warmr2d2

Content filters are simple, take this one for example. Most schools use iPrism and the general idea is easily scalable to the ISP level. On the flip side it’s quite easy to get around content filtering, the two common ways are TOR and VPNs

TOR is completely free and by far the most effective, It weakness is that it’s pretty slow

VPNs cost money (there are free VPNs but, generally those are very slow and sell your data) and are slightly more practical to block. But VPNs are fast, you won’t notice much of a difference as to your normal speeds. If you want help choosing a VPN I’d look here

A good example of an effective large scale content filter, would be China’s Great Firewall . Four very basic methods The Great Firewall uses are 1. DNS poisoning 2. URL filtering 3. Packet analysis 4. Killing an Internet connection

DNS stands for (Domain Name Server), a DNS is a data base that holds the names that correlate with an IP address. For example googles IP address is 172.217.9.238, googles domain name is google.com. Because of a DNS when you put google.com into your address bar it takes you to 172.217.9.238. DNS poisoning (in regards to censorship) is simply when the DNS server refuses to give you the IP of a certain website

URL filtering is like DNS poisoning, but instead of having a list of blocked IPs. It’s blocks URLs with certain keywords

Packet analysis is like URL filtering except instead of just looking for keywords in a URL. The whole request is searched, like if you search “Capitalism vs Communism” on a search engine. The request may not go through or it may go through but you only get pro-communism results in China.

Killing internet connection is exactly what it sounds like, if all else fails. Just kill the persons internet, stop all traffic coming from them.

Though here are some key differences as to China’s Great Firewall and what America’s might look like In China the great firewall is controlled by the government instead of various ISPs In China content filtering is driven by the desire to censor political dissidents and unsavory opinions, as opposed to being driven for monetary gain China’s firewall is backed by one of the largest police states and physical surveillance apparatuses on earth. ISPs censorship would only be as good as their technology

TL;DR on a basic level content filtering is extremely easy to implement and to bypass. Research the Great Firewall

Edit: here’s a paste bin of this comment. So you can find this info even if my comment gets taken down

I’ve heard a lot of people say that without these regulations, the market will be more competitive and allow for more ISP’s to become relevant. As someone who helped build an ISP from the ground up, what do you think about that idea?