About a month ago, I pointed out (in God is for Suckers gets censored by net filtering software) that the commercial SonicWALL Content Filtering System (used by Panera Bread for the free wi-fi access they provide at their eateries) had put GifS on their “banned” list, classifying us as “Cult/Occult” (defined as being a site “sponsored by prominent organized modern religious groups that are identified as “cults” by three or more authoritative sources… that promote or offer methods, means of instruction, or other resources to affect or influence real events through the use of spells, curses, magic powers or supernatural beings.”)

Since nothing in that description applies to GifS, I wrote them a polite but puzzled note, pointing out that someone had clearly made an error, since we were being blocked for reasons that didn’t in the least apply to this site.

I never got a response; but about a week ago, they lifted the block.

Seems likely that SonicWALL has a “path of least resistance” model: Somebody doesn’t like a site, or some bot of theirs discovers clustering of words it doesn’t like (maybe religion - magical - invisible - evil - kill for “Cult/Occult”?), and they blacklist it. Somebody complains, and they take it off the blacklist — unless it obviously “belongs” there, like www.assfuckers.com. “False positives? We don’t care about no steenkin’ false positives.” If so, their evil is that of pathetic systematic bad technique rather than that of targeting particular viewpoints on controversial topics.

More empirical testing is obviously needed. I think I’ll send them a mainstream religious site or two which does meet their “Cult/Occult” standard, and see what happens.