AT&T vs. 4chan Followup Part 1- Nothing Personal

Mashable, the social media guide reports that Monday, AT&T blocked 4chan to DSL subscribers and the reasons weren’t completely clear, leading to speculation that censorship might be in play in regards to the infamous online forum. Earlier today, AT&T customers began regaining access, and now we know the details surrounding the telecom’s move to block and then unblock 4Chan.

AT&T has issued the following statement:

“Beginning Friday, an AT&T customer was impacted by a denial-of-service attack stemming from IP addresses connected to img.4chan.org. To prevent this attack from disrupting service for the impacted AT&T customer, and to prevent the attack from spreading to impact our other customers, AT&T temporarily blocked access to the IP addresses in question for our customers. This action was in no way related to the content at img.4chan.org; our focus was on protecting our customers from malicious traffic.

Overnight Sunday, after we determined the denial-of-service threat no longer existed, AT&T removed the block on the IP addresses in question. We will continue to monitor for denial-of-service activity and any malicious traffic to protect our customers.”

So while the block may have been nothing personal, you can still see some of the power that social media can bring with it.

Be sure to check out part 2 where I’m going to tell you how they got their story to the top of digg.com and all over the news in just a few hours.