In this recommended diary, mlharges describes how Daily Kos was briefly classified as a "Hate/Discrimination" site by OpenDNS. Without getting too propellerhead about it, OpenDNS is a free-to-use DNS resolution service, which means that it works behind the scenes to translate domain names that humans use (like "www.dailykos.com") into numbers that computers use (like "208.122.51.48") and vice versa. Among the other services that OpenDNS provides is community-based domain tagging: anyone can vote for a particular domain to be tagged as Blogs, Chat, Advertising, Politics, etc., and if enough other people agree on a tag, the tag is associated with that domain in the OpenDNS database. Unfortunately, there appears to be an organized effort afoot to censor liberal/progressive Web sites by assigning the "Hate/Discrimination" tag to them.
I don't use the word "censor" lightly here. Organizations that use the OpenDNS service, such as mlharges' employer, can configure it to block access to domains tagged with certain labels, which is why mlharges was briefly unable to access Daily Kos from work.
It seems that the opportunity to make mischief with this system has been too much for some on the right to pass up. OpenDNS lets you review the list of currently "undecided" domains for a particular tag; i.e., domains for which the tag has been suggested but which have not been voted on by enough people for the tag to be applied. Perusing the "Hate/Descrimination" list, I found the following sites:
Huffington Post
Democratic Underground
Gay City News
Courage Campaign
United Against H8
NOW
Crooks and Liars
The California Majority Report
Mother Jones
signorile.com
Andrew Sullivan
Protest 8
From the Left
MoveOn.org
CBS News (?)
Feministing
No on Prop 8
Invalidate Prop 8
fundrace.huffingtonpost.com
Emptywheel
Mormons for Marriage (anti-Prop 8)
Out Gay Life
There are more than 1000 sites on the list, so I'm nowhere near done; I'll add more to the list above as I find them. These sites have been suggested for the "Hate/Discrimination" tag by a number of different OpenDNS userIDs with no clear connection between them, although one
"Daddy O" seems to be the ringleader or chief culprit.
Fortunately, together we can stop this censorship. Anyone can create a free account at opendns.com and vote on sites; your organization doesn't have to use OpenDNS for you to vote. OpenDNS is an above-board operation and you don't have to worry about getting spam if you sign up, although if you're really paranoid about it you can always use a throwaway e-mail account from a service like Mailinator.
Please don't respond in kind by tagging conservative sites with "Hate/Discrimination" or other inappropriate tags. As Kos indicated just a short while ago, the problem with dailykos.com has been resolved, and to all appearances the OpenDNS system is responsive to people-powered input. Our only goal here is to prevent sites from being subject to censorship due to inappropriate tagging. If you find any that I've missed, post about them in the comments and I'll add them to the list above.