AT&T raises ire of 4chan users after ISP blocks access to popular forums

AT&T reportedly blocked sections of message board 4chan, the popular wellspring of memes and clearinghouse for humor of questionable taste. For a short time yesterday, AT&T was blocking image boards (/b/ and /r9k/) with no explanation to its DSL and U-Verse customers or to 4chan's admins. Later in the evening, AT&T restored network access, but the site remained under a large-scale denial of service (DDoS) attack which continued into the morning.

While AT&T's blockage of img.4chan.org was confirmed, the relationship between the blockage and denial of service attack remains unconfirmed. Some reports (and some posters on /b/) claim that the DDoS attacks were coming from AT&T customers.

Of course, any ISP-level action taken against the popular site is sure to elicit retaliation from its users, no matter what the ISP's motive. In a matter of hours, users already began planning actions against AT&T.

For example, an article saying "AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson was found dead in his multimillion dollar beachfront mansion, say official sources..." was posted to Digg, and has received almost a thousand votes by this afternoon, and a campaign to boycott AT&T has been put up.

On Encyclopedia Dramatica, under the heading "The Gameplan," a PR war is discussed as one option for retaliation. It says, "Make it absolutely abundantly clear that this is NOT acceptable to American consumers and this WILL NOT be allowed to happen, or else face financial and political suicide. Acting like an idiot and trying to DDoS them will only end with you being persecuted, and your actions being used as a justification.
Fight with what works: this is David and Goliath. this is the little man and the big evil corporation. this is the honest consumers fighting back by being consumers: by stop giving them money, by making them look horrible, by causing a PR sh*tstorm. By having the consumerist press have headlines disparaging AT&T."