According to this article, social media is “revolutionizing your doctor visits.” I won’t argue that websites haven’t made our lives easier in terms of finding out if you have symptoms of H1N1 or researching which specialized hospitals are best for what. However, there is still a long way to go until healthcare becomes “revolutionized” vis-a-vis social media. It seems that a significant number of people are expecting to find great doctors in the same manner we find nomnom-licious restaurants on Yelp. This isn’t going to happen anytime soon. Why? While the crowd who scours the internet looking for the best underground cafes and undiscovered treasures certainly can contribute to the social media-lizing of healthcare, there is a significant chunk of people, people who are the majority players in the healthcare community, who don’t.

Let’s take a look at the Yelp community. Whenever I want to find reviews about a restaurant or hair salon, my first step is to whip open a new browser tab and see fellow Yelpers’ verdicts. Yelp has a fairly, and by fairly I mean very, large amount of traffic – 25 million unique visitors in a month. Looking at the demographic info, the majority of users are within the 18 – 49 age range. I know that there are many non-members using Yelp, too, but given that they’re non-members, they’re also not contributing in terms of reviews and ratings.

Now, let’s look at the healthcare industry. If we’re going to have a similar community for healthcare, reviewers and raters are crucial for success and efficiency. I’m not saying that young people don’t get sick. However, there will be certain areas of medicine that won’t benefit anytime soon. Some fields will have a lot of traffic – dentists, family physicians, pediatricians, cosmetic surgeons and OB GYNs are good bets. These areas have a significant number of patients who are within the online-review-utilizing-and-contributing age bracket. As for cardiologists, rheumatologists, and geriatricians? Detailed information and reviews will be sparse. Given that physicians devote about 30 – 35% of patient care time to those over 65, it is clear that the elderly still constitute a sizable chunk of the healthcare community. We’ll be missing their input on physicians and doctors for a long while.

However, if you think about, those of us who are most likely to utilize the intarwebz and social sites to research our doctors are more likely to look in the common fields I mentioned above. I know that if I move to a new city, a dentist and optometrist would be first on my list. Thankfully, tons of others in a similar age range will have tested and tried out a significant number of these doctors. All in all, I wouldn’t call this a healthcare revolution – but it is a start.

Apparently, AT&T has decided to block 4chan. 4chan. Let’s say that again – 4chan. Of all the sites they could have censored, 4chan? Really? Really? Did they not see what 4chan did with TIME’s 100 Most Influential People list? And TIME didn’t even do anything to them. AT&T’s got some real cajones if they’re willing to take on the wrath of 4chan, which of course, comes bundled with the army of anon. You just don’t mess with 4chan, unless you want your homepage to start displaying 2girls1cup or meatspin- and that’s only the start of it.

As per TechCrunch:

AT&T has just opened perhaps the most vindictive, messy can of worms it could have possibly found. Blocking any site seems like a breach of user trust, but the decision to block 4chan in particular just seems stupid. Expect the web equivalent of rioting if this doesn’t change soon. – Jason Kincaid

The troops have already begun rallying here and on Encyclopedia Dramatica. I don’t know about you, but I’m stocking up on my popcorn. Unless 4chan decides to blow up AT&T’s servers, in which I will be /wrist, because sadly, my service provider is AT&T.

From Encyclopaedia Dramatica:

This isn’t like going to war with Anontalk, or Scientology, or some website, it’s AT& fucking T. There will be no lulz in this war.
This time the internet IS serious business.

EDIT: Seems like AT&T already gave up – /b/ is accessible again (I double checked). Damn, I was so looking forward to the epic intarwebz battle. But! There’s still hope yet:

It appears that AT&T has STOPPED blocking access to img.4chan.org in multiple previously affected areas!

(as soon as they get a little shitstorm, they back down — will this story end here? do we say ‘oh ok thanks for unblocking’ or do we go on?)

We go on. Anonymous does not forgive. Anonymous does not forget. – Anon,

EDIT Numero Dos: AT&T released a statement earlier today, explaining how all this went down in the first place.

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.

And a response from moot, via his status blog:

Here’s what happened:

For the past three weeks, 4chan has been under a constant DDoS attack. We were able to filter this specific type of attack in a fashion that was more or less transparent to the end user.

Unfortunately, as an unintended consequence of the method used, some Internet users received errant traffic from one of our network switches. A handful happened to be AT&T customers.

In response, AT&T filtered all traffic to and from our img.4chan.org IPs (which serve /b/ & /r9k/) for their entire network, instead of only the affected customers. AT&T did not contact us prior to implementing the block. Here is their statement regarding the matter.

In the end, this wasn’t a sinister act of censorship, but rather a bit of a mistake and a poorly executed, disproportionate response on AT&T’s part. Whoever pulled the trigger on blackholing the site probably didn’t anticipate [nor intend] the consequences of doing so.

We’re glad to see this short-lived debacle has prompted renewed interest and debate over net neutrality and internet censorship—two very important issues that don’t get nearly enough attention—so perhaps this was all just a blessing in disguise.

Aside from that, I’ll also add that there is some big news due later this week. Keep an eye on the News page, Twitter, and global message for updates.

As always, I can be reached at moot@4chan.org.

—

PS: If any companies would like to hook us up with some better hardware, feel free! The architecture we’ve got powering this large and influential beast is really quite embarrassing. ( ._.)

Like moot wrote, this srsly was a badly executed “solution” on AT&T’s part. They should at least warn people or have a posted alert saying that they’re going to block any site or IP for a good majority of the customers. Not to mention, one that has a high volume of traffic, like 4chan or any media site.

Ah well, I guess we’ll have to keep waiting to witness an epic internet throwdown.

I ran across this article the other day about how social networks, at least those born and raised on good ol’ American soil, need to adapt to Asian culture if they ever want to succeed in the Asian region. This is critical to the success of any social website that wants to succeed- and not only do they have to adopt local characteristics and tastes, but also compete against the already established local networks. When we were conducting interviews earlier this semester for UMA’s creative committee, this was actually the case question we asked the prospys. It seems that so many companies are ready to jump head first into China without considering the culture and end up getting owned in the face by local establishments. It’ll be interesting to see if the big names like Facebook will make changes that cater specifically to target areas in Asia.

And speaking of Asia Web 2.0, the Geeks on a Plane tour is now official. While a nine-day foray into the world of Asian internet startups and companies won’t be comprehensive at all, it’d still be a hell of a lot more informative than what we can only access on the intarwebz. I like the fact that they’re attending events that are hosted by companies started and based in Beijing/Shanghai/Tokyo, rather than companies abroad that have been Asianified. The events in Shanghai look especially attractive- the Barcamp Shanghai un-conference hosted by Tudou and a Geeks & Glamour after party at the shiny M1NT lounge? *dies*

And before I go, I’d like to throw a shout out to my homedizzle Robert, all the way out thurr in Las Vegas. :] Happy?