What do they seek to accomplish here? There is strong precedent for the US defending the 1st amendment against foreign interests.
No UK bureaucrats are going to make a career out of this.
Going after a company that can defend itself and can't be intimidated, will prevent them from bluffing successfully against smaller companies, who could realistically be intimidated.
If I were working at Ofcom, I would stay away from the large US sites with access to good legal counsel, and instead try to intimidate the long tail that don't.
Totally separate from the issue of whether this is good or bad: it doesn't look like these Ofcom guys are playing with a full deck.
> staffed by those who couldn't make it as civil servants
Still civil service.
> I'd be surprised if anyone who works there has ever used the internet
They do, but the pricks who created the law are/were reactionary politicians, who couldn’t be bothered to actually draft decent laws.
Ofwat and ofgem are different issues, they have suffered regulatory capture.
Ofwat has the power to bankrupt the entire water system. Which is great, but then the government would have to bail out the shareholders. which means not only higher taxes, but no private investment for large scale. Oh and ballooning public debt.
Which means stagflation, well harder stagflation. There is a ton more to this.
Don't get me wrong it needs reform, but that costs money. We need to have the money to hire decent staff. But with the impeding cuts and what ever dipshittery from Reform next, thats not going to happen
In the UK and Ireland, a distinction is generally made between public servants, who are paid by government appropriation, and civil servants, who are employed directly by government departments and the organisations they directly control and fund.
Looked this up. They’re not part of the civil service transfer scheme so I think you are 100% correct. They also in theory have their own corporate structure but since they literally publish documents explaining how to map it to civil service grades I think it’s fair to say the overall experience isn’t that different. But different tenure, different pension, they’re not civil servants.
4chan is a small company with dubious profitability so I doubt they can afford much in the way of lawyers, but it doesn't really matter because they can simply ignore the UK completely. They only accept crypto anyway, so the UK can't even take away 4chan's payment processing in the UK.
From the article it looks like the fine here is basically for not complying with information requests (rather than a full investigation having concluded that 4chan is in violation of the substance of the Act). Ofcom probably thought 4chan would just respond to the requests by geoblocking the UK, which would have been good enough for them. But once their bluff was called, they really had no choice but to levy the fine. Announcing you are investigating someone for violating the law and then not bothering to fine them when they very clearly ignore your investigation (which is itself a violation of the law) is more destructive to your credibility than anything.
It's not like the fine has zero consequences. It will likely restrict 4chan and its senior officials from visiting or dealing with the UK, which I'm sure is annoying on a personal level if nothing else. I don't know if Ofcom currently has the power to order ISPs to block non-compliant domains, but if it doesn't you can bet it will be using this to push for that power.
As for not being able to intimidate the long tail: for US companies, yes this might further weaken Ofcom's influence over them. But companies with a UK presence who try to call Ofcom's bluff after this are likely going to have a bad time.
> There is strong precedent for the US defending the 1st amendment against foreign interests.
How does this ruling affect the company's right to free speech in the US? It's a fine for refusing to comply with a law in the UK; any sufficiently competent organisation could choose to comply with censorship/age gating in one country and avoid those restrictions in all others.
> How does this ruling affect the company's right to free speech in the US?
As I understand it, not at all.
I don't think the British institutions care at all about their rights to do whatever they want outside the UK; the problem is, 4chan does provide access to people in the UK, so it's a bit like a pirate radio station that the UK would like to not be receiving owing to the station's complete lack of interest in following UK laws.
To put it another way, if 4chan blocked the UK, the UK would consider this development to be appropriate. UK might not cancel the penalty fine, but that's because the offence for which it has been issued has already occurred; after all, nobody gets out of an already-issued littering ticket during a holiday by returning to their home country.
> To put it another way, if 4chan blocked the UK, the UK would be fine with this outcome.
They really wouldn't, otherwise they would've done that already since it is well within their power to command ISPs to blackhole any offending website. That they chose to levy fines instead tells me all I need to know about their true intentions.
Where appropriate, in the most serious cases, we can seek a court order for ‘business disruption measures’, such as requiring payment providers or advertisers to withdraw their services from a platform, or requiring Internet Service Providers to block access to a site in the UK.
That sounds to me like they consider curtailing speech by blocking a website to be one of the last things to try, not the first.
That's the default when you host an app on the world wide web, though. Regardless of how big of a burden it is for 4chan (I would think it's as simple as flipping a switch in some control panel blocking UK access?), it still does compel the US-based company with no commercial presence in the UK to consider complex international law and to make changes to their US-based web app in response to a foreign jurisdiction's regulations, which feels wrong to me.
This is tangential to whether it affects "free speech" outside the UK, though, and I'm inclined to agree that it doesn't, but I guess it depends on how you define free speech. If 4chan's web app itself is considered speech, and not just the content that's posted there, maybe. But I think free speech advocates are a lot more concerned with the content.
But note that merely being accessible in the UK is not enough here. The service must either target the UK or have a significant number of users in the UK, or it provides harmful content. So the online forum for Oregon gardeners is quite safe even if, indeed, accessible from the UK.
But still it is an awkward legislation and it would be simpler to simply block rather than to threaten and fine services from around the world.
Ofcom attempting to enforce it's laws upon a US-resident corporation that has no business presence in the United Kingdom is the very definition of affecting one's right to free speech in the United States. This is why the US has a rich history of case law to draw upon for defining personal jurisdiction. In this case, Ofcom is perhaps hoping to exploit uncertainty regarding personal jurisdiction to impose its law upon foreign citizens who otherwise have no business in the United Kingdom. So, yeah, it definitely affects a company's right to free speech in the US. It affects EVERYONE's right to free speech in the US, and it should not be dismissed simply because 4chan is the defendant.
Mostly incorrect. The First Amendment limits the US government, not Ofcom or UK courts. UK law can regulate services with “links to the UK” even if the provider is abroad, and Ofcom’s enforcement does not itself abridge anyone’s US constitutional rights.
The first amendment is a natural right, not a civil right, but at any rate the matter of personal jurisdiction is what is at issue, which most definitely does regulate who can and cannot assert authority over a man (fictive or otherwise). Ofcom's attempt to enforce their law over corporations and people who do not in fact have "links to the UK" as defined under US law is the entirety of the issue. They are overstepping their jurisdiction and infringing upon the sovereignty of the United States.
It's sovereignty that limits the UK courts from enforcing a fine against an organization without a physical, legal, or financial presence in the UK. They could ask US courts to enforce a UK judgment, but the First Amendment does bind US courts.
A lot of the US rules in this area came from UK courts trying to enforce defamation/libel related claims on US authors and journalists.
The American consensus basically became that US courts don’t enforce overseas judgments on free speech stuff where the speech would be legal in the US. Even if that speech could be “heard” elsewhere.
See the Ehrenfeld v. Bin Mahfouz case (2005) and subsequent US SPEECH act (2010).
The thing about laws are they stop at the border. Unless you are sufficiently powerful that you can ignore the rights of other countries and their people, the UK isn't powerful anymore, but hasn't grasped that concept yet (I'm British, at this point it's just kind of sad).
So UK laws stop at the UK border.
4Chan is a US company, based in the US, with all its people and stuff in the US. It has never had a presence in the UK.
In the US people and companies have the right to free speech guaranteed under the first amendment, that includes speech conducted online. Many people would consider having the ability to speak, but having the government restrict hearing that speech to amount to a free speech violation.
The only jurisdiction 4Chan operates in is the US and they are defending their rights: they also have that right, the US isn't North Korea, or China, or the UK.
This isn't a matter of can they censor, of course they can. This is a matter of they don't have to, and they won't.
The UK has no jurisdiction, or reason to believe they have jurisdiction, or ability to enforce its laws extraterritorially over pretty much any foreign entity, but especially not the US.
Anyway you look at this, this is a jumped up little backwater not content with robbing their own citizens of their rights, they are now trying to rob others too.
As someone who's lived in the UK for years but no longer there (I'm American and currently live in another EU country) it's sad but also quite funny watching the rapid deterioration across multiple domains that has taken place in the last 20 years. At times it seems that the people at the upper strata of politics have completely broken with contemporary reality and went off into a fantasy make-believe space, but don't realize it and keep acting as if that's not the case.
You don't have to say, but I'm curious where you moved to.
I'm not originally from the UK, but have lived here for over 20 years. I'm fully settled here, with a family, children at school, sports, hobbies, friends etc, but lately it just feels more and more gloomy.
The annoying thing is, I had planned to use geoarbitrage at some future point to sell up and retire somewhere on the European mainland, but that arbitrage opportunity has or is disappearing as places like Portugal become more expensive.
I moved to Germany where my wife is from, and I currently split my time between a conservative US state where my kids are studying (I left California where I grew up when the liberal politics became too much to handle as I didn't want my kids to grow up in this sort of environment).
4chan are the “think of the children” bad guys to make an example out of.
This isn’t a play to get money or 4chan to comply, it’s a play to increase the strength of their legislation. So expect stronger blocking etc to be on the cards to prevent foreign entities from avoiding the law.
This is a little wild to think about. It would make infosec impossible in the UK.
Imagine the IT departments of every mutltinational corporation desperately trying to sort out permissions to keep important information off of machines deployed in the UK.
New authorization groups for everyone in the UK, lots of meetings with lawyers to sort out what they can have access to.
Everyone in the UK becomes a second class psuedo-trustworthy employee overnight.
Were I in charge of IT, when that bombshell came across my desk, I think I would give every UK employee a chromebook, and migrate all workloads to the cloud.
No data could be saved locally. No thumb drives.
Depending on the availability of good cloud tools, the productivity hit might be so large that layoffs would be warranted.
4chan allows browsing with a VPN but to post using a VPN requires paying for their 4chan pass which many will not do so I guess reverse censorship will have its intended effect here if they are blocked. Exception of course are malware based "VPNs" that route through residential computers that have not yet been b&.
No one has seriously discussed banning VPN's - one minister mentioned they where looking it and no one said anything about private keys either as far as I know.
If I'm wrong someone can drop me a link since I live in the UK.
it's been mulled over and keeps getting brought up again and again, the Overton window has shifted from "go away and come back when you're serious to", "christ how would we comply with that?" https://nordvpn.com/blog/tech-world-angry-with-theresa-mays-...
If you live here how can you not spot how every govt since they kicked out brown has been pushing for this?
I'm aware and it's precisely because it's not a new thing been seeing it for years, I specifically was asking for a citation for this government.
I don't rule out they are daft enough to consider it, I just think they aren't quite that stupid.
OSA was a "something must be done, this is something, it must be done" thing - they can appease the mumsnet types for a bit with it and would generally prefer it quietly went back to sleep for a bit.
Not least because it's gonna hurt them electorally because while the people who are slightly in favour of it where slightly in favour of it a lot of the people who aren't really aren't seeing it as either unworkable, stupid or unworkable and stupid.
Yeah, the ultimate goal is to end all user-generated content, first through moderation and then by algorithms, motivated by structural deficiency in commissioned for-profit contents that it is no match against user-generated. And the response sorely needed right now is resurgence of a distributed social media system that do not grossly undermine copyrights.
I think you’re overanalyzing it. They’re just enforcing the law. You and I may agree that it’s a bad law, but that doesn’t mean that the people in charge of enforcing it necessarily have complex and sinister motives.
I don't agree that wanting to further one's own career is complex or sinister. If the enforcement of laws wasn't aligned with career progress it would be bad for enforcement, including the laws that you and I want enforced.
Even if the goal is just enforcement, you would get more enforcement, collect more fines, if you didn't put your ability to actually collect fines into question. When 4chan successfully defends itself and the UK extracts no money, that will show US companies which would have been in doubt, that they can also defend themselves.
Sure I mean, people generally want to do their jobs, which in this case means fining sites that don’t comply with the legislation. I don’t see any reason to think that it’s more complex than that. If 4chan doesn’t comply then the site will probably be blocked by UK ISPs, so I don’t think the logic in your second paragraph really goes through.
A job is not just robotically following a script. If your actions have negative impact on the goals of your job and you do it anyway, you are bad at your job.
I didn’t make any claim about people being good at their jobs. But I’m not sure why you think that this will have a negative impact on OFCOM’s goals. Imposing the fine is probably just a formal preliminary to having UK ISPs block 4chan.
In this case, Ofcom's stated goal (which I admit may be different than their actual goal) is to get overseas companies to comply with their rules.
I think you may be giving them too much credit. You're essentially saying that their real goal is to get an ISP block and everything they are doing now is performative to get to that real, unstated goal.
On the other hand I may be underestimating them as, to me, they just seem like power-tripping troglodytes.
I don't think the fine is performative. It's just the first sanction that gets applied. I don't understand why you think that's incompatible with Ofcom's stated goal.
How do you expect this to happen? The law is pretty clear and afaik 4chan has been pretty explicit that they know the law and they're ignoring it. 4chan's 'out' is that they don't have any legal presence in the UK. More legitimate enterprises do so the results of this will have no bearing on them.
If this is deemed illegal in an US court then the OSA will be unenforcebale against US entities in the US (though not sure what's needed to set precedent).
This is important because otherwise UK fines may be enforceable in US courts.
> This is important because otherwise UK fines may be enforceable in US courts.
UK law is generally unenforcible in the US except extradition agreements for crimes commuted while residing in the UK. That's not the case here and there's no agreement that applies to this case.
> It is possible to enforce UK judgements and fines in the US, though my understanding is that it is not simple or guaranteed.
I am curious as to how that could possibly work. Is there some trade agreement that requires the US to respect UK court rulings? Generally the US has sought to distance itself from any kind of foreign influence or control.
I'm talking specifically about US companies, which make up the lion's share of popular websites. They are served from the US as a primary location, and the company is incorporated there as well. Modulo CDN hosted assets, there is no presence in the UK.
If the company is in the UK, then yes, they are obviously screwed.
The damage to the UK's web presence has already been done.
I don't expect anyone would want to incorporate an internet dependent company there.
The law is law, but Ofcom wrote the regulation (1000+ pages) themselves with their interest groups. A lot of regulators went through revolving door and are now selling services for complying with Online Safety Act.
no, ofcom don't need to be picking the fights they are, they're choosing to support the political arm under the claims of "hate speech" and "ungood bad think"
> they're choosing to support the political arm under the claims of "hate speech" and "ungood bad think"
I do wonder if you bother to actually read the stuff you are typing.
like have you _met_ anyone from ofcom? or seen the shit that 4chan routinely post?
4chan is literally the living embodiment of what the OSA was designed(and will probably fail) to stop. No moderation, loads of porn, incitement to violence
but to your point, `claims of "hate speech"` Ofcom have no mandate for hate speech. But then I imagine facts are less interesting than a daydream of cypherpunk rebellion.
There is plenty of moderation on 4chan. It actively avoids breaking the laws of the country it's hosted in (the USA). You may not like what's on it, but it's not "extreme".
It used to be more extreme, it's not today. It's why spinoffs like 8chan were created, they felt there was too much moderation on 4chan. If you hear of some diabolical internet stunt, these days it was probably soyjak.party that organised it, not 4chan's /b/
As you allude, Ofcom cares not, they just want all sites to bend the knee to them.
You're overestimating how much thought governments put into things.
Governments are just organizations and organizations are made of people. We see plenty of folly in the private sector; the government can do it too, don't you worry. Arguably they can do folly in ways the private sector only dreams of, what with being funded by the taxpayer.
The org is enforcing the law as written. The law, as written, is fucking stupid. Ergo the enforcement actions that derive from it themselves look fucking stupid.
Sure, governments are organizations made up of people. But they're hierarchical organizations. There are really only a handful of people who matter when it comes to making decisions.
They are enforcing the law, but why pick out 4chan? Because everyone has heard of 4chan.
Thanks for posting, an insightful overview of the ramifications of the Online Safety Act on online freedoms.
> Perhaps most troubling, the UK’s approach sets a dangerous precedent for global internet regulation. If every country can claim jurisdiction over any website accessible within its borders, the internet becomes subject to the most restrictive speech laws anywhere in the world.
Another interesting point is that the UK could just ban the websites it finds objectionable, but that'd expose them as a censor, so instead the strategy is to basically force those websites to withdraw from the market voluntarily (or comply), which is a much less revolting story to sell to its population.
First Amendment makes it hard for the government to censor or ban them outright, but onerous child protection requirements gets them to close on their own. Russ Vought:
> …you know what happens is the porn company then says, ‘We’re not going to do business in your state.’ Which of course is entirely what we were after, right?
The UK already blocks certain websites at the national level, e.g. you can’t access Pirate Bay from a UK ISP, so can’t imagine Ofcom blocking 4chan would cause much consternation among those who aren’t already against the OSA.
One interesting bit is that the lawyer, RONALD D. COLEMAN is (or at least was) a youtube lawyer.
He'd pop into 'law streams' from time to time to talk about cases and discuss newsworthy events out of the courts.
He is as if New Jersey was transmuted into a man (I say that with great affection).
I want to say, and I could be wrong, I became familiar with his name during the Rittenhouse trial. Or maybe the couple high profile trials after the Rittenhouse trial, that were popular while we all waited for covid to be 'over'.
For whatever that's worth
edit: he IS a real lawyer with real clients and real cases. I don't want to diminish anything because I called him a 'youtube lawyer'. I think it's more: A lawyer that sees value in being on youtube from time to time.
It still is but current SCOTUS of US has lost a lot of credibility in essentially making Presidents 4 to 8 year kings who can't be sued or charged with a crime. There are other things like the newer judges lying while under oath that they weren't joining up to end decisions on civil rights and ending abortion as a basic right.
You know, I'd like to actually know the answer to the question you're posing there. Does discussing suicide increase the overall rate, is it neutral -- or does it even decrease it? The Samaritans are usually regarded as a net public benefit, though they tend not to encourage people to go through with it, whereas the Wikipedia link suggests that the users of that forum have some kind of fetish for it.
I would also expect to find that the effect of internet was minimal (in my case because I think the drivers of suicide are mostly socioeconomic), but I'd really like to see a proper study. I'm also aware that there is quite a lot of peer-reviewed evidence that pro-anorexia websites do actually cause harm, and there's an obvious parallel to be drawn.
Media coverage if done irresponsibly can encourage others to do the same.
> Research from over 100
international studies provide evidence that the way suicide deaths are reported is
associated with increased suicide rates and suicide attempts after reporting [6,7].
> At the same time the WHO also suggests that positive and responsible reporting of suicides
which promotes help-seeking behaviour, increases awareness of suicide prevention, shares
stories of individuals overcoming their suicidal thinking or promotes coping strategies can
help reduce suicides and suicidal behaviour [6,7,8]
Having perused the site a number of times, I wouldn't say many people there "have a fetish for it". You're a million times more likely to be told to kill yourself on 4chan than on SS.
SS simply says a) suicide should be your choice, b) dehumanizing people for having suicidal thoughts is bad. Sadly these opinions are so far outside the overton window that suicidal people end up having no choice but to discuss their problems with other suicidal people - likely not a good basis for improvement but the human is a social animal so I'll take it over nothing.
And although SS provides info on how you can kill yourself, it also tells you how you can't kill yourself, and that has apparently saved me from permanent liver damage. So at least for me it has been objectively beneficial - more so than the brainless repetition of "consult a professional" which seems to be the gold standard for suicide prevention these days.
Thanks for sharing. It's actually reassuring to hear that the forum isn't as dark as I assumed. Providing a route for people to work through things is surely more helpful than suppression.
I am a little surprised that you perceive a gap between the advice to "consult a professional" and your a) and b). Do professionals working in this space not accept the validity of your thoughts and feelings, as a basic step? They really should.
For whatever it's worth, I hope you choose to stay with us.
Presumably the "big names" are able to (or have already) implemented the requirements under the law and have an economic and reputational incentive to comply.
Unfortunately, I don't see any site being blocked that will make these shameless gremlins in power let go of their authoritarian control over the public's lives.
Semi-related view from a former oldfag (is that term still used?), I am of the firm opinion that Insta and Twitter are far more damaging than 4chan ever was. Not that it doesn't have its filth, of course. But these image boards are too obscure for broad appeal and do not purposefully mess with people's psyche to show them more ads.
"Two more weeks" is a meme phrase used when an event will never actually happen. For example: "trust the plan! just two more weeks until XYZ" when XYZ will not happen.
London is the third most visited city and Heathrow is the second most popular airport by international visitors. The prospect of being arrested upon arrival there might be a little annoying.
Even if you don't intend to ever set foot in the UK you could find yourself there unintentionally, if your airline needs to make an unplanned diversion. So you basically have to forego any European air travel.
I wouldn't go that far. It's easy to find flights with routes where a diversion to the UK would either never make sense or be impossible due to distance.
Agreed, but if anything, it just shows how they lack teeth to mandate any action outside their jurisdiction.
If an entire continent was at stake, this would be a different story. But, in the end, the UK is small in the grand scheme of things. Any website operated outside the UK won't care, and actively demonstrating this is pretty illogical from their part.
They didn't just threaten anything - they imposed the fine. Imposing a fine while knowing that it likely will never be collected is the very definition of "symbolic".
The threat of imprisonment if you don't pay the fine is the polar opposite of anything "symbolic". It puts individuals at significant personal risk should they ever make the mistake of traveling through the UK, in turn limiting their freedom of movement permanently even without being in prison.
This is just not that big a deal for people who don't have family or business connections there already. It'll be like 'oh no, banned from a once-great place.' Had the UK remained in the EU, they might have been able to get other countries to honor such an arrest warrant, but as it is they just look petulant.
Sorry, being in effect banned from a country (and possibly anyone it has an active extradition agreement with, which is unrelated to EU membership) is a big deal.
Imagine being a US citizen, and suddenly being banned from Texas and Utah. It's not like you were planning on visiting those, right? Just remember to never accidentally take interstate 10, 15, 20, 40, 70 or 80 when driving around, that can't be too hard.
Suggesting it is okay to have arbitrary freedoms taken away because "you wouldn't use it anyway" is a very slippery slope. Who needs privacy and free spech, not like you want to badmouth the eternal supreme leader anyway.
It is extremely relevant an entity granted powers by their sovereign governemnt is threatening that the next legally mandated escalation should they not comply with their unrealistic demands is imprisonment. And yes, ending up in jail is a realistic outcome when their laws dictate it, so if it goes that far you are now playing the floor is lava but instead of lava it's nations with UK extradition agreements.
I mean Russia has fined Google 20 decillion USD. What is the point if you can't collect? Like me fining my neighbor 100 million Euro. He will laugh at me and tell me to get lost.
This is not a fictive fine, it's threats of imprisonment, and ignoring the whole thing means having to avoid travelling to or through the UK for life, and that's assuming the UK doesn't try to activate any sort of extradition agreements.
Even without going to prison, that's a permanent and quite significant theft of freedom of movement. If you ever travel abroad, you could end up accidentally booking a transfer through the UK.
No one ends up unintentionally transferring through Russia anytime soon. And likening the legal threats of a foreign nation to a joke from your neighbor makes no sense.
Russia is a well known authoritarian state arbitrarily penalizing anyone not aligned with and assisting their ideals, with no expectation of any kind of fair process.
The UK is a misguided democracy within the usual group of countries considered "the west", enforcing stupid and broken laws in a highly questionable fashion that presents fundamental questions about jurisdiction in the modern world.
However, it is acting against an entity is cancerous enough that even the defendent is purely challenging (and getting support on) the technical legal grounds in a search for precedent.
If your flight is redirected due to weather/etc. to some British commonwealth country, then you might be grabbed upon landing. Or if you are a really big fish, your plane might be forced to land on a crown-controlled land.
The only member of the Commonwealth that is British anymore is the UK and any of the independent countries in the Commonwealth grabbing a passenger on behalf of a civil judgement in a English court seems no more likely than any other random country doing so.
Even more unlikely is the crown exercising the kind of power you're talking about. Never mind that Charles isn't the King of the majority of Commonwealth countries.
Under the UK goodness knows in principle yes but they have a protected status in terms of id and tax history (I, wish I was joking) which makes it problematic enough to even discuss...
Ofcom does what the government tells it to do. And the government does what people tell them to do. You underestimate the popular support for censorship laws in the UK - the country still had a legally-empowered "Board of Film Censors" in 2010...
The fact that it's not listening to you does not mean it's not listening to anyone.
Our MPs are listening to the faith-based organizations bankrolled by American interests. They are listening to the Catholic Church, the Church of England, and their equivalents in the other faiths (they all condemn "vice"). They are listening to anti-porn organizations. They are listening to "think of the children" groups. They are listening to Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch. They are listening to Mumsnet. They are listening to censorship-enabling companies. They are listening to anyone with money and an interest in defining power structures to further entrench themselves.
They are listening, just not to the apathetic, individualistic know-it-alls who don't engage in politics and then complain that it's all shit.
The BBFC still exists today and serves pretty much the same purpose as the MPA in the land of the free. Is there any practical difference between the two?
BBFC's rulings have legal impact, and they can refuse classification making the film illegal show or sell in the UK.
over in the US, getting an MPAA rating is completely voluntary. MPAA rules do not allow it to refuse to rate a motion picture, and even if they did, the consequences would be the same as choosing not to get a rating.
If you don't get a rating in the US, some theatres and retailers may decline to show/sell your film, but you can always do direct sales, and/or set up private showings.
What exactly is stopping 4chan from not paying the fines? Is the UK gonna send the cyberpolice to shut down an American website? If your website isn't hosted in the UK you shouldn't have to abide by their laws.
Does 4chan actually get profits from the UK or have offices/servers there? If not how can they do anything to them? Seems like it would be the UK's responsibility to block access to it rather than the inverse if 4chan doesn't have a presence there.
At this point every major website and "smart" phone app should just refuse to comply with these idiotic laws and simply block UK users. It's only when the masses realize that the freedoms they care about are being eroded that something will change.
The UK government want to get on with blocking websites and VPNs as soon as possible. 4chan was obviously not going to comply and was picked to allow ofcom to quickly move onto the next step.
Reminder that Google owes Russia more money than exists in the world, for continuing to disobey the Russian law which commands them to allow the Russian state to upload its propaganda on Youtube.
Ofcom are basically the UK's Roskomnadzor. Tell them to go fuck themselves with a copy of the OSA.
I'm from the UK and would gladly fuck all of them with a copy of the OSA, but I'd rather that the law were repealed. In the meantime, I'm telling everyone how to use VPNs and Tor Browser, and to never give anyone their real identity details on the internet.
I'm not sure why they should care. Just banhammer the entire island. Everybody should. They can have their own independent internet, that conforms to UK laws. Let's see when HN will be fined, for advocacy of circumvention of local laws, or of strong encryption.
Facebook banned all Canadian news outlets, and they were probably actually making a few bucks from them. I can't imagine that 4chan would care too much about losing UK users. 4% of barely any revenue, maybe? Just ban them all; they're insignificant. The only drawback for UK citizens is that Reform will go up a point or two in the polls from people who prefer the authoritarianism they don't know to the authoritarianism they do, but considering the awful alternatives it's really six of one a half-dozen of the other.
One of the rational reasons people are preferring nationalists is simply because they are less powerful than the neolibs, who all work together against their populations. Better a the dumb local boss you know than a being the local outpost of a faceless world boss.
I think if a country is vehemently an international or foreign website it should be on them to block their citizens access, not on website operators to somehow try to geo-restrict that region from access.
That could lead to tons of countries having their own internet firewalls similar to China, if that's what they want to do. Which I probably wouldn't like.
But the alternative of being liable for any new legislation, fines, etc, from any country in the world just because I operate a small website on the internet seems at least equally bad.
> One of the rational reasons people are preferring nationalists is simply because they are less powerful than the neolibs, who all work together against their populations. Better a the dumb local boss you know than a being the local outpost of a faceless world boss.
If you think that's rational, you are wrong. Rationalising, sure, just not rational.
"Divide and conquer" is very much desired by those who want to control you, and thinking "a local authoritarian for local people" will (or even could) eject the influence of the outside world, is a false narrative.
Popular sentiment though, so may well get authoritarian parties some votes.
I suspect Ofcom knows that 4chan isn't going to comply, they're just going through the motions before deploying the nuclear option of ordering ISPs to block it.
I think the end state of this will be when Trump links prosecutions like this to tariff deals, and Kier Starmer will have to choose between mean words on the internet or further damage to an economy in already bad shape.
I think he is stuck, like the Prime Minister of France. He has a party that won't tolerate spending cuts of the required scale, and an economy that can't tolerate further tax raises.
He also has the charisma of a wet sock, which doesn't help.
Starmer has longer than Trump all things being equal - he doesn't even need to call an election until July 5th 2029. He also has a massive majority, making a government collapse by other means highly unlikely.
Curious why Trump would even care and, if so, why he wouldn't lean toward his constituency that is largely in favor of these laws (see Texas, Florida, Utah, etc.).
I think there is a difference between straight p0rn, and a discussion forum that often posts NSFW images.
4chan is also the originator of the Pepe the Frog memes, and claims (whether people believe it or not) to have meme-d Trump into the Whitehouse in 2016.
You saying that 1. since 4chan is a message board Trump might change his tariff policy to save it where he would't if it was a porn site and 2. Trump feels he owes them for 2016?
I think neither a murky ideological battle nor a decade-old debt matters much to the president. And it probably matters that the UK made a tariff deal already, so changing terms would be a big act of self-sabotage.
You can cheat elections with enough money. Excepting that citizens are generally not on an equal footing with their own government. Party politics exist.
We don't have "true democracy" in the UK. There are two main issues:
- Votes are not equal. You need to win constituencies to get "a point". If you get enough points, you can form the government. But that means huge parts of sparsely populated areas have votes which count for more than the densely populated parts, where people's votes count for less.
- You don't need an overall majority to win "a point". You just need more than every other candidate in that constituency. That means a government can gain absolute majority power with a very low overall vote share. The current government got 34% of the overall votes, yet won the largest government majority in history.
And we're trapped with this system, because the main parties won't let us change it. When it was tried, and we had a national referendum on it, they rigged the vote in their favour by only offering a complicated and relatively crap alternative and spent our money on propaganda like this:
I wrote this years ago about GDPR but it applies here too
I don't really oppose gdpr but one of the reasons I vehemently opposed implementing GDPR at my former job is that we were not operating in the EU. Well, we had customers there, but we were an American company operating with American severs. GDPR sets another precident that other countries can make laws about what people from other jurisdictions can do..
Our lawyers said "Do it anyway, just in case".
The side effect of these very many different local regulatory bodies is you start trying to comply with multiple laws, some that can conflict each other - and this costs not just time and money, but the rigidity to stand up and say "No, our elected leaders have decided what the laws of the land are, and we follow them".
And the thing is, many countries do not have good faith laws. The majority of the people in the world live under what Americans and the EU, and the West would call lacking fundamental human rights. Some of these laws are plain BAD (hell, the US and AU even have our own bad internet laws) and some are EVIL.
Google routinely complying with the Chinese government is a great example of them wanting to take the cash first and ask questions later (or not at all). I don't want to work for that company.
I don't really think being a good 'worldwide' citizen can exist when there are conflicting views held by governments about what is right. The fact is some governments are objectively etter than others
I don't really think we aught to be involving ourselves at all with Russian officals, apparatjiks or other government bodies - but we find ourselves in this situation again, like GDPR, Russian officals have set certain rules about how data for russian citizens needs be held.
Of course Russia has no grounds to sue me in America and if it did, do you think a judge would enforce our compliance with laws that hold no water in our countries? Of course not.
Russia wants russians data - on russian servers in russia. The fact is they're probably mostly interested in being able to physically seize - without any due process - russian citizens data from servers which all happen to be in russia. It's a smart law if you're interested in putting people in gulags.
I'd rather lose all russian customers, and also all of the customers in north korea, or whatever else despotic governments that exist that think they can exert pressure on independent companies who don't operate under their jurisdictions and not have to worry about what bullshit they'll come up with next.
None of this to imply that the US and EU, Australia, Switzerland, etcdon't have a bunch of questionable laws and procedures that might not be quite fair or free either, but the world ain't perfect
What happens next is country X decides you must do one thing, and country Y decides you do another, and you come to TECHNICAL problems and BUSINESS problems and ETHICAL problems trying to comply with both.
If you're not in the EU, do not even bother with GDPR.
If the UK doesn't like 4chan, they're going to have to just block it. 4chan, an American product, with likely no funds, is never going to pay this and will suffer zero consequences.
Commentators criticising the act and ofcom’s attempt, do understand the online safety act is to prevent children from watching porn? The critique always lacks any form of grounding in reality or proposal of alternative solutions
^ this is my point. You remove any grounding. We don’t allow children to drink (we allow them younger in the UK than the US), drive, and many other things we have safeguards for. Also, how do you suggest parenting solves for this? Are children with parents all the time? Does the data suggest an only parenting technique works? No, course not. What’s your solution to something that is a problem? All up for a critique of the act but to say “there is no problem” is absurd.
Many people are saying this is symbolic and cannot be enforced. Unfortunately, that's just not true. Look at what happened to the founder of Telegram. Some jurisdiction decides you're violating their laws, all you need to do is catch a connecting flight or take a vacation on their soil or a place that will eagerly extradite, and you're a political prisoner.
What happens if one of the officers of 4Chan or Gab is on a flight to Paris and the plane is redirected to London? Well, they're going to prison. The UK is a police state.
Durov's plane wasn't redirected to France, nor were the French planning to extradite him anywhere else for all we know. He willingly landed his own private jet in Paris.
I understand what point you're trying to make, but Protasevich would have been a better example. Beware of whose airspace you fly over.
Durov is also, relevantly, a naturalized French citizen in addition to his various other passports. It's not just "some jurisdiction", it's one he opted into!
I still cannot believe the Geneva Conventions allowed this. This should have ended with John Kerry and Jen Psaki in a Swiss prison for at least 10 years, if not Barack Obama himself. We managed to convict accused war criminals with a lot less evidence in the Nuremburg trials. FOR EMPHASIS: I'm not comparing the severity of the crimes, I'm comparing the evidentiary basis for securing convictions.
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."
-Henry Kissinger
The Geneva Conventions are international humanitarian laws consisting of four treaties and three additional protocols that establish international legal standards for humanitarian treatment in war.
All you did was link to the main page of a wikipedia article and copy and paste the first sentence. Your response is so lazy, it doesn't even deserve a response, but I'm putting this out here for the benefit of the general public:
https://www.icrc.org/en/article/grave-breaches-defined-genev...
GC 4 Art. 147.
"Grave breaches to which the preceding Article relates shall be those involving any of the following acts, if committed against persons or property protected by the present Convention: wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments, wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, UNLAWFUL DEPORTATION OR TRANSFER OR CONFINEMENT OF A PROTECTED PERSON, compelling a protected person to serve in the forces of a hostile Power, or wilfully depriving a protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed in the present Convention, taking of hostages and extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly."
1. Foreign heads of state are definitely protected persons.
2. Foreign heads of state transiting to and from diplomatic meetings are engaged in a protected activity.
3. If these laws apply between enemy nations engaged in declared war, they are even more applicable to countries at peace with one another.
It turns out I'm even more right that I initially thought: this was not only a breach of the spirit of the Geneva Conventions, it was also a breach of the very letter of the law! Regardless, someone doesn't understand the purpose of the Geneva Conventions in the first place, so I'll elaborate...
Edward Snowden himself is irrelevant, it doesn't matter if Osama Bin Laden was on that plane. The fact is that the US and its allies used deception to illegally ground a diplomatic flight, detain a foreign head of state, and engage in an illegal search and seizure.
Furthermore, whether or not the countries involved were even at war is irrelevant. The purpose of the Geneva Conventions are to maintain a minimum set of international ethics that make diplomacy safe for diplomats. If a foreign head of state can be detained or imprisoned, and if his property can be searched or seized, then diplomatic negotiations for anything are now impossible.
It doesn't matter if the reasons for breaking these rules are justifiable or not, the fact is that you're not trustworthy even in a basic capacity that allows for diplomatic negotiation. You're in the same perfidious bucket as Japanese Emperor Hirohito, Saddam Hussein, or Ruhollah Khomeini (Iranian Hostage Crisis).
"Build your opponent a golden bridge to retreat across."
-Sun Tzu
P.S. The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations explicitly forbids detaining diplomats. See articles 27 and 29:
> If these laws apply between enemy nations engaged in declared war, they are even more applicable to countries at peace with one another.
So far as I can tell, that claim is your own invention.
Also, according to your own link's link to the full text:
Article 4 - Definition of protected persons
Persons protected by the Convention are those who, at a given moment and in any manner whatsoever, find themselves, in case of a conflict or occupation, in the hands of a Party to the conflict or Occupying Power of which they are not nationals.
Nationals of a State which is not bound by the Convention are not protected by it. Nationals of a neutral State who find themselves in the territory of a belligerent State, and nationals of a co-belligerent State, shall not be regarded as protected persons while the State of which they are nationals has normal diplomatic representation in the State in whose hands they are.
The provisions of Part II are, however, wider in application, as defined in Article 13 .
Persons protected by the Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field of August 12, 1949, or by the Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of Wounded, Sick and Shipwrecked Members of Armed Forces at Sea of August 12, 1949, or by the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War of August 12, 1949, shall not be considered as protected persons within the meaning of the present Convention.
Even if it was, Morales was not detained by another state, nor did his plane land under what is recognised as "coercion": The aircraft was denied overflight by several European states after rumours that Snowden was aboard, so it diverted to Austria, where it landed voluntarily for refuelling. Austria’s authorities requested (but, in a legal sense, did not compel) inspection; Morales, in a legal sense, consented.
Also, "search and seizure"? Nothing was seized, IIRC?
> The purpose of the Geneva Conventions are to maintain a minimum set of international ethics that make diplomacy safe for diplomats.
Nope, different laws for that. As you say elsewhere, Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. Which, importantly, is a different thing than the Geneva Conventions. I mean, you can tell by how most of the words in the name are different…
> YOU LOSE! YOU GET NOTHING! GOOD DAY, SIR!
I see you're new here. Such energy doesn't go down well on this site.
Morales' plane wasn't actually forced to land anywhere nor did anyone try to arrest anyone onboard.
His plane was denied access to airspace. At worst, he would have had to turn around and reroute. They only decided to land right away because of a faulty fuel indicator.
Enforcing bad legislation that was enacted through the democratic process doesn’t make a country a police state. It’s just the rule of law. That has always included the enforcement of bad laws as well as good ones.
There's no such thing. There are many different processes that some people consider democratic and others don't. But "democratic" has no other meaning than rule by the governed. It is not a description of a specific political process. Especially one that bans leading opposition candidates, which is clearly as undemocratic as anything that can occur in government. If a population wants to vote in somebody who is currently in prison for crimes they are obviously guilty of, preventing them from doing it is a direct repudiation of democracy.
Even killing opposition candidates is marginally more democratic, because at least that only lasts for an instant. Saying that people cannot vote for the government of their choice is a restriction on the governed, not a restriction on people who want to govern.
The UK does not ‘ban’ leading opposition candidates. The largest opposition party in Parliament is the Conservatives; Kemi Badenoch is not banned. The opposition party leading in the polls is Reform; Nigel Farage is not banned.
You don’t refer to any specific cases so I can’t offer any specific response, but the key phrase is
> under ___ laws.
A police state is one where the police arrest whoever the government directs them to arrest (rather than enforcing the law). Keir Starmer is not phoning up Police chiefs to get people disappeared.
Courts ruling on matters of legal interpretation is how things are supposed to work. This is like saying “the US Constitution is whatever the kangaroo Supreme Court says that it is.”
I mean there isn't a UK court. There's the supreme court, but one can still appeal to the Hague to get you out of a jam. But yeah, you keep thinking that. Its not like with have a shadow docket going on, undermining the constitution.
> It's a total police state.
I can still, on record call Starmer "a massive fucking prick".
I can do that on TV.
I will not get arrested, I will not have an ICE raid called on me, I won't get death threats.
I won't lose my job[1]
So no, its not a police state, because the judiciary is still working, more or less
> The UK locks up political dissidents under draconian 'safety' laws.
We used to just out and out shoot them.
We used to demand that they have their voices literally overdubbed by an actor.
We used to round people up and jail them for being too irish.
We used to be in a civil war, up until the 2000s.
You're just having a cyberpunk wet dream. Don't get me wrong, the OSA is an abomination. but you are being a hyperbolic child, especially as actual authoritarianism is happening in the USA, without anything as a peep from the same blowhards talking about the OSA.
It's a nanny state with the police arresting and jailing people for tweets. It's a police state, but "we" like to identify police states with Russians, Chinese, and Iranians, or whoever the state's enemy is at the moment.
When police show up to your door and ask you to apologize to people for causing distress, and to consider not speaking from now on, you live in a police state. When you have banned political parties and organizations that trigger the mass arrests of peaceful protestors, you live in a police state. People who are comfortable with what is being suppressed never think of their country as a police state. At least until something happens to them or someone they care about, when they suddenly become "activists."
sigh You've not lived in a police state, or more accurately, you've been online too much to actually get context.
In the UK threatening to kill someone has been illegal since at least ~1880 something. Going online an publicly calling for the death of one or more person (which in the eyes of the law is pretty close to sending a good old paper death threat) is not only widely considered a dick move, its illegal.
Now, How do you enforce that? the police investigate, and if its deemed a credible threat, you are visited by the plod. Who most likley go "look mate, don't be a dick".
If you are really being a dick, you might be cautioned (taken to the police station and told "you're being a shit")
The next stage up is appearing in court.
And then you have to be convicted by a jury of your peers, and the burden of evidence is really quite high. ("oh but that mum, she was innocent." I advise you to read all that she wrote, you know the extra bits that the sun can't print)
Its not like you're bundled into the back of a van by masked goons who refuse to identify themselves. Taken to a mass detention centre and not seen for weeks, and then yeeted to an illegal jail.
But why are the police investigating social media?
Now thats a good question. And the answer is: Musk doesn't moderate. Stuff that gets you a visit from the plod is generally against the community standards of social media, even X.
Now to your point here: "When police show up to your door and ask you to apologize to people for causing distress"
I've had a visit from the police, why? because I was young and being an antisocial shit. The police were not actually there to arrest me, and I don't think they could actually if they wanted to. The point was, they were there to make the town liveable for all it's citizens. I was "fucking around", and the police were gently telling me that I'd really not like to "find out".
"OH BUT PERSONAL FREEDOM". Now, the thing is, I was perfectly free to carry on my bad ways. The problem was, those ways, had they descended further, would have resulted in jail time. The choice was mine.
I don't want to live in a country where its acceptable to bully whomever I like, in the guise of personal freedom. Sure, speak your mind, but don't be a dick about it.
Let's not act like political speech has not been used to arrest people in the UK. To claim otherwise is a lie, or a level of ignorance only afforded to small children.
> To claim otherwise is a lie, or a level of ignorance only afforded to small children.
And I have not claimed otherwise. during the troubles stuff went south very quickly. What you are doing are conflating political persecution with the censoring of 4chan, an organisation who's adherence to law is flexible at best.
That UK police do not carry firearms really has nothing to do with whether the UK is heading in the direction of being a police state. Firearms are no more necessary for oppression than the private possession of them is sufficient to fight against it.
> and the cops themselves don't want to change that.
I think that you will find that there is a minority of UK police who would welcome being armed with deadly weapons.
Here's an article from 2017:
"A national survey carried out by the Police Federation of England and Wales found more than a third of officers supported the idea of routinely being armed, compared to 23 per cent when the last survey was carried out in 2006.
Another 55 per cent said they would be prepared to carry a gun if asked to – up more than 10 per cent."
I'll be the first to tell you, police in the USA are absolute tyrants. You can be killed for mouthing off to the police here, and likely nothing will happen to them.
What do they seek to accomplish here? There is strong precedent for the US defending the 1st amendment against foreign interests. No UK bureaucrats are going to make a career out of this. Going after a company that can defend itself and can't be intimidated, will prevent them from bluffing successfully against smaller companies, who could realistically be intimidated. If I were working at Ofcom, I would stay away from the large US sites with access to good legal counsel, and instead try to intimidate the long tail that don't.
Totally separate from the issue of whether this is good or bad: it doesn't look like these Ofcom guys are playing with a full deck.
> it doesn't look like these Ofcom guys are playing with a full deck
they're a quango, staffed by those who couldn't make it as civil servants (not a high bar)
I'd be surprised if anyone who works there has ever used the internet
similarly useless are ofwat (water) and ofgem (energy), both of which allowed massive scandals to happen on their watch
ofwat: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jul/21/new-powerfu...
ofgem: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63805028
> staffed by those who couldn't make it as civil servants
Still civil service.
> I'd be surprised if anyone who works there has ever used the internet
They do, but the pricks who created the law are/were reactionary politicians, who couldn’t be bothered to actually draft decent laws.
Ofwat and ofgem are different issues, they have suffered regulatory capture.
Ofwat has the power to bankrupt the entire water system. Which is great, but then the government would have to bail out the shareholders. which means not only higher taxes, but no private investment for large scale. Oh and ballooning public debt.
Which means stagflation, well harder stagflation. There is a ton more to this.
Don't get me wrong it needs reform, but that costs money. We need to have the money to hire decent staff. But with the impeding cuts and what ever dipshittery from Reform next, thats not going to happen
In the UK and Ireland, a distinction is generally made between public servants, who are paid by government appropriation, and civil servants, who are employed directly by government departments and the organisations they directly control and fund.
they're not civil servants, because the the organisations were deliberately created to be separate from whitehall
(and ministerial interference)
Looked this up. They’re not part of the civil service transfer scheme so I think you are 100% correct. They also in theory have their own corporate structure but since they literally publish documents explaining how to map it to civil service grades I think it’s fair to say the overall experience isn’t that different. But different tenure, different pension, they’re not civil servants.
It seems to be a distinction without meaning in this case.
it's asif we need to reform the system and find a better way...
ofwat is shortly to be abolished
(whether or not that will help is another matter)
4chan is a small company with dubious profitability so I doubt they can afford much in the way of lawyers, but it doesn't really matter because they can simply ignore the UK completely. They only accept crypto anyway, so the UK can't even take away 4chan's payment processing in the UK.
From the article it looks like the fine here is basically for not complying with information requests (rather than a full investigation having concluded that 4chan is in violation of the substance of the Act). Ofcom probably thought 4chan would just respond to the requests by geoblocking the UK, which would have been good enough for them. But once their bluff was called, they really had no choice but to levy the fine. Announcing you are investigating someone for violating the law and then not bothering to fine them when they very clearly ignore your investigation (which is itself a violation of the law) is more destructive to your credibility than anything.
It's not like the fine has zero consequences. It will likely restrict 4chan and its senior officials from visiting or dealing with the UK, which I'm sure is annoying on a personal level if nothing else. I don't know if Ofcom currently has the power to order ISPs to block non-compliant domains, but if it doesn't you can bet it will be using this to push for that power.
As for not being able to intimidate the long tail: for US companies, yes this might further weaken Ofcom's influence over them. But companies with a UK presence who try to call Ofcom's bluff after this are likely going to have a bad time.
Does Ofcom actually have the power to restrict a person from traveling to the UK if a fine is levied against a company they work for?
Would you be willing to find out if it were you?
No, but they have the power to have you arrested for non-payment of the fine when you arrive at the airport.
Even if you were just employed at the company? Not even just the CEO/etc?
> There is strong precedent for the US defending the 1st amendment against foreign interests.
How does this ruling affect the company's right to free speech in the US? It's a fine for refusing to comply with a law in the UK; any sufficiently competent organisation could choose to comply with censorship/age gating in one country and avoid those restrictions in all others.
> How does this ruling affect the company's right to free speech in the US?
As I understand it, not at all.
I don't think the British institutions care at all about their rights to do whatever they want outside the UK; the problem is, 4chan does provide access to people in the UK, so it's a bit like a pirate radio station that the UK would like to not be receiving owing to the station's complete lack of interest in following UK laws.
To put it another way, if 4chan blocked the UK, the UK would consider this development to be appropriate. UK might not cancel the penalty fine, but that's because the offence for which it has been issued has already occurred; after all, nobody gets out of an already-issued littering ticket during a holiday by returning to their home country.
> To put it another way, if 4chan blocked the UK, the UK would be fine with this outcome.
They really wouldn't, otherwise they would've done that already since it is well within their power to command ISPs to blackhole any offending website. That they chose to levy fines instead tells me all I need to know about their true intentions.
I believe the order of escalation here is:
1) Identify non-compliance or risk
2) officially request information from the website
3) wait for reply
4) formal enforcement proceedings: a fine and prep for court action (they are here)
5) convince a court to order the site to be blocked
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-c...
Note that they themselves say there:
That sounds to me like they consider curtailing speech by blocking a website to be one of the last things to try, not the first.> 4chan does provide access to people in the UK
That's the default when you host an app on the world wide web, though. Regardless of how big of a burden it is for 4chan (I would think it's as simple as flipping a switch in some control panel blocking UK access?), it still does compel the US-based company with no commercial presence in the UK to consider complex international law and to make changes to their US-based web app in response to a foreign jurisdiction's regulations, which feels wrong to me.
This is tangential to whether it affects "free speech" outside the UK, though, and I'm inclined to agree that it doesn't, but I guess it depends on how you define free speech. If 4chan's web app itself is considered speech, and not just the content that's posted there, maybe. But I think free speech advocates are a lot more concerned with the content.
It's the same with the GDPR...
But note that merely being accessible in the UK is not enough here. The service must either target the UK or have a significant number of users in the UK, or it provides harmful content. So the online forum for Oregon gardeners is quite safe even if, indeed, accessible from the UK.
But still it is an awkward legislation and it would be simpler to simply block rather than to threaten and fine services from around the world.
Ofcom attempting to enforce it's laws upon a US-resident corporation that has no business presence in the United Kingdom is the very definition of affecting one's right to free speech in the United States. This is why the US has a rich history of case law to draw upon for defining personal jurisdiction. In this case, Ofcom is perhaps hoping to exploit uncertainty regarding personal jurisdiction to impose its law upon foreign citizens who otherwise have no business in the United Kingdom. So, yeah, it definitely affects a company's right to free speech in the US. It affects EVERYONE's right to free speech in the US, and it should not be dismissed simply because 4chan is the defendant.
Mostly incorrect. The First Amendment limits the US government, not Ofcom or UK courts. UK law can regulate services with “links to the UK” even if the provider is abroad, and Ofcom’s enforcement does not itself abridge anyone’s US constitutional rights.
The first amendment is a natural right, not a civil right, but at any rate the matter of personal jurisdiction is what is at issue, which most definitely does regulate who can and cannot assert authority over a man (fictive or otherwise). Ofcom's attempt to enforce their law over corporations and people who do not in fact have "links to the UK" as defined under US law is the entirety of the issue. They are overstepping their jurisdiction and infringing upon the sovereignty of the United States.
It's sovereignty that limits the UK courts from enforcing a fine against an organization without a physical, legal, or financial presence in the UK. They could ask US courts to enforce a UK judgment, but the First Amendment does bind US courts.
A lot of the US rules in this area came from UK courts trying to enforce defamation/libel related claims on US authors and journalists.
The American consensus basically became that US courts don’t enforce overseas judgments on free speech stuff where the speech would be legal in the US. Even if that speech could be “heard” elsewhere.
See the Ehrenfeld v. Bin Mahfouz case (2005) and subsequent US SPEECH act (2010).
The thing about laws are they stop at the border. Unless you are sufficiently powerful that you can ignore the rights of other countries and their people, the UK isn't powerful anymore, but hasn't grasped that concept yet (I'm British, at this point it's just kind of sad).
So UK laws stop at the UK border.
4Chan is a US company, based in the US, with all its people and stuff in the US. It has never had a presence in the UK.
In the US people and companies have the right to free speech guaranteed under the first amendment, that includes speech conducted online. Many people would consider having the ability to speak, but having the government restrict hearing that speech to amount to a free speech violation.
The only jurisdiction 4Chan operates in is the US and they are defending their rights: they also have that right, the US isn't North Korea, or China, or the UK.
This isn't a matter of can they censor, of course they can. This is a matter of they don't have to, and they won't.
The UK has no jurisdiction, or reason to believe they have jurisdiction, or ability to enforce its laws extraterritorially over pretty much any foreign entity, but especially not the US.
Anyway you look at this, this is a jumped up little backwater not content with robbing their own citizens of their rights, they are now trying to rob others too.
As someone who's lived in the UK for years but no longer there (I'm American and currently live in another EU country) it's sad but also quite funny watching the rapid deterioration across multiple domains that has taken place in the last 20 years. At times it seems that the people at the upper strata of politics have completely broken with contemporary reality and went off into a fantasy make-believe space, but don't realize it and keep acting as if that's not the case.
You don't have to say, but I'm curious where you moved to.
I'm not originally from the UK, but have lived here for over 20 years. I'm fully settled here, with a family, children at school, sports, hobbies, friends etc, but lately it just feels more and more gloomy.
The annoying thing is, I had planned to use geoarbitrage at some future point to sell up and retire somewhere on the European mainland, but that arbitrage opportunity has or is disappearing as places like Portugal become more expensive.
I moved to Germany where my wife is from, and I currently split my time between a conservative US state where my kids are studying (I left California where I grew up when the liberal politics became too much to handle as I didn't want my kids to grow up in this sort of environment).
Thanks
4chan are the “think of the children” bad guys to make an example out of.
This isn’t a play to get money or 4chan to comply, it’s a play to increase the strength of their legislation. So expect stronger blocking etc to be on the cards to prevent foreign entities from avoiding the law.
Yes the government have already talked about banning VPNs and government taking copies of your private keys :-/
Urgh, the courts already have the power to compel you to provide private keys.
It was for anti-terror, but now its being used on pricks like Yaxely-lenon, who Imagine will make much hay from it.
This is a little wild to think about. It would make infosec impossible in the UK.
Imagine the IT departments of every mutltinational corporation desperately trying to sort out permissions to keep important information off of machines deployed in the UK. New authorization groups for everyone in the UK, lots of meetings with lawyers to sort out what they can have access to. Everyone in the UK becomes a second class psuedo-trustworthy employee overnight.
Were I in charge of IT, when that bombshell came across my desk, I think I would give every UK employee a chromebook, and migrate all workloads to the cloud. No data could be saved locally. No thumb drives. Depending on the availability of good cloud tools, the productivity hit might be so large that layoffs would be warranted.
Oh, they'll just introduce mandatory digital ID, and the vpn registration.
Companies will be permitted to use vpns as long as their AUP forbid employees from using their own for personal reasons.
Or so.
Plenty of the ways authoritarian can go.
Good luck to them.
VPN companies like Mullvad currently accept anonymous accounts with payment via crypto.
You can also just lie about your country of origin when signing up to a VPN account even with a 'compliant' provider that blocks UK IPs.
That would be the proposal from IT, and the response from the C-suite will be "that's unfortunate, lay them all off."
4chan allows browsing with a VPN but to post using a VPN requires paying for their 4chan pass which many will not do so I guess reverse censorship will have its intended effect here if they are blocked. Exception of course are malware based "VPNs" that route through residential computers that have not yet been b&.
What private keys? Any private keys?
No one has seriously discussed banning VPN's - one minister mentioned they where looking it and no one said anything about private keys either as far as I know.
If I'm wrong someone can drop me a link since I live in the UK.
it's been mulled over and keeps getting brought up again and again, the Overton window has shifted from "go away and come back when you're serious to", "christ how would we comply with that?" https://nordvpn.com/blog/tech-world-angry-with-theresa-mays-...
If you live here how can you not spot how every govt since they kicked out brown has been pushing for this?
I'm aware and it's precisely because it's not a new thing been seeing it for years, I specifically was asking for a citation for this government.
I don't rule out they are daft enough to consider it, I just think they aren't quite that stupid.
OSA was a "something must be done, this is something, it must be done" thing - they can appease the mumsnet types for a bit with it and would generally prefer it quietly went back to sleep for a bit.
Not least because it's gonna hurt them electorally because while the people who are slightly in favour of it where slightly in favour of it a lot of the people who aren't really aren't seeing it as either unworkable, stupid or unworkable and stupid.
Yeah, the ultimate goal is to end all user-generated content, first through moderation and then by algorithms, motivated by structural deficiency in commissioned for-profit contents that it is no match against user-generated. And the response sorely needed right now is resurgence of a distributed social media system that do not grossly undermine copyrights.
"They won't comply so these new restrictions are for your own good, citizen"
Subject, surely?
Sigh. It's been 42 years since it was cleared up and that most people became citizens. Can we stop with that remark already
I think you’re overanalyzing it. They’re just enforcing the law. You and I may agree that it’s a bad law, but that doesn’t mean that the people in charge of enforcing it necessarily have complex and sinister motives.
I don't agree that wanting to further one's own career is complex or sinister. If the enforcement of laws wasn't aligned with career progress it would be bad for enforcement, including the laws that you and I want enforced.
Even if the goal is just enforcement, you would get more enforcement, collect more fines, if you didn't put your ability to actually collect fines into question. When 4chan successfully defends itself and the UK extracts no money, that will show US companies which would have been in doubt, that they can also defend themselves.
Sure I mean, people generally want to do their jobs, which in this case means fining sites that don’t comply with the legislation. I don’t see any reason to think that it’s more complex than that. If 4chan doesn’t comply then the site will probably be blocked by UK ISPs, so I don’t think the logic in your second paragraph really goes through.
A job is not just robotically following a script. If your actions have negative impact on the goals of your job and you do it anyway, you are bad at your job.
I didn’t make any claim about people being good at their jobs. But I’m not sure why you think that this will have a negative impact on OFCOM’s goals. Imposing the fine is probably just a formal preliminary to having UK ISPs block 4chan.
In this case, Ofcom's stated goal (which I admit may be different than their actual goal) is to get overseas companies to comply with their rules.
I think you may be giving them too much credit. You're essentially saying that their real goal is to get an ISP block and everything they are doing now is performative to get to that real, unstated goal.
On the other hand I may be underestimating them as, to me, they just seem like power-tripping troglodytes.
I don't think the fine is performative. It's just the first sanction that gets applied. I don't understand why you think that's incompatible with Ofcom's stated goal.
>> When 4chan successfully defends itself
How do you expect this to happen? The law is pretty clear and afaik 4chan has been pretty explicit that they know the law and they're ignoring it. 4chan's 'out' is that they don't have any legal presence in the UK. More legitimate enterprises do so the results of this will have no bearing on them.
If this is deemed illegal in an US court then the OSA will be unenforcebale against US entities in the US (though not sure what's needed to set precedent).
This is important because otherwise UK fines may be enforceable in US courts.
> This is important because otherwise UK fines may be enforceable in US courts.
UK law is generally unenforcible in the US except extradition agreements for crimes commuted while residing in the UK. That's not the case here and there's no agreement that applies to this case.
It is possible to enforce UK judgements and fines in the US, though my understanding is that it is not simple or guaranteed.
I suppose the action 4chan is taking in US court is exactly to avoid this possibility.
> It is possible to enforce UK judgements and fines in the US, though my understanding is that it is not simple or guaranteed.
I am curious as to how that could possibly work. Is there some trade agreement that requires the US to respect UK court rulings? Generally the US has sought to distance itself from any kind of foreign influence or control.
I'm talking specifically about US companies, which make up the lion's share of popular websites. They are served from the US as a primary location, and the company is incorporated there as well. Modulo CDN hosted assets, there is no presence in the UK.
If the company is in the UK, then yes, they are obviously screwed. The damage to the UK's web presence has already been done. I don't expect anyone would want to incorporate an internet dependent company there.
The law is law, but Ofcom wrote the regulation (1000+ pages) themselves with their interest groups. A lot of regulators went through revolving door and are now selling services for complying with Online Safety Act.
no, ofcom don't need to be picking the fights they are, they're choosing to support the political arm under the claims of "hate speech" and "ungood bad think"
> they're choosing to support the political arm under the claims of "hate speech" and "ungood bad think"
I do wonder if you bother to actually read the stuff you are typing.
like have you _met_ anyone from ofcom? or seen the shit that 4chan routinely post?
4chan is literally the living embodiment of what the OSA was designed(and will probably fail) to stop. No moderation, loads of porn, incitement to violence
but to your point, `claims of "hate speech"` Ofcom have no mandate for hate speech. But then I imagine facts are less interesting than a daydream of cypherpunk rebellion.
There is plenty of moderation on 4chan. It actively avoids breaking the laws of the country it's hosted in (the USA). You may not like what's on it, but it's not "extreme".
It used to be more extreme, it's not today. It's why spinoffs like 8chan were created, they felt there was too much moderation on 4chan. If you hear of some diabolical internet stunt, these days it was probably soyjak.party that organised it, not 4chan's /b/
As you allude, Ofcom cares not, they just want all sites to bend the knee to them.
You're underestimating how much thought governments put into things. Bureaucrats wouldn't be showcasing their own impotence with no reason.
You're overestimating how much thought governments put into things.
Governments are just organizations and organizations are made of people. We see plenty of folly in the private sector; the government can do it too, don't you worry. Arguably they can do folly in ways the private sector only dreams of, what with being funded by the taxpayer.
The org is enforcing the law as written. The law, as written, is fucking stupid. Ergo the enforcement actions that derive from it themselves look fucking stupid.
Sure, governments are organizations made up of people. But they're hierarchical organizations. There are really only a handful of people who matter when it comes to making decisions.
They are enforcing the law, but why pick out 4chan? Because everyone has heard of 4chan.
I wonder if it more like "ofcom fines 10,000 offenders", then "press reports on controversial and vocal offender 4chan"
[flagged]
Presumably that was a typo since it seemed like a pretty sane commend otherwise.
Yes, I assume they meant "precedent".
Yes, fixed. I often spell both words wrong and click on the spelling suggestion. Autocorrect got me to the wrong one.
4chan is fighting them as well.
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/09/05/when-trolls-take-on-tyra...
Thanks for posting, an insightful overview of the ramifications of the Online Safety Act on online freedoms.
> Perhaps most troubling, the UK’s approach sets a dangerous precedent for global internet regulation. If every country can claim jurisdiction over any website accessible within its borders, the internet becomes subject to the most restrictive speech laws anywhere in the world.
Another interesting point is that the UK could just ban the websites it finds objectionable, but that'd expose them as a censor, so instead the strategy is to basically force those websites to withdraw from the market voluntarily (or comply), which is a much less revolting story to sell to its population.
This is the same tactic currently taken in the US with pornography age verification laws, btw https://theintercept.com/2024/08/16/project-2025-russ-vought...
First Amendment makes it hard for the government to censor or ban them outright, but onerous child protection requirements gets them to close on their own. Russ Vought:
> …you know what happens is the porn company then says, ‘We’re not going to do business in your state.’ Which of course is entirely what we were after, right?
The UK already blocks certain websites at the national level, e.g. you can’t access Pirate Bay from a UK ISP, so can’t imagine Ofcom blocking 4chan would cause much consternation among those who aren’t already against the OSA.
I can access https://thepiratebay.org/index.html just fine from Hyperoptic.
One interesting bit is that the lawyer, RONALD D. COLEMAN is (or at least was) a youtube lawyer.
He'd pop into 'law streams' from time to time to talk about cases and discuss newsworthy events out of the courts.
He is as if New Jersey was transmuted into a man (I say that with great affection).
I want to say, and I could be wrong, I became familiar with his name during the Rittenhouse trial. Or maybe the couple high profile trials after the Rittenhouse trial, that were popular while we all waited for covid to be 'over'.
For whatever that's worth
edit: he IS a real lawyer with real clients and real cases. I don't want to diminish anything because I called him a 'youtube lawyer'. I think it's more: A lawyer that sees value in being on youtube from time to time.
Coleman won the 'Slants' case at SCOTUS, so he's the real thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matal_v._Tam
https://www.likelihoodofconfusion.com/legal-publications-ron...
Arguing a case in front of SCOTUS still means something today?
It still is but current SCOTUS of US has lost a lot of credibility in essentially making Presidents 4 to 8 year kings who can't be sued or charged with a crime. There are other things like the newer judges lying while under oath that they weren't joining up to end decisions on civil rights and ending abortion as a basic right.
As a layman, I thought that was a bit of a prestige deal. Is it not?
Some would say it has lately become a bit of a kangaroo court.
Put enough money into the right-wing hands and anything is possible
I was not aware of the main driver, not mentioned, sanctioned suicide even existing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctioned_Suicide
Now that they banned discussing suicide online I'm sure the number of suicides will plummet.
You know, I'd like to actually know the answer to the question you're posing there. Does discussing suicide increase the overall rate, is it neutral -- or does it even decrease it? The Samaritans are usually regarded as a net public benefit, though they tend not to encourage people to go through with it, whereas the Wikipedia link suggests that the users of that forum have some kind of fetish for it.
I would also expect to find that the effect of internet was minimal (in my case because I think the drivers of suicide are mostly socioeconomic), but I'd really like to see a proper study. I'm also aware that there is quite a lot of peer-reviewed evidence that pro-anorexia websites do actually cause harm, and there's an obvious parallel to be drawn.
Media coverage if done irresponsibly can encourage others to do the same.
> Research from over 100 international studies provide evidence that the way suicide deaths are reported is associated with increased suicide rates and suicide attempts after reporting [6,7].
> At the same time the WHO also suggests that positive and responsible reporting of suicides which promotes help-seeking behaviour, increases awareness of suicide prevention, shares stories of individuals overcoming their suicidal thinking or promotes coping strategies can help reduce suicides and suicidal behaviour [6,7,8]
https://cmhlp.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Resource-2-SPIR...
Having perused the site a number of times, I wouldn't say many people there "have a fetish for it". You're a million times more likely to be told to kill yourself on 4chan than on SS.
SS simply says a) suicide should be your choice, b) dehumanizing people for having suicidal thoughts is bad. Sadly these opinions are so far outside the overton window that suicidal people end up having no choice but to discuss their problems with other suicidal people - likely not a good basis for improvement but the human is a social animal so I'll take it over nothing.
And although SS provides info on how you can kill yourself, it also tells you how you can't kill yourself, and that has apparently saved me from permanent liver damage. So at least for me it has been objectively beneficial - more so than the brainless repetition of "consult a professional" which seems to be the gold standard for suicide prevention these days.
Thanks for sharing. It's actually reassuring to hear that the forum isn't as dark as I assumed. Providing a route for people to work through things is surely more helpful than suppression.
I am a little surprised that you perceive a gap between the advice to "consult a professional" and your a) and b). Do professionals working in this space not accept the validity of your thoughts and feelings, as a basic step? They really should.
For whatever it's worth, I hope you choose to stay with us.
[dead]
[flagged]
be careful, did you fill in the correct form to be able to make that post?
The people who run that site should be in jail. I think seriously encouraging suicide with details of methods crosses a line.
Looks like Hiro will have to cut the salaries of the 4chan jannies to pay the fine.
At this point we need big names to choose to remove their services in the UK so the government gets the message.
Presumably the "big names" are able to (or have already) implemented the requirements under the law and have an economic and reputational incentive to comply.
The “big names” benefit greatly from having the resources to comply meanwhile smaller companies can’t.
imgur did this.
Unfortunately, I don't see any site being blocked that will make these shameless gremlins in power let go of their authoritarian control over the public's lives.
Hello, have you ever heard of democracy?
Semi-related view from a former oldfag (is that term still used?), I am of the firm opinion that Insta and Twitter are far more damaging than 4chan ever was. Not that it doesn't have its filth, of course. But these image boards are too obscure for broad appeal and do not purposefully mess with people's psyche to show them more ads.
4chan will pay in two more weeks
huh? what makes you think of that?
"Two more weeks" is a meme phrase used when an event will never actually happen. For example: "trust the plan! just two more weeks until XYZ" when XYZ will not happen.
Specifically it comes from Trump frequently saying “two more weeks” and then nothing ever happens
No
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZ4z0QhD92Y
tomorrow never comes
tomorrow never dies
Do they even have any legal presence in UK to fine?
It can stop the owners being able to travel to the UK or risk being detained.
> It can stop the owners being able to travel to the UK or risk being detained.
Big loss, that destination.
London is the third most visited city and Heathrow is the second most popular airport by international visitors. The prospect of being arrested upon arrival there might be a little annoying.
Even if you don't intend to ever set foot in the UK you could find yourself there unintentionally, if your airline needs to make an unplanned diversion. So you basically have to forego any European air travel.
I wouldn't go that far. It's easy to find flights with routes where a diversion to the UK would either never make sense or be impossible due to distance.
It would be a hassle though.
"We'll always have Paris."
I assume it's mostly symbolic and/or serving some greater legal purpose.
Agreed, but if anything, it just shows how they lack teeth to mandate any action outside their jurisdiction.
If an entire continent was at stake, this would be a different story. But, in the end, the UK is small in the grand scheme of things. Any website operated outside the UK won't care, and actively demonstrating this is pretty illogical from their part.
Threatening with prison or a fine of double digit millions of pounds doesn't seem very symbolic.
They didn't just threaten anything - they imposed the fine. Imposing a fine while knowing that it likely will never be collected is the very definition of "symbolic".
The threat of imprisonment if you don't pay the fine is the polar opposite of anything "symbolic". It puts individuals at significant personal risk should they ever make the mistake of traveling through the UK, in turn limiting their freedom of movement permanently even without being in prison.
This is just not that big a deal for people who don't have family or business connections there already. It'll be like 'oh no, banned from a once-great place.' Had the UK remained in the EU, they might have been able to get other countries to honor such an arrest warrant, but as it is they just look petulant.
Sorry, being in effect banned from a country (and possibly anyone it has an active extradition agreement with, which is unrelated to EU membership) is a big deal.
Imagine being a US citizen, and suddenly being banned from Texas and Utah. It's not like you were planning on visiting those, right? Just remember to never accidentally take interstate 10, 15, 20, 40, 70 or 80 when driving around, that can't be too hard.
Suggesting it is okay to have arbitrary freedoms taken away because "you wouldn't use it anyway" is a very slippery slope. Who needs privacy and free spech, not like you want to badmouth the eternal supreme leader anyway.
It’s quite literally the perfect example of symbolic action.
Imprisonment is the polar opposite of symbolic action.
Correct, but irrelevant, since nobody has been imprisoned
Edit: and nobody realistically could be
It is extremely relevant an entity granted powers by their sovereign governemnt is threatening that the next legally mandated escalation should they not comply with their unrealistic demands is imprisonment. And yes, ending up in jail is a realistic outcome when their laws dictate it, so if it goes that far you are now playing the floor is lava but instead of lava it's nations with UK extradition agreements.
I mean Russia has fined Google 20 decillion USD. What is the point if you can't collect? Like me fining my neighbor 100 million Euro. He will laugh at me and tell me to get lost.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdxvnwkl5kgo
Are you likening the UK to Russia?
This is not a fictive fine, it's threats of imprisonment, and ignoring the whole thing means having to avoid travelling to or through the UK for life, and that's assuming the UK doesn't try to activate any sort of extradition agreements.
Even without going to prison, that's a permanent and quite significant theft of freedom of movement. If you ever travel abroad, you could end up accidentally booking a transfer through the UK.
No one ends up unintentionally transferring through Russia anytime soon. And likening the legal threats of a foreign nation to a joke from your neighbor makes no sense.
I really fail to see the difference between this and Russia's fine.
Russia is a well known authoritarian state arbitrarily penalizing anyone not aligned with and assisting their ideals, with no expectation of any kind of fair process.
The UK is a misguided democracy within the usual group of countries considered "the west", enforcing stupid and broken laws in a highly questionable fashion that presents fundamental questions about jurisdiction in the modern world.
However, it is acting against an entity is cancerous enough that even the defendent is purely challenging (and getting support on) the technical legal grounds in a search for precedent.
If your flight is redirected due to weather/etc. to some British commonwealth country, then you might be grabbed upon landing. Or if you are a really big fish, your plane might be forced to land on a crown-controlled land.
The only member of the Commonwealth that is British anymore is the UK and any of the independent countries in the Commonwealth grabbing a passenger on behalf of a civil judgement in a English court seems no more likely than any other random country doing so.
Even more unlikely is the crown exercising the kind of power you're talking about. Never mind that Charles isn't the King of the majority of Commonwealth countries.
And this is different exactly how to Belarus (backed by Russian power) [1]?
[1]: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/belarus-forces-vilnius-...
[dead]
This is going to end up the same way when Russia fined Google 20 decillion dollars. They won't receive a cent.
Do members of parliament also need to provide their IDs when they want to jerk off?
Yes, but we pay for their VPN: https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/vpns/nordvpn-is-the-most...
Think of all the kompromat VPN services could have.
Perhaps this whole ofcom business is the result of foreign VPN companies lobbying to increase market penetration in the UK?
Because they're the only ones who are profiting from this fiasco! /s
All the normie podcasts now falsely advertising VPNs as panaceæ for every possible security problem are cashing in too.
It could be better - like with Chat Control where politicians and other important persons are exempt.
Under the UK goodness knows in principle yes but they have a protected status in terms of id and tax history (I, wish I was joking) which makes it problematic enough to even discuss...
What a colossal waste of time. At this point, just unplug the undersea cables, and turn the UK into a big intranet. It's clearly what Ofcom wants.
Ofcom does what the government tells it to do. And the government does what people tell them to do. You underestimate the popular support for censorship laws in the UK - the country still had a legally-empowered "Board of Film Censors" in 2010...
My government doesn't seem to be listening to me, did you have yours professionally trained or something?
You just need to donate to the ruling party or pay for the lunch and then you're good.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/fujitsu-uk-sues-department-h...
> did you have yours professionally trained or something?
It's rather simple really; the secret is money.
Only then can you tame a politician.
One no more tames a politician than one tames a dog. When you stop feeding either their slab of meat, you become their next meal.
The fact that it's not listening to you does not mean it's not listening to anyone.
Our MPs are listening to the faith-based organizations bankrolled by American interests. They are listening to the Catholic Church, the Church of England, and their equivalents in the other faiths (they all condemn "vice"). They are listening to anti-porn organizations. They are listening to "think of the children" groups. They are listening to Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch. They are listening to Mumsnet. They are listening to censorship-enabling companies. They are listening to anyone with money and an interest in defining power structures to further entrench themselves.
They are listening, just not to the apathetic, individualistic know-it-alls who don't engage in politics and then complain that it's all shit.
The BBFC still exists today and serves pretty much the same purpose as the MPA in the land of the free. Is there any practical difference between the two?
BBFC's rulings have legal impact, and they can refuse classification making the film illegal show or sell in the UK.
over in the US, getting an MPAA rating is completely voluntary. MPAA rules do not allow it to refuse to rate a motion picture, and even if they did, the consequences would be the same as choosing not to get a rating.
If you don't get a rating in the US, some theatres and retailers may decline to show/sell your film, but you can always do direct sales, and/or set up private showings.
> And the government does what people tell them to do.
HAHAHAHAHAHA
Maybe they can take some inspiration from North-Korea, I heard their intranet is great!
Note: I had to edit the title because it was too long for HN
Well edited
> "Services can no longer ignore illegal content"
But that's exactly what 4chan and kiwi farms are doing.
For what it’s worth jannies typically remove content that is illegal in the US. What illegal content do you think is on 4chan/kf?
What exactly is stopping 4chan from not paying the fines? Is the UK gonna send the cyberpolice to shut down an American website? If your website isn't hosted in the UK you shouldn't have to abide by their laws.
Does 4chan actually get profits from the UK or have offices/servers there? If not how can they do anything to them? Seems like it would be the UK's responsibility to block access to it rather than the inverse if 4chan doesn't have a presence there.
At this point every major website and "smart" phone app should just refuse to comply with these idiotic laws and simply block UK users. It's only when the masses realize that the freedoms they care about are being eroded that something will change.
Is there any way to donate to the defense found here as a non-american non-brit?
The UK government want to get on with blocking websites and VPNs as soon as possible. 4chan was obviously not going to comply and was picked to allow ofcom to quickly move onto the next step.
exercise in futility
Heh, I wonder if it's just like how 4chan anons j?rking off to themselves for the fact that Ofcom sends out pointless fines and sh?t.
I’d be curious to know how the UK going to enforce its extra territorial law against a company with no ties to the UK?
What an odd feeling to be rooting for 4chan...
If you can stomach vulgarities, i always was the anti-censorship shit test.
Reminder that Google owes Russia more money than exists in the world, for continuing to disobey the Russian law which commands them to allow the Russian state to upload its propaganda on Youtube.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdxvnwkl5kgo
Ofcom are basically the UK's Roskomnadzor. Tell them to go fuck themselves with a copy of the OSA.
I'm from the UK and would gladly fuck all of them with a copy of the OSA, but I'd rather that the law were repealed. In the meantime, I'm telling everyone how to use VPNs and Tor Browser, and to never give anyone their real identity details on the internet.
I'm not sure why they should care. Just banhammer the entire island. Everybody should. They can have their own independent internet, that conforms to UK laws. Let's see when HN will be fined, for advocacy of circumvention of local laws, or of strong encryption.
Facebook banned all Canadian news outlets, and they were probably actually making a few bucks from them. I can't imagine that 4chan would care too much about losing UK users. 4% of barely any revenue, maybe? Just ban them all; they're insignificant. The only drawback for UK citizens is that Reform will go up a point or two in the polls from people who prefer the authoritarianism they don't know to the authoritarianism they do, but considering the awful alternatives it's really six of one a half-dozen of the other.
One of the rational reasons people are preferring nationalists is simply because they are less powerful than the neolibs, who all work together against their populations. Better a the dumb local boss you know than a being the local outpost of a faceless world boss.
I think if a country is vehemently an international or foreign website it should be on them to block their citizens access, not on website operators to somehow try to geo-restrict that region from access.
That could lead to tons of countries having their own internet firewalls similar to China, if that's what they want to do. Which I probably wouldn't like.
But the alternative of being liable for any new legislation, fines, etc, from any country in the world just because I operate a small website on the internet seems at least equally bad.
> One of the rational reasons people are preferring nationalists is simply because they are less powerful than the neolibs, who all work together against their populations. Better a the dumb local boss you know than a being the local outpost of a faceless world boss.
If you think that's rational, you are wrong. Rationalising, sure, just not rational.
"Divide and conquer" is very much desired by those who want to control you, and thinking "a local authoritarian for local people" will (or even could) eject the influence of the outside world, is a false narrative.
Popular sentiment though, so may well get authoritarian parties some votes.
Good luck in trying to collect it.
I suspect Ofcom knows that 4chan isn't going to comply, they're just going through the motions before deploying the nuclear option of ordering ISPs to block it.
Seeing the memes about brits being kicked off the site by their own government might actually be worth a quick visit, lol.
They should go looking for the Hacker Known as 4chan and collect from him.
Yeah, who is this 'anonymous' fellow?
I think the end state of this will be when Trump links prosecutions like this to tariff deals, and Kier Starmer will have to choose between mean words on the internet or further damage to an economy in already bad shape.
Starmer doesn't have very long, and he seems to be trying to accelerate his relocation out of government.
I think he is stuck, like the Prime Minister of France. He has a party that won't tolerate spending cuts of the required scale, and an economy that can't tolerate further tax raises.
He also has the charisma of a wet sock, which doesn't help.
So another thirty years of Tory rule (or worse) because Labor did a dog that caught the car. Hurray.
Or Reform... considering that Conservatives are third in the polls currently.
If there were elections now according to the current projections Tories would get less seats than the Liberal Democrats.
Yeah, I consider Reform worse.
Starmer has longer than Trump all things being equal - he doesn't even need to call an election until July 5th 2029. He also has a massive majority, making a government collapse by other means highly unlikely.
Curious why Trump would even care and, if so, why he wouldn't lean toward his constituency that is largely in favor of these laws (see Texas, Florida, Utah, etc.).
I think there is a difference between straight p0rn, and a discussion forum that often posts NSFW images.
4chan is also the originator of the Pepe the Frog memes, and claims (whether people believe it or not) to have meme-d Trump into the Whitehouse in 2016.
You saying that 1. since 4chan is a message board Trump might change his tariff policy to save it where he would't if it was a porn site and 2. Trump feels he owes them for 2016?
I think neither a murky ideological battle nor a decade-old debt matters much to the president. And it probably matters that the UK made a tariff deal already, so changing terms would be a big act of self-sabotage.
I guess time will tell who's right?
I can see Trump looking at this as a great policy if it will give him more power. I wouldn't count on him -ever- choosing less fascism
[dead]
poor Brits
Every country gets the government it deserves.
the problem is this is affecting people outside of the UK too...
Not likely
You can cheat elections with enough money. Excepting that citizens are generally not on an equal footing with their own government. Party politics exist.
We don't have "true democracy" in the UK. There are two main issues:
And we're trapped with this system, because the main parties won't let us change it. When it was tried, and we had a national referendum on it, they rigged the vote in their favour by only offering a complicated and relatively crap alternative and spent our money on propaganda like this:https://politicaladvertising.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/0...
I love the UK in so many ways, but sometimes it makes it very hard to love.
"Why don't Afghani women rise up and overthrow the Taliban? Are they stupid?"
Thanks for lumping me in with the great unwashed.
what a pointless excersize this is
I wrote this years ago about GDPR but it applies here too
I don't really oppose gdpr but one of the reasons I vehemently opposed implementing GDPR at my former job is that we were not operating in the EU. Well, we had customers there, but we were an American company operating with American severs. GDPR sets another precident that other countries can make laws about what people from other jurisdictions can do..
Our lawyers said "Do it anyway, just in case".
The side effect of these very many different local regulatory bodies is you start trying to comply with multiple laws, some that can conflict each other - and this costs not just time and money, but the rigidity to stand up and say "No, our elected leaders have decided what the laws of the land are, and we follow them".
And the thing is, many countries do not have good faith laws. The majority of the people in the world live under what Americans and the EU, and the West would call lacking fundamental human rights. Some of these laws are plain BAD (hell, the US and AU even have our own bad internet laws) and some are EVIL.
Google routinely complying with the Chinese government is a great example of them wanting to take the cash first and ask questions later (or not at all). I don't want to work for that company.
I don't really think being a good 'worldwide' citizen can exist when there are conflicting views held by governments about what is right. The fact is some governments are objectively etter than others
I don't really think we aught to be involving ourselves at all with Russian officals, apparatjiks or other government bodies - but we find ourselves in this situation again, like GDPR, Russian officals have set certain rules about how data for russian citizens needs be held.
Of course Russia has no grounds to sue me in America and if it did, do you think a judge would enforce our compliance with laws that hold no water in our countries? Of course not.
Russia wants russians data - on russian servers in russia. The fact is they're probably mostly interested in being able to physically seize - without any due process - russian citizens data from servers which all happen to be in russia. It's a smart law if you're interested in putting people in gulags.
I'd rather lose all russian customers, and also all of the customers in north korea, or whatever else despotic governments that exist that think they can exert pressure on independent companies who don't operate under their jurisdictions and not have to worry about what bullshit they'll come up with next.
None of this to imply that the US and EU, Australia, Switzerland, etcdon't have a bunch of questionable laws and procedures that might not be quite fair or free either, but the world ain't perfect
What happens next is country X decides you must do one thing, and country Y decides you do another, and you come to TECHNICAL problems and BUSINESS problems and ETHICAL problems trying to comply with both.
If you're not in the EU, do not even bother with GDPR.
Rant over
> we were not operating in the EU. Well, we had customers there...
If the UK doesn't like 4chan, they're going to have to just block it. 4chan, an American product, with likely no funds, is never going to pay this and will suffer zero consequences.
Ofcom can go of itself.
If only
[dead]
Commentators criticising the act and ofcom’s attempt, do understand the online safety act is to prevent children from watching porn? The critique always lacks any form of grounding in reality or proposal of alternative solutions
There is already a method for that, it is called parenting. Technology never could, cannot, and never will solve problems that are human in nature
Children freely watching porn is a technology problem not a not a nature problem
^ this is my point. You remove any grounding. We don’t allow children to drink (we allow them younger in the UK than the US), drive, and many other things we have safeguards for. Also, how do you suggest parenting solves for this? Are children with parents all the time? Does the data suggest an only parenting technique works? No, course not. What’s your solution to something that is a problem? All up for a critique of the act but to say “there is no problem” is absurd.
With this logic we could ban selling knives, because you can use them to kill somebody.
In the UK you need to be over 18 to buy knives
Complete ban should be enforced, even if it saves a one child, it is worth it.
Or ban guns
Many people are saying this is symbolic and cannot be enforced. Unfortunately, that's just not true. Look at what happened to the founder of Telegram. Some jurisdiction decides you're violating their laws, all you need to do is catch a connecting flight or take a vacation on their soil or a place that will eagerly extradite, and you're a political prisoner.
What happens if one of the officers of 4Chan or Gab is on a flight to Paris and the plane is redirected to London? Well, they're going to prison. The UK is a police state.
Durov's plane wasn't redirected to France, nor were the French planning to extradite him anywhere else for all we know. He willingly landed his own private jet in Paris.
I understand what point you're trying to make, but Protasevich would have been a better example. Beware of whose airspace you fly over.
Durov is also, relevantly, a naturalized French citizen in addition to his various other passports. It's not just "some jurisdiction", it's one he opted into!
That is a good point I completely overlooked: your international flight can get redirected to a country you never intended to visit.
It has been known that certain middle east countries force passengers crafts to divert and land to get their hands on wanted people
I'm pretty sure the US and Europe do this as well, Evo Morales grounding incident:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident
I still cannot believe the Geneva Conventions allowed this. This should have ended with John Kerry and Jen Psaki in a Swiss prison for at least 10 years, if not Barack Obama himself. We managed to convict accused war criminals with a lot less evidence in the Nuremburg trials. FOR EMPHASIS: I'm not comparing the severity of the crimes, I'm comparing the evidentiary basis for securing convictions.
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." -Henry Kissinger
What would those have to do with "intelligence contractor leaked our stuff, might be on the Bolivian president's plane, oh no a diplomatic incident"?
All you did was link to the main page of a wikipedia article and copy and paste the first sentence. Your response is so lazy, it doesn't even deserve a response, but I'm putting this out here for the benefit of the general public:
https://www.icrc.org/en/article/grave-breaches-defined-genev... GC 4 Art. 147. "Grave breaches to which the preceding Article relates shall be those involving any of the following acts, if committed against persons or property protected by the present Convention: wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments, wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, UNLAWFUL DEPORTATION OR TRANSFER OR CONFINEMENT OF A PROTECTED PERSON, compelling a protected person to serve in the forces of a hostile Power, or wilfully depriving a protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed in the present Convention, taking of hostages and extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly."
1. Foreign heads of state are definitely protected persons.
2. Foreign heads of state transiting to and from diplomatic meetings are engaged in a protected activity.
3. If these laws apply between enemy nations engaged in declared war, they are even more applicable to countries at peace with one another.
It turns out I'm even more right that I initially thought: this was not only a breach of the spirit of the Geneva Conventions, it was also a breach of the very letter of the law! Regardless, someone doesn't understand the purpose of the Geneva Conventions in the first place, so I'll elaborate...
Edward Snowden himself is irrelevant, it doesn't matter if Osama Bin Laden was on that plane. The fact is that the US and its allies used deception to illegally ground a diplomatic flight, detain a foreign head of state, and engage in an illegal search and seizure.
Furthermore, whether or not the countries involved were even at war is irrelevant. The purpose of the Geneva Conventions are to maintain a minimum set of international ethics that make diplomacy safe for diplomats. If a foreign head of state can be detained or imprisoned, and if his property can be searched or seized, then diplomatic negotiations for anything are now impossible.
It doesn't matter if the reasons for breaking these rules are justifiable or not, the fact is that you're not trustworthy even in a basic capacity that allows for diplomatic negotiation. You're in the same perfidious bucket as Japanese Emperor Hirohito, Saddam Hussein, or Ruhollah Khomeini (Iranian Hostage Crisis).
"Build your opponent a golden bridge to retreat across."
-Sun Tzu
P.S. The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations explicitly forbids detaining diplomats. See articles 27 and 29:
https://legal.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/conventio...
YOU LOSE! YOU GET NOTHING! GOOD DAY, SIR!
> If these laws apply between enemy nations engaged in declared war, they are even more applicable to countries at peace with one another.
So far as I can tell, that claim is your own invention.
Also, according to your own link's link to the full text:
-- https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/gciv-1949/art...So, not what you say.
Even if it was, Morales was not detained by another state, nor did his plane land under what is recognised as "coercion": The aircraft was denied overflight by several European states after rumours that Snowden was aboard, so it diverted to Austria, where it landed voluntarily for refuelling. Austria’s authorities requested (but, in a legal sense, did not compel) inspection; Morales, in a legal sense, consented.
Also, "search and seizure"? Nothing was seized, IIRC?
> The purpose of the Geneva Conventions are to maintain a minimum set of international ethics that make diplomacy safe for diplomats.
Nope, different laws for that. As you say elsewhere, Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. Which, importantly, is a different thing than the Geneva Conventions. I mean, you can tell by how most of the words in the name are different…
> YOU LOSE! YOU GET NOTHING! GOOD DAY, SIR!
I see you're new here. Such energy doesn't go down well on this site.
[flagged]
[dead]
Morales' plane wasn't actually forced to land anywhere nor did anyone try to arrest anyone onboard.
His plane was denied access to airspace. At worst, he would have had to turn around and reroute. They only decided to land right away because of a faulty fuel indicator.
Enforcing bad legislation that was enacted through the democratic process doesn’t make a country a police state. It’s just the rule of law. That has always included the enforcement of bad laws as well as good ones.
> the democratic process
There's no such thing. There are many different processes that some people consider democratic and others don't. But "democratic" has no other meaning than rule by the governed. It is not a description of a specific political process. Especially one that bans leading opposition candidates, which is clearly as undemocratic as anything that can occur in government. If a population wants to vote in somebody who is currently in prison for crimes they are obviously guilty of, preventing them from doing it is a direct repudiation of democracy.
Even killing opposition candidates is marginally more democratic, because at least that only lasts for an instant. Saying that people cannot vote for the government of their choice is a restriction on the governed, not a restriction on people who want to govern.
The UK does not ‘ban’ leading opposition candidates. The largest opposition party in Parliament is the Conservatives; Kemi Badenoch is not banned. The opposition party leading in the polls is Reform; Nigel Farage is not banned.
The UK locks up political dissidents under draconian 'safety' laws.
You don’t refer to any specific cases so I can’t offer any specific response, but the key phrase is
> under ___ laws.
A police state is one where the police arrest whoever the government directs them to arrest (rather than enforcing the law). Keir Starmer is not phoning up Police chiefs to get people disappeared.
The laws are whatever the UK's kangaroo courts decide they are. It's a total police state.
Courts ruling on matters of legal interpretation is how things are supposed to work. This is like saying “the US Constitution is whatever the kangaroo Supreme Court says that it is.”
> whatever the UK's kangaroo courts decide
I mean there isn't a UK court. There's the supreme court, but one can still appeal to the Hague to get you out of a jam. But yeah, you keep thinking that. Its not like with have a shadow docket going on, undermining the constitution.
> It's a total police state.
I can still, on record call Starmer "a massive fucking prick".
I can do that on TV.
I will not get arrested, I will not have an ICE raid called on me, I won't get death threats.
I won't lose my job[1]
So no, its not a police state, because the judiciary is still working, more or less
[1] not my current job anyway
> The UK locks up political dissidents under draconian 'safety' laws.
We used to just out and out shoot them.
We used to demand that they have their voices literally overdubbed by an actor.
We used to round people up and jail them for being too irish.
We used to be in a civil war, up until the 2000s.
You're just having a cyberpunk wet dream. Don't get me wrong, the OSA is an abomination. but you are being a hyperbolic child, especially as actual authoritarianism is happening in the USA, without anything as a peep from the same blowhards talking about the OSA.
You're absolutely right, the UK has always been despotic. And that's just at home, to say nothing about the colonies.
> The UK is a police state.
No it isn’t.
It's a nanny state which is even worse
It's a nanny state with the police arresting and jailing people for tweets. It's a police state, but "we" like to identify police states with Russians, Chinese, and Iranians, or whoever the state's enemy is at the moment.
When police show up to your door and ask you to apologize to people for causing distress, and to consider not speaking from now on, you live in a police state. When you have banned political parties and organizations that trigger the mass arrests of peaceful protestors, you live in a police state. People who are comfortable with what is being suppressed never think of their country as a police state. At least until something happens to them or someone they care about, when they suddenly become "activists."
> you live in a police state.
sigh You've not lived in a police state, or more accurately, you've been online too much to actually get context.
In the UK threatening to kill someone has been illegal since at least ~1880 something. Going online an publicly calling for the death of one or more person (which in the eyes of the law is pretty close to sending a good old paper death threat) is not only widely considered a dick move, its illegal.
Now, How do you enforce that? the police investigate, and if its deemed a credible threat, you are visited by the plod. Who most likley go "look mate, don't be a dick".
If you are really being a dick, you might be cautioned (taken to the police station and told "you're being a shit")
The next stage up is appearing in court.
And then you have to be convicted by a jury of your peers, and the burden of evidence is really quite high. ("oh but that mum, she was innocent." I advise you to read all that she wrote, you know the extra bits that the sun can't print)
Its not like you're bundled into the back of a van by masked goons who refuse to identify themselves. Taken to a mass detention centre and not seen for weeks, and then yeeted to an illegal jail.
But why are the police investigating social media?
Now thats a good question. And the answer is: Musk doesn't moderate. Stuff that gets you a visit from the plod is generally against the community standards of social media, even X.
Now to your point here: "When police show up to your door and ask you to apologize to people for causing distress"
I've had a visit from the police, why? because I was young and being an antisocial shit. The police were not actually there to arrest me, and I don't think they could actually if they wanted to. The point was, they were there to make the town liveable for all it's citizens. I was "fucking around", and the police were gently telling me that I'd really not like to "find out".
"OH BUT PERSONAL FREEDOM". Now, the thing is, I was perfectly free to carry on my bad ways. The problem was, those ways, had they descended further, would have resulted in jail time. The choice was mine.
I don't want to live in a country where its acceptable to bully whomever I like, in the guise of personal freedom. Sure, speak your mind, but don't be a dick about it.
Let's not act like political speech has not been used to arrest people in the UK. To claim otherwise is a lie, or a level of ignorance only afforded to small children.
> To claim otherwise is a lie, or a level of ignorance only afforded to small children.
And I have not claimed otherwise. during the troubles stuff went south very quickly. What you are doing are conflating political persecution with the censoring of 4chan, an organisation who's adherence to law is flexible at best.
Criminal 1: "Quick, hide the money!"
Criminal 2: "Coppers?"
Criminal 1: "Worse. Nannies."
Nah, it's not worse.
Still only enforceable if they leave the US soil.
> The UK is a police state.
The UK is further from being a police state than the USA is.
And despite what Trump has been doing, both are nowhere near being that.
I mean, UK cops aren't even routinely given firearms… and the cops themselves don't want to change that.
That UK police do not carry firearms really has nothing to do with whether the UK is heading in the direction of being a police state. Firearms are no more necessary for oppression than the private possession of them is sufficient to fight against it.
> and the cops themselves don't want to change that.
I think that you will find that there is a minority of UK police who would welcome being armed with deadly weapons.
Here's an article from 2017:
"A national survey carried out by the Police Federation of England and Wales found more than a third of officers supported the idea of routinely being armed, compared to 23 per cent when the last survey was carried out in 2006.
Another 55 per cent said they would be prepared to carry a gun if asked to – up more than 10 per cent."
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/armed-police...
I'll be the first to tell you, police in the USA are absolute tyrants. You can be killed for mouthing off to the police here, and likely nothing will happen to them.
We don't jail people for tweets though.
> We don't jail people for tweets though
https://reason.com/2025/10/10/tennessee-man-arrested-gets-2-...
This is supposed to be a surprise? You break the law in a country, and then visit that country, and - shock - they arrest you.