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4Chan mocks £520k fine for UK online safety breaches

bbc.com

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Re: 4Chan mocks £520k fine for UK online safety breaches

#121

Post by dmix »

selfmodruntime wrote: post #68
petcat wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And now we'll watch the UK take the logical next step which is for the government to mandate that all ISPs in the country block 4chan. CCP "Great Firewall" style.

You'd be amazed at the times I've argued with people on HN that free speech infringement by the UK government has grown rampant, only for them to enact the next draconian law a month later.

UK is trying to be like Russia and China, where a minder will show up at your door if you post something the government doesn't like. Then people online will defend it because the investigation didn't turn into a full criminal charge or they say the people simply deserved it.

The reality is this will seriously chill speech broadly across the country regardless of either of those outcomes, and the technical costs of enforcement will be steep.

Re: 4Chan mocks £520k fine for UK online safety breaches

#122

Post by vdqtp3 »

selfmodruntime wrote: post #68
petcat wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And now we'll watch the UK take the logical next step which is for the government to mandate that all ISPs in the country block 4chan. CCP "Great Firewall" style.

You'd be amazed at the times I've argued with people on HN that free speech infringement by the UK government has grown rampant, only for them to enact the next draconian law a month later.

Same. The responses are consistently "but they only restrict bad speech"

Re: 4Chan mocks £520k fine for UK online safety breaches

#123

Post by cookiengineer »

tokyobreakfast wrote: post #116
refulgentis wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commenting on Europe has gotten really lax the last year or so. People kinda will just say whatever pops into their head and it’s some drive-by claim that they haven’t thought about for a second past it popping into their head, presumably because it’s become normalized. (i.e. “but everyone knows Europe goes too far”) Sometimes it self resolves - as you contributed here, yes, countries limit and interfere and fine oth…

[flagged]

> Are you having a mini-stroke?

This comment is comically pointless.

Re: 4Chan mocks £520k fine for UK online safety breaches

#125

Post by 3rodents »

dijit wrote: post #16

The response from Ofcom doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. If you are to sell a toy in the UK you must be a British company. (and must pay VAT and comply with British safety standards). If a consumer buys from overseas and imports a product then they do not have British consumer protections. Which is why so much aliexpress electrical stuff is dangerous (expecially USB chargers) yet it continues to be legally imported. Jus…

That’s not really true. The Ofcom representative said “not allowed” not “unable to”. Even if cocaine is legal in my country, I’m “not allowed” to sell it to British consumers by the power of the British authorities. The British authorities may not have legal authority in my jurisdiction but they can take action in their own, including issuing penalties and stopping my deliveries at the border.

Re: 4Chan mocks £520k fine for UK online safety breaches

#126

Post by [deleted] »

dijit wrote: post #16

The response from Ofcom doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. If you are to sell a toy in the UK you must be a British company. (and must pay VAT and comply with British safety standards). If a consumer buys from overseas and imports a product then they do not have British consumer protections. Which is why so much aliexpress electrical stuff is dangerous (expecially USB chargers) yet it continues to be legally imported. Jus…

[deleted]

Re: 4Chan mocks £520k fine for UK online safety breaches

#127

Post by frostiness »

gnfargbl wrote: post #104
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UK ISPs do block some domains though.

Which does nothing to block 4chan, because everyone knows what a VPN is and how to get one.

Unlike other websites though, VPNs are generally banned from posting on 4chan, which would definitely hurt traffic.

Re: 4Chan mocks £520k fine for UK online safety breaches

#128

Post by guelo »

rstat1 wrote: post #56
guelo wrote: post #43

There's always people that say it's the parents responsibility to monitor their kids. But as a parent, you either give your kids full access to the internet or nothing. The fault lies with the OS companies Google, Microsoft, Apple. They do a terrible job with parental controls. They make it very hard to setup, they're confusing and hard to use plus they barely work. I think they just do it as a checkbox for marketing…

OS makers should not be in the business of enforcing censorship. If you want to shield your children from the "horrors" of the internet either use proper parental control software, or don't allow access at all like you said until your kids are mature to understand what's going on The onus is on the parent to the be parent. Not the tech industry, and especially not the government.

Who are you to decide what should or should not be?

"proper parental control software" doesn't exist for a lot of the platforms.

Re: 4Chan mocks £520k fine for UK online safety breaches

#130

Post by akersten »

thunderfork wrote: post #94
gnfargbl wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as a UK citizen: you're exactly right. If the UK wants to prevent 4chan from being imported into the UK then it needs to block it at the border as it would for physical goods. The fact that's technically hard to do (at least without going full-on CCP) doesn't change the situation. Attempting to fine a foreign entity for doing something that breaks no laws in the foreign entity's jurisdiction is just risible.

It's very much a rock-and-a-hard-place situation. "It's an import", so they have to respond to it like they'd respond to imports... But unlike physical imports, there's a sense that blocking these imports is an affront to base philosophical freedom in a way that prohibiting physical imports isn't.

> there's a sense that blocking these imports is an affront to base philosophical freedom in a way that prohibiting physical imports isn't.

It would serve UK legislators well to explore that tingling sense some more before they consider any further efforts in this direction, but that's just my two pence.

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