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4chan will refuse to pay daily online safety fines, lawyer tells BBC

bbc.co.uk

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Re: 4chan will refuse to pay daily online safety fines, lawyer tells BBC

#131

Step 1, pass law. Step 2, demand compliance. Step 3, upon not hearing of compliance, levy fines. Step 4, upon non payment of fines, declare in breach of (2). Step 5, block site from UK using DNS, in the same manner as torrent sites etc. 5 was always the goal, 2 to 4 are largely just performative.

Performative yes, but it's about controlling their subjects, not punishing the act or preventings its recurrence. Such as it ever was in UK politics.

Think about the logic of KYC/AML laws - introduced wehn HSBC were fined $1.9 billion for laundering Mexican drug cartels and Saudi terrorist cell money. The impact and burden were almost wholly on the consumer, and did nothing to stop institutional bad actors being malfeasant on a macro scale. This was beautifully illustrated HSBC were caught doing the exact same thing 10 years later. And again. And again.

Fast forward to UK culture and politics today and how they're dealing with a globalised world watching them post-Brexit.

Labour (and to an extent the BBC) were pilloried for having an anti-semitism problem over the last decade, and Northern Ireland is typified by proscribed terrorist groups doing public marches with large public terrorist murals. Rather than mitigate any of the causes, or engage with the problem on a societal level, the UKs answer is to arrest 80 and 89 year olds pleading to stop infanticide in Gaza, and charge native-Irish speaking Rappers and Sundance Award Winning actors under the terrorism act

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/jul/24/uk-police-de... https://edition.cnn.com/2025/08/20/uk/irish-rapper-terrorism...

When looking at the current passion for control and restriction of the internet under the guise of combatting CSAM, its important to understand the context under which these disingenuous ploys arise.

US and European readers might not realise that the BBC, the House of Lords, and specific Political Parties in the UK have a very serious child-grooming and paedophilia scandal they've been trying to keep under wraps for 50 years that had the lid blown off by the revelations following Jimmy Saville's death. This is outside the major child-grooming and abuse scandals in the cultural pillars and cultural groups of the UK - e.g. Church of England, The Boy Scouts, the British Public School system etc...

I can't even go into the more recent and utterly appalling Rotherham debacle - and the dereliction of duty of both the police and the legal system - as it would simply take too long.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploit...

In 1981 Sir Peter Hayman - Diplomat and MI6 operative who held highly sensitive posts at the MOD and NATO - was called out for being a paedophile, using parliamentary privilege, as he had not been jailed after it was discovered he had left a package containing child pornography on a bus. The DPP and AG declined to prosecute, but Thatcher advised him that he would be stripped of his honours if was caught in a Public Toilet engaging in homosexual acts again, as he was in 1984.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westminster_paedophile_dossier... https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/tory-mp-warned-o...

Now that the statute of limitations is running out, and official secrets acts files are due to be unsealed, its time for a pallaver about VPNs and protecting the children from the 'internet'. Given their age and new-found riches in a disenfranchised post-Brexit Britain, the ruling classes of the UK have never been in a more trepidatious position - some commentators even predicting civil war in the next 5 years - so time for some large-scale distractive measures.

Is the UK headed for civil war? | UK Politics | The New ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4urbhc_cOQk

Re: 4chan will refuse to pay daily online safety fines, lawyer tells BBC

#132
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4chan uses Cloudflare. Blocking routes to Cloudflare may have an interesting impact unless CF are cooperating with the UK. 4chan could stop using CF but their moderators will have to step up their game as CF is being used to detect and block CSAM.

AFAIK Cloudflare gives 4chan a dedicated ip to simplify blocking.

I think you may be right. [1] It's the same IP I've had in my hosts file for a long time.

[1] - https://whoisfreaks.com/tools/dns/history/lookup/4chan.org?t...

Re: 4chan will refuse to pay daily online safety fines, lawyer tells BBC

#133
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I disapprove of what the gov is doing here, I think it’s incorrect and unhelpful to put all the blame on them. AIUI, the UK is a democracy and these policies are generally supported by the voters.

> AIUI, the UK is a democracy The House of Lords disagrees and the Monarch disagree. Sometimes they cosplay as a democracy.

[deleted]

Re: 4chan will refuse to pay daily online safety fines, lawyer tells BBC

#134

Step 1, pass law. Step 2, demand compliance. Step 3, upon not hearing of compliance, levy fines. Step 4, upon non payment of fines, declare in breach of (2). Step 5, block site from UK using DNS, in the same manner as torrent sites etc. 5 was always the goal, 2 to 4 are largely just performative.

IMO this whole situation is ridiculous.

#2-#4 are the government trying to impose its national laws on an entity in a completely different country, operating entirely in that completely different country, with no business relationship whatsoever with your country. It's a futile and frankly rather insulting effort; no different from if Iran declared it was illegal for UK women living in the UK to leave the house without wearing a burka.

#5 is an authoritarian offense against your own citizens; trying to prevent them from being able to communicate with people in another country even if they want to do so.

Re: 4chan will refuse to pay daily online safety fines, lawyer tells BBC

#135

Step 1, pass law. Step 2, demand compliance. Step 3, upon not hearing of compliance, levy fines. Step 4, upon non payment of fines, declare in breach of (2). Step 5, block site from UK using DNS, in the same manner as torrent sites etc. 5 was always the goal, 2 to 4 are largely just performative.

This is the only power they have left. The UK government has lost control of what happen in the physical world on their own island so now the bureaucrats play a fantasy game where they are gonna enforce their rules and dominion in their former colonies or the digital world.

> The UK government has lost control of what happen in the physical world on their own island

What do you mean by this?

Re: 4chan will refuse to pay daily online safety fines, lawyer tells BBC

#136

I wouldn't be so sure it's an ideological stand. 4chan got hacked a while back because they were running a totally outdated software stack. It's been pretty much abandoned by its owner hiromoot. If they aren't going to update the site for basic maintainance, they definitely aren't going to implement all this chat control/ age verification bullcrap. I suppose a resistance to change is good when your competitors are bu…

I laughed at hiromoot. Very clever nickname

Re: 4chan will refuse to pay daily online safety fines, lawyer tells BBC

#137
post #127
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I disapprove of what the gov is doing here, I think it’s incorrect and unhelpful to put all the blame on them. AIUI, the UK is a democracy and these policies are generally supported by the voters.

The UK hasn't elected a government on 50% or more of the vote since the 1950s: https://www.statista.com/statistics/717004/general-elections... It is hard to call minority rule democratic, really. I've no issue with your point on the OSA and think it is widely supported, but let's be realistic, representation in the UK is virtual on matters like this: widely supported, but mostly by coincidence.

I think you're making the original poster's point for them. It's very clear a minority government is not the one forcing OSA on people. They don't even have the power.

Arguably, minority rule is more democratic than majority rule, because minority rule isn't "the minority does whatever they want".

Re: 4chan will refuse to pay daily online safety fines, lawyer tells BBC

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not elitist to remark that people tech skills are atrophying. The zoomers literally have memes about how bad are at tech stuff. Setting a VPN is 100% not trivial, I know that because I recently set up a wireguard vpn on a VPS. Not impossible, sure, but out of the reach for a normal person. Sure, one can ask a techie friend (if one's has a techie friend capable of self-hosting a VPN). So now instead of the gov ba…

One techie can resell his vpn to other people.

please re-read my comment

>Selling turnkey tools will be banned

you can't escape the state financial control, it's impossible

sure, you can do it on a very very small scale, but nothing that would have any impact

Re: 4chan will refuse to pay daily online safety fines, lawyer tells BBC

#139
post #127
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I disapprove of what the gov is doing here, I think it’s incorrect and unhelpful to put all the blame on them. AIUI, the UK is a democracy and these policies are generally supported by the voters.

The UK hasn't elected a government on 50% or more of the vote since the 1950s: https://www.statista.com/statistics/717004/general-elections... It is hard to call minority rule democratic, really. I've no issue with your point on the OSA and think it is widely supported, but let's be realistic, representation in the UK is virtual on matters like this: widely supported, but mostly by coincidence.

2-party electoral systems (likely to bear >50% majority governments) are also not very democratic, in a way. There's no perfect system, but I prefer minority governments to a 2-party duopoly. YMMV.

Re: 4chan will refuse to pay daily online safety fines, lawyer tells BBC

#140
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I disapprove of what the gov is doing here, I think it’s incorrect and unhelpful to put all the blame on them. AIUI, the UK is a democracy and these policies are generally supported by the voters.

really? From my anecdotal evidence, is that it's fucking stupid and hated

Behold, the power of the anecdote.
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