Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ofcom fines 4chan £20K and counting for violating UK's Online Safety Act

theregister.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 260 posts

Re: Ofcom fines 4chan £20K and counting for violating UK's Online Safety Act

#221

Post by rockskon »

blibble wrote: post #181
KaiserPro wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. W…

they're not civil servants, because the the organisations were deliberately created to be separate from whitehall (and ministerial interference)

It seems to be a distinction without meaning in this case.

Re: Ofcom fines 4chan £20K and counting for violating UK's Online Safety Act

#222

Post by aydyn »

pogue wrote: post #219
NoboruWataya wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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?

Re: Ofcom fines 4chan £20K and counting for violating UK's Online Safety Act

#223

Post by aydyn »

foldr wrote: post #93
alphazard wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 it…

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.

Re: Ofcom fines 4chan £20K and counting for violating UK's Online Safety Act

#224

Post by lelandfe »

constantius wrote: post #128
nadermx wrote: post #9

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 tha…

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?

Re: Ofcom fines 4chan £20K and counting for violating UK's Online Safety Act

#225

Post by m463 »

alphazard wrote: post #74

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 fro…

I wonder if it more like "ofcom fines 10,000 offenders", then "press reports on controversial and vocal offender 4chan"

Re: Ofcom fines 4chan £20K and counting for violating UK's Online Safety Act

#226

Post by ninalanyon »

ben_w wrote: post #152
linuxftw wrote: post #41

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…

> 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...

Re: Ofcom fines 4chan £20K and counting for violating UK's Online Safety Act

#227

Post by Mindwipe »

pogue wrote: post #219
NoboruWataya wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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?

No, but they have the power to have you arrested for non-payment of the fine when you arrive at the airport.

Re: Ofcom fines 4chan £20K and counting for violating UK's Online Safety Act

#228

Post by foldr »

aydyn wrote: post #223
foldr wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Ofcom fines 4chan £20K and counting for violating UK's Online Safety Act

#229

Post by armitron »

RansomStark wrote: post #180
bendigedig wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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…

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.

Re: Ofcom fines 4chan £20K and counting for violating UK's Online Safety Act

#230

Post by pogue »

Mindwipe wrote: post #227
pogue wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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?
Post reply on HN