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

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

#231

Post by toyg »

deejaaymac wrote: post #75
toyg wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

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

#232

Post by ben_w »

linuxftw wrote: post #204
ben_w wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 .

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-...

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

#234

Post by munksbeer »

armitron wrote: post #229
RansomStark wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

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.

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

#235

Post by EasyMark »

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.

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

#236

Post by EasyMark »

ycombinatrix wrote: post #186
quercusa wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

#237

Post by munksbeer »

sunaookami wrote: post #24
DataDaemon wrote: post #19

poor Brits

Every country gets the government it deserves.

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:

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.

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

#238

Post by EasyMark »

gadders wrote: post #21

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 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

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

#239

Post by armitron »

munksbeer wrote: post #234
armitron wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

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…

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).

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

#240

Post by munksbeer »

armitron wrote: post #239
munksbeer wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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
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