Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine • Hacker News Board

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#421

Post by seszett » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 5:14 AM UTC

dboreham wrote: post #388

flir wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish Wikipedia would take one for the team, and go dark in the UK. (And I'm in the UK). Wouldn't work with somewhere like China, but the UK might still be capable of being shamed.

This has been happening for years but if you're in the US you don't realize. For example I can't access my local Montana newspaper web site from the UK "because GDPR" (even though the UK isn't in the EU).

I don't remember the exact details now but that was mostly out of spite from presumably one entity (or a handful at most) that owns many US local newspapers though. They're not subject to GDPR anyway as they explicitly don't target EU users as customers, they just wanted to put pressure, pass a message to the EU.

And as you can see they didn't even bother updating their block after Brexit.

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#422

Post by riffraff » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 5:15 AM UTC

bigbadfeline wrote: post #403

colechristensen wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on the kind of website. If you're not advertising, selling anything, or otherwise doing any business through your website you're much more emboldened to not care about every jurisdiction. But if you're trying to make money through your website... well sorry you're doing business in those countries and I don't have a ton of objection to you needing to follow foreign laws. I'm fine with "balkanization" (I kn…

> But if you're trying to make money through your website... well sorry you're doing business in those countries. Say, I'm the provider... well sorry, you (the customer) are doing business with a foreign country (mine) and you should do it in accordance with YOUR laws about YOUR country's foreign trade. That's the only way to properly conform to jurisdiction, amirite? In other words, UK has no jurisdiction over US bu…

> That's the only way to properly conform to jurisdiction, amirite?

No, you're not? It's pretty obvious that if you try to, say, sell illegal drugs to my citizens, I as a country will come after you even if it's legal on your side.

The internet blurred the lines because you don't "show up" in the buyer's country but there's nothing new here: both seller and buyer need to respect the law.

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#423

Post by scott_w » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 5:36 AM UTC

SanjayMehta wrote: post #407

flir wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish Wikipedia would take one for the team, and go dark in the UK. (And I'm in the UK). Wouldn't work with somewhere like China, but the UK might still be capable of being shamed.

[flagged]

Evidence?

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#424

Post by p0w3n3d » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 5:40 AM UTC

Oppan North Korean Style.

In Poland we had no access to "western" electronics since 1989 because we had been part of the "Warsaw Pact" i.e. subordinate to USSR. This was hard, so I pity for you guys in UK

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#425

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 5:42 AM UTC

kimixa wrote: post #237

nadermx wrote: post #144

The UK has been doing this sort of stuff for at least a decade. For example they have the PIPCU which under the guise of copyright threatens 10 years in prison for sites not even in their jurisdiction. https://torrentfreak.com/uk-police-launch-campaign-to-shut-d... And with that, they have at the least gotten registrars not located in their jurisdicrion to transfer domains https://easydns.com/blog/2013/10/08/whatever…

The US has always claimed jurisdiction on foreign-hosted but US-accessible content. Do people forget the owner of Megaupload being extradited? In many ways this is just catching up to the current US state. And there's a lot of confusion here between basic consumer data protection laws and (IMHO massively overreaching) "Online Safety" laws. This isn't Imgur making a stand for free speech, this is Imgur wanting to trac…

[deleted]

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#426

Post by debugnik » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 5:43 AM UTC

lemonlearnings wrote: post #382

stingraycharles wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point the parent is making is that you don’t have to manually keep track of the countries you need to block. You just tell Cloudflare what your website does / what type of laws may be problematic, and Cloudflare manages the blocklist automatically. Makes a lot of sense actually that it’s surprising they don’t have this yet.

So the entire internet goes off during La Liga?

No? That's the other way around, ISPs blocking server IPs for customers. This is about servers blocking legally risky visitor IPs.

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#427

Post by hackernewds » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 5:44 AM UTC

zmmmmm wrote: post #267

There's an opportunity for a service like CloudFlare here give people a simple toggle that manages geoblocks on legal liability factors. It's way too much for every organisation to individually track every country's laws day by day in case just by being accessible there you incur a liability. And it sounds like the UK would have just self-selected out of the list of "safe" countries. If something like this was in wid…

CF already provides this

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#428

Post by wizzwizz4 » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 5:44 AM UTC

gr3ml1n wrote: post #370

flumpcakes wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it have to be immediately enforceable? Now Imgur have thrown the baby out with the bath water and cannot serve the UK and it leaves a big market for another company to come along and capitalise on that. American companies are too use to being able to bully their way in America. Some countries do have better consumer protection laws.

It's not a particularly big market, and given the regulatory hurdles: it's simply not worth doing business with the UK for most companies anymore.

The regulatory hurdles here are quite small, actually. If COPPA were worded better, Imgur would've been in violation of that, too, from what I can tell of the complaint.

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#429

Post by asimpleusecase » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 5:51 AM UTC

scott_w wrote: post #423

SanjayMehta wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Evidence?

https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2025-04-28/debates/2E7...

Rather than jump into the raging press coverage or as some see it raging press coverup - here is a link to debate in UK Parliament that indicates there is an issue.

Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine

#430

Post by pjmlp » Wed, Oct 01, 2025, 5:54 AM UTC

hopelite wrote: post #401

loeg wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The balkanization is being caused by the UK. No technical solutions prevent this.

It’s rather ironic, because the very kind of “social credit score” that we were told the Chinese are subject to is has existed in the West and is being implanted in a far more sly way with things like tone policing; arbitrary accusation of rule breaking of ever increasingly narrow, convoluted, and subjective rules enforced by faceless mods and surely son by AI bots, bans, and even extraordinary lengths to hunt down a…

Welcome to Schufa in Germany, the “social credit score” without which is almost impossible to rent or buy in most German cities, if the report (which most folks hardly know how it gets calculated) doesn't have the right numbers on it.

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