4chan will refuse to pay daily online safety fines, lawyer tells BBC
(bbc.co.uk)392 points by donpott a day ago
392 points by donpott a day ago
It stopped being relevant because its content became acceptable on major social networks, beginning in late 2022.
Major social networks aren't even remotely close to being in the same niche. There are no algorithms, no friction with accounts, no obtrusive interfaces or feature bloat, no likes, no post ratings, content is completely ephemeral. This is a common and fundamental misunderstanding I see people make when trying to understand why 4chan exists. The people who post on 4chan aren't doing it because they can't help but post edgy content, they're doing it because its web 1.0 approach to social media completely erases a whole load of annoyances and anti-patterns that are endemic in the modern web.
Just like Usenet, it will probably never die despite the antisocial controversies. Or at least in the case of 4chan, it will be replaced with another board-type system. As Twitch streamers are the contemporary version of AM radio, 4chan is the contemporary version of BBSes. You should be extremely skeptical of the idea that you could ever compete in the same space with a heavily commercialized product like a modern social network. Twitter is not a replacement, it never will be.
the emergent behavior from ephemeral posting has become a feature by this point. and while it does technically have accounts, they don't at all work like a normal social media account. they aren't published, and using the "this is for sure me" tripcode feature is socially frowned upon.
The stuff that Free Speech Absolutists like to say on twitter, judging by the date they included.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquisition_of_Twitter_by_Elon...
In a way it does not exist any more. Most of the threads are started by 4chan-GPT yes this is a thing and most replies to threads are 4chan-GPT. They uses 4chan passes to allow proxies and not have to deal with a craptcha. Anyone could start their own chan, implement GPT bots and have the same level of popularity. I would wager a dozen HN'ers could implement this in a day. I think the goal on 4chan is controlling the narrative. My question would be, would HN'ers also use bots to control the narratives on their chans or create the same daily and weekly threads?
I doubt GPT is posting NSFW content. I think /b/ is mostly teen boys on the cell phones at school. Prior to 2012 it was diverse porn but then it started to lean heavily into gay porn. I don't know what to make of that. Perhaps Pornhub does not have enough gay porn and they are filling the void?
I don't see that much gay porn on there. The most popular threads seem to be teens that may or may not be 18, trans girls, chubby girls, and girls that you know personally. Then there's the AI porn which is often furry or children.
They bragged about it for a while but after the bragging stopped my proof is only anecdotal. When the United States Agency for International Development was defunded the bots went quiet and shortly thereafter the site was hacked using a vulnerability that had been well known since 2012. It was peaceful for a few weeks prior to the hack and for a couple weeks after the hack. Most of the fake racists disappeared from /pol/ and /g/ stopped shilling products. It was just real people and the site was just as active as the hundreds of other chans. Best I can tell 4chan is a test site to fine tune social manipulation GPT's. All the bots, fake racists and shillers are back now suggesting to me the manipulators started getting funded by other means. Before someone says it, there are a few real racists there too. The bots attract and egg them on. Most moved to 8chan. I think that is part of the experiment and tuning. Perhaps some day the veil will be lifted.
This was one guy that did it for a few days (weeks?). Not some "common occurence". Funny video btw: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efPrtcLdcdM
Humiliation of the UK continues. Falling into irrelevance / meme territory.
Good, that’s the only way these unpopular laws might get repealed or reworked, given that the UK citizens can’t or won’t do much about it except collectively shrug.
What terrifies me is that the EU is looking at UK’s OSA as a model, and will soon implement it here.
In the UK, ~55% of traffic comes from mobile [1]. The UK could approach Apple and Google and ask them to remove VPNs from their respective app stores when opened in the UK.
I imagine this would curtail a large proportion of mobile VPN usage.
Blocking desktop VPNs would be a bit more adhoc but it is possible to make it much harder for many people to download VPN clients.
[1] https://www.digitalsilk.com/digital-trends/mobile-vs-desktop...
Watching sports for cheap using a "dodgy firestick" or similar hardware is incredibly popular in the UK to watch sports for cheap even among those not tech-inclined, despite obviously being illegal. I'd predict the same to happen here, quickly you'll see plug-and-play boxes that will route their home wi-fi traffic through a VPN, and most people will have a mate of a mate who sells them for a few tenners.
I am pretty sure we are slowly but surely heading towards a point where every country will implement its own great firewall and block every website except those in a whitelist approved by the government.
They're not going to suddenly become competent enough to implement something like that.
I don't know, is it easy for chinese residents to subscribe and pay invoices for a Starlink connection?
Deep packet inspection can detect VPNs. The problem may be more that people have legitimate uses for VPNs, like at their work. Those could be whitelisted though.
This is similar to how Wikipedia reacts to Internet Watch Foundation (a UK CSAM Watchdog) when it decided to block the page "Virgin Killer" (a 1976 album by German band Scorpions) and the album cover image page. FBI found no issue with it, but the UK did. The result means ISP using the IWF blocklist are getting their traffic routed to proxy server, and Wikipedia usually blocks open proxies. Eventually, news outlet reproduced the artwork in question, rendering the block moot, and IWF rescinded the block a few days later [1]
I wonder if 4chan will simply decide to ban visitors from UK from visiting based on regulatory compliance. Sometimes when I accidentally clicked on a streaming sites that were not available in my country, their error page will be simply "This content isn't available in your country", but the URL contains GDPR, even though the site is not EU-based at all, and that I'm not visiting it from EU country either.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Watch_Foundation_and_...
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
I know this is nothing new, but just stop and appreciate how much modern governments have abandoned all decorum and have fully embraced just downright silly levels of signaling. The UK knows that the law has no jurisdiction over US companies, and they know that US companies won't pay it, but they went ahead with it anyway.
Americans complaining about extra-territorial application of laws?
As much as I dislike the OSA, if you're not in the UK you can -- and probably should -- just ignore it. Unless you care specifically about interacting with users or businesses in the UK, in which case you probably need to comply.
Unlike the USA, we're generally incapable of successfully demanding everyone everywhere go along with whatever overreach we might think up.
> Unlike the USA, we're generally incapable of successfully demanding everyone everywhere go along with whatever overreach we might think up.
I can understand why someone might think the UK still has as much influence as it did 50-75 years ago when you consider how prevalent that "UKCA" symbol is (the one that was introduced to replace the "CE" mark post-Brexit).
It's fairly prevalent, but actually the UK government gave up on replacing CE a couple of years ago: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-government-announces-e...
I'm sure the companies who put effort into adopting UKCA were really happy to have put in that effort :P. Even if it's I hope not as onerous as adopting it (or CE) from scratch, as they both have quite similar (if not originally identical?) requirements. It seemed more intended to give the impression of Brexit success than of actually making a difference to anything.
1. Create a fake LinkedIn profile for your enemy that says they work for 4chan
2. Wait for them to travel to the UK
3. ???
4. Profit
Firsr, they need learn to control of what happen on their own island
For the same reason Roskomnadzor makes demands of Wikipedia to remove information it doesn't like: to impotently make demands of entities that will obviously not comply so there can be some theatrics before blocking them or marking them as an evil non-compliant entity.
It's truly baffling stuff. If Roskomnadzor made demands of a UK-based website before dramatically fining them massive amounts daily (that will obviously never be collected), people would rightfully treat them as a laughing stock. Yet when Ofcom treats a foreign entity the same way, they somehow expect to be treated seriously.
Honestly 4chan treated this with far more respect than it was due by having their lawyers respond at all.
While the UK's demands will surely be laughed at, I'm fairly sure George Orwell's estate has a solid copyright claim here against the UK.
I really dislike what 4chan is, but I'm also a huge proponent of freedom online. I am glad that 4chan is telling the UK to go pound sand, I just hope they have the foresight to realize that they should not travel there or into countries that might extradite them. It's too bad that the country where 1984 originated is currently doing it's best to put the ideas in that book (the bad ones) to use in subjugating their citizens.
Ofcom's only card now is to have UK ISPs block 4chan. When that happens will Starlink comply? maybe. what if they block X? could get messy fast.
I'd be totally un-shocked if the UK criminalized Starlink (over OSA or otherwise), in part because they've already criminalized it before, in some of their territories[0,1].
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42979869 ("Starlink in the Falkland Islands – A national emergency situation? (openfalklands.com)"—225 comments)
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37645945 ("Saint Helena Island Communications (sainthelenaisland.info)"—145 comments)
> Imagine if some tech like DNS over UHF radio What could the UK do?
Criminalize this usage of UHF radio.
They'll just maintain course on their mission to make everything illegal no matter the technical details.
Starting with whatever allows criticism of their parody of a farce of so called leadership.
At the risk of being old and optimistic; my gut right now is: GOOD, maybe the antisocial youngn's could perhaps make some real fundamental strides in hacking around/replacing/ doing SOMETHING about DNS as it serves.
My old mind is like, COME ON, DNS is just a PHONEBOOK. Just make another one, or do something better.
>If Ofcom doesn't think this will be enough to prevent significant harm, it can even ask that ISPs be ordered to block UK access.
Well again I guess the UK never heard of VPNs, but they are trying to ban them still, it is like these pols have no clue how the internet works. They never learn these actions are like playing wack-a-mole.
VPNs are next: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn438z3ejxyo
> it doesn't believe VPNs should be outlawed
That still leaves space for a lot of unpleasant, but plausible, alternatives:
* Banning under-18s from using VPNs; enforced by ordering Visa+Mastercard to deny UK-originating payments to VPN operators that don't verify their users' identity.
* Introducing a "VPN license"; initially only granted to large corporate users. All encrypted VPN traffic will be required to periodically broadcast their VPN license-number in cleartext so that ISP-based traffic monitoring will let it pass, otherwise the connection will be reset.
I’m curious about what the plan is to differentiate between legitimate business use and personal use of any kind. Age verification obviously won’t work for self-hosted, so does age verification then get pushed to VPS providers? And at that point, so what? I’m already paying with legitimate bank details for legitimate personal use.
do you think the public at large knows what VPS are? How to set up a VPN? the public at large barely understands the concept of files nowadays, if it's not app they're lost
banning selling VPN and VPN apps will solve 90% of the problem and that's enough
It doesn't matter if naive blocking means can be trivially circumvented. This creates a chilling effect, less technically proficient people will just move to other sites. When circumvention becomes an offence, now government has one more point of leverage over you - they manufacture law under which almost everyone is guilty.
They need bridges.
I think the question we should be asking is "What about SSHing into a VPS?" and "What about seedboxes".
You can disguise a VPS as any server outside of your country, it could serve up an HTTPS page and no one snooping the connection would be any wiser.
Related: https://snowflake.torproject.org/
Help run a Snowflake proxy! You can do it from your browser.
I wish these boomers would stop trying to act like they can control the internet because their citizens are part of it. If they want to do that they should wall their country off like China or NK. Not that I prefer that but this is way worse.
Desperate politicians ,steering desperately against the right wing tide they created by showing everyone the reality of mass immigration to keep their business models and world afloat .
But 4chan is most of all pro free speach, which is a different axis, which has opponents left, right and center .
4chan is the edgy counterculture, yes. So when the mainstream was leaning towards christian and right, it was leaning anti-theist libertarian left.
When the mainstream swung to the left, 4chan shifted too and became more right-leaning, and took a stance of performative opposition to political correctness. A similar shift is happening now - away from right wing again as right wing is becoming more mainstream.
Ofcom can fine 4chan all it wants, but without UK assets those penalties are unenforceable, they have no power here.
This is why the US dropped tea into Boston to have it's own Freedom.
> This is why the US dropped tea into Boston to have it's own Freedom.
the 3% tariff on Chinese tea was seen as oppressive
don't look at what has been imposed this year (without congressional approval)
The tariff was oppressive in large part because the colonies didn't have representation in Parliament and were allowed limited (and decreasing) local governance. The Stamp, Townshend and Intolerable Acts were a whole lot more than just "we don't wanna pay taxes".
A similar argument can be made against the tariffs though.
US consumers will be paying the bulk of the tariffs through price increases. We do have representatives in Congress, they just weren't the ones imposing tariffs.
edit: as fun as silent down votes are, it would be interesting to hear where you might disagree
These tariffs may have representation, but constitutionally not from the right representative. Congress has the authority and only delegated it to the president in limited circumstances that don't apply. Trump says the ones on China are imposed for fentanyl being shipped in by mail and other means, and within days of saying that pardoned the largest opiates by mail operator in US history, Ross Ulbricht.
I don't feel represented on the national or international stage AT ALL. Maybe I'll stop paying mine.
The target of the Boston Tea Party was the British implementation of the Tea Act of May 10, 1773, which allowed the East India Company to sell tea from China in the colonies without paying taxes apart from those imposed by the Townshend Acts.
That's absurd. That doesn't pass the sniff test at all for being remotely true that people would react like that to only a 3 percent tax.
I looked it up, and it was a 3 pence tax per pound. When tea was selling for 2 to 3 pence per pound. So yeah, a 100-150% tax combined with the fact that the East India Company was allowed to sell without paying the tax. That is very unjust and threatens their business a lot more than the tax alone.
> This is why the US dropped tea into Boston to have it's own Freedom.
(But primarily done to protect colonial smugglers' and merchants' businesses which were being undercut by the English tea that was still cheaper than theirs, even with the small tax.)
"Allowing" UK residents to access the site? The UK is not the police of the Internet. 4chan is not a UK site and does not have to be aware of UK law. If the UK doesn't like it then it's their responsibility to stop their residents from accessing it. 4chan is complying with all the laws that apply to them.
> the site administrators have willingly chosen to not follow UK law while still allowing UK residents to access the site.
I happily don't follow a lot of countries' laws. 'Willingly', is another matter which implies malfeasance of some sort.
I assumed 4chan didn't exist anymore and it was renamed/replaced by another board... Great advertisement.
The UK acts like a madman on fire trying to attack everybody.