Ofcom fines 4chan £20K and counting for violating UK's Online Safety Act
(theregister.com)92 points by klez 3 hours ago
92 points by klez 3 hours ago
4chan are the “think of the children” bad guys to make an example out of.
This isn’t a play to get money or 4chan to comply, it’s a play to increase the strength of their legislation. So expect stronger blocking etc to be on the cards to prevent foreign entities from avoiding the law.
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 itself and the UK extracts no money, that will show US companies which would have been in doubt, that they can also defend themselves.
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.
One interesting bit is that the lawyer, RONALD D. COLEMAN is (or at least was) a youtube lawyer.
He'd pop into 'law streams' from time to time to talk about cases and discuss newsworthy events out of the courts.
He is as if New Jersey was transmuted into a man (I say that with great affection).
I want to say, and I could be wrong, I became familiar with his name during the Rittenhouse trial. Or maybe the couple high profile trials after the Rittenhouse trial, that were popular while we all waited for covid to be 'over'.
For whatever that's worth
edit: he IS a real lawyer with real clients and real cases. I don't want to diminish anything because I called him a 'youtube lawyer'. I think it's more: A lawyer that sees value in being on youtube from time to time.
4chan is fighting them as well.
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/09/05/when-trolls-take-on-tyra...
I was not aware of the main driver, not mentioned, sanctioned suicide even existing.
You know, I'd like to actually know the answer to the question you're posing there. Does discussing suicide increase the overall rate, is it neutral -- or does it even decrease it? The Samaritans are usually regarded as a net public benefit, though they tend not to encourage people to go through with it, whereas the Wikipedia link suggests that the users of that forum have some kind of fetish for it.
I would also expect to find that the effect of internet was minimal (in my case because I think the drivers of suicide are mostly socioeconomic), but I'd really like to see a proper study. I'm also aware that there is quite a lot of peer-reviewed evidence that pro-anorexia websites do actually cause harm, and there's an obvious parallel to be drawn.
Media coverage if done irresponsibly can encourage others to do the same.
> Research from over 100 international studies provide evidence that the way suicide deaths are reported is associated with increased suicide rates and suicide attempts after reporting [6,7].
> At the same time the WHO also suggests that positive and responsible reporting of suicides which promotes help-seeking behaviour, increases awareness of suicide prevention, shares stories of individuals overcoming their suicidal thinking or promotes coping strategies can help reduce suicides and suicidal behaviour [6,7,8]
https://cmhlp.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Resource-2-SPIR...
Presumably the "big names" are able to (or have already) implemented the requirements under the law and have an economic and reputational incentive to comply.
It can stop the owners being able to travel to the UK or risk being detained.
They didn't just threaten anything - they imposed the fine. Imposing a fine while knowing that it likely will never be collected is the very definition of "symbolic".
The threat of imprisonment if you don't pay the fine is the polar opposite of anything "symbolic". It puts individuals at significant personal risk should they ever make the mistake of traveling through the UK, in turn limiting their freedom of movement permanently even without being in prison.
I mean Russia has fined Google 20 decillion USD. What is the point if you can't collect? Like me fining my neighbor 100 million Euro. He will laugh at me and tell me to get lost.
Are you likening the UK to Russia?
This is not a fictive fine, it's threats of imprisonment, and ignoring the whole thing means having to avoid travelling to or through the UK for life, and that's assuming the UK doesn't try to activate any sort of extradition agreements.
Even without going to prison, that's a permanent and quite significant theft of freedom of movement. If you ever travel abroad, you could end up accidentally booking a transfer through the UK.
No one ends up unintentionally transferring through Russia anytime soon. And likening the legal threats of a foreign nation to a joke from your neighbor makes no sense.
This is going to end up the same way when Russia fined Google 20 decillion dollars. They won't receive a cent.
Yes, but we pay for their VPN: https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/vpns/nordvpn-is-the-most...
All the normie podcasts now falsely advertising VPNs as panaceæ for every possible security problem are cashing in too.
It could be better - like with Chat Control where politicians and other important persons are exempt.
Reminder that Google owes Russia more money than exists in the world, for continuing to disobey the Russian law which commands them to allow the Russian state to upload its propaganda on Youtube.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdxvnwkl5kgo
Ofcom are basically the UK's Roskomnadzor. Tell them to go fuck themselves with a copy of the OSA.
I'm from the UK and would gladly fuck all of them with a copy of the OSA, but I'd rather that the law were repealed. In the meantime, I'm telling everyone how to use VPNs and Tor Browser, and to never give anyone their real identity details on the internet.
Starmer doesn't have very long, and he seems to be trying to accelerate his relocation out of government.
So another thirty years of Tory rule (or worse) because Labor did a dog that caught the car. Hurray.
Curious why Trump would even care and, if so, why he wouldn't lean toward his constituency that is largely in favor of these laws (see Texas, Florida, Utah, etc.).
I think there is a difference between straight p0rn, and a discussion forum that often posts NSFW images.
4chan is also the originator of the Pepe the Frog memes, and claims (whether people believe it or not) to have meme-d Trump into the Whitehouse in 2016.
You saying that 1. since 4chan is a message board Trump might change his tariff policy to save it where he would't if it was a porn site and 2. Trump feels he owes them for 2016?
I think neither a murky ideological battle nor a decade-old debt matters much to the president. And it probably matters that the UK made a tariff deal already, so changing terms would be a big act of self-sabotage.
Heh, I wonder if it's just like how 4chan anons j?rking off to themselves for the fact that Ofcom sends out pointless fines and sh?t.
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 flight to Paris and the plane is redirected to London? Well, they're going to prison. The UK is a police state.
That is a good point I completely overlooked: your international flight can get redirected to a country you never intended to visit.
I'm pretty sure the US and Europe do this as well, Evo Morales grounding incident:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident
Still only enforceable if they leave the US soil.
You don’t refer to any specific cases so I can’t offer any specific response, but the key phrase is
> under ___ laws.
A police state is one where the police arrest whoever the government directs them to arrest (rather than enforcing the law). Keir Starmer is not phoning up Police chiefs to get people disappeared.
Durov's plane wasn't redirected to France, nor were the French planning to extradite him anywhere else for all we know. He willingly landed his own private jet in Paris.
I understand what point you're trying to make, but Protasevich would have been a better example. Beware of whose airspace you fly over.
My government doesn't seem to be listening to me, did you have yours professionally trained or something?
"Why don't Afghani women rise up and overthrow the Taliban? Are they stupid?"
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 from the large US sites with access to good legal counsel, and instead try to intimidate the long tail that don't.
Totally separate from the issue of whether this is good or bad: it doesn't look like these Ofcom guys are playing with a full deck.