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4chan will refuse to pay daily UK fines, its lawyer tells BBC (www.bbc.co.uk)
submitted 1 day ago by kbal@fedia.io to c/technology@beehaw.org
24 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The online message board's lawyers say that UK safety laws don't apply outside the UK. This basic principle may soon be tested in court.

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[-] Flax_vert@feddit.uk 2 points 4 hours ago

Weird idea: what if the government set up a system where the website will be blocked unless you verify your age with gov.uk? And anyone trying to get to it will have to pass by gov.uk tokens first. Although https might make that difficult.

Of course, I fully disagree with the OSA. But it's... An alternative.

[-] IllNess@infosec.pub 34 points 1 day ago

There are already a lot of products and services created to block adult material. Instead of wasting millions of dollars and thousands of hours of human power, they could've made a law to opt-in to these services at the service provider level.

For example, in this situation, nearly all blocking services would block 4chan.

[-] kbal@fedia.io 30 points 1 day ago

They tried that. Don't underestimate the progress already made towards building the Great Firewall of Britain. I guess the main problem was that when the blocking was optional, too many people chose to opt out.

[-] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 22 points 1 day ago

Wow so many people disagreed that it flipped. Almost like people don't want it

[-] Junkers_Klunker@feddit.dk 17 points 1 day ago

Yea, but don’t you see, wee need to protect the kids.

[-] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 11 points 1 day ago

right right right, you're right, please take away my privacy to help parents not need to parent their children!!!

[-] Junkers_Klunker@feddit.dk 5 points 17 hours ago

Your privacy is not as important as childrens safety on the interwebs. What do you think happens if they grow up and see media that isn’t government licensed.

[-] IllNess@infosec.pub 8 points 1 day ago

First off thank you for the info. Second what comes next is not directed towards you.

SO WHAT THE FUCK IS THE FUCKING PROBLEM THEN?!

[-] cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

then ban 4chan in the uk. nothing of value would be lost.

[-] Banzai51@midwest.social 4 points 5 hours ago

Problem is, it won't stop with 4chan.

[-] icelimit@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 day ago

How does one ban a website within a geographical border? Isn't that censorship?

[-] Flax_vert@feddit.uk 3 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Yes, it is censorship. The UK already has a blacklist of websites. rt.com is on there along with sputnik news and rossiyasegodnya.com

The rest are copyright infringement.

I don't think censorship is necessarily a bad thing. The debate is moreso "where do you draw the line"

[-] belated_frog_pants@beehaw.org 23 points 1 day ago

Ip blocking at state ran/sponsored networking level. But censorship is the point of the age verification law so that would be their end goal.

[-] Scipitie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 1 day ago

The first part is a technical question and the second part a definition one.

For the how to: the most common approach is to simply blacklist their IPs on a provider basis. This leads to no provider that obeys your blacklists to allow their users traffic to that target. Usually all providers in a nation obey that nations law (I assume, I only know that for my own :D)

For the censorship: I don't like that word because it's implications fan be used against any and all laws. A shitload of content is made inaccessible because it breaks laws from active coordination of attacks to human trafficking. All of this can be described as censorship.

Forthe UK law it's... I'm not British and to me it appears to be a vague tool to silence and control all types of content under the guise of protecting children. Not with the intention to protect or prevent something but with the intent to control. I would fully understand and emphasize with using the word censorship in this context.

[-] HarkMahlberg@kbin.earth 0 points 1 day ago

4chan has been all too eager to spread Russian propaganda for over a decade, and has been a festering sore on the internet even longer still. I wouldn't let the paradox of tolerance bind us to 4chan of all places. OP is right, nothing of value would be lost.

[-] Flax_vert@feddit.uk 2 points 4 hours ago

If 4chan breaks, they'll all go elsewhere.

I think it's best just to leave 4chan there so we don't have to deal with them.

[-] HarkMahlberg@kbin.earth 1 points 2 hours ago

I used to think that was a good idea too: sequester 4chan, make it the sin-eater of the internet at large.

But as we learned through 2014-2016, from Gamergate to the alt-right to MAGA, 4chan didn't need to break for them to go elsewhere. And not just elsewhere, but everywhere. A single 4channer could make multiple reddit accounts, twitter accounts, and fake facebook profiles. But what allowed their work to reach larger audiences was to use /pol/ to coordinate their brigades across the internet. 4chan's anonymity and lack of persistent logs made that easy.

Russian state actors infiltrated their ranks as other anons. As obnxious trolls looking to get a rise out of people, they had huge blinds spots and failed to see this for what it was (or looked the other way). Once installed, they could launder propaganda by making it look like it was coming from seemingly American sources, all across the internet, all at the same time. The anons were Putin's useful idiots.

The argument of sequestering the social pariahs to 4chan implies they are physically locked up there, imprisoned but satisfied, uninterested in engaging the internet at large. But clearly that isn't true. You can't leave the Nazis in one corner of the bar - it becomes the Nazi bar. If you want to fight them, you have to remove them from the common spaces, and then remove their own spaces. Unfortunately, the cancer of fascism has metastasized all across the internet, now originating from people who have never heard of "this four chan." Fighting that is going to require us to stop falling for the paradox of tolerance and start kicking the Nazis out, whether we have laws to do so or not.

[-] TehPers@beehaw.org 4 points 22 hours ago

Banning 4chan for that reason would be valid if they had a law against that to enforce.

But in the same way you don't go after someone for tax evasion in a country they've never been to or interacted with, you don't fine 4chan because they won't start collecting IDs from users when the company is not even in your jurisdiction.

Either way, I can't imagine people there missing 4chan. They just need to give a valid reason to block it instead of BSing a fine.

[-] iii@mander.xyz -5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

As always, 4chan good guys

this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2025
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