> The [Online Safety] Act explicitly grants Ofcom the legal authority to regulate online safety for individuals in the United Kingdom<p>And so they should, within the borders of the UK.<p>It's illegal to own unlicensed firearms in the UK. In the US, it is legal. UK authorities can prevent ownership of firearms in the UK via penalties, prevent firms from selling firearms in the UK, and set up import controls to prevent people from importing guns bought abroad. They cannot prevent foreign companies from selling firearms abroad.<p>Ofcom can institute penalties for UK consumers who access illegal content, prevent firms from providing such content on UK soil, and put up firewalls to prevent people from digitally importing such content into the UK. They cannot prevent foreign companies from providing such content.<p>Ofcom is being lazy and is trying to offload the responsibility to foreign firms.<p>Safety and liberty are often at odds. Let the UK decide the balance for their citizens and let their citizens bear the benefits and costs of implementing the measures.
> They cannot prevent foreign companies from providing such content.<p>Said companies often find it less burdensome to comply than the option of being outright blocked from the market. Brazil did that a couple times with a couple different companies. If a company wants to provide services to a given jurisdiction, it needs to comply with local regulations.
Strange that this is framed as a national sovereignty issue not an issue of UK government’s overwrought free speech repression and its utilization of corporate bullying to that end. This is exactly the thing we don’t want democratic governments to do - congeal with corporate power against their people. Appealing to legality when the laws are themselves unjust is not a defense. The online safety act is broad and vague and not in the interests of UK citizens, so sovereignty appeals are completely disingenuous here. When we talk about sovereignty what we are really referring to is the power of the UK government over its people and the subservience expected of entities like 4chan to that end.<p>We see these exact same mechanisms in the US and that’s precisely <i>why</i> we should not manufacture rationalizations for this kind of policy - the societal decline as a result of this cynical trend is clear.
It <i>is</i> an issue of national sovereignty because the UK is trying to force foreign <i>civilians</i> to enforce their laws outside of their jurisdiction for free, by way of bullying, threats, and illegal fines.<p>What the UK does within their own borders is their business. They don't have <i>any</i> right to force foreign entities to censor themselves or tl block UK citizens, as if that's even a technically feasible request.<p>The UK's free speech situation is bad, yes, but that's not the problem we're talking about here. The matter at hand is the UK trying to censor free speech by foreign citizens outside the UK and is using illegal threats to do so.
> UK government’s overwrought free speech repression and its utilization of corporate bullying to that end.<p>If the citizens of the UK wish to express discontent, they are free to vote for a different parliament so they enact different laws. We who live outside the UK have no say on their laws.
The UK is much like the US in that democratic processes are co-opted and undermined by special interests to the point that governments engage in suppression of free speech and mass surveillance against their populations. (What’s unique to the UK is that it’s government is largely subservient to the US in the international dragnet.) We are all human and share the same human rights regardless of our nationality.
> The UK is much like the US in that democratic processes are co-opted and undermined by special interests<p>A judge will not find this comment amusing, or a justification for breaking the law. You can, of course, engage in civil disobedience, but keep in mind it doesn't shield you from consequences.
The government got 33% of the vote. Please tell me how I can vote for a sensible government.
> and set up import controls to prevent people from importing guns bought abroad.<p>In this example 4chan is 'importing' it's content to the UK. I agree though, Ofcom should just go straight to banning these websites that won't comply, rather than this silly and pointless song and dance. Ultimately that's the only real enforcement tool they have. For certain websites that will be enough (Facebook, etc.) for them to follow whatever law for the regions they want to be accessible in.
> In this example 4chan is 'importing' it's content to the UK<p>No, UK ISPs are importing 4chan into the UK. At no point is 4chan involved in the importing of it's content. It could even be argued it's not involved in exporting it either.
> It could even be argued it's not involved in exporting it either.<p>It is providing content to IPs located in the UK, therefore, it's knowingly exporting content. If the user bypasses controls using VPNs or proxies, it's a different thing, but I would expect 4chan to make a reasonable effort on their side in order to prevent a sitewide block.
I don't know if you know this, but when you put a website online there isn't a big switch that says "TURN ON TO SERVE TO UK"<p>When a resource exists on the internet, it is available to <i>everyone</i>. That's how the internet works. There <i>is no mechanism</i> by which to exclude any given country. You can try to geolocate the IP for every individual visitor, but that's a ridiculous burden for website operators and it also doesn't even work.<p>Ofcom is trying to censor the entire global internet. If they want to censor the UK internet, they have much, much better tools.<p>They're trying to enforce extrajudicial law by way of threats and bullying instead of actually taking proactive steps to "protect" UK citizens from dangerous memes.<p>Ofcom has the right to censor the internet within the UK. They do <i>not</i> have the right to an opinion about what private entities do in other countries.
> I don't know if you know this, but when you put a website online there isn't a big switch that says "TURN ON TO SERVE TO UK"<p>No, but it's a relatively trivial setting to block IP ranges, especially for a service the size of 4chan.<p>> You can try to geolocate the IP for every individual visitor, but that's a ridiculous burden for website operators and it also doesn't even work.<p>It's not a ridiculous burden (the ranges are easy to obtain - I did it before) and it's not expected to be 100% effective against a dedicated user because proxies exist.
I certainly wouldn't. Let the UK block if they want to. At least the voters there will know who to be angry at.
If I order something from AliExpress shipped from China, I’m importing it, and the vendor exporting it. They’re not importing it to me, and I’m not exporting it to myself.<p>Same thing if I make a web request for content on a server overseas.
4chan is exporting. The consumer is importing. That distinction matters.
They're not being lazy. The political reality is that the people of the UK are mostly sick of this shit so harassing the sources (4chan and others) is gonna cause less pushback for the same results than fining people.
From the attorney's post:<p>> The infinite character of that power was most famously summed up by English lawyer Sir Ivor Jennings, who once said that “if Parliament enacts that smoking in the streets of Paris is an offence, then it is an offence”. This line is taught to every first-year English law student.<p>Initially this seems like disrespect for another country's sovereignty. But really the crucial thing is:<p>> We explained to the UK that the Online Safety Act had a snowball’s chance in hell of being enforced in the United States<p>Ofcom has to go through the motions of telling 4chan they can't smoke in Paris because of the (very on-brand) nanny law.
Not quite.<p>Ofcom in their reply make their point clear: "The [Online Safety] Act explicitly grants Ofcom the legal authority to regulate online safety for individuals in the United Kingdom [...]"<p>They are stating that companies operating in the UK and providing services to UK individuals, are required to conform with UK regulations in relation to those services, under UK law.<p>As an American business, you can choose to ignore that, but that has consequences if any of your board of directors ever sets foot in the UK.<p>The US does this, and US lawyers understand this. If I open an online poker and sports bookmaking site in the UK (where such sites are completely legal), and take business from all over the United States thereby breaking federal law, I can expect to be met at the plane door the next time I take a shopping trip to NYC. Arguing that my servers and my business are located in the UK is not going to impress the federal judge I'd appear in front of in the morning. Stating the US laws against my activities have a snowball's chance in hell of being enforced in the UK is surely going to risk me being charged with contempt.<p>The Online Safety Act is ridiculous on many levels, but in the same way that Google does certain things in relation to Tiananmen Square searches in China, and every tech company engages in regulatory alignment for the entire Middle East, the UK has asked that US companies do certain things in the jurisdiction of the UK. I'd argue, less harmful and egregious things in some respects.<p>Should the UK do this? No, probably not. I think it will just make VPN software vendors richer, and UK citizens - particularly children - barely any safer.<p>Are Ofcom claiming jurisdiction in the US? No, they're claiming jurisdiction in the UK. Which, I hasten to add <i>they are legally required to do by the Online Safety Act</i>, by the government they are an agency of. If they didn't, the government would literally be breaking its own law.<p>TIL that 4chan's lawyer is about as grown up, mature and able to engage in critical thinking about the law as the people who post on his client's site.
Not quite. There are well-established legal mechanisms for Ofcom (or anyone) to try to engage legally with companies domiciled in the US and with no locus in the UK. Rather than using these mechanisms, they have tried to short-circuit the process by sending emails that have no legal force.
Hmmh. If some powerful law enforcement agency was coming after me to stop my website, I sure would hope they would first send me an email asking me to stop.
What “well established process” would apply here ?
The US-UK Mutual Legal Assistance treaty imposes obligations on Ofcom which they have not met, 4chan claims:<p>“None of these actions constitutes valid service under the US-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, United States law or any other proper international legal process.”<p><a href="https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/71209929/1/4chan-community-support-llc-v-uk-office-of-communications/" rel="nofollow">https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/71209929/1/4chan-commun...</a>
MLAT applies only to a narrow set of legal procedures, essentially around criminal activity. I’m a lawyer but this is very specialist stuff. I’m not expert enough to opine on whether MLAT applies here but - simply judging by the quality of their respective legal work on display - I’m minded to believe that Ofcom knows what they are doing. OTOH 4chan’s rhetoric reeks of FUD.
> They are stating that companies operating in the UK<p>They are not operating in the UK. ISPs in the UK have chosen to make content from the USA available in the uk (or more accurately, do nothing to prevent it being available)
but ISPs do not have the power to decide if something is infringing a rule or not.<p>Thus Ofcom goes through the motions of telling 4Chan "hey I think you're not compliant" and if 4Chan says "lol, I'm not serving UK people" _then_ the UK authority will tell the ISPs to block it (and the will be on the hook if they don't).
>every tech company engages in regulatory alignment for the entire Middle East<p>Can someone expand on this a bit? I'm passingly familiar with the Chinese Google example (though I thought Google left the market rather than bend the knee?) but I know nearly nothing about the Middle East angle.
They bend the knee for censorship requirement. (Not only that, they provided machine learning based filtering service for other Chinese search engine at the time)<p>According to Google, the China government tried to infiltrate Google's internal computer system. In response, Google stopped the censorship over night, and withdraw from China market shortly afterward.<p>I still remember night, when _all_ Chinese search engine stopped censoring because Google stopped their filtering service.<p>The China tech company have evolved much since those days, and they are now much better at censoring compare to what Google had in the early days of the internet.
I worked for a company that asked users for their gender, with language along the lines of "choose the gender that best matches your identity."<p>There was a special case for Middle Eastern countries that removed this language.
On a photocopier, if I switch the language to Arabic, Hebrew disappears from the list of options.
> though I thought Google left the market rather than bend the knee?<p>Not even close. They bent the knee first; they left afterwards.
Not at all. They refused Chinese requests, left the market and closed offices.<p>Still the gold standard for how US companies should have responded to Chinese censorship demands.
Can you explain what do you mean?
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_China" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_China</a><p>> On 26 January 2006, Google launched its China-based google.cn search page, with results subject to censorship by the Chinese government.<p>> In January 2010, Google announced that, in response to a Chinese-originated hacking attack on them and other US tech companies, they were no longer willing to censor searches in China and would pull out of the country completely if necessary.<p>They never had a problem censoring their results. They claimed to pull out "in retaliation" for being hacked; realistically, they noticed that China didn't want them to succeed, and gave up on trying.
> The US does this, and US lawyers understand this. If I open an online poker and sports bookmaking site in the UK (where such sites are completely legal), and take business from all over the United States thereby breaking federal law, I can expect to be met at the plane door the next time I take a shopping trip to NYC.<p>Countries do things like this when they're run by fools and they <i>can</i> do this because the fools have weapons and prisons. What good has it done the US? Can US patrons of offshore internet Bitcoin casinos no longer find them available? Not a chance.<p>But then on top of being completely ineffective, it causes exactly what you're saying -- other fools in other countries want to treat the foolishness as precedent for doing it themselves.<p>Which is why the people in the various countries should put a stop to all of it, before it spreads and they find themselves in a foreign prison because their flight had a layover in a country with a law they didn't know about. And countries themselves should retaliate like hell whenever anyone tries to do it to one of their citizens.
That's the crucial part. Lots of people who do business in other countries either want to, or need to, visit the US from time to time. Whether for a "shopping trip to NYC", or for business reasons. That's why it's a big deal when the US wants somebody.<p>On the other hand, I'm not particularly concerned about some tyrannical regime on the other side of the world that doesn't like the kind of content I have on my site. I'll postpone the research until I actually need to fly over their airspace or something.<p>Where does the UK currently stand in the spectrum between "country that everyone wants to visit sometime" and "country that nobody gives a fuck about"? It used to be firmly on the former side, but it seems to be drifting away to the latter side every year.
> That's the crucial part. Lots of people who do business in other countries either want to, or need to, visit the US from time to time.<p>That doesn't do them any good because the set of people who never intend to set foot in the US is still vastly larger than the number of people required to set up an offshore internet casino.<p>> On the other hand, I'm not particularly concerned about some tyrannical regime on the other side of the world that doesn't like the kind of content I have on my site. I'll postpone the research until I actually need to fly over their airspace or something.<p>Most people can't even name every country, much less tell you what their laws are. And then you'll be breaking them without even knowing, and if that's regarded as a legitimate reason to incarcerate someone then what are you supposed to do? Suppose you have to choose between a layover in Egypt or in Hungary, do you even know which one's laws you might have broken at any point in your life?<p>> Where does the UK currently stand in the spectrum between "country that everyone wants to visit sometime" and "country that nobody gives a fuck about"? It used to be firmly on the former side, but it seems to be drifting away to the latter side every year.<p>The problem is if you get on a flight to Paris you have no control over whether it might get diverted to London.
If diverting planes becomes a big enough problem for ordinary businesspeople and not just prominent opponents of certain dictators, I'm sure someone will build an app that helps us plan flights accordingly. Traveling from the US to France and need to avoid UK airspace? Sure, let's take a quick layover in Spain. Have you done any of the following things in the last x years? OK, we'll make a big detour around China this time.<p>Don't let slippery slope arguments take you into the dystopian future quicker than the world itself seems to be willing to.
This isn’t about visiting for shopping. Billions of people, the vast majority of humanity, manage just fine without ever taking a holiday in the US.<p>What matters is if any of their assets are ever denominated in USD, or ever use the international banking system that is also controlled by the US. No other country has that kind of long arm jurisdiction.
> Google does certain things in relation to Tiananmen Square searches in China<p>What does Google do with Tiananmen square searches in China? I can't access google here at all.
It is a mass killing event which the Chinese government pretends never happened and/or suppresses the information of. Phrases will be banned/filtered from all digital services in China relating to it. From Wikipedia:<p>> The Tiananmen Square protests, known within China as the June Fourth Incident, were student-led demonstrations held in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, lasting from 15 April to 4 June 1989. After weeks of unsuccessful attempts between the demonstrators and the Chinese government to find a peaceful resolution, the Chinese government deployed troops to occupy the square on the night of 3 June in what is referred to as the Tiananmen Square massacre. The events are sometimes called the '89 Democracy Movement, the Tiananmen Square Incident, or the Tiananmen uprising.<p>> Between 200 and 10,000 civilians were killed. The Red Cross states that around 2,600 died and the official Chinese government figure is 241 dead with 7,000 wounded. Amnesty International's estimates puts the number of deaths at several hundred to close to 1,000. As many as 10,000 people were estimated to have been arrested during the protests.
Completely whitewashed, for all the good it does Google.
4chan is not "operating in the UK". They accept and respond to packets from the UK. If the UK government doesn't like this, they can block 4chan themselves.
Mmmmmhhhhhhh…What if I buy some goods (say electronics) in the EU from a foreign firm (v.gr. China) using mail and these goods do not comply with the EU’s regulations? I really do not know the proper reply to this.
Then you’re the importer of record and the compliance burden is on you.
Customs will destroy the package. They do not start fining random foreign companies for sending you the package.
That’s what customs is for.
That's serving UK users while knowing that they aren't legally allowed to.
That's an interesting view.<p>If I were to fly to the USA, purchase something that was illegal in my home country (and explicitly state I was going to take it back home), then took it back home - would the vendor be prosecuted?
No because the sale would have had to occur in the place that it is illegal
If I fire off an agent to buy items at random times from a list which is updated in country, where does the purchase of the list items happen?
Obviously, yes. A crime is a crime, so what difference does it make what country it was committed in?
If they came to your home country, very possibly yes.
? Of course they wouldn't.<p>Bartenders from other countries don't get locked up the moment they enter the US because they served alcohol to someone (a US citizen?) between 18 and 21. The US does not have jurisdiction over alcohol sales in other countries.<p>In this scenario, what's more likely to be illegal is bringing the item into the country.<p>It's difficult to make physical analogies to these types of internet laws. What makes them 'tricky' is how they are <i>not</i> physical.
If they pack the alcohol up in a crate, and then ship it to the person after they make the order in person? Less clear yes?<p>If the consumer goes to a place it is legal, and consumes it there without bringing any back, most people would say ‘meh’. Depending on the product. Hard drugs and sex work, being two common exceptions that some countries get more worked up about even traveling to ‘enjoy’ it.<p>But ship it back (especially hard drugs or sex workers!), and almost all people get more concerned.<p>The issue here is exactly why customs typically is a mandatory ‘gate’ for packages AND passengers entering a country.<p>Similar, one could say, to a giant country level firewall?<p>And why it is so lucrative for smugglers, which are defacto performing a type of arbitrage eh?
If you are purchasing any form of financial service that involves moving money around and said financial services provider also happens to interact with a US based financial entity, then yes, Uncle Sam will make life very difficult.<p>And no before you ask crypto won't solve this because Uncle Sam demands USD stablecoins to have sanctions mechanisms built in and clearing entities that don't implement KYC etc. will find themselves subjected to prosecution in other ways.
How many other laws can I passively break in other countries I have no connection to?
A darknet drug dealer could make the same argument, probably with little success.
your comment seems very insightful but for the layman that I am it seems to ignore the source of international law reach.<p>the usa does at lot of leg work to set up legal frameworks, suck as forcing transpacific "partnership", which enforce usa IP law overseas etc.<p>they can enforce some things, like gambling and financial rules, and now intellectual property overseas because there are specific accords for those. every thing else, even hacking and spying, they must wait for the "criminal" to land on it's jurisdiction.<p>why is this changing anything on all of that?<p>also, your example of google/china would let this play out opposite of what you suggest: uk gov would please US law to keep doing business there. i fail to see the relevance on that also.
>As an American business, you can choose to ignore that, but that has consequences if any of your board of directors ever sets foot in the UK.<p>The board of directors for a private company is generally secret in the US. Only the "manager" aka president/CEO/whoever at the top is generally named publicly, as well as legal agent.
> TIL that 4chan's lawyer …<p>…also suffers from delusions of grandeur, apparently: “Britain will be spinning hard to minimise the noise in the media.”
4Chan operates out of the US. The UK can ban it if it wants but it can not unilaterally make demands of 4chan and expect courts to enforce them, because it has no jurisdiction over 4chan's activities.
Ironic considering that U.S. does long arm enforcement all the time, often successfully. You can often read stories about U.S. seizing random foreign websites, bitcoins and shit on this very forum. I guess the part where Britain looks “very silly” is that UK’s long arm is much more likely to be ignored than US’s long arm since British Empire’s sun has set?<p>> as if we haven’t yet shucked-off the American Revolution, let alone colonialism.<p>I can’t even.
Technically yes, but arresting US citizens will have implications and you can expect the us will protest via diplomatic channels. It is very unlikely UK is interested in that.<p>Not that countries don't prosicute laws for crimes outsiden of their border, but the bar for what they will is higher.
The UK already claims extraterritorial jurisdiction in some extreme cases like pedophilia and terrorism.
> Ofcom has to go through the motions of telling 4chan they can't smoke in Paris because of the (very on-brand) nanny law.<p>The thing is, Ofcom can still issue fines, and enforce these fines against anyone in the UKs legal scope advertising on 4chan.
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More odious nannying by silly civil servants. If Britain is to restore cultural leadership it needs to move policy away from this horrible trend of policing what people say and think, and focus its energy on better policing what people do.
I don't mean this to be as insulting as it may, but the UK government trying to police US businesses has always felt like a toddler trying to ground his mom.
Maybe a very elderly parent, trying to ground their adult child who they are now dependent on.
<a href="https://www.best-poems.net/milne/disobedience.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.best-poems.net/milne/disobedience.html</a>
I see it as a problem of inconsistency that is common in situations where a parochial performer has their moments on the big stage, and follows it up with faceplants.
I don't think its unreasonable for a government to ask company to abide by its laws if it want to do business with its citizens.<p>Where I think they are going wrong is that they are trying to levy fines rather than just blocking the business.<p>Oh, and the whole age verification thing is bonkers. I'm a parent of 2 teenagers, I don't think its asking too much for a parent to be responsible for what children see and do on the internet.
If you honestly believe you can control what your two teens see and do on the internet, you've either got them chained up in a closet, or you're wrong.
Having worked with children from 10 all the way up to 18 in a residential setting, I couldn’t agree more.<p>In a way they are like addicts: you love them and want the best for them but you absolutely have to be on your guard for egregious breaches of trust cropping up without warning. Children / teenagers / young adults can be driven by curiosity, peers, and lack of judgment into all kinds of dreadful behavior, and it can come from the least likely ones just as much as the obviously naughty ones.<p>The best we can do is to warn them in advance, accept that mistakes will be made anyway, and support them in learning from their mistakes. Keep at it for even a short while and you too can experience the shock of how your most charming, academically brilliant, upstanding star pupil is found throwing up a bottle of vodka she just drank!
With parenting it’s not a case where you have 100% airtight control over everything with no possible leaks. It’s a spectrum where you impose expectations combined with some controls.<p>The parents I’ve seen who give up and make no efforts because they think it’s impossible to perfect control everything don’t have great outcomes. This applies to everything from internet to drinking alcohol and more.
I went through it and circumvented it completely in the 90s when the only way online was a computer with a modem in the living room. It's so much easier today, its absolutely trivial to circumvent anything you're doing. Old smartphones from "a friend's brother" are easily hidden and can be used on wifi you don't control.<p>All it takes is the kid wanting to go behind your back, the rest becomes easy for them. The only chance you have is establishing a good relationship with your kid and instilling good values. You can't actually control them online unless you lock down their life like a supermax prison.
There is a fairly big gap between chained in the closet and completely free access to the internet. There is also a lot difference between catching a glimpse of some porn and spending hours in their bedroom exploring the darkest corners of the internet.<p>I don't have them chained up, but I'm also not concerned they are become radicalized, or damaging themselves watching snuff films and goatse.
It is not possible to censor the internet when VPNs are freely available. The more you try the more it backfires. By telling your kids they cant see a website they are sure to visit it, all they have to do is google for a free vpn.
> It is not possible to censor the internet when VPNs are freely available.<p>The obvious next step is to ban VPNs too or to block connections to their servers.
>It is not possible to censor the internet when VPNs are freely available.<p>What's stopping VPN providers from being forced to censor the internet?
I think buy the time your kids can order, pay for, and configure a VPN they are old enough to look at boobies on the internet.
The problem with relying on parents is that they're either reckless or simply unable to prevent the kids from smoking.<p>By the time they're teenagers, it's pretty easy for them to access anything on the internet regardless of the controls implemented.<p>4chan is a cesspool, and society is worse off letting it fester, but you arn't solving this problem by "personal responsibility" of parents.
You can legally order pipe tobacco and cigars on the internet in the US without showing ID. When I was a kid you could do it with wine too, and I doubt that's changed. I don't find it to be a problem.
I think smoking is a little different for a few reasons.<p>It's physically addictive with harsh withdrawal symptoms that makes it difficult to quit; and it has significant healthcare costs for the wider community when smokers eventually get sick and die prematurely.<p>Nobody is going to get addicted and die prematurely from reading 4chan. Cleaning what you consider a cesspool is not the job of the government. These laws are about kids stumbling into the cesspool before they are ready.<p>Parents can choose to just not give their kids phones till they are 12 or 13 (highschool). Before that, internet access is on locked down devices in the family room with somebody else around.<p>Personally I think once your kids are about 13-14 you have probably had your chance to pass on your morals, they need to be mentally prepared to encounter bad stuff on the internet and deal with it.
social media is clearly physically addictive. America's turned into a neonazi democracy partly because of this.
Psychologically perhaps, but to say physically addictive is not precise.<p>The government in general has been becoming increasingly authoritarian and centralized far before social media, see the abuses of the CIA and MK ULTRA, Operation Mockingbird, COINTELPRO, the War on Terror. You use the term neonazi, yet I hope you're honest enough to recognize the left also has dark authoritarian impulses. It was only a few years ago that we had ruinous lockdowns, widespread censorship, illegal mandates for experimental medical interventions, mostly peaceful riots, a 30% spike in homicides, anarcho-tyranny with the prosecution of Kyle Rittenhouse and Daniel Penny, etc.
How is nicotine different from dopamine? Both are addictive chemistry. One comes in little sticks, the other comes in a black glass and metal slab.
Part of cigerettes adficrive physical is the action and cues.<p>I agree thwres no chemical component but addictiond are broadee than just external chemical iintroduction.
Is the democrat party on the left?
There used to be speculation that smokers actually cost less to the government, since they get lung cancer and die before they would get their pensions, or soon after, and therefore the government wanted people to smoke.<p>I mean, point 1 in favour of this theory is the fact that tobacco is legal, while most drugs aren't.
US businesses can get bent. Half my country is rotten and hollowed out, all the shops replaced by Amazon. Screw them. Uber wants to come over here and put our local cabbies out of work, then bring them all back on lower wages with higher fees. Screw off. Air B&B destroys affordable housing all across Europe and turns cities into tourist hell. Oracle comes over here and they're trying their damnedest to get their hands on our valuable NHS data. Facebook (now Meta) comes over here and shows horrific content to young children, wrecking the mental health of teens, especially young girls. Twitter (now X) wants to pollute my country's politics with American fascist nonsense while its owner promises to donate hundreds of millions to far right political parties across the content.<p>I don't want any of these “services” thank you very much. Inflict them on your own people, not us.<p>American technology companies operate by finding technological solutions to evading the law, then counting on being too big to fail once regulators catch up. These companies do not provide innovative products, they abuse monopoly power to dominate industries. The Chinese are smart enough to make their own versions of all this stuff so that they aren't under the US yoke and I want the same here (sans the dictatorship of course). I want to replace every horrid US machine with something FOSS or publicly owned, and every regulatory step towards that is a win in my book.<p>Maybe instead of turning your nose up at other countries that dare to regulate your tech overlords, you should try to get your politicians to do the same thing.
Tough luck, if you don't like it, then you (or your government) should block those websites. It's not job of the US businesses nor US government to enforce another country's laws.
I've sympathy for what you're proposing - on-shoring our own tech - but the Online Safety Act is a terrible law and it should've been repealed yesterday. It will do nothing to advance those aims, and plenty to stifle innovation in the UK tech space. Ofcom can get fucked.
So ban those businesses from operating in your region. Don't pretend that Ofcom can regulate the content that is viewed around the world just because you're upset about things in your country.
If your countrymen want to use Uber, Air B&B, Oracle, and Facebook, should you try to stop them from doing it, even if you personally dislike those companies?<p>You are making the same argument that Trump is making with the tariffs. Personally, while I can see some good arguments for protectionism, I'd rather have the choice to decide whether or not I want to buy Chinese products, rather than the government making the choice for me.
Closer to the point: having Uber in a place with a licensed taxi trade is basically the same thing as removing licensing and then granting a monopoly on one business to operate taxis.<p>So you two are on completely separate frames of thought. One party sees it as a matter of choice, the other sees it as removing choice because one party has a monopoly on avoiding the regulations.<p>The issue here is IMO more so that the taxi driver should be able to operate a taxi business without a license without having to go through Uber. Ultimately what is happening in a lot of places is the guys with medallions will basically use agents of the state to violently enforce their racket (which Uber breaks up, but then monopolizes), or alternatively in some places in Latin America the entrenched taxi drivers will simply shoot to kill their competitors that don't have cartel sanctioned 'medallions.'
I personally think that FB, Uber, RBNB, Oracle, Google, Amazon, and literally every american SASS should be completely forbidden from Europe. Period no discussion at all. Given the state of current America, given the reactions even on this very post that do not see how Cambridge Analytics has damaged the entire world - yes, I think it would be safe to put a good 10 year ban on every US web tech. It would fasten up Europe and leave out the important decision to someone who can actually make a difference instead of being washed out by some reddit / twitter with fake russian bots. Let the economics just move away and make the decisions for people who are in a state of hypnosis instead of playing with mass control and then calling it "freedom".<p>Keep your american movies and social networks please. Btw why is TikTok banned in US?
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing</a><p>Do some research on why these services are so attractive before you give your opinion on it being a good thing. What these companies are doing should be illegal under US law as well, but they have paid your president to make that issue go away.
You are missing the point. US has a lot of harmful cultural exports and one of them is streaming, where people degrade and humiliate themselves for money and the like. Then there is yt shorts, then 4chan, then social media.<p>These slowly degrade societies, like it or not. At least someone tries to do something to weed out the utter, batshit crazy adults, actually childminded idiots, who think the world is their playground.<p>Any way I see it this is a slow virus, a weapon of sorts. Just politicians usually have their heads lodged in their own back orifice, hence slow reacting.
Under no circumstances should be US businesses treated as authorities. They are not mom nor should have any kind of leadership position.
No you’re right. Instead of a multi-billion dollar organization supporting the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people, serving directly their millions of customers, we would be better off running this with a team of Oxbridge literature and PPE alumni, armed with a hodgepodge of constituent letters accompanied by stiff emails by one or two members of parliament funded by god knows who, who otherwise have no skin in the game.
Corporations have skin in a game - namely to keep their power, prevent competition from arising, make sure the workers are squeezed with less options so that they demand less salaries.<p>Capitalism works when there is a competition between companies. Corporations are everything but that.
On the other hand, the limited size of the British market limits Parliament’s ability to pressure foreign companies.<p>China may be able to bully Apple into letting it snoop on its citizens’ icloud backups, but when the UK wants the same illiberal snooping powers, with 10% the population it’s 90% easier to walk away.
It's quite ironic that they would have an easier time enforcing that if they were still part of the EU and could have been the deciding factor towards more regulation faster.<p>The EU is big and rich enough to force Big Tech into submission under threat of loosing the market.
Significantly less than 10%.
Important correction:<p>s/civil servants/lawmakers/g<p>Civil servants didn't create, write, or pass the law. They simply got handed a flaming, bad smelling paper bag and got told to implement it.
> Civil servants didn't create, write, or pass the law. They simply got handed a flaming, bad smelling paper bag and got told to implement it.<p>The bag is handed by the legally elected government body in charge of making laws. I assume the UK citizens who elected their representatives agree with the policy.
In this case no. Interestingly, in the US in agencies like the ATF the civil servants make the regulation and enforce it, binding as law. In immigration it's even crazier -- civil servants create the policies, enforce them, and act as the judge.
The Chevron doctrine - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevron_U.S.A.,_Inc._v._Natural_Resources_Defense_Council,_Inc" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevron_U.S.A.,_Inc._v._Natura...</a>.<p>This concept in the U.S. is also evolving since 2024 decision reducing the strength of this legal protection.<p>Practically all countries have some version of this, few hundred lawmakers and their staff cannot reasonably set every single policy and micromanage its execution for every for government function.<p>Civil servants always have a lot of say in direction of governance even if not directly enshrined in law or recognized by the court.<p>The classic 80s satire Yes, Minister is good illustration of the parliamentary version of how it happens in say England even if not enshrined in law so to speak.
Put anyone in charge of any space and they'll want to control what people say and think there.<p>Hell look at HN and literally anywhere. Everybody has their own "ideal" world.<p>I for instance don't want anybody talking shit about anime or video games ever.
100%. We need to look no further than what the US government tried to do to Twitter, YouTube and Facebook during the pandemic.
Well yes, because those who don't quickly lose users due to bad signal-noise ratio<p>When was the last time anyone visited an unmoderated usenet group?
Did the government ever moderate usenet?
4chan is well, moderated, but it's outlived Facebook with real names.
Frankly, LLMs with transparent prompts, as well as user-side filters based on LLM prompts (e.g. <i>"Don't show me comment threads talking shit about Attack on Titan"</i>) could do a better and more "fair" job than meat-based moderators now.<p>They won't have personal biases, don't need to sleep (ending the infamous <i>"mods are asleep, post xxx"</i> waves), their prompts would be visible to everyone, and there could be ways for the users themselves to update the space's rules/prompts.
LLMs have their own biases.<p>But either way, I want people like dang to be the ones moderating and managing a community - call it "personal bias" if you'd like, but they have a vision for the space, and as long as I as a user think that that vision is of a community I want to be in, then it's fine. If I no longer think it is... I leave.
If speech in the U.K. was moderated like HN, the situation would be greatly improved.
The moderation of this site is top notch and a key component of its quality, and I say that as someone admonished by dang more than once.
yes, them constantly locking threads about content they don’t agree with is stellar
Oh please. Vote-based social networks are way too vulnerable to burying the truth and boosting lies.<p>It just takes the first 3-4 viewers to downvote you to prevent the next 10000 people from seeing what you said. There's no downside to downvoting just because you don't like what someone says, even if it's true.<p>And usually no amount of corrections can outshout a lie/mistake with 100+ votes.
There has to be a better formula to design this game. It seems valuable enough to explore.<p>It will be hard to design a formula that can only be gamed by making quality contributions.<p>A quality discussion requires parties who disagree, exchange of ideas and facts and ideally some kind of eventual agreement.<p>The hardest part is to make it enjoyable to use.
Maybe transparent AI is the only way to fairly govern masses of people?<p>Let people regularly vote on which prompts should be added/removed, and have the AI justify all of its decisions, show which information it used etc.
I believe this is likely true and will become evident in time to most, but not all, carbon based systems.
That's the most dystopian thing I've read today
Vote manipulation is a non-issue here because users require a minimum of 500 karma to vote, and because the site is so much smaller than Reddit it can take months to reach that threshold. Downvoting is also capped so that you're very unlikely to get pushed back below the 500 karma threshold unless you are consistently making comments that the community doesn't like. I post things I know won't be well-received here all the time and it's quite rare for a comment to go below -2 karma, but comparatively common for these sorts of comment to get flagged despite not breaking any rules.<p>4chan was great in 2015 precisely because anyone could comment, but it's a young man's website in that scrolling through a 300 comment thread to find the worthwhile parts of the discussion will require upwards of fifteen minutes, whereas on Reddit or Hacker News most of that sorting is already done. This does have censorial effects, so it isn't ideal for controversial topics like politics, but it's better for almost everything else.
What stops people from setting up and aging (or buying) sockpuppet accounts to the point where they control 10+ or even 100+ flag-capable / vote-capable HN accounts, and then using them as a network to deny or boost certain topics? This kind of behavior almost certainly goes on here.
> What stops people from setting up and aging (or buying) sockpuppet accounts to the point where they control 10+ or even 100+ flag-capable / vote-capable HN accounts, and then using them as a network to deny or boost certain topics?<p>It’s a single board with a full-time moderator and almost everyone on it has a background in information technology. These kinds of networks leave very obvious signatures, and the site simply isn’t a big enough place for them to hide.<p>> This kind of behavior almost certainly goes on here.<p>Do you have any examples?
> <i>the site is so much smaller than Reddit it can take months to reach that threshold.</i><p>You can get there in days if you just spot a few bandwagons to hop on.<p>> <i>I post things I know won't be well-received here all the time and it's quite rare for a comment to go below -2 karma, but comparatively common for these sorts of comment to get flagged despite not breaking any rules.</i><p>Yep, there's no downside to frivolously downvoting/flagging: It just takes a 2-3 people to hide your comment from the majority of the users as soon as it's posted, easy for a PR firm with paid people watching a topic like hawks.<p>Sometimes when I get insta-downvoted in a heated topic, if I delete my comment and repost later, the first few votes are positive. So it's clearly dependent on luck/time, which it shouldn't be.<p>I and others suggested this years ago: Maybe votes shouldn't have any effect for the first 12 or 24 hours.
The evolution of governance of online communities mirrors that of the real-world.<p>First, everyone did what they wanted. As conflict became more common, power hierarchies started to emerge. we're now at a stage where every place needs to be governed, yet its members have no influence over who does it.<p>I have online communities will transition into something resembling democracy where moderators are elected from members by members.<p>---<p>While HN is fairly lenient, moderators in pretty much all online spaces are effectively dictators, they are not elected and they cannot be removed by ordinary users, no matter how many disagree.<p>And of course, such positions attract people who want power for its own sake and who have agendas they want to push.
You vote for the moderation you like with your digital feet- see X vs BlueSky
> <i>moderators in pretty much all online spaces are effectively dictators</i><p>This. How do 1-10 or 20 or even 100 people get the "right" to decide what millions of people talk about and see?<p>What's keeping them from burying/boosting opinions about shit they have strong personal feelings about?<p>Steve Huffman/Spez of Reddit literally edited users' comments, and they autoban anyone saying "Fuck Spez"
>While HN is fairly lenient<p>HN is <i>NOT</i> fairly lenient. HN has a very strict set of rules (applied with infinite discretion) and absolute bunches of tiny rules and quirks that are completely hidden and no real transparency of any kind.<p>HN has basically an official party line for heavens sake! This is a site for disseminating information about VC things and driving engagement about things that VCs want people to talk about and think, driving traffic to Paul Graham things, and advertising YC businesses and people and ideology.<p>And not politics unless it's positive towards the ideology of VCs<p>There aren't official punishment policies or official ways to appeal anything. There's no higher power to call out to. There's a semisecret clique of users.<p>HN, like most places that are actually good to participate in, is a strict, tyrannical dictatorship that <i>usually</i> uses it's powers to shape behavior towards "discussion", but what that means is entirely up to dang and now tomhow.<p>The internet requires such behavior because it's just too easy to participate in a non-genuine way and entirely escape any retaliation. You cannot shun a human in an internet setting like you can in real life. The social tools humans and other animals use to shape community behavior are impossible online.<p>This idea that if we just let people speak absolutely free on the internet things will work better is hilariously uninformed. Humans do not pick or latch on to narratives that are <i>correct</i>, they pick narratives that <i>feel the best</i> and in the modern world, that is almost never the "correct" one. Brains hate nuance, but reality is nuanced.<p>It's funny, the same exact people on here who insist they can't ride the bus or walk around cities because they freak out if a homeless person accosts them seem to be blind to the concept of how other people's free expression can have a chilling effect.
Yes this is absolutely correct. I can think of more content that's disallowed on HN than content that's allowed: no politics (for the most part), no flamewars/aggressiveness/name-calling, no self-promoting links to your OnlyFans, nothing hugely offtopic, etc. And that's on top of very aggressive moderation of things other social media sites are filled with but are de facto banned here: shitty puns or jokes, one-line zingers, meaningless affirmation comments like "So much this" or "This is the way", nitpicks about submitted articles or personal swipes at the authors' politics...<p>HN has incredibly strict moderation, and to be clear, that's a <i>good</i> thing. It keeps discussion in line and useful, for the most part.<p>> It's funny, the same exact people on here who insist they can't ride the bus or walk around cities because they freak out if a homeless person accosts them seem to be blind to the concept of how other people's free expression can have a chilling effect.<p>I've seen that the term "gatekeeping" is recently starting to be reclaimed as people realize this, to emphasize that while anyone is welcome to participate, the community is not required to bend its rules or standards to accommodate new people. i.e. anyone is welcome to use the bus, but openly shooting heroin while you're on it won't be tolerated.
> Humans do not pick or latch on to narratives that are correct<p>Oh, the Party-Approved Correct Narrative.<p>Nazi/fascist narratives were sure as hell correct in 1930s-1940s Germany, mind you, and have been becoming correct again worldwide since 2020.
Unfortunately, Britain, like America, is seized by the worst of both worlds because conservatives and business interests have captured the electorate and narrowly agree on authoritarian nonsense.
I’ve come to align with Trump’s right wing politics, based on their direct announcements on Youtube and policy decisions. What they are doing makes economic and strategic sense. I have also come to see the general hostility as emanating from people who are fed deranged distortions on the Trump admin’s decisions, likely fostered by narrow business interests and foreign entities who don’t care about the plight of America. This is after 23 years of Democrat support, since I moved to this country.
Britain is ruled by a far left government.
England was cooked in WW2. While the USA was landing on hte moon and back, the UK borrowed $1Billion dollars because they caused a deficit after the war. Rather than moving forward, the monarchy held the UK back from progress. And they still are, Brexit was the latest scheme. charlie isn't going to help them get out of the 18th Century.
On the one hand if you police what people say and think you risk moderation being weponized into censorship. On the other hand if you don't you risk big corp weaponizing free speech into misinformation.<p>It's not a simple problem to solve, and it's not like having one problem is better than the other, because both devolve outside the boundaries of democracy.
> The Act explicitly grants Ofcom the legal authority to regulate online safety for individuals in the United Kingdom, and this expressly includes conducting investigations into, and imposing penalties for, non-compliance by providers of online services with their duties under the Act. […] The Act expressly anticipates that it will have extra-territorial effect<p>I don't see anything wrong here: Sure, Ofcom can have the legal authority to regulate online safety worldwide. It's just that this... legal authority... isn't quite enforceable outside the UK jurisdiction. How unfortunate!
There is plenty of precedence for this, and I am about to fudge a bunch of details.
The basic point is that the United Kingdom can make any law it sees fit to any place or person. Even though it may only exercise punitive issues once they arrival inside the physical jurisdiction. So the example I was taught, the UK can pass a law banning smoking in Paris, but may not arrest/fine until such criminal trespassers get off the ferry in UK.
This means that the Sovereign power is omni-whatevers, unless you explicitly say otherwise eg The UK Legislated their way out of South Africa and Canada expilictly.
If 4Chans money ever passes through a UK bank, I'm sure Ofcom will grab what they can. It's a very British shakedown.
The United States (eg. illegal gambling, hacking), South Korea (smoking cannabis abroad) and many other countries operate the same way.
You are saying that when US citizens engage in illegal gambling in other parts of the world, the US sues and threatens the foreign gambling venues? That South Korea sues marihuana dispensaries in the US when they sell to visiting Koreans?
The equivalent is the US threatening to arrest the operators of those venues <i>when they set foot on US soil</i>.<p>But in any case, this is different, as the US has only declared these activities as illegal <i>in the US</i>. They haven't enacted laws saying you cannot gamble outside the US.<p>When it comes to antiterrorism stuff, it's a totally different story. If I go to the Middle East and provide money to an organization on the US terrorist list, then yes - I can definitely be prosecuted for it if I enter US jurisdiction. And it goes even further - I don't need to enter their jurisdiction. The US can just have me extradited if there is a treaty.
> When it comes to antiterrorism stuff, it's a totally different story. If I go to the Middle East and provide money to an organization on the US terrorist list, then yes - I can definitely be prosecuted for it if I enter US jurisdiction. And it goes even further - I don't need to enter their jurisdiction. The US can just have me extradited if there is a treaty.<p>Moreover, the US government can have you seized and brought to the US <i>without</i> a treaty (or even <i>in violation of</i> a treaty), which may become a diplomatic and/or international legal issue between the US and the state where you were seized, and may subject the agents doung the seizing to personal legal difficulty in that state, but has no bearing on the validity of the criminal process brought against you once they haul you back to the US. See, e.g., U.S. v. Alvarez-Machain, 504 U.S. 655 (1992).
I think he is saying that once US citizens return to the US, then they will be arrested.
The US has seized non-US citizens, abroad, for acts committed abroad, over which the US asserts (and exerts) extraterritorial jurisdiction, not just US citizens, and not just waiting until they enter the US on their own.
If they were talking about the US arresting US citizens, then the equivalent would be Ofcom sending a fine to the UK visitors of 4chan. That's clearly not what they're doing.
The USA has gone after gambling site operators in other countries, yes
> South Korea (smoking cannabis abroad)<p>And gambling, too. Remember in 2013 when all those celebrities got busted for gambling in Macao?<p>> After getting caught gambling illegally, Shinhwa’s Andy, Boom and Yang Se Hyung received their punishments.<p>> On November 28, the Seoul Central District Court sentenced Andy, Boom, and Yang Se Hyung to monetary penalties. Andy and Boom must pay 5,000,000 won, while Yang Se Hyung will pay 3,000,000 won.<p>> The fines were dependent on how much money each person bet. Andy spent 44,000,000 won, Boom 33,000,000 won, and Yang Se Hyung 26,000,000 won.<p>> The three are all currently pulled out of all schedules and self-reflecting on their actions.<p>> Meanwhile, Lee Su Geun, Tak Jae Hoon, and Tony An are waiting for their first trial to take place on December 6. They bet more than several hundred million won.<p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20140215040022/http://mwave.interest.me/enewsworld/en/article/52114/andy-boom-yangsehyung-receive-fines" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20140215040022/http://mwave.inte...</a>
Sure, but those laws apply to <i>US Citizens</i>, and typically aren't enforced until the person returns to US soil.<p>Sovereignty is a big thing in international politics. Countries as a whole are loath to meddle in other countries domestic affairs, even in extreme cases like genocide/ethnic cleansing. Violating weird online protection laws are not the sort of thing a country is going to risk an international incident over.<p>Sure you can find some examples of countries that violate those norms, but they are the exception not the rule.
This case is more like UK bans selling cigarettes and tries going after a Parisian tobacconist.
Good reminder that what happens on the server stays on the server, but what happens on the client happens wherever the client is.
Which doesn't sounds so absurd if you replace “tobacco” with “cocaine” and “Parisian” with “Colombian”.
Still sounds absurd to me.<p>> UK bans selling cocaine in the UK and tries going after a Colombian cocaine dealer in Columbia.
I'll neutrally note that this is why Trump is blowing up Venezuelan fishing boats currently: <a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/10/15/nx-s1-5575699/why-is-the-trump-administration-blowing-up-venezuelan-boats" rel="nofollow">https://www.npr.org/2025/10/15/nx-s1-5575699/why-is-the-trum...</a><p>(I'll less-neutrally note that this is also absurd, and probably criminal.)
That is the war on drugs yes?
It still sounds absurd to me. Nations should not be in the business of passing laws that apply to extraterritorial actions of foreign citizens. I know that it happens, especially with the US, but IMHO it’s just not how things should work.<p>This has become far too normalized due to decades of bad behavior by the US, and it’s going to come back to bite us as US power declines. Just wait until 30 years from now when you can’t safely visit anywhere in the far East because you made a subversive comment about China. Although I’m sure the same people will hypocritically wail and gnash their teeth about the laws made by <i>those</i> people, when of course <i>our</i> extraterritorial laws are just fine.
The end punishment will still end up being that 4chan is not allowed to do business in the UK. If they want their website to work in the UK, they should follow UK law.
Then the UK should just step up and pass a censorship law, not do this song-and-dance about fining businesses outside their control.<p>If this kind of BS becomes too common then running a small internet business will become impossible. Even if you don’t do business in a country, you will have to consider whether or not they <i>might</i> consider you in violation of some obscure law and then consider whether or not that country has the leverage to impact your business or even your own personal safety. It’s utterly ridiculous. This would spell the end of the global internet, except for megacorps. It’s already a tough business environment as it is.<p>The status quo is that some countries have these laws, but they are generally ignored unless you’re a citizen, you manage to do something geopolitically significant, or you get involved in transnational crime rings. This seems acceptable to me. If countries don’t like the free internet, then ban it so we can all see what you’re really up to.
> This has become far too normalized due to decades of bad behavior by the US, and it’s going to come back to bite us as US power declines.<p>This has been happening long before the US started doing it.<p>If anything, it's normalized in the US <i>because</i> of the bad behavior prior to the US doing it. China's a great example. What does brutally crushing dissent internally and abroad without even a facade of a single care about human rights get you? Well, in their case, damn near superpower status. Been that way since at the very least Nixon's administration.<p>The net effect was people started to wonder why we bother with the inefficiencies of "rights" and "privacy". The concern for human rights shown since the end of WWII in the West (particularly the US) is an <i>exception</i>, not norm, in history.
>The net effect was people started to wonder why we bother with the inefficiencies of "rights" and "privacy".<p>Who are these people you're talking about, tankies, faschists?<p>The Chinese have the government that they deserve. They screw each other over, and what goes around comes around. It's a cautionary tale, not an example to follow.
What about marijunana? It's absurd for the UK government to try and go after a legal California weed store.
If the California stores ships to the UK, you can be certain that they will.<p>And they'd be right to do so as a country has sovereignty over what is allowed or not in their country, not matter the country of origin of the seller.
It does if the attempted enforcement is sending a notice of a fine to Pablo Escobar.<p>Ok then, thank you, I'll file that demand as appropriate.<p>Now if the UK sends warships to the country, ok. Good luck with sending warships to invade the US.
Yes if the Parisian tabaconist sells in the UK. What happens in France is a French concern.
Not exactly. It's like if a brit goes to paris to buy cigarettes, the UK is stating that it's the tabac's job to refuse the transaction.<p>They can say whatever they want, but the UK can't conduct an extra-territorial police action in france. They can bar subject from traveling to france instead. The onus is on the UK.
They're not going to Paris, are they? 4chan brings their services into the UK. The US does the same thing: Kim Dotcom comes to mind.
In the complaint[1], they explicitly state "4chan has no presence, operations, or infrastructure outside of the territorial limits of the United States." So, no, 4chan is not bringing their services into the UK: UK users send requests that travel to the US and hit 4chan servers/CDNs there.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/71209929/1/4chan-community-support-llc-v-uk-office-of-communications/" rel="nofollow">https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/71209929/1/4chan-commun...</a>
No, the ISPs who operate the ASes and routers that make up "the internet" are the ones who bring the service to the UK.<p>4chan does not reach out to UK users in any way, only responds to their incoming requests.<p>It really is analogous to UK users going to a foreign country, buying something that their home country has an issue with, having a third party ship it to their home country, and then their home country getting mad at the store.
To argue the details, no they don't bring their service to the UK. Rather, they surface their services where ever their servers are. And then "the internet", other people's hardware and such that they have no control over, bring it to the UK. I know it's pedantic, but this particular thread is _about_ the pedantics.
You can argue that either way. It's not the best analogy. I extrapolate in another comment in this thread.<p>NZ agreed to cooperate with the US request. That made all the difference. If the US agrees to allow UK to proceed, then that's trouble for 4chan.
<i>4chan brings their services into the UK</i><p>How exactly do they do that? Do they have peering agreements with UK-based ISPs?
From what I've heard, their servers are in the US, so UK residents are connecting to the US to access the site and not the other way around. 4chan sells memberships that allow users to bypass some of the rules. If they accept payment from UK banks (no idea if they do or not), then perhaps the UK can make a claim they're doing business in the UK.
The most important difference between this and Kim Dotcom is the US has a lot of weight to throw around, evidently having enough to lean on the governments of small countries like NZ. In the case of 4chan though, it's a once-great but now relatively minor country trying to have their way with an American company, meanwhile America has laws explicitly for the purpose of telling the British to fuck off with the imposition of any of their free speech violating antics against Americans.
Time to stand up Hadrian's Firewall!
I'm nearly at the point of saying that a tobacco sales isn't the best analogy here.
I could be milk, right? Or a sheet of paper.<p>I'll concede that it's not terribly far fetched. If the french entity produced a good that is illegal in the UK put it in the post to be delivered to the UK, then we have something like an analog to producing HTML in one place and displaying elsewhere.<p>However, the thing about sovereignty is that you don't have it if you can't enforce it.
There was an Australian case, I'll look it up, but the relevant bit, the publishing of the web page happened on a computer in Australia, which they claimed (successfully) gave them jurisdiction
No, more like the Parisian tobacconist had the audacity to sell tobacco to some Brits without asking Ofcom.
> but may not arrest/fine until such criminal trespassers get off the ferry in UK<p>Many entities assert extraterritorial jurisdiction [0] for a broad range of activities. The critical question is if the offense would be categorized under an existing extradition treaty's list [1].<p>0. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraterritorial_jurisdiction" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraterritorial_jurisdiction</a><p>1. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extradition" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extradition</a>
> The Act expressly anticipates that it will have extra-territorial effect<p>It also continues like this:<p>> This does not mean that the Act extends to all use of in-scope services globally. […] “The duties extend only to the design, operation and use of the service in the UK and, for duties expressed to apply in relation to ‘users’, as it affects the UK users of the service”<p>Wouldn't this mean that the Act only applies to services explicitly design/targeting UK users/visitors? So if you're building a general service for no particular residents/citizens, the Act doesn't apply to you? Or am I misunderstanding something?
That's not what the text means, but even if it did, you cornered yourself, since if you have no particular care for UK users, you won't care if they are blocked from your general service.
Blocking UK users from your service does not put you out of scope of OSA, according to Ofcom.<p>4 days ago:<p>> "Services who choose to restrict access rather than protect UK users remain on our watchlist "
It is worth noting that the other sites swept up in this current batch have had their investigations closed by restricting, though.<p>My read on "remain on our watchlist" was them monitoring for if that block lapses, etc.<p>I do expect UK's internet insanity to reckon with VPNs sooner rather than later, though.
Sure, its cheap and easy. Plus you know those UK users will just get a VPN and come anyway so you don't lose a thing. Its only 4chan that wants to make this public. They don't have much in the way of advertising revenue so there isn't much damage that can be done to them. Either way, the actions of the UK government are largely irrelevant again.<p>If the UK government bans VPNs, now they have more people in jail for speech violations than Russia and a more restricted Internet than China. The jokes write themselves at that point. It also becomes a virtue to dunk on the UK government worldwide. All to keep people from reading a site that the majority of people have no interest in. Its sad really...
That's strange, because protection is supposed to be implemented by blocking.
Could you help a fellow out and translate what it actually means in plain language?
Remember that they're threatening a fine, and failing to pay fines can be a criminal matter. Simply blocking the site would be less of an issue, at least in terms of legal consequences.
But it doesn't seek to block 4chan, it seeks to impose penalties.
><i>Wouldn't this mean that the Act only applies to services explicitly design/targeting UK users/visitors?</i><p>Clearly not considering that there's nothing in 4chan that would make it explicitly targeted towards the UK. Unless Ofcom is saying something and doing the opposite.
4chan does have very minor explicit support for UK users; on some boards it puts a UK flag on their post (as it does with all other countries and territories.) It could perhaps be argued that this constitutes the site being consciously designed with UK users in mind. Hardly matters though, there's nothing the UK can do about it. They aren't a superpower anymore and it's time for them to realize it.
I am not a 4chan user. How is this flag assigned? Automatically by 4chan based on some criteria? Or chosen at will by the user?<p>Presumably if the latter, one may express their support of the flag of their choice; or indicate their heritage; or any number of other reasons.<p>If the former, and considering the existence of a .uk TLD, they probably are considered to be “targeting” that market.
Non compliance will require the setting of a security flag in the IP header.<p><a href="https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3514.txt" rel="nofollow">https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3514.txt</a>
You get one automatically assigned based on GeoIP. It's even mentioned on Wikipedia.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki//pol/" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki//pol/</a>
That's only on /pol/ though, and it's based on GeoIP. No other board has flags other than complete meme ones like /int/
I low key want to see official documents stating the name of some of those threads: all the "bongland" and" have you got a loicense" threads with some of their respective comments.
4chan.co.uk value decimated by this analysis
It doesn't go nearly as far as US legislation such as the trade embargoes against Cuba, Iran, or Venezuela. In that the US effectively harms any company that does business with a sanctioned country by sanctioning the company in the US. By the same logic, the UK could sanction any company that does business with 4chan and prevent it from doing any business in the UK.
It’s presumably meant to be effective against global corporations like Meta and Google that have significant operations in the UK. They can be liable for non-compliance globally and Ofcom doesn’t have to show it occurred within the UK.
Look at this page: <a href="https://www.4chan.org/advertise" rel="nofollow">https://www.4chan.org/advertise</a><p>It explicitly says that 7% of their users are coming from UK. If UK blocks them, they will loose noticeable part of advertising revenue. If there was no money at stake, they could just ignore Ofcom and sleep well. But they appear to be very agitated about the fact that they may loose their second biggest market.<p>Honestly, I don’t understand anyone on 4chan side here: they are de facto in UK jurisdiction because they earn money from that user base, so either they comply or they leave. All of this freedom-of-speech and US lawsuit hype is just a distraction circus.
Note, they don’t earn money from users. They earn money from advertisers.<p>This is important because if it was advertisers, it would be much easier for UK to have actual power over them, since the UK business actually would be under UK jurisdiction.
4chan gets money by selling (with crypto) "passes" to their users. These passes allow users to post using VPNs. Being banned in the UK will increase demand for these passes, probably increasing 4chan's revenue over all.
>Note, they don’t earn money from users. They earn money from advertisers.<p>It doesn’t matter. They loose the audience - they loose advertising revenue. The only difference is that UK cannot seize the money to collect the fine (the fine now is the price of the return ticket), but the fine wasn’t big anyway and complete loss of the market has bigger economic consequences. UK doesn’t have power over US corporation, but they have power over their distribution channel and they have full sovereign right to exercise that power.
That assumes UK deploys technical measures to prevent their own citizens from accessing the website, which costs more political capital than fining a corporation. Or makes it illegal to access the site, which is even more unpopular.<p>The difference is significant.
Realistically, UK is a big market for 4chan, but is 4chan big enough for UK? What share of its 70M+ population will flip their vote because of this specific case? How many people will just switch to Reddit or something else and won’t even connect that block to any political party?
You seem to be under the false impression that 4chan makes money, as in, is profitable. It's very much not. Nor does advertising, much less UK advertising, constitute an important influx of money into the "business".
A rather strange conclusion from my words. I do not assume it’s profitable, but it’s pretty logical that a for-profit organization running a service that is based on user engagement will have its revenue from the sources linked to the audience, be it advertising, subscriptions or donations. If you cut a visible slice of that audience, it’s going to impact the revenue. It’s <i>still</i> not profitable, 10 years after acquisition? May the investors be blessed for their charitable attitude, but it doesn’t change anything.
Comply, leave, or fight the law if you think it's stupid.<p>Lots of laws are stupid. If you think they're stupid, you're allowed to try to fight them.
Yes, sure, they can fight the law - in UK. It’s not what they are doing.
If you think foreign laws directly targeting you are stupid, not only do you have few ways of fighting them, trying to fight them might often be criminalized as well ("foreign interference" laws etc.)
Well, you’re allowed to try to fight them in some places, some of the time - with often severe consequences if you don’t win.
if the uk wants to be a authoritarian state then do it properly and not this grey area of "you're passively sending packets so you're fined a billion dollars so you block us"<p>it's worse than china's firewall
> It's just that this... legal authority... isn't quite enforceable outside the UK jurisdiction.<p>That appears to be the widely held understanding in this particular case.<p>I'm not so sure. This isn't a strictly black letter law matter. It probably should be, and I'd prefer that it was, but I see political angles to this.<p>Right now, it is improbable that Trump's DOJ has any interest in doing Ofcom's bidding in the US for UK "online safety" violations, real or imagined. But a world where the US DOJ might does exist. We're the political vectors aligned differently; say, for example, Ofcom was pursuing 4chan for "supporting" ISIS in the UK, I think few people would be surprised learn that Trump's DOJ was eager to "investigate," and perhaps synthesize some indictable offenses, and perhaps even extradite.<p>Have we not seen, and are we not seeing now, ample examples of similar abuses of power?<p>So I see much of the rhetoric, and also this lawyer's flippancy, as naïve. Given the optimal set of office holders and sufficient moral panic over some matter, Ofcom et al. could very well have real leverage in the US.
Sure, that would require the Democrats win an election first. I wouldn't hold my breath on that one. Its not like Trump is the most inspiring candidate. When you lose 2 out of 3 to him, perhaps time to take a long look in the mirror. But no, the dems will probably run someone like AOC next time and lose badly. Even worse, once 2030 comes around there is a new census. This matters because enough people have moved from blue to red states that Republicans will no longer have to win any swing states to win both the House and POTUS. Unless something dramatic changes, like say the Dems run a southern governor instead of a coastal progressive, then we are looking at quite a while before we have to worry about that.<p>PS Don't yell at me about this, I'm just explaining the situation.
> Unless something dramatic changes<p>Dramatic things happen with regularity. Wars, viruses, economic calamities... there is no predicting any of it. For all you or I know 4 years from now the (D)s will own everything. Maybe then Ofcom gets a hearing. Maybe Ofcom doesn't exist any longer. This misses the point.<p>The point is that the hubris exhibited here, in this forum, and also by this lawyer, behaving as though there is some perpetual immunity in effect, is naïve. It is entirely plausible that some foreign regulator with intentions that happen to align well with the prerogatives of prevailing office holders <i>right now</i> or at any point in the future could have have powerful leverage in the US.
The concern is they decide a site non-compliant, can't do shit about it in absence of British presence, then go after Britons accessing the site.<p>Kiwifarms stopped serving UK IPs, not because of fear of enforcement but rather because they don't anyone British jailed. The UK landing page straight up says 'use Tor'.
Can probably arrest the founder in Heathrow, like Durov's arrest in France.
> Kiwifarms stopped serving UK IPs, not because of fear of enforcement<p>That's exactly what anyone wanting to save face would say though.<p>> they don't anyone British jailed. The UK landing page straight up says 'use Tor'.<p>There's a contradiction here: if you want to protect British citizens from being jailed for accessing a website then you should tell them not to use your website, not “use an alternative way to connect", because that will still get people to jail if they get caught by other means
(I don't think you can, in fact be jailed for accessing a website in the UK in the first place).
I think the premise of this is simple, and a lot of people seem to not be understanding this...<p>The UK can make a law and apply it however they see fit. 4Chan is providing a service to UK people (a website you can access) and is not implementing the law. Ultimately the UK cannot enforce this law until money destined to/from 4Chan passes through the UK or people associated with the site visit UK territories.<p>In practicality this law for the most part will just mean either websites block the UK or UK ISPs are forced to block websites.<p>But this law was designed for the websites and platforms that will not be willing to do that as they make money off of UK citizens, such as Amazon/Facebook/Youtube/etc.<p>If a website blocks UK users then the law doesn't apply as it is only concerned with protecting UK citizens. If a foreign company was shipping drugs or guns to UK children, or your choice of obvious contraband, then why wouldn't it have the power to hold that entity accountable? This is how it has always worked and I am not seeing why this is a problem just because it's in the digital space.
Putting the burden on site operators to geoblock UK users is not only placing an incredible burden on individual operators, it doesn't even work.<p>It is <i>not</i> the responsibility of foreign companies to enforce or even acknowledged the UK's laws. If the UK has a problem, they have tools to solve it on their own soil. If they want to enforce their laws <i>they</i> need to pay for it.<p>The UK is trying to bully and scare foreign website operators <i>regardless of scale or type of business</i> into paying to enforce UK laws outside of the UK.<p>If they want a website blocked, the only way to make that work is to block it <i>and pay for it themselves</i>.
Relevant here is that 4Chan appears to explicitly target the UK users for commercial purposes, and potentially (via subcontract to Cloudflare) serves to UK customers from equipment located on UK soil.<p>Whether one agrees with the policy aims of the OSA or not, there are some complex jurisdictional and enforceability issues at play here. Unfortunately it’s not as simple as you make out.
> […] and potentially (via subcontract to Cloudflare) serves to UK customers from equipment located on UK soil.<p>Still, not quite.<p>Servers in the UK ≠ targeting the UK – courts on both sides of the pond will ask whether the operator directed activity at the forum. Merely serving content from UK edge nodes because a CDN optimises latency is usually incidental and does not, by itself, show a «manifest intent» to engage with UK users. There is an established precedent in the US[0].<p>If a UK-established CDN processes personal data at UK nodes, the CDN itself may be subject to UK GDPR. That does not automatically drag a non-UK website operator into UK GDPR unless it <i>offers services to</i> or <i>monitors</i> people in the UK. Accessibility or passive CDN caching alone is insufficient. And modern UK statutes mirror this; for example, the Online Safety Act bites where a service has a significant number of UK users or targets the UK – not simply because a CDN happens to serve from UK equipment. From the horse's mouth: <a href="https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-content/guide-for-services?language=en" rel="nofollow">https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-c...</a><p>Then there is a nuance – explictly configured Cloudflare (1) vs automatic «nearest-edge» (2) selection:<p>1. Explicit UK-favouring config (for example, rules that prioritise UK-only promotions, UK-specific routing or features tailored for UK users) is a <i>relevant</i> signal of targeting, especially when combined with other indications such as UK currency, UK-specific T&C's, UK marketing or support. In EU/UK consumer cases the test is whether the site is <i>directed to the state</i> – a holistic, fact-sensitive enquiry where <i>no single factor is decisive</i>.<p>2. Automatic «nearest-edge» selection provided by a CDN by default is a <i>weak</i> signal. It shows global optimisation, not purposeful availment of the UK market. US targeting cases say much the same: you need directed electronic activity with intent to interact in the forum; mere accessibility and generic infrastructure choices are not enough.<p>[0] <a href="https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F3/293/707/521921/" rel="nofollow">https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F3/293...</a>
I'd love some of what you're smoking.<p>I assume companies wouldn't need to comply with tax law either unless countries in which they operate pay them to pay their dues.
> why wouldn't it have the power to hold that entity accountable?<p>Literally because the entity is not under the jurisdiction of the UK. The UK can force domestic companies to block the website but they cant force the website itself to do anything. The claims of fines against 4chan are therefore nonsensical. Probably just part of the legal proceedings prior to blocking the site I guess but still strange to see.
It does have 'jurisdiction' because it applies to the citizens: it is offering a service to UK citizens.<p>If I had a website operated outside of the US, where you can download US citizens private medical records and phone conversations, I would be liable to breaking US law.<p>If you do not want to be held accountable to a regions laws, then you do not offer a service to or deal with data that relates to that regions citizens.<p>I don't think this is a hard concept to grasp.<p>Jurisdiction does not imply enforceability. There are laws from your country that you can break while not even being in that country and be held accountable.
Simply offering a service to UK citizens isn't enough to provide jurisdiction. If I run a lemonade stand, and a UK citizen walks up a pays a dollar for a glass of lemonade, then that doesn't give the UK jurisdiction over the lemonade stand.<p>That's what's happening here - a webserver is operating entirely out of the UK, with no nexus. UK citizens send requests to it - just like all other countries citizens do, so either the website would be covered by all laws or just the places where it has nexus.<p>This is especially true in the US, where speech is strongly protected - making Ofcom's assertion that its regulation overrides the first amendment especially egregious. The UK government's behavior here is a bit shameful.
> If I run a lemonade stand, and a UK citizen walks up a pays a dollar for a glass of lemonade, then that doesn't give the UK jurisdiction over the lemonade stand.<p>You are allowed to sell lemonade to British tourists. But if you're shipping lemonade to the UK, you are subject to UK lemonade regulations. That doesn't mean that the UK has jurisdiction over your business and can shut it down or anything like that, but if you travel to the UK or UK banks handle your transactions, they have the right to seize funds and shipments, close your accounts or detain you if you set foot in the UK. Your choice are: follow UK regulations; stop shipping lemonade to the UK; or continue as you were, never go to the UK, and know that the UK can always ban shipments from your stand.<p>The US does the same thing all the time, and even worse[1]. Lots of piracy sites located in jurisdictions where US copyright laws don't apply are seized by US federal agencies and replaced with a notice about piracy. Those sites haven't broken any laws in the countries they're hosted in, they have no legal presence in the US, and yet the domains are banned/seized and administrators detained if they ever step foot on US soil. The UK is not threatening to seize anyone's site.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_In_Our_Sites" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_In_Our_Sites</a>
> But if you're shipping lemonade to the UK, you are subject to UK lemonade regulations.<p>I was with you up until here. Shipping to a physical address, where if you don't specify the country name, it won't arrive. Is very different than shipping to an Internet address, which has no "reasonable" connection to a physical location.<p>> Your choice are: follow UK regulations [give up the core gimmick of your entire site]; stop shipping lemonade to the UK [the shipping analogy really breaks here, how? and what about vpns? what if the other endpoint is in the UK but the address isn't?]; or continue as you were, never go to the UK, and know that the UK can always ban shipments from your stand.<p>I don't disagree that [country] <i>can</i> make laws that make society worse... But I don't think it's reasonable to defend them as if these actions aren't egregious. There's the armchair arguments that I enjoy as a thought experiment, but it's still important to point out how antisocial this behavior is.<p>> The US does the same thing all the time, and even worse [...]<p>There's an argument to be made they're using a domain registratar in the US, which is subject to those laws (obviously). But what about [other disappointing behavior] because it's worse. Is exactly the example you're arguing against. Precedence of bad stuff is still bad, ideally everyone would point out it's bad, and suggest alternatives to the bad thing, no?
Why is it the website operators job to figure out where people are from? It isn't even generally possible for them to do correctly. A better analogy would be that a british person hired someone who looked and sounded american to go to the us to buy some lemonade and have it shipped to the uk where having it breaks the law, and then blaming the lemonade stand.
> Why is it the website operators job to figure out where people are from?<p>Why not? It's their responsibility to comply with UK laws if they want to keep serving British customers and making money off of them. Just because the service is provided online doesn't mean it can go on unregulated. You're acting like this is something new that websites haven't had to do for decades.
> > Why is it the website operators job to figure out where people are from?<p>> Why not?<p>Because laws vary from location to location, and it's an unreasonable for a [UK] agency to make demands from an exclusively [US] group under the assumption that they are aware of every possible law in existence. Someone in the [US] can't expect to have reasonable influence over the laws in the [UK] that they're now required to follow? That's a blatantly unfair system. That's why not.<p>But actually why? You confidently assert that because it has happened before, that's the way it should always be!<p>You're still trying to apply rules for jurisdiction, that don't map well to the Internet. If I was sending someone to the UK to buy and sell, I think your arguments would make sense. But that's not the analogy that applies here. The better analogy is, people from the UK are traveling across jurisdictional lines, and buying from my shop, based exclusively in my country. My country feels privacy and anonymity are important fundamental rights, and my business exists to that end. Here, instead of trying to control UK citizens, and making it illegal for them to travel to the US to do something they want to prevent, they instead are trying to force the US group to attempt to doxx every user and exclude some of them.<p>That feels insane to me, what's your take on that examplev<p>Also, I feel it's important to note, part of the reason they're using this specific tactic, is because they're aware how impossible and intractable their demands actually are. To call internet geolocation complex or error prone would be an understatement. So based exclusively that they're demanding someone other than them should tackle a near impossible task, should be enough of a reason to reject the demand. Legal or not, unreasonable demands deserve rejection.
A good start would be to use geoip. It's not perfect, but it will almost certainly be enough to make UK happy (the same happens when detecting European for GDPR purposes).
Lmao, why would a web server operator need to care where their clients send requests from? Imagine if half the countries in the world required this, each with distinct requirements on how to handle traffic from their jurisdictions. Insane. Relieve us of the misery of acting as though OFCOM’s requests are reasonable- they are not.
> The UK is not threatening to seize anyone's site.<p>Yet? :)
Countries claim juristiction for thing outside their borders all the time. however they place a much higher bar on what they claim. Lemonaid stands are likely safe, but even if it is legal where you live the US will claim pedopillia laws aganst you they can get you.<p>part of the high bar is claiming juristriction requires sending your army. (Sanctions are often used too which might or might not work). That is why the threat is if the directors travel to the uk - that gives them sone power - but still expect US government to do 'things' if the arrest any US citizen on this.
> If I run a lemonade stand, and a UK citizen walks up a pays a dollar for a glass of lemonade, then that doesn't give the UK jurisdiction over the lemonade stand.<p>It does... to correct your example, the UK citizen is paying a dollar for the lemonade while in the UK.<p>Are you saying that if I had a website hosted in Russia that pretended to be your bank and stole all your money from phishing that is perfectly legal?
So, my original point was that a business is not under the jurisdiction of the UK just because it offers a service to UK citizen - I probably should have mentioned I'm not in the UK.<p>Whether the website is illegal or not would depend on Russian law in your example. I'd also suspect that other laws might apply, like wire fraud. Some of those would likely be enforceable in other countries.
>Are you saying that if I had a website hosted in Russia that pretended to be your bank and stole all your money from phishing that is perfectly legal?<p>Website hosted in US publishing truth about Ukraine war - even calling it a war is already a felony in Russia - is it legal or illegal?<p>I'm personally against stealing money, and i'm for calling a war a war, yet how do we formally codify that into law - there are 200 countries and at any given moment, especially while online, you're probably violating some law of some country. Before internet globalization, the geography based jurisdiction was such an objective approach. Now it is more like "catch me if you can" which is obviously not a solid foundation to build on. Like that plane that had emergency landing in Minsk, and the Belorussian dissident flying on that plane was arrested by the Belorussian police. And many here on HN were critical of MBS when Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul - what if our plane has to make an emergency landing in Riyadh ...
> Website hosted in US publishing truth about Ukraine war - even calling it a war is already a felony in Russia - is it legal or illegal?<p>That's illegal in Russia. Russia has fined Google more money than exists in the world. It doesn't mean anything, but you bet the CEO of Google isn't going to visit Russia. Russia can choose to block any websites that hurt their feelings. Much like the UK and 4Chan.<p>> what if our plane has to make an emergency landing in Riyadh ...<p>Then you hope to God that the people with the bone saws don't read hackernews.
> Website hosted in US publishing truth about Ukraine war - even calling it a war is already a felony in Russia - is it legal or illegal?<p>Try hosting one of those sites and then fly to Russia and let us know. I think you’ll find it’s quite illegal and will be enforced to the fullest extent of the law the second you enter their jurisdiction.<p>It turns out it doesn’t actually matter whether you or I think the law in question is BS. We don’t run Russia or determine what laws they enact.
Someone has to be willing to extradite. I'm sure China, Russia, and Iran would love to prosecute all those pesky political dissidents abroad.<p>I'll be pretty shocked if someone ever gets extradited out of the US for not showing a cookie banner.
Jurisdiction only applies within a sovereign country. If there's some dispute that crosses national lines, you don't call the International Bureau of Investigations to send International Agents in to drag the perp before the Planetary Supreme Court.
"Offering to" is a nonsense term. The website exists on the open internet regardless of jurisdictional borders. A UK citizen must actively go to the website, initiating a connection from within the UK and requesting data from an IP address that may or may not have some kind of relationship with geography.<p>4Chan isn't popping up unbidden on people's phones. Wither a UK citizen <i>chooses</i> to visit a website is no business of the website operator.<p>To say that 4Chan is somehow responsible for the actions of unknowably many private citizens is absurd. If the UK wants to enforce internet censorship within their borders, that's their own business. Putting pressure on wholly independent foreign businesses for the crime of existing is not reasonable. This is just as bad as US credit card companies censoring adult material from the entire global online economy.<p>They're trying to censor large parts of the global internet for <i>everyone</i>, not just their citizens. If they cared about UK citizens so much, they'd do something like proactively blocking noncompliant websites to force them to immediately either comply or fuck off. They should be trying to protect their citizens instead of trying to bully foreign companies they have no jurisdiction over. It's their responsibility to enforce their laws, not the US courts.
Yeah this line of thinking worked really well for Assange
> why wouldn't it have the power to hold that entity accountable?<p>If I transmit insults of dear leader Kim Jung Un on amateur radio, then those radio waves will reach DPRK. I likely would be breaking DPRK law.<p>Why wouldn't they have the power? Same reason my decree that guns are now banned in the US is not even refuted, but ignored.<p>4chan has no obligation or even reason to even respond to the UK except as entertainment (this reply was entertaining), and to send a message to <i>the US</i> that (in its opinion) the US government cooperating with the UK on this would be illegal by US law, the only law that matters to the US legal system. Other countries laws only matter insofar as they are allowed <i>by US law</i>. Foreign laws will not get US constitution bypass unless the US constitution itself allows it.<p>It's as if DPRK demanded to have a US citizen extradited in order to be executed for blasphemy. All that US citizen cares about is to give a heads up to the US that "if these people come knocking, tell them to go fuck themselves".<p>What is the UK government going to do, send bobbies over to attack 4chan owners with nerve gas on US soil?<p>What's the alternative? I'm sure there are countries where it's illegal for women to show their faces on TV. Why wouldn't that country have the power to hold any website where women's faces are shown accountable?<p>On a more depressing note, as is super clear in the US lately, crime is perfectly legal, if your friend (or POTUS you bribed) orders you to not be prosecuted. Or pardons you for being a drug kingpin and mobster ordering murders of innocent people (Ross Ulbricht).<p>Power ultimately comes from the exercise of violence. The UK cannot exercise state violence on US soil. That's a US monopoly under very harsh penalty. On US soil only US law (or in the case of Trump, lawlessness) can de facto be exercised.<p>Also, from their reply:<p>> The infinite character of that power was most famously summed up by English lawyer Sir Ivor Jennings, who once said that “if Parliament enacts that smoking in the streets of Paris is an offence, then it is an offence”. This line is taught to every first-year English law student.<p>Why should parisians care? Why would France cooperate with enforcing such laws?<p>If POTUS orders that taking $50k in cash as a bribe is not to be prosecuted, then you won't be prosecuted.
I think you are confusing breaking a law, and enforceability. I agree with the gist of your argument though, the UK cannot _force_ a US only company, but it doesn't change the fact it is breaking UK law.<p>> I likely would be breaking DPRK law. Why wouldn't they have the power?<p>They do as a sovereign nation. But what most people seem to be missing is that you're not going to DPRK and the US Government doesn't care so you can go about your life breaking DPRK law as much as you want.
They can’t possibly be breaking UK law because the service isn’t even being provided in the UK. UK users are accessing US servers to get service.
> I think you are confusing breaking a law, and enforceability.<p>I'm not. My comment and other replies to you are telling you that YOU are.<p>We're saying that your question doesn't make any sense.
nitpicking like this is asinine
<i>It's as if DPRK demanded to have a US citizen extradited in order to be executed for blasphemy</i><p>Not really. It's more like DPRK messaging <i>a private US citizen</i> directly, repeatedly and incessantly, that they will be executed for blasphemy. Ofcom is <i>not</i> using proper diplomatic channels here.<p><i>Why should parisians care? Why would France cooperate with enforcing such laws?</i><p>Everyone here seems convinced that Parisians <i>should</i> care about this, because the majority opinion seems to be that it's perfectly acceptable for the UK government to arrest Parisians for having ever smoked a cigarette in Paris, should they set foot on UK soil. I do not agree that this is a defensible application of law.
They want to block things, but don't want the optics of being one of "those" countries with a national firewall. So we get things like this.
That part I understand, it surely looks awful.<p>The ID side of things though? Having your citizenry send their personal information to foreign companies all across the globe? It's a disaster waiting to happen.
That's what it seems like.<p>Instead of getting court orders and ordering ISPs to block the sites, the UK is pushing off the responsibility for age verification onto the companies/site owners whether they are actually under UK jurisdiction or not.<p>Because if instead the UK just managed it internally, and started ordering ISPs to block, they'd be criticized foor being like China, and the citizens would start placing their blame on the government instead of the private companies that are pulling out of the market.
Given the constant stream of crazy things I read about the UK, I'm surprised that a national firewall is off the table given their laws and attitudes around what would be protected speech here.
We already have hadrian's firewall blocking some piracy sites.
Ofcom said this four days ago:<p>> "Services who choose to restrict access rather than protect UK users remain on our watchlist"<p>How does withdrawing service from UK users not "protect UK users"? How does age verifying UK IPs provide more protection than withdrawing the service entirely?<p>It is about power and control, and nothing else.
I think that because the UK speaks english, they’ve come to believe they somehow have similar levels of extraterritorial power as the US. Just a general symptom of way too many people consuming US media/political content.
That hyperbole is about the scale of the US military budget. The UK is nowhere close to the US in terms of its belief in "extraterritorial power". You are taking one instance and wildly just making things up
Doing business in the US is existential for most multinationals, so they do have extraterritorial reach - hence the US taxation system, US banking regulatory system, WTO, etc. Not so for the UK, especially post-brexit.
The difference, of course, is that the US actually has extraterritorial power. The idea that you would compare the UK's perception of their power to the US's perception of its power seems to be the kind of mistake the person you're replying to is referring to.<p>Standing next the the US when it does things (or rather to the left and two steps behind the US) is not being like the US.<p><a href="https://youtu.be/lJatJ-Hi2_s?t=66" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/lJatJ-Hi2_s?t=66</a><p>more recent: <a href="https://youtu.be/Hyn_VHtSU48?t=35" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/Hyn_VHtSU48?t=35</a>
The extraterritorial power of the US has no legal basis on the jurisdictions it's exerted.
They probably made the mistake of assuming they had a reciprocal relationship.<p><a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/us-visa-policy-targets-foreign-nationals-who-censor-americans-state-dept-2025-05-28/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/us-visa-polic...</a>
Many comments here are on the premise that 4chan is "operating in"/"providing services in"/"broadcasting in" the UK, or similar.<p>As I understand it, _the UK_ is the one performing the importing of this content (through the backbones). 4chan is involved at no part of that pipeline other than connecting their servers to the Internet.<p>There are two ways in which a country could control content:<p>1. Through a governing body capable of regulating global content, like an Internet UN (with actual power)<p>2. Banning content locally via (broken) technical means<p>The UK is pretending that there's a third option: Telling other country's they have to abide by UK law.
Is there a solution where we can compel parental control to be enabled by default on kids phones?<p>That would seem to be least intrusive option.<p>Using the internet in the UK/EU is such a horrible experience, every cookie pop-up is a reminder how badly thought out these rules are.
> Using the internet in the UK/EU is such a horrible experience, every cookie pop-up is a reminder how badly thought out these rules are.<p>Technical cookies don't require any consent so every time you see a cookie banner the website owner wants to gather more data about you than necessary. Furthermore, these rules don't require cookie banners, it's what the industry has chosen as the way to get consent to track their users.
It's very easy to make websites without needing cookie popups in EU/UK. Every cookie popup is a reminder of how stale the thinking around tracking and data sharing is!
UK mobile networks and ISPs have had age-restricted content filtering enabled by default since ~2013-14.<p>This policy was pushed by David Cameron, who was the prime minister at the time:<p><a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/the-internet-and-pornography-prime-minister-calls-for-action" rel="nofollow">https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/the-internet-and-porn...</a><p><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23401076" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23401076</a>
The simplest solution is to require all online devices to have a "child mode" that can be activated during setup, and require all parents to enable this for minors under 16. In this mode, the device takes screenshots every few seconds of active use, and makes this viewable on the parents' devices as a timeline. This must be private with full end-to-end encryption and limited data retention in the clients (7 days or so).<p>It's much simpler than blocking, and much more effective. Most parents don't know what to block proactively, blocklists are imperfect, and the biggest threats are hiding in the most innocent looking apps (Discord, Roblox, Reddit, even just messaging with friends from school).
Age restricted filtering of the internet is the default on all UK mobile networks as far as I know, it might even be the law that it defaults to filtering. You have to actually ring them up and say you want the filtering switched off or some do it as part of the sign up process.<p>All the routers also come with filtering settings as well and ISPs ship with the filtering on by default, since that is the law and has been for several decades.
It's generally just a toggle in the account settings so no need for a phone call, but yes. It is default-on when you take out a new broadband connection or mobile phone contract.
disgusting<p>my dream is when ISPs are allowed to sell this, but not allowed to call it internet access.
I'm happy to have popups with "Reject All" button. If there is no "Reject All" button I close site immediately.<p>Cookie regulations are perfectly Ok, businesses which want to add 429 vendors and data processors to simple internet shop or corporate blog is not.<p>If you use cookies only for legitimate basic local functionality (like login and shopping cart on online shop site) you SHOULD NOT have any popups, there is exemption for such use cases in the regulations. Only if you want to sell data or pass it for processing to third party you need popup. Simply don't.
Having done several rounds with parental control, I'd say -- nfw. We were worried more about timesink than anything else, but over a long period of time, it mainly boils down to knowing your kids, trusting them, with checkups. The tech is just not there to actually control what happens on a device.<p>White listing worked for a while (months) when they were young, but it was super-high touch and stuff just broke all the time. You try to whitelist a site, but you have to then figure out all their CDNs.<p>Restricting specific sites works, sort of, until they find some place that hosts that content. Blocking youtube doesn't work(*), every search engine has a watch videos feature. (Why are you spending 3 hours a day on DDG?) There's really no way to segment youtube into "videos they need to watch for school" and "viral x hour minecraft playthrough". Somehow, we've managed to combine the biggest time waste ever with a somewhat useful for education hosting service.<p>That's leaving out the jailbreaks that come from finding an app's unfiltered webview and getting an open web escape there.<p>There's basically no reliable method for filtering even on locked down platforms.<p>* there's probably a way to kill it at the firewall based on dns, but that's iffy for phones and it's network wide.
It's totally doable to block YouTube with pihole, and also to make it blocked only on certain devices.<p>The regex are:
(^|\.)youtubei\.googleapis\.com$
(^|\.)ytstatic\.l\.google\.com$
(^|\.)ytimg\.l\.google\.com$
(^|\.)youtube-ui\.l\.google\.com$
(^|\.)youtube\.com$
(^|\.)ytimg\.com$
(^|\.)googlevideo\.com$<p>You can create groups and assign devices to them, and assign the block rules only to certain groups.<p>The only annoyance with this is that it blocks logging into Google since they redirect to YouTube to set a login cookie as part of the Google login process. If you're already logged into Google though, everything works as normal, and you can always disable pihole for five minutes if for some reason you got logged out and need to log back in.
> The tech is just not there to actually control what happens on a device.<p>Neither is the tech for locking down all online identity to government-controlled access... But I have strong opinions about which one everybody should/shouldn't start creating!
Maybe they're called parental controls because they control the parents (by limiting and bundling choices).
> Using the internet in the UK/EU is such a horrible experience, every cookie pop-up is a reminder how badly thought out these rules are.<p>That's what the advertising-dependent implementers who deliberately made it shittier than necessary (stuff like "you have to decline each of our 847 ad partners individually") want you to think, at least. It's mostly malicious compliance.
The funniest part of the banners is that most websites just buy a service from a third party to manage compliance, and some of those third party service providers have added "decline all" style buttons and one click solutions to <i>all</i> that use them, and are even friendly enough to save that choice in one of the "necessary" cookies.<p>But people (like my girlfriend) still click "Allow all" because they don't seem to realize that the legislation requires the website to still function if you decline unnecessary cookies!<p>The banner is literally an attempt to FOMO you into accepting cookies you never need to accept!<p>IMO the EU is somewhat in dereliction of Duty for not punishing cookie banner sites
Oh, its funnier than that. The most sophisticated data trackers don't even use cookies anymore. Anyone you would have to worry about getting that data hasn't used cookies in years. So the entire exercise punishes small companies that don't do anything with the data except pre-populate fields for you. But big tech companies that the law was targeting don't have to change a thing.
Install uBlock. In its settings: Filter Lists -> Cookie notices
Sure, but you'd need to apply it to <i>all</i> phones, because what's stopping a kid from buying an adult smartphone if they have the money? And smartphones can be dirt cheap.<p>Also remember that the pop-up is an industry choice, the rules only mandate that a user should opt in, not how. No laws mandate the cookie banners, no regulations say they should be obnoxious.
> Sure, but you'd need to apply it to all phones, because what's stopping a kid from buying an adult smartphone<p>There's no need, that's already the case.<p>All phones (the network account attached to the SIM actually, not the phone itself) comes with a content filter enabled by default in the UK, adult or not.
> All phones (the network account attached to the SIM actually, not the phone itself) comes with a content filter enabled by default in the UK, adult or not.<p>Neither resident nor frequent visitor to the UK, so I'm behind the times when I ask: I beg your fucking pardon?<p>Is there further reading on this inane nanny-state horror, ideally via a Wikipedia article on the law or gentleman's agreement amongst the carriers?<p>Furthermore, is this more common than I assume, and I simply don't notice because I don't stray too far from the mainstream?
I think you show identification (like when buying alcohol) when buying the phone/contract, and the block is removed. Or, this can be done later.
> I beg your fucking pardon?<p>Yep, my thoughts exactly when I first encountered it.<p>> Is there further reading on this inane nanny-state horror<p>I tried to look something up but it seems the articles and news about the (new) Online Safety Act has taken over all of the search results (and it's not something I want to search too hard at work). I even asked an LLM but it couldn't provide sources and simply said it was "voluntary" and "industry standard". The rest of its output was drowned in the new Online Safety Act.<p>I suppose thanks to the OSA the old system is now history.
I suppose it'd be the same thing in the UK - kids cannot buy knives.
> Sure, but you'd need to apply it to all phones, because what's stopping a kid from buying an adult smartphone if they have the money? And smartphones can be dirt cheap.<p>What's to stop that same kid to buy a porno dvd? Or to download a torrent of a porno? Or a porn magazine?
The cookie popups is such a painful representation of Europe tech in general.<p>Like you can configure your browser to do whatever you want with cookies - blocking them all, blocking only third party ones, etc. - there is no need for government regulation here.<p>But the legislators are completely tech illiterate and even the general public supports more interference and regulation.
The legislation simply says if you collect more data about your users than necessary, you must inform them and they must consent. This has nothing to do with cookies or any other tech.<p>The question a user should ask is why is this website collecting my data. Marketing and adtech companies are trying to shift this question to why is the EU making websites worse.<p>> there is no need for government regulation here<p>You don't need to care about this if you respect users' privacy in the same way you don't need to care about waste water regulation when you don't pump waste into rivers.
No, that legislation is perfectly fine! It's the pesky websites who can't get their grubby hands off of private data. They could very well do away with some of the tracking, and have no popup at all, fully legally! But they all chose not to, and would rather annoy everyone with the pop-up.<p>I'd welcome a ramp-up of the legislation: outlaw the kind of tracking that needs the banners currently outright. I'm sure a lot of websites would just geo-block EU as a result (like how some did because of GDPR), but I bet the EU-compliant visitor tracking solutions would suddenly skyrocket, and overall, nothing of value would be lost, neither for the users, nor for the website administrators.
It’s a bit of both.<p>It’s not possible to rely on browser controls as-is, because they do not differentiate between necessary and optional cookies.<p>Browser vendors <i>could</i> agree standards and implement them, exposing these to users and advertisers in a friendly way.<p>But they haven’t shown any interest in doing this.<p>I wonder why?
Without laws forcing companies to properly declare which cookies are "necessary", this control you imagine does nothing, as every company simply sets their advertising cookies as "necessary"<p>One of the hundreds of reasons do_not_track failed. You cannot do something that trusts the website operators, because they are egregiously untrustworthy.<p>The cookie banner everyone keeps bitching about is a direct example of this. No website is required to have a cookie banner. They choose to, because they know most users click "Yes to all", and then complain about <i>the regulators</i>, instead of the assholes asking you to consent to sharing your data with nearly a <i>thousand</i> third parties<p>And "browser vendors" will never do anything, because 90% of the market is a literal advertising behemoth, the rest of the market is owned by a company that makes money only when you do things not through the web browser.
Come to think of it, parental control would be a neat application for something like Apple Intelligence. A local system service that is "trustworthy enough" to monitor everything on screen, and written content too.
Parental controls only need look for an RTA header [1] that would need to be legislated to be served from any adult or potentially adult <i>user-generated content</i> site. Not perfect, nothing is but it would take an intern maybe half a day to add the code to clients to check for said header. Adding the header on the server side is at trivial. Teens will bypass it as they can stream and watch together porn and pirated movies in rate-PG video games that allow defining a <i>"movie player"</i> but small children on locked down tablets would be fine.<p>[1] - <a href="https://www.rtalabel.org/index.php?content=howtofaq#single" rel="nofollow">https://www.rtalabel.org/index.php?content=howtofaq#single</a>
This would enable/catalyze an order of magnitude more child abuse than anything that can happen on the worst cesspits of the internet.
Why Apple Intelligence when screen recording has been a feature for parental control systems for ages?
I hate that the internet is being destroyed in the name of iPad kids
Some would argue the point is to be intrusive... The most cost effective and simplest solution to kids watching porn would be regulation around on-device filters. Why the UK didn't do this and instead tried to regulate the entire internet should be questioned – is this really about the children watching porn?<p>When purchasing an internet-enabled device the UK could regulate that large retailers must ask if the device is to be used by an under 18 year old. If they say yes, then they could ship with filters enabled. They could also regulate that all internet-enabled devices which could be sold to children should support child filters.<p>If we did this then whether or not a child views NSFW material it will be on the parent, instead of the current situation where whether a child can view NSFW material online depends on the age verification techniques of Chinese companies like TikTok or American companies like 4chan.
i love how screen time is only detrimental to young minds, and older minds are somehow immune to its evils.
> Is there a solution where we can compel parental control to be enabled by default on kids phones?<p>What do you mean? Parents can easily set this up before they give them to their children.
Oi, ‘av you got yer internet loisence?
Jokes aside, what on earth is going on with the UK?<p>It seems to have serious demographic issues and actual ethnic English are understandably angry at having been largely vilified as Nazis and far-right for wanting to protect their heritage and identity.<p>To reach into draconian surveillance and censorship to quell its own natives of the land who has lived there for thousands of years at the behest of those that have arrived from far away lands with a drastically incompatible culture with the British is a recipe for civil war.
I don't understand why the British government's solution is to impose orders on British ISPs as they have done with other websites that they want to block, rather than try to impose on a company based in another country.
"The least bad thing that Ofcom and the Government could do is to quietly let the matter drop whilst focusing on education."<p>This generalises very well for all Government. Shame we're a couple of generations into education being about producing pliant workers over independent, thinking human beings.
>This generalises very well for all Government.<p>The government shouldn't be dropping things. It should have the power to pick those things up in the first place.<p>It's like a fishing stop. Even if you get off with a warning the whole interaction just shouldn't have happened.
> education being about producing pliant workers over independent, thinking human beings.<p>You cant have things like computers and smart phones if you dont have millions of pliant workers mass producing them for you. If you want the technological world that we live in to be possible then you should accept that it requires this concept. If everybody is a creative independant free thinking individual, then nobody is a worker drone in a factory churning out phones, laptops, or the materials and components that go into them.
Mass education was formed to destroy local cultures and languages in the prussian empire and revolutionary french to make sure people were compliant and wouldn't revolt against the state's control, it has never had anything to do with making people thinkers. This is the stated purpose, and always has been.
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Neither of these things happen, but even if either was miraculously true, should the onus be on the entirety of society to self-censor, or on the kids parents to parent properly (IE use parental controls and supervise screen time)?
> TikTok destroys our boys by turning them into trans<p>???<p>Do you really believe that?
I'd think it would be allowed for UK to:<p>1. Tell 4chan or its registrar l to take down .co.uk urls (maybe?)<p>2. Tell UK ISPs to ban UK visitors from viewing 4chan
They can, but they have to ask a court to enforce any sort of block. I imagine that's coming soon.
> Tell UK ISPs to ban UK visitors from viewing 4chan<p>Too bad the UK public can't effectively tell Ofcom off.
This is a really well-written article. The whole thing is so absurd and this makes it so clear.
FWIW I agree with the intent of the Act, and am generally in favour of a sovereign firewall.<p>Edit: In a nutshell - almost every other transfer of goods and services across national borders is subject to quality standards. Why do we give a pass to a system that allows deep, individualised access to people's personal lives and mental processes?
I'd argue transfer of services is not really an issue. People buying services from a foreign entity is a pretty fringe case, and most legitimate businesses will try to establish a local presence for that anyway.<p>Sovereign firewalls are mostly used by countries that have them for censorship and surveillance, and I think letting governments use a pretext of digital services being able to avoid tolls and taxes to establish such a powerful tool would be a huge mistake.
Right now you're downvoted for expressing an opinion that I believe deserves a deeper discussion.<p>I don't want the government to decide which thoughts I can access and which ones I can't, but I also understand that allowing a foreign power (let's say Russia, although "the US" works just as fine) to freely run undercover propaganda and/or destabilization campaigns without any recourse doesn't look good either. And while I agree with "when in doubt aim for the option with more freedom", I can understand those who share your position.
What about domestic entities running undercover propaganda campaigns - as we have seen e.g. with Cambridge Analytica? Should we maybe focus on the more fundamental problem of our democracies being vulnerable to propaganda campaigns rather than making sure that only "good" and "sovereign" propaganda campaigns are allowed?
> Should we maybe focus on the more fundamental problem of our democracies being vulnerable to propaganda campaigns<p>Step 1 is reduce your attack surface :)
As a second point, democracies <i>are</i> propaganda campaigns - it's a feature, not a bug.<p>I believe that national cultural and societal norms play a key part in self-regulation. I think it's too much to ask for those balancing forces to work as effectively without first turning down the firehose.
Being able to implement any decision by running a targeted campaign discouraging it's opponents from voting and swaying the undecided can't be a feature or we have very different understanding of democracy.<p>By closing up we defend us from some threats, but open gates wide for others. Foreign actors compete against much stronger domestic media machines and as you mentioned have to operate in foreign cultural environments. Gaining true influence also always involves financial flows, not just propaganda campaigns, so it is sure possible to mitigate these threats without closing information flow.<p>Consider the opposite threat of democracies being undermined from within. If some internal "threat actor" gets control of the executive branch and of the media and also can prevent information flow from the outside, very little can be done against it.<p>I think it is critical to keep in mind this second possibility even when the first threat seems more urgent.
There are entire political industries openly dedicated to swaying the undecided! It's a messy business, but that's what we have.<p>Propaganda is not necessarily to gain influence or money. Eg: Country x just wants to mess with people's heads and turn them on each other to weaken a rival country. Or: Country y runs a crafted propaganda campaign against a rival. As a result, some sector of its own economy starts doing better at the expense of its rival.<p>>If some internal "threat actor" gets control of the executive branch and of the media and also can prevent information flow from the outside, very little can be done against it.<p>I understand the scenario (it's far from new), but that's what the design of any particular democracy is supposed to minimise. Term limits, separation of government powers, etc.
Something needs to be done. The outcomes are manifestly bad. I can't take the pro-freedom intellectual argument seriously unless it's coupled with a suite of pragmatic solutions to the negative side effects I am observing with my own senses. The intellectual walls of text just aren't papering over that reality.
Propaganda campaigns are one thing, but the reality is these laws target stupid ass shit like porn.<p>Is that a made up problem? IMO: yes. That's a PARENT'S responsibility, not mine.<p>There are legitimate arguments in favor of a national firewall. Nobody is making them.
>The outcomes are manifestly bad.<p>That's just as bad of an argument as so-called intellectual walls of text. Nothing needs to be done, the outcomes are not bad. My argument is as strong as yours.
>I don't want the government to decide which thoughts I can access and which ones I can't<p>That would be an interesting discussion in itself, but even so - accessing material in isolation over the internet removes all of the benefits of cultural and community self-regulation.<p>>freely run undercover propaganda and/or destabilization campaigns<p>I'm of the opinion that WWW3 has already happened - it was a war for hearts and minds waged over the internet, and we've already lost.
> I'm of the opinion that WWW3 has already happened - it was a war for hearts and minds waged over the internet, and we've already lost.<p>Who is we, and who won? What did they win?
> cultural and community self-regulation<p>This is a very fancy way of saying “censorship”.<p>> I'm of the opinion that WWW3 has already happened - it was a war for hearts and minds waged over the internet, and we've already lost.<p>If the open, unfettered exchange of culture and ideas is such a threat to our system then we deserve to lose. If my only option is to be stuck in a system that enforces ideological conformity on its subjects, then I’d rather it be the Chinese system. At least it’s not so dysfunctional!<p>If we are receiving all of the downsides of a liberal democracy without the benefits, what’s the point anymore?
Because it's about the free exchange of information, not another trade war
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Going after 4chan is brilliant:
No government is going to intervene on 4chans behalf, but dealing with 4chan might create a legal precedent.
"Your honor, my client does not recognize the authority of this tribunal" -- Judgment At Nuremberg (1961)
If the UK is serious, they could ban entry to the 4chan owner(s) or even arrest them upon entry, so it's not something to just ignore or laugh off.
Ofcomm hasn't been able to identify the owners of the delaware LLC, that's why they attach a screenshot of the CAPITOL SERVICES, INC website.<p>Publically available databases suggest 4chan executives include John Cena, Evan Essence and Norton Antivenom.
Oh no, not being able to visit UK must be the worst punishment of all. They'll live their lives without being able to see Luton. What kind of life is that.
> The kids already know how to use VPNs to circumvent firewalls<p>Vpn is not always a solution, at least in my experience (nordvpn).<p>I haven’t tried 4chan, but e.g. reddit rejects anonymous vpn traffic (shows an error message, forces login); streaming platforms also often don’t work.
What's funny is that behind much of the vitriol against Ofcom and the UK Parliament from American citizens is the USA's legal concept of Free Speech.<p>Many Americans believe absolutely in Free Speech – their exact version of it, as has been upheld by the courts of the USA. And they believe firmly they have the right to it worldwide. (And many also believe in the USA's moral right to spread its concept of Free Speech worldwide.)<p>If people were honest, they would admit that they are aghast at this attack on what they perceive their right to Free Speech wherever they are in the world. (And of course, slapping the UK down any chance it can get because of history – another fine example of the bullying, domineering and self-righteous behaviour of the USA that the world constantly has to put up with.)<p>I really do hope the hypocrisy is obvious to the many fine and educated people here.
The United States frequently asserts extraterritorial jurisdiction. They were chasing Assange even when he hadn't stepped foot in their country.
alecmuffett is spot on here and I am grateful to him for making noise about this. The Online Safety Act is a mere prelude to the real goal: building on 20 years of CleanFeed to implement a central, government controlled firewall.<p>The risks of such technology are grave. It is hard enough, for example, running a distributed national police service while keeping a lid on corruption, miscarriages of justice, and incompetence. Willfully using technology to scale up human effects will risk amplifying bad actors to a <i>national</i> scale.
This reminds me of when Australia tried to force twitter to block a video globally: <a href="https://news.rebekahbarnett.com.au/p/elon-musk-wins-latest-censorship" rel="nofollow">https://news.rebekahbarnett.com.au/p/elon-musk-wins-latest-c...</a><p>In one of the more enlightened things Elon has done in the last few years, he fought back, and he won.<p>Interestingly, here in AU, there was a storm of media outrage at the time, saying all kinds of nasty things about Musk, making all kinds of assertions about how he was super arrogant and wrong to insist on upholding american's freedom of speech, with no attempt to justify why. It was almost like we were just expected to assume that AU law applies everywhere on earth.<p>Here's a fun sample of a totally unbiased article from the time: <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-20/elon-musk-reacts-to-esafety-commissioner-asking-x-to-take-down-/103748930" rel="nofollow">https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-20/elon-musk-reacts-to-e...</a><p>Strangely, when the court order wasn't upheld because AU laws don't actually apply outside our country, and the gubmint that was so outraged and "ready to take him on" lost badly on every point, there was no huge storm of media coverage about that.
>The way we protect British kids from the Internet is to make better and more capable Britons, rather than to try and kidproof the entire internet.<p>If only it were that easy. For me as a parent, my approach is to implement a "Great personal firewall" - that is, internet restrictions that decrease over time as they mature, and starting with essentially zero access. Unfortunately, it's probably doomed to fail as other kids their age (5 + 7) and in their peer groups are already walking around with smartphones.<p>To put it bluntly, too many parents are too unenaged and lazy (or self-centered).
Same problem. Tried to balance some kind of freedom with limitations but it just didn't work. Then I found discord, read through some chats...<p>Now it's just outright forbidden to have anything with a chat. And no Internet.<p>The problem is that other 10 year old have mobiles, free PC access, etc, so there constant peer pressure.
Some peoples are funny :) And there are parents ;)<p>Kids go to school, have lessons, right ? And few minutes breaks between lessons ? How that parents want to censorship what kids talk about ? Not to mention phones use. And why exactly ?<p>Thing is as it always is: parents make fundamens in culture/world view eg via their views and religion they subscribe. And then society and reality takes over. What society you have ?
Adults grooming children in chats is absolutely a thing, this is completely different from talking any way they feel like to their peers face to face.
Not exactly. Before smartphones, sure, you weren't able to police the kid 24/7. The kid gets out of the house, comes back in the evening, god knows what happened in the meantime. But nowadays parents actually do have the means to exercise absolute control over their kids. That's a huge game-changer. First, most of interaction happens online. If you ban the kid from the internet, your kid won't have friends, problem solved. And it's not like kids nowadays rush to gather outside.
Exactly, plus there's free, mostly unrestricted wifi everywhere. If your child has some pocket or birthday money they can freely spend, they can walk into an electronics store, buy a cheap smartphone or tablet and have unrestricted access.<p>At home measures are at best a delay, not a fix. What you <i>also</i> have to do is actually communicate with your child. If you're strict about what they can and cannot do on the internet, they will feel shame for doing it anyway, which may also mean they would be too ashamed to talk to their parents if for example they are getting groomed online.
That was originally going to be my plan - my kids can have a smartphone when they can afford to buy one themselves. I figured that by this point they would be old and experienced enough to deal with it. As I pointed out above, some of their peers at ages 5-7 already have parentally-supplied smartphones. It sucks that I'm probably going to have to talk to my currently 5-year-old girl very soon about what the internet has to offer.
You don't need a perfect fix.<p>I'm sorry, but if you're threat model is your kid getting a fucking <i>burner phone</i>, I don't know what to tell you.<p>Even this law won't fix it! Why, couldnt your kid just save up and buy a plane ticket to the US?? Oh no .. we need a global law don't we?<p>Or, maybe, we throw away that thinking and acknowledge that the problem is not that big and solving 99% of it is MORE than good enough.<p>Your kid is way more likely to die in a car wreck. Focus on that or something.
If the government wanted to do something it would enforce optional controls for the bill payer, and provide decent training (via videos and in person in libraries) on how to use parental controls.<p>I tried setting up parental controls on Fortnite and it was a nightmare, having threats multiple accounts with multiple providers, it felt very much designed to force people to go “ahh forget it”.
> it would enforce optional controls for the bill payer,<p>They do; in the UK, if you want to have access to porn, you need to tell your ISP and they will unblock it.<p>Of course, that's a game of whack-a-mole because you can render porn in Minecraft servers or join one of many communities on Whatsapp or Discord if needs be. It mainly blocks the well-known bigger porn sites.
I have thought about this for a really, really long time.<p>The conclusion is, it's a service problem, not a howto-block problem<p>kid-friendly content is under supplied and often bad maintained.<p>To quote GabeN: Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem
How much would be enough supply, in your opinion? Because there is a lot, there is no shortage.<p>But it's not forbidden or hidden away, so kids aren't curious about it.
> Because there is a lot, there is no shortage.<p>Yes, but the problem is, many (if not most) of those content or services were created by adults and dispised by kids.<p>pick one your kid's most interested topic, are there enough kid-friendly content/services that fulfills all the needs?
I believe it should be a layered approach.<p>1. Educate children about bad actors and scams. (We already do this in off-line contexts.)<p>2. Use available tools to limit exposure. Without this children will run into such content even when not seeking it. As demonstrated with Tiktok seemingly sending new accounts to sexualised content,(1) and Google/Meta's pathetic ad controls.<p>3. Be firm about when is the right age to have their own phone. There is zero possibility that they'll be able to have one secretly without a responsible parent discovering it.<p>4. Schools should not permit phone use during school time (enforced in numerous regions already.)<p>5. If governments have particular issues with websites, they can use their existing powers to block or limit access. While this is "whack-a-mole", the idea of asking each offshore offending website to comply is also "whack-a-mole" and a longer path to the intended goal.<p>6. Don't make the EU's "cookies" mistake. E.g. If the goal is to block tracking, then outlaw tracking, do not enact proxy rules that serve only as creative challenges to keep the status quo.<p>and the big one:<p>7. Parents must accept that their children will be exposed at some level, and need to be actively involved in the lives of their children so they can answer questions. This also means parenting in a way that doesn't condemn the child needlessly - condemnation is a sure strategy to ensure that the child won't approach their parents for help or with their questions.<p>Also some tips:<p>1. Set an example on appropriate use of social media. Doom scrolling on Tiktok and instagram in front of children is setting a bad example. Some housekeeping on personal behaviours will have a run on effect.<p>2. If they have social media accounts the algorithm is at some point going to recommend them to you. Be vigilant, but also handle the situation appropriately, jumping to condemnation just makes the child better at hiding their activity.<p>3. Don't post photos of your children online. It's not just an invasion of their privacy, but pedophile groups are known to collect, categorise and share even seemingly benign photos.<p>1. <a href="https://globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/digital-threats/tiktok-directs-13-year-olds-to-porn/" rel="nofollow">https://globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/digital-threats/tikto...</a>
The government can't make parents not be bad parents.
Okay, but just blocking content isn't much better than being unengaged, in the long term. They will get exposed anyway, if only from a friend (whose parents are unengaged and lazy) who has no restrictions on their phone. The important thing is to teach and train media skills. Teaching an understanding that comment sections are cesspools and amplify negative feedback. Teaching that people flame because it's so much easier than keeping silent, or putting in the thought to say something useful. Teaching that there are truly horrendous things on the Internet.
That's exactly my point. They are likely to get exposed to the worst of the internet at a significantly younger age than they will have the maturity and experience to handle (and younger than I can have any hope of trying to coach them in), all thanks to parents who give young kids (I'm talking 8 and younger) smartphones to keep them quiet.<p>My oldest girl is 5. She's already very aware that other kids in her class have access to tablets and phones. How on earth do I responsibly explain to her the dangers? I have enough trouble asking her to get dressed and keep her nappy dry at night.
in all seriousness, what do you fear?
Abusive online relationships.
An attention-suck that I can't handle as an adult, with the corresponding lack of development of other life skills that I consider essential to a successful and fulfilled life.<p>I say "I consider", because skills self-evidently essential to a good life (emotional regulation, focus and attention span, ability to read other people's emotional states, effective communication, physical skills) are increasingly not generally considered that way.
in terms of speech development, TV was found to be a massive benefit in increasing vocabulary - how are you so sure the internet (nebulously defined as that is) is detrimental to communication abilities, arent they on there talking to their friends?. And if we are talking about the internet in general and not just twitter/tiktok, then its largely NOT doomscrolling and ragebait. Hackernews (heck, every single news organisation EVER) has an "algorithm" for "increasing engagement", books are written to increase engagement, its been going on for centuries but only since social media appeared do we suddenly dislike it.
> TV was found to be a massive benefit in increasing vocabulary<p>By who, and for who? My kids (ages 5+7) watch significantly less TV than their peers (as well as currently almost zero internet access), and are frequently complimented on their command of vocabulary and ability to express themselves.<p>>And if we are talking about the internet in general and not just twitter/tiktok, then its largely NOT doomscrolling and ragebait.<p>By amount of time that people spend on the internet, it is <i>mostly</i> doomscrolling and ragebait. If only we could take that part of it away.
>By who, and for who?<p>ages 0-6, increased vocabulary with increased screen time <a href="https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cdev.13927" rel="nofollow">https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cdev.13927</a><p>> My kids (ages 5+7) watch significantly less TV than their peers (as well as currently almost zero internet access), and are frequently complimented on their command of vocabulary and ability to express themselves.<p>Compliments are nice I suppose, but theyre a poor metric when regarding vocabulary size.<p>> By amount of time that people spend on the internet, it is mostly doomscrolling and ragebait. If only we could take that part of it away.<p>"most" people I assume doesnt include you? Youre too smart to fall for it, obviously.
Have you read the paper you linked? It indicates <i>at best</i> a slightly positive outcome on average, with many caveats (video is worse, the younger the kid the worse the effect, removing educational content results in a negative correlation, etc). It also links to another metastudy that covers a larger age range, and indicates a <i>negative</i> correlation.<p>>theyre a poor metric when regarding vocabulary size.<p>I'm talking about school reports, among other things.<p>>"most" people I assume doesnt include you? Youre too smart to fall for it, obviously.<p>It's something I struggle with daily, and have put a lot of thought into what I want from my use of online technology. Eg, I don't have a smartphone. How can a kid be expected to make good choices if I can't?
>It indicates at best a slightly positive outcome on average<p>Follow the science bud. The science is telling you to give them screentime<p>>I'm talking about school reports, among other things.<p>well yeah, you are now.<p>> It's something I struggle with daily,<p>this actually explains a lot
> <i>From my perspective more damage has been wrought to British culture by the Disneyification of Winnie-the-Pooh (big fan of EH Shephard here) than by 4Chan.</i><p>Here here!<p>None of what Labour are doing makes sense to me from a <i>"tHinK oF tHE cHilDreN!!"</i> perspective because it's so easy to get round with a VPN.<p>It's far more plausible, to me anyway, that's it's really a push to remove anonymity for online activity.<p>The chances they eventually enforce the usage of their new Digital ID as the sole form of acceptable age verification in the UK seem pretty high.
Ofcom is lucky that their threats are hollow. They're like the little dog protected by a fence taunting the much larger dog from their safe position.
You'll forgive us if we take American protestations about freedom of speech with a pinch of salt for a while, I hope.<p>Because the time is fast coming when countries around the world will have to start banning regime-aligned US businesses from operating in their borders full stop; protecting children is going to look like a quaint concern.
Am I missing something here? 4chan is available in the UK so has to follow UK laws there, where is the problem? Regardless of whatever it is they are enforcing.
Here's an example demonstrating why this is insane:<p>Suppose North Korea sends you a letter demanding that you take down a blog post joking about Kim Jong-un being chubby, because that's illegal in North Korea. Do you feel obligated to comply with that demand? After all, your blog could possibly be read by someone in North Korea.<p>I don't have anything against the UK. They've been our good buddies since a spat we had a couple hundred years ago. But I feel every bit as obligated to follow UK law as to obey North Korean law, which is to say, not at all.
4chan, the owner/company, does not operate out of the UK. It’s a US company. They are only bound to US laws.<p>Just because UK internet users are able to establish a network connection to 4chan’s server via ISP peering agreements does not mean 4chan are subject to UK law.
This is the right framing. No site, including 4chan, is forcing their content on innocent Brits. The only way people in the UK see 4chan is by proactively establishing a connection to the site and requesting the download of data. Those users, not 4chan, are the active agents. If the UK government wants to control what its subjects request online, they should pass laws regulating that behavior.
As long as 4chan sells 4chan passes to UK citizens, they do business in the UK. They sell using crypto so there's not much for the UK to go after, but they do more than just "be available".
Two counter points. First, crypto is not part of the UK government's financial systems or institutions. They don't automatically hold jurisdiction over all crypto transactions, or more specifically, crypto service providers.<p>Second, again, 4chan does not operate in the UK. If someone in the UK purchases a 4chan pass, they have electronically transmitted their "money" over to the US to buy it. I would compare this to a UK citizen flying over to the US and buying a ticket, and bringing it back with them to the UK.<p>It's very clear, 4chan did not perform any business or transactions within UK jurisdiction.
Great! If this is so, then you should be able to prove that UK citizens are using crypto to purchase their services and that 4chan is expressly aware of this fact. I'm sure this proof will be forthcoming presently...
I think if the UK wants to operate on such an assumption, they should move to national firewall with a whitelist model rather than a blacklist.
4chan is <i>available</i>. As far as I know, it is not operated in the UK. If anything, it is the UK-based user that is acting unlawfully. If the UK wants to block 4chan, it is free to do so.
the same is starting to happen with porn in many US states now.
It's fourth decade of WWW and the governments still haven't figured anything better than applying their sovereignty globally.
It seems to me the UK isn’t all that aware of just how gone are the days of the British Empire. I can imagine the OSA being somewhat relevant internationally in the pre-handover days, but not today.
Parliament can make any law.
From <a href="https://prestonbyrne.com/2025/10/16/the-ofcom-files/" rel="nofollow">https://prestonbyrne.com/2025/10/16/the-ofcom-files/</a><p>> consistent with the UK legal doctrine known as parliamentary supremacy, which holds that the UK Parliament has theoretically unlimited power<p>This is also true in Canada for the most part, while in theory with the adoption of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms as part of the Constitution Act, 1982. This Act prescribes that “the Constitution of Canada is the supreme law of Canada” (s.52), Thus constitutional supremacy replaced Parliamentary supremacy in Canada, in reality, the parliament can invoke s. 33 of the Charter, the notwithstanding clause, allows Parliament and the provincial legislatures to override certain provisions of the Charter, Canadian legislatures are still partially supreme. Which means the law can stand even if it violates those rights. This clause, which can only be used for a five-year term that is renewable, applies to specific sections of the Charter, including fundamental freedoms, legal rights, and equality rights, but not democratic, mobility, or Aboriginal rights.
Just reading the first correspondence from Ofcom and this section in particular:<p>> What should I do if there is confidential information in my
response?<p>> You must provide all the information requested, even if you consider that the information, or any
part of it, is confidential (for example, because of its commercial sensitivity).<p>> If you consider that any of the information you are required to provide is confidential, you should
clearly identify the relevant information and explain in writing your reasons for considering it
confidential (for example, the reasons why you consider disclosure of the information will seriously
and prejudicially affect the interests of your business, a third party or the private affairs of an
individual. You may find it helpful to do this in a separate document marked ‘confidential
information’<p>> Ofcom will take into account any claims that information should be considered confidential.
However, it is for Ofcom to decide what is or is not confidential, taking into account any relevant
common law and statutory definitions. We do not accept unjustified or unsubstantiated claims of
confidentiality. Blanket claims of confidentiality covering entire documents or types of information
are also unhelpful and will rarely be accepted. For example, we would expect stakeholders to consider whether the fact of the document’s existence or particular elements of the document (e.g. its title or metadata such as to/from/date/subject or other specific content) are not confidential. You should therefore identify specific words, numbers, phrases or pieces of information you consider to be confidential. You may also find it helpful to categorise your explanations as Category A, Category B etc<p>> Any confidential information provided to Ofcom is subject to restrictions on its further disclosure
under the common law of confidence. In many cases, information provided to Ofcom is also subject
to statutory restrictions relating to the disclosure of that information (regardless of whether that
information is confidential information). For this reason, we do not generally consider it necessary to
sign non-disclosure agreements. Our general approach to the disclosure of information is set out
below.<p>> For the avoidance of doubt, you are not required to provide information that is legally privileged and
you can redact specific parts of documents that are legally privileged. However, where you withhold
information on the basis that it is privileged you should provide Ofcom with a summary of the nature
of the information and an explanation of why you consider it to be privileged. Please note that just
because an email is sent to or from a legal adviser does not mean it is necessarily a legally privileged
communication. Further information is available in paragraph 3.18 of our Online Safety Information
Powers Guidance.<p>So ofcom's position is:<p>We want your data, you will give us your data, the GDPR does not apply to you, and if it does, we will decide whether it does. You must explain yourself to us. You must not redact anything. Even if you think you can redact anything (you know, because GDPR) you cannot redact anything. The GDPR and data protection laws do not apply because we have said so. You are required to break confidentiality agreements. We will not sign an NDA because we do not need to and we will not justify ourselves to you in any way shape or form.<p>We are the UK, and therefore, because we asked you to, you will comply with our every demand, whim and whimper. Otherwise we will continue to send strongly worded emails.<p>And fine you. And block you. Because that's the only thing we can do. And you best not advertise VPN's or we'll...Send another sternly worded email!<p>Good job UK!<p>(I cannot see how that paragraph is in any way legal, it must break the EU/UK's data protection laws in trying to compel disclosure of third party data. I cannot see any court in the UK ever upholding that paragraph if legally challenged as it's way above Ofcom's remit to be demanding confidential data. In any case, they should absolutely be required to sign NDA's)
Ofcom does know that they're dealing with 4chan, right?<p>Ultimately all of these sorts of regulations rely on people feeling the need to comply. 4chan feels no needs, least of all to comply.<p>It's the immovable object of online forums. It has not encountered a true unstoppable force. I doubt it ever will.<p>If they want it "gone" they'll have to both block it at the infrastructure level leading into the country <i>and</i> keep people from using internet infrastructure that isn't subject to these blocks from within the UK. That's... not really possible.
Ofcom is simply doing their job. I doubt they care about the users of 4chan. They will fine the company in accordance to UK law. Then if the company does not comply Ofcom will target their advertisers and it's Japanese owner who lives in France as well as having UK ISPs block 4chan. I can't think of any reason as to why France wouldn't work with UK authorities on this.<p>Contrary to HN and other USA tech forums might think, this will likely be recieved favorable by the the UK public.
For France to be legally able to give a shit Ofcom would need to go to court in the UK, pierce the corporate veil, and receive a final judgment against the owner of 4chan. Only then would they have some routes to petition French authorities for assistance.<p>There's no agreement between the UK and France that would require or even permit French authorities to enforce fines by a some random UK entity willy-nilly.
The UK law is stupid, but they have every right to regulate content in their own country. Just because a business operates in another country does not release it from obligations in other countries where they operate.<p>4chan, like any company is free to withdraw their business if they do not agree with the laws there.<p>This is how every law works in every country for every type of business.
I'd like for someone to do a parental rights case at the ECHR against this, e.g. by claiming that according to their religion and traditional culture kids in their teens should be getting into contact with porn, snuff and the like, and that they as parents have a right to transfer this to their kids.
It seems the once "Great" Britain cannot let go of its grandiose delusions of ruling over and "civilizing" the entire known world.<p>I've always held onto the suspicion that the distinction between left-wing and right-wing social views is more aesthetic than philosophical. All you have to do is tell a leftist "no", and they turn into everything they hate about their parents.
Cheers, UK.
We settled this in 1776. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolutionary_War" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolutionary_War</a>
Some people see this as comedic, but government bureaucrats and politicians have always had a sucking desire for control over our lives. They will keep pushing until all of us are in strait jackets living in a nightmare.<p>We must resist and do everything we can to shrink government power and grow our personal rights and freedoms.
I wish there was a mandatory 4 yr degree for prospective politicians whose syllabus was designed by the UN or something.
Lol. Here's my policy. I declare my extra-territorial effect. Because your house is not my territory, it's mine now.
I bought a 4chan pass today just to support the effort. If there's ever a hornets nest you don't want to fuck with it's 4chan and i can't imagine a better poking stick than ofcom.
<i>If there's ever a hornets nest you don't want to fuck with it's 4chan</i><p>That certainly used to be the case <i>pre-2012</i>. All the former hactivists have long since left. <i>marriage, kids, real life, etc...</i> Now it's mostly handfuls of edgy boys on cell phones in school and 4chan-GPT creating and responding to threads. I wish I were wrong. The site went mostly dead for about two weeks when USAID was defunded and had to shift funding sources then all the usual re-re-re-re-re-posted topics in /g/ returned. Some of them are on this site too <i>... inb4 they reply</i>. Adding to this now the general public have the real names, IP addresses and locations of all the moderators so they are less likely to participate in doxxing.<p>There was a quote, <i>"4chan is where smart people go to act stupid, facebook/reddit is where stupid people go to act smart"</i>. That probably needs to be updated.
idk, 4chan still can have the highest quality of technical conversation (at least on ML) outside of twitter/X —- and yes, that’s including HN. it’s where the llama & mistral weights were leaked
4chan was funded by USAID? Is this an in-joke?
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the rasion d'etre of 4chan can probably be discussed forever, but i can't imagine donating money to such a vile, hate-filled platform. surely there are better causes fighting for the same things, right?<p>i know, freedom of speech, it's your money and not mine, etc.
Whose hate filled platform? Is there proof mods push general threads or curate content? If the "hate" is legit perspectives from the populous then its important. Reddit is highly curated and far more echoey than 4chan. Never seen pro-Jesus/Islam threads on main page of Reddit. 4chan has them all the time on multiple boards.
I think the general curation by some mods is less pushing some agenda, more just enabling the shitposters they're friends with at the cost of genuine discussion.<p>Least thats what happened with a scene I'm rather involved in, the threads in recent years became nothing but a cesspool of negativity and most people knew who was behind the constant drama. What people didnt expect was the leak revealed one of the mods was among the group constantly causing it.
> Is there proof mods push general threads or curate content?<p>how does this relate to what i said? i get the "we're a free platform where everyone can do everything and no one is responsible for anything", just a cheap excuse from my POV considering the unhinged, doxxy culture on there. sure, there are cute boards, nice. i am talking about the inhumane, unhinged slurry of shit.<p>"Sure my neighbour has a couple of cadavres in his cellar, but have you seen the pretty flowers on his balcony?"<p>but per usual you can't criticize 4chan in the slightest without its warriors appearing to defend it. i get it. 4chan did and does cool stuff. it also does absolutely disgusting things, surprisingly this always gets dismissed as 'it's only the couple of rogue boards which are crazy'.
'Hate!? on 4chan!? That's absurd!' /s
4chan isn't all /b/ and /pol/. /g/ the technology board can be a very interesting place. And its Members often create technology that absolutely suprises me. Just recently we started an effort to retake the usenet and are actively repopulating alt.cyberpunk.tech with genuine good discussions.
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> 4chan isn't all /b/ and /pol/<p>maybe this is my bias, could very well be. maybe i should give it a 10th chance and browse the more useful boards.<p>i guess /g/ would be a start, do you have other recommendations? i mean i'm open to change my mind. for me 4chan stands for alt-right pipelines, spreading far-right ideology online etc., so i just really have a sour taste in my mouth when thinking about it.
why do so many people think 4chan is the same site it was 10 years ago? modern 4chan is just another reddit.
I agree on some notions, theres little original content or discussion, theres little creativity.<p>Most threads still get plagued by a circlejerk of wannabe neonazis repeating shibboleths and transphobia at each other ad infinitum, or if you're lucky enough you find a crumb of quality discussion, often generals, often around derivative content from other platforms or popular media.<p>There are the rare productive generals that do have people curating information in meaningful ways, or even rarer actually doing things themselves. Far more often generals are just toxic loosely held together "friend" circles who cant get along anywhere else due to a perpetual veil of irony that can only survive in anonymous spaces, often attacking each other for little more than to stir the pot and keep conversation going.
They'll still hold a superiority complex over their use of the site even though every single bad thing they'll say about others can be said for 4chan times 10.<p>Its not 2006 anymore, 4chan isnt a creator of internet culture, 4chan is a dumpster of the web, where art goes to die.
One man’s hate is another man’s love.
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"Irony is overwhelming" does not appear within the article; should be removed from the title here.
I hate the Ofcom and the clowns that pass for British government.<p>But I can see how this argument would make sense in the retarded mind of a lawyer. The first amendment doesn't give people rights: people already have those rights. Instead, the first amendment constrains the power of the US government to infringe upon those rights. It doesn't constrain the power of any other government.