[HN Gopher] 4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence
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4Chan Lawyer publishes Ofcom correspondence
Author : alecmuffett
Score : 301 points
Date : 2025-10-17 07:31 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (alecmuffett.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (alecmuffett.com)
| ridruejo wrote:
| This is a really well-written article. The whole thing is so
| absurd and this makes it so clear.
| cdfsdsadsa wrote:
| FWIW I agree with the intent of the Act, and am generally in
| favour of a sovereign firewall.
|
| 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?
| probably_wrong wrote:
| Right now you're downvoted for expressing an opinion that I
| believe deserves a deeper discussion.
|
| 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.
| oytis wrote:
| 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?
| cdfsdsadsa wrote:
| > Should we maybe focus on the more fundamental problem
| of our democracies being vulnerable to propaganda
| campaigns
|
| Step 1 is reduce your attack surface :) As a second
| point, democracies _are_ propaganda campaigns - it 's a
| feature, not a bug.
|
| 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.
| oytis wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| I think it is critical to keep in mind this second
| possibility even when the first threat seems more urgent.
| cdfsdsadsa wrote:
| There are entire political industries openly dedicated to
| swaying the undecided! It's a messy business, but that's
| what we have.
|
| 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.
|
| >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.
|
| 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.
| cdfsdsadsa wrote:
| >I don't want the government to decide which thoughts I can
| access and which ones I can't
|
| 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.
|
| >freely run undercover propaganda and/or destabilization
| campaigns
|
| 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.
| iamnothere wrote:
| > cultural and community self-regulation
|
| This is a very fancy way of saying "censorship".
|
| > 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.
|
| 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!
|
| If we are receiving all of the downsides of a liberal
| democracy without the benefits, what's the point anymore?
| ants_everywhere wrote:
| You have it backwards. Ideological conformity these days
| is enforced by creating the illusion that everyone around
| you is ideologically conforming.
|
| The question is: is there a defense against this?
|
| Your answer currently is there is no defense because
| creating an illusion of unanimous ideological conformity
| counts as an exchange of ideas and that exchange must not
| be hindered.
|
| The debate is over whether the right to conduct Sybil
| attacks is more precious than the right to freedom of
| thought. The question is vastly harder than many people
| in this thread seem to believe.
|
| My personal take is that the right to freedom of thought
| is more fundamental and that the value of freedom of
| speech is via its support for freedom of thought.
| stinkbeetle wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Who is we, and who won? What did they win?
| energy123 wrote:
| 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.
| tokai wrote:
| >The outcomes are manifestly bad.
|
| 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.
| energy123 wrote:
| The Internet Research Agency organizing multiple Black
| Lives Matter protests due to control over approximately
| 50% of the largest identity-based Facebook groups is just
| one small example on a long list of examples of social
| unrest and the consequential ushering in of sectarianism
| and destruction of democracy that the current status quo
| is enabling. The pro-freedom types do not even know this
| is happening let alone have any solutions to it. Turning
| a blind eye is all they have. So until they show an
| awareness of the existence of the issue I will be siding
| with the only people who have put any effort into
| addressing the problems.
| array_key_first wrote:
| Propaganda campaigns are one thing, but the reality is
| these laws target stupid ass shit like porn.
|
| Is that a made up problem? IMO: yes. That's a PARENT'S
| responsibility, not mine.
|
| There are legitimate arguments in favor of a national
| firewall. Nobody is making them.
| oytis wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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.
| Aachen wrote:
| Because it's about the free exchange of information, not
| another trade war
| cdfsdsadsa wrote:
| >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.
|
| 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.
|
| To put it bluntly, too many parents are too unenaged and lazy (or
| self-centered).
| vkazanov wrote:
| 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...
|
| Now it's just outright forbidden to have anything with a chat.
| And no Internet.
|
| The problem is that other 10 year old have mobiles, free PC
| access, etc, so there constant peer pressure.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| 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.
|
| At home measures are at best a delay, not a fix. What you
| _also_ 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.
| cdfsdsadsa wrote:
| 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.
| array_key_first wrote:
| You don't need a perfect fix.
|
| I'm sorry, but if you're threat model is your kid getting a
| fucking _burner phone_ , I don't know what to tell you.
|
| 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?
|
| 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.
|
| Your kid is way more likely to die in a car wreck. Focus on
| that or something.
| Woodi wrote:
| Some peoples are funny :) And there are parents ;)
|
| 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 ?
|
| 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 ?
| mkesper wrote:
| 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.
| vkazanov wrote:
| Grooming is exactly what scared the shit out of me in my
| kid's Discord. Teenagers promoting sex to children. Well
| these idiots at least have a hormonal excuse. But adults
| hanging out online with children and teenagers...
|
| I don't remember this in my late 90s LAN chats.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| 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.
| hdgvhicv wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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".
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > it would enforce optional controls for the bill payer,
|
| They do; in the UK, if you want to have access to porn, you
| need to tell your ISP and they will unblock it.
|
| 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.
| hdgvhicv wrote:
| In which case there is no need for anything else.
| est wrote:
| I have thought about this for a really, really long time.
|
| The conclusion is, it's a service problem, not a howto-block
| problem
|
| kid-friendly content is under supplied and often bad
| maintained.
|
| To quote GabeN: Piracy is almost always a service problem and
| not a pricing problem
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| How much would be enough supply, in your opinion? Because
| there is a lot, there is no shortage.
|
| But it's not forbidden or hidden away, so kids aren't curious
| about it.
| est wrote:
| > Because there is a lot, there is no shortage.
|
| Yes, but the problem is, many (if not most) of those
| content or services were created by adults and dispised by
| kids.
|
| pick one your kid's most interested topic, are there enough
| kid-friendly content/services that fulfills all the needs?
| eqvinox wrote:
| 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.
| cdfsdsadsa wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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.
| skeezyjefferson wrote:
| in all seriousness, what do you fear?
| cdfsdsadsa wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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.
| skeezyjefferson wrote:
| 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.
| cdfsdsadsa wrote:
| > TV was found to be a massive benefit in increasing
| vocabulary
|
| 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.
|
| >And if we are talking about the internet in general and
| not just twitter/tiktok, then its largely NOT
| doomscrolling and ragebait.
|
| 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.
| skeezyjefferson wrote:
| >By who, and for who?
|
| ages 0-6, increased vocabulary with increased screen time
| https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cdev.139
| 27
|
| > 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.
|
| Compliments are nice I suppose, but theyre a poor metric
| when regarding vocabulary size.
|
| > 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.
|
| "most" people I assume doesnt include you? Youre too
| smart to fall for it, obviously.
| cdfsdsadsa wrote:
| Have you read the paper you linked? It indicates _at
| best_ 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
| _negative_ correlation.
|
| >theyre a poor metric when regarding vocabulary size.
|
| I'm talking about school reports, among other things.
|
| >"most" people I assume doesnt include you? Youre too
| smart to fall for it, obviously.
|
| 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?
| skeezyjefferson wrote:
| >It indicates at best a slightly positive outcome on
| average
|
| Follow the science bud. The science is telling you to
| give them screentime
|
| >I'm talking about school reports, among other things.
|
| well yeah, you are now.
|
| > It's something I struggle with daily,
|
| this actually explains a lot
| willis936 wrote:
| The government can't make parents not be bad parents.
| quitit wrote:
| I believe it should be a layered approach.
|
| 1. Educate children about bad actors and scams. (We already do
| this in off-line contexts.)
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| 4. Schools should not permit phone use during school time
| (enforced in numerous regions already.)
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| and the big one:
|
| 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.
|
| Also some tips:
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| 1. https://globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/digital-
| threats/tikto...
| oytis wrote:
| It's fourth decade of WWW and the governments still haven't
| figured anything better than applying their sovereignty globally.
| spuz wrote:
| 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.
| IlikeKitties wrote:
| 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.
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| 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?
|
| i know, freedom of speech, it's your money and not mine, etc.
| janwl wrote:
| One man's hate is another man's love.
| tronicjester wrote:
| 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.
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| > Is there proof mods push general threads or curate
| content?
|
| 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.
|
| "Sure my neighbour has a couple of cadavres in his cellar,
| but have you seen the pretty flowers on his balcony?"
|
| 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'.
| IlikeKitties wrote:
| To say 4chan isn't a cesspit of racism, mysogony, anti-
| semitism and disgusting content would be a lie. But the
| same is true for twitter and people buy their blue
| checkmarks there all the time.
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| > the same is true for twitter
|
| i agree :)
|
| > people buy their blue checkmarks there all the time
|
| sadly, yes.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| weird how all the despicable awful platforms are simply
| the ones with the least amount of editorial oversight
| from on high
| JokerDan wrote:
| Not sure on this one, Reddit is arguably the worst place
| on the internet and has a lot of oversight, is heavily
| curated. Part of the reason it is so bad in fact. The
| pendulum just swings the other way compared to X and
| 4chan.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| In the 3rd world twitter rage baiting is now a career.
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| 'Hate!? on 4chan!? That's absurd!' /s
| miladyincontrol wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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.
| IlikeKitties wrote:
| 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.
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| > 4chan isn't all /b/ and /pol/
|
| maybe this is my bias, could very well be. maybe i should
| give it a 10th chance and browse the more useful boards.
|
| 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.
| tokai wrote:
| /pol/ was a containment board for Stormfront users. The
| site is super pluralistic. But don't force yourself to go
| to a place you don't want to go.
| krapp wrote:
| There's no such thing as a "containment board." Nothing
| actually gets contained.
| IlikeKitties wrote:
| They're correct though, that was /pol/s origin story.
| That Containment worked roughly as well as the one in
| Chernobyl though.
| EarlKing wrote:
| Objection: The Chernobyl containment building generally
| speaking does its job. /pol/, on the other hand, leaks
| like an incontinent old man in a retirement home.
| "Containment" only works if you have jannies that
| actually sweep it up. 4chan, much like Voat, suffers a
| problem of people spamming up boards and threads with
| unrelated crap that is ostensibly supposed to be kept to
| other boards/threads (like /pol/). The reputation they
| have is a consequence of that unmanageability (just like
| Voat ultimately suffered from when they embraced Reddit's
| cast-offs and suddenly had people talking about
| "shitskins" and "day of the rope" everywhere).
| IlikeKitties wrote:
| > Objection: The Chernobyl containment building generally
| speaking does its job.
|
| The Sarcophagus and the new containment building sure, I
| meant the original one before the accident.
| trallnag wrote:
| You want to me share all the IP addresses I've got banned
| on for posting stuff on /g/, /sp/, and /int/? There's
| definitely some level of containment going on. Be it
| pornography, politics, or gore.
| BergAndCo wrote:
| why do so many people think 4chan is the same site it was 10
| years ago? modern 4chan is just another reddit.
| miladyincontrol wrote:
| I agree on some notions, theres little original content or
| discussion, theres little creativity.
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| Its not 2006 anymore, 4chan isnt a creator of internet
| culture, 4chan is a dumpster of the web, where art goes to
| die.
| Bender wrote:
| _If there 's ever a hornets nest you don't want to fuck with
| it's 4chan_
|
| That certainly used to be the case _pre-2012_. All the former
| hactivists have long since left. _marriage, kids, real life,
| etc..._ 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 _... inb4 they
| reply_. 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.
|
| There was a quote, _" 4chan is where smart people go to act
| stupid, facebook/reddit is where stupid people go to act
| smart"_. That probably needs to be updated.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| 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
| Bender wrote:
| Yeah don't get me wrong, once in a while something
| interesting is posted. Any time something is said in
| corporate media to be leaked that is the first ClearWeb
| site I check to see if someone has posted to a paste/git
| site.
| mmooss wrote:
| 4chan was funded by USAID? Is this an in-joke?
| Bender wrote:
| _4chan was funded by USAID? Is this an in-joke?_
|
| I never said that. USAID manipulate narratives on all
| popular multimedia and social media sites. Anyone may post
| on 4chan and anyone with a 4chan-pass may use proxies and
| VPN's.
| mmooss wrote:
| > USAID manipulate narratives on all popular multimedia
| and social media sites.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised to read that on 4chan, but on HN
| ... we need some credible citations. :)
| Bender wrote:
| Some of the text and PDF's by congress discuss some of
| the findings but there are other sites that reported on
| it in the last couple years. [1] Some documents try to
| justify it [2]. There are countless more documents,
| mostly in PDF form because people can't HTML for whatever
| reason. Just use "site:.gov usaid 4chan" on Google. I
| have more of them bookmarked on my workstation. There are
| also disinformation documents to counter every document.
| If this sounds like conspiracies I have some rabbit holes
| for you. Start with DHS and the Ministry of Truth.
|
| Speaking of misinformation, there are efforts to suggest
| USAID is actually US AID inferring they are some type of
| AID organization including putting "AID" in a different
| color in their logo. A few times a year they contribute
| small amounts of resources so they can get away with
| saying it but they are actually the United States Agency
| for International Development [3] originally meant to
| sway public opinion in other nations but started
| targeting people in the USA and its allies.
|
| I think the take-away is that everything on the internet
| including references and citations are probably
| misinformation of misinformation of misinformation. I
| have sympathy for AI trying to ingest all of it.
|
| [1] - https://unherd.com/newsroom/documents-reveal-us-
| government-a...
|
| [2] - https://docs.house.gov/meetings/FA/FA14/20190521/10
| 9537/HHRG...
|
| [3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Agency_
| for_Inter...
| epanchin wrote:
| Is there a solution where we can compel parental control to be
| enabled by default on kids phones?
|
| That would seem to be least intrusive option.
|
| 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.
| cedws wrote:
| I hate that the internet is being destroyed in the name of iPad
| kids
| HPsquared wrote:
| 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.
| pr337h4m wrote:
| This would enable/catalyze an order of magnitude more child
| abuse than anything that can happen on the worst cesspits of
| the internet.
| HPsquared wrote:
| I don't see how a content blocker would do that.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Why Apple Intelligence when screen recording has been a
| feature for parental control systems for ages?
| HPsquared wrote:
| I mean a classifier to identify anything that looks sus.
|
| Edit: also something like this needs deep OS integration.
| Bender wrote:
| 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 _user-generated content_ 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 _" movie
| player"_ but small children on locked down tablets would be
| fine.
|
| [1] -
| https://www.rtalabel.org/index.php?content=howtofaq#single
| HPsquared wrote:
| That "unlabelled whack-a-mole" problem is exactly what a
| system-level visual classifier would block.
| Bender wrote:
| I am not sure what you mean. Are you saying a daemon
| would recognize a video player that is streaming porn
| from within a video game? Who is installing this daemon?
|
| A client checking for a header is more than sufficient to
| block small children from seeing porn and that is 100%
| more than we have today. No extra memory or CPU required
| _important on tablets or phones handed to children_. No
| privacy invasion by daemons or other third parties.
|
| Kid: _" Mommie they said go to pornhub.com for games but
| it ask for password"_
|
| Mom: _" Dumb trolls are picking on you, I will deal with
| them."_
| HPsquared wrote:
| The phone manufacturer. I don't think it would otherwise
| be possible without root. And it's quite a
| computationally heavy thing where security and privacy
| are important. It'd have to be secure (no sending
| information). That's why I suggested Apple, they have the
| vertical integration to do this kind of thing. In theory.
| Also it's a good counter to governments trying to censor
| the internet itself if children can be protected at the
| device level.
| Bender wrote:
| How about this. We implement RTA headers on the server
| and checks for the header on the clients, get little ones
| squared away and in parallel have Google and Apple start
| working on your local AI daemon. The header should take
| one code change cycle to get in place, maybe a couple
| weeks realistically assuming the goal posts are not on
| wheels.
| HPsquared wrote:
| But "we" are not in control of "the server". I agree
| though it's worth doing, adult content should be tagged
| as such. But it doesn't handle the case of non-
| compliance.
| Bender wrote:
| "We" are not in control of the server or phone client or
| tablet applications. Should the 5-eyes or 9-eyes
| countries pass a law to use RTA headers on servers and
| look for the header on user-agents that should suffice to
| get basic coverage for kiddos by default and parents can
| disable the checks if they so desire.
| smilingsun wrote:
| 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!
| user34283 wrote:
| If you do not use personalized advertising, I presume. Which
| may drop your ad revenue by somewhere between 20% and 60%.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| > 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.
|
| What's to stop that same kid to buy a porno dvd? Or to
| download a torrent of a porno? Or a porn magazine?
| xxs wrote:
| I suppose it'd be the same thing in the UK - kids cannot buy
| knives.
| alias_neo wrote:
| > Sure, but you'd need to apply it to all phones, because
| what's stopping a kid from buying an adult smartphone
|
| There's no need, that's already the case.
|
| 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.
| xethos wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Neither resident nor frequent visitor to the UK, so I'm
| behind the times when I ask: I beg your fucking pardon?
|
| 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?
|
| Furthermore, is this more common than I assume, and I
| simply don't notice because I don't stray too far from the
| mainstream?
| alias_neo wrote:
| > I beg your fucking pardon?
|
| Yep, my thoughts exactly when I first encountered it.
|
| > Is there further reading on this inane nanny-state
| horror
|
| 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.
|
| I suppose thanks to the OSA the old system is now
| history.
| joncrocks wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_
| Uni...
| Symbiote wrote:
| 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.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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.
| blue_cookeh wrote:
| 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.
| tryauuum wrote:
| disgusting
|
| my dream is when ISPs are allowed to sell this, but not
| allowed to call it internet access.
| scrlk wrote:
| UK mobile networks and ISPs have had age-restricted content
| filtering enabled by default since ~2013-14.
|
| This policy was pushed by David Cameron, who was the prime
| minister at the time:
|
| https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/the-internet-and-porn...
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23401076
| skeezyjefferson wrote:
| i love how screen time is only detrimental to young minds, and
| older minds are somehow immune to its evils.
| wiredfool wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| That's leaving out the jailbreaks that come from finding an
| app's unfiltered webview and getting an open web escape there.
|
| There's basically no reliable method for filtering even on
| locked down platforms.
|
| * 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.
| jfim wrote:
| It's totally doable to block YouTube with pihole, and also to
| make it blocked only on certain devices.
|
| 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$
|
| You can create groups and assign devices to them, and assign
| the block rules only to certain groups.
|
| 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.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| My kids figured out disabling Wifi disabled the Pihole
| within hours, and that was when they were ~9. They are
| intelligent opponents and a very fast moving target.
| jfim wrote:
| On Android, it's technically possible to use an always on
| VPN to still use pihole even when on cellular data, but
| unless there are some mdm controls on the phone, one can
| obviously disable the VPN.
| snthd wrote:
| Maybe they're called parental controls because they control
| the parents (by limiting and bundling choices).
| Terr_ wrote:
| > The tech is just not there to actually control what happens
| on a device.
|
| 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!
| MaKey wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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.
| mnmalst wrote:
| Or the website owner doesn't want to take the risk and ads a
| banner even if the site strictly doesn't need one.
| aveao wrote:
| that seems like an issue with the website owner to me
| reorder9695 wrote:
| A lot of websites for smaller businesses will not be run
| by technical people, they'll be run by business people or
| otherwise who don't understand cookies beyond "I see
| cookie banners on every website I visit, therefore to
| avoid legal trouble I need one too", you can't expect
| someone like that to understand the difference between
| tracking cookies and technical cookies.
| Aachen wrote:
| We're a small business, <10FTE, and have no cookie notice
| at all. We don't track people.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| There's no risk, they know what they are doing because the
| law doesn't just mandate the banner, it mandates you to
| know which third party service you're sharing the data to.
|
| Check the banner next time, you'll see how many "partners"
| they do sell your data to.
| ryandrake wrote:
| So when I see a tracking cookie dialog on a web site,
| either 1. the site collects more data than they need to in
| order to run the site or 2. they don't and the site's
| management is incompetent. Both are pretty good reasons to
| avoid that particular web site.
| kypro wrote:
| 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?
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
| alias_neo wrote:
| > then they could ship with filters enabled
|
| All mobile network connections already come with content
| filters enabled in the UK, adult or not, and has to be
| explicitly disabled.
| crtasm wrote:
| Yes but to be clear, using wifi or a VPN can bypass that.
| It's not an on-device filter.
| alias_neo wrote:
| Yes absolutely. It's at the service provider level.
| array_key_first wrote:
| Yes but wifi costs money - only adults have wifi. It's
| effectively already age restricted.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Is this a joke or reference I'm missing?
| array_key_first wrote:
| No it's not a joke at all.
|
| When you buy wifi, they already make sure you're an
| adult. They ask for proof of residence, you sign a
| contract. Children cannot buy wifi. Go ahead and try - no
| ISP is going to write a contract with a child.
|
| Wifi, like tobacco and alcohol, is already age
| restricted.
|
| The problem is the adults buying it then turn around and
| just... Hand it to children. That's not the fault of the
| law or society.
|
| Like, okay the store clerk might make sure when I buy a
| pack of menthols I'm of age. But if I just go home and
| hand my kid the pack of menthols, all bets are off.
| That's not the store clerks problem, he can't and won't
| get in trouble for that.
|
| Parents and establishments are being stupid here. Same
| applies for public wifi. Don't want kids to use it? Okay,
| give it a password, only tell the password to adults.
| Easy peasy.
|
| The law can't stop parents from being stupid.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > But if I just go home and hand my kid the pack of
| menthols, all bets are off. That's not the store clerks
| problem, he can't and won't get in trouble for that.
|
| But it is _society 's_ problem, and within society's
| capacity to attempt to manage.
|
| https://www.childline.org.uk/info-advice/you-your-
| body/drugs... says it's illegal to _give_ a child
| cigarettes, and the cops can confiscate them if you 're
| 16 or below.
|
| > The law can't stop parents from being stupid.
|
| Sure, but reality also often means smart, caring parents
| still can't stop kids from... being kids. I've lived in
| places where half a dozen public wifi hotspots were
| available; even if I didn't, chances are I'd have to let
| my kids on wifi for homework, on computers I don't have
| admin rights to because they come from the school.
|
| They can't go sign up for a new internet plan, but that's
| hardly required.
| array_key_first wrote:
| > But it is society's problem, and within society's
| capacity to attempt to manage.
|
| Sure, to an extent, but not really: we give parents a lot
| of freedom here.
|
| > Sure, but reality also often means smart, caring
| parents still can't stop kids from... being kids. I've
| lived in places where half a dozen public wifi hotspots
| were available; even if I didn't, chances are I'd have to
| let my kids on wifi for homework, on computers I don't
| have admin rights to because they come from the school.
|
| Okay, then lock down those networks. We don't need to
| lockdown the Internet as a whole.
|
| In reality, most of those networks already are locked
| down.
|
| Try searching up porn on, say, hotel wifi, it won't work.
|
| We already have the solution.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Try searching up porn on, say, hotel wifi, it won't
| work.
|
| I... very much doubt that.
| GardenLetter27 wrote:
| The cookie popups is such a painful representation of Europe
| tech in general.
|
| 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.
|
| But the legislators are completely tech illiterate and even the
| general public supports more interference and regulation.
| phba wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| > there is no need for government regulation here
|
| 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.
| npteljes wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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.
| james_in_the_uk wrote:
| It's a bit of both.
|
| It's not possible to rely on browser controls as-is, because
| they do not differentiate between necessary and optional
| cookies.
|
| Browser vendors _could_ agree standards and implement them,
| exposing these to users and advertisers in a friendly way.
|
| But they haven't shown any interest in doing this.
|
| I wonder why?
| mrguyorama wrote:
| 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"
|
| One of the hundreds of reasons do_not_track failed. You
| cannot do something that trusts the website operators,
| because they are egregiously untrustworthy.
|
| 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 _the regulators_ ,
| instead of the assholes asking you to consent to sharing
| your data with nearly a _thousand_ third parties
|
| 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.
| crtasm wrote:
| Install uBlock. In its settings: Filter Lists -> Cookie notices
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| 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 _all_
| that use them, and are even friendly enough to save that
| choice in one of the "necessary" cookies.
|
| 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!
|
| The banner is literally an attempt to FOMO you into accepting
| cookies you never need to accept!
|
| IMO the EU is somewhat in dereliction of Duty for not
| punishing cookie banner sites
| preisschild wrote:
| > Is there a solution where we can compel parental control to
| be enabled by default on kids phones?
|
| What do you mean? Parents can easily set this up before they
| give them to their children.
| HPsquared wrote:
| 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.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| That's what it seems like.
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| We already have hadrian's firewall blocking some piracy sites.
| tasuki wrote:
| > 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
|
| 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!
| pavlov wrote:
| 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.
| jojobas wrote:
| Yep, then and their German counterpart have many times asked
| Facebook to censor stuff for the entire world and they've
| complied every time.
| LordN00b wrote:
| 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.
| jojobas wrote:
| This case is more like UK bans selling cigarettes and tries
| going after a Parisian tobacconist.
| beardyw wrote:
| Yes if the Parisian tabaconist sells in the UK. What
| happens in France is a French concern.
| jojobas wrote:
| No, more like the Parisian tobacconist had the audacity
| to sell tobacco to some Brits without asking Ofcom.
| tpoacher wrote:
| yes, where said Brits were in Britain and the tobacco was
| shipped there.
| Palmik wrote:
| No, the tobacco was being served from France, the Brits
| used British pidgeon carriers to bring the tobacco to
| Britain.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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.
| foobarian wrote:
| Time to stand up Hadrian's Firewall!
| awesome_dude wrote:
| 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
| ibejoeb wrote:
| But what does successfully mean? An Australian court can
| rule on it, but Australia is going to have to take it up
| with US State from there. Or send the navy, I guess...
| fecal_henge wrote:
| I'm nearly at the point of saying that a tobacco sales
| isn't the best analogy here.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| I could be milk, right? Or a sheet of paper.
|
| 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.
|
| However, the thing about sovereignty is that you don't
| have it if you can't enforce it.
| tgv wrote:
| 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.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| You can argue that either way. It's not the best analogy.
| I extrapolate in another comment in this thread.
|
| 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.
| tremon wrote:
| _4chan brings their services into the UK_
|
| How exactly do they do that? Do they have peering
| agreements with UK-based ISPs?
| RHSeeger wrote:
| 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.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| 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.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| The US entertainment industry has a lot of weight to
| throw around.
| parliament32 wrote:
| 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.
|
| [1]
| https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/71209929/1/4chan-
| commun...
| ang_cire wrote:
| No, the ISPs who operate the ASes and routers that make
| up "the internet" are the ones who bring the service to
| the UK.
|
| 4chan does not reach out to UK users in any way, only
| responds to their incoming requests.
|
| 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.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| 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.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Which doesn't sounds so absurd if you replace "tobacco"
| with "cocaine" and "Parisian" with "Colombian".
| iamnothere wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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 _those_
| people, when of course _our_ extraterritorial laws are
| just fine.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| > 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.
|
| This has been happening long before the US started doing
| it.
|
| If anything, it's normalized in the US _because_ 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.
|
| 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 _exception_ , not
| norm, in history.
| yupyupyups wrote:
| >The net effect was people started to wonder why we
| bother with the inefficiencies of "rights" and "privacy".
|
| Who are these people you're talking about, tankies,
| faschists?
|
| 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.
| 8note wrote:
| 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.
| iamnothere wrote:
| Then the UK should just step up and pass a censorship
| law, not do this song-and-dance about fining businesses
| outside their control.
|
| 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 _might_ 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.
|
| 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.
| CaptainOfCoit wrote:
| Still sounds absurd to me.
|
| > UK bans selling cocaine in the UK and tries going after
| a Colombian cocaine dealer in Columbia.
| kemayo wrote:
| I'll neutrally note that this is why Trump is blowing up
| Venezuelan fishing boats currently:
| https://www.npr.org/2025/10/15/nx-s1-5575699/why-is-the-
| trum...
|
| (I'll less-neutrally note that this is also absurd, and
| probably criminal.)
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| They likely do not have a flag state and could be
| considered pirates. Fisherman dont have 100k worth of
| outboard motors either.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Which law allows the death penalty for allegedly
| transporting drugs?
|
| Shooting first and asking questions later is how we got
| into this mess of deporting us citizens.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Sections 105 and 108 of the United Nations Convention on
| the Law of the Sea allows any country to go after drug
| smugglers in international waters but it does require
| that a court in that country approve of the action. It's
| certainly worth questioning if a court can issue a
| preemptive ruling on a proposed action against alleged
| drug smugglers. There's also the issue that Maritime Law
| is weird, convoluted, and probably sanctions most state
| actions if you dig around enough.
| mothballed wrote:
| Both the US and Venezuela are non-parties to United
| Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
| lazide wrote:
| That is the war on drugs yes?
| knorker wrote:
| It does if the attempted enforcement is sending a notice
| of a fine to Pablo Escobar.
|
| Ok then, thank you, I'll file that demand as appropriate.
|
| Now if the UK sends warships to the country, ok. Good
| luck with sending warships to invade the US.
| binary132 wrote:
| Good reminder that what happens on the server stays on the
| server, but what happens on the client happens wherever the
| client is.
| morkalork wrote:
| The United States (eg. illegal gambling, hacking), South
| Korea (smoking cannabis abroad) and many other countries
| operate the same way.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > South Korea (smoking cannabis abroad)
|
| And gambling, too. Remember in 2013 when all those
| celebrities got busted for gambling in Macao?
|
| > After getting caught gambling illegally, Shinhwa's Andy,
| Boom and Yang Se Hyung received their punishments.
|
| > 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.
|
| > 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.
|
| > The three are all currently pulled out of all schedules
| and self-reflecting on their actions.
|
| > 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.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20140215040022/http://mwave.int
| e...
| morkalork wrote:
| There's also all the countries that have laws regarding
| sex-tourism abroad as well.
| kstrauser wrote:
| That's different in that it prosecutes citizens of those
| countries for things done outside their borders, not
| unrelated people doing things elsewhere.
|
| America will prosecute Americans for doing certain things
| that are illegal inside America outside its borders. As
| another example, if you take a boat to international
| waters and kill someone on it, you're going to get
| arrested and prosecuted when you get home.
|
| America will not arrest or prosecute someone from the UK
| visiting Thailand as a sex tourist.
| xp84 wrote:
| Ok, hypothetically though, and going back to the smoking
| in Paris law, if the UK banned smoking in Paris, and a
| French citizen proven to have smoked in Paris vacations
| in the UK, the only thing stopping the UK from
| prosecuting them is that it would be kinda "act-of-war-
| ish" to start imprisoning French citizens. Technically
| they could under their own law, they just wouldn't dare
| since they don't want to start a major diplomatic
| incident or war.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Once you're in another country's jurisdiction, all bets
| are off. You're subject to those laws, unless there's a
| treaty or similar saying that you're not. In another
| post, I mentioned writing nasty blog posts about Kim
| Jong-un. If you do that, it's probably a very bad idea to
| visit North Korea.
|
| In this case, the operator of 4Chan is free to blow off
| the UK's law. They may wish to account for that in future
| travel plans, though.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| This is why we are not travailing the US right now.
| kstrauser wrote:
| That's reasonable.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| This is also why a lot of people refuse to travel to the
| UK now.
| msh wrote:
| The US have done this a lot, luring "hackers" and other
| criminals to the US and then arresting them.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I declare categorically that UK law does not apply to me,
| here in California.
|
| _However_ , if I'm going to break one of their laws that
| they feel very strongly about, I'm probably not going to
| travel to the UK. That's just begging for something bad
| to happen. Why risk it?
|
| So in this case, if you know the US is looking for you,
| why, oh why, would you travel to the US?
| vintermann wrote:
| There are a few cases of claiming universal jurisdiction
| criminalizing what citizens of other countries do even
| outside the country, but that's generally things like
| crimes against humanity.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Boats are considered the territory of the flag state.
| tremon wrote:
| 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?
| BeetleB wrote:
| The equivalent is the US threatening to arrest the
| operators of those venues _when they set foot on US
| soil_.
|
| But in any case, this is different, as the US has only
| declared these activities as illegal _in the US_. They
| haven 't enacted laws saying you cannot gamble outside
| the US.
|
| 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.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Moreover, the US government can have you seized and
| brought to the US _without_ a treaty (or even _in
| violation of_ 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).
| wannadingo wrote:
| I think he is saying that once US citizens return to the
| US, then they will be arrested.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| 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.
| morkalork wrote:
| The USA has gone after gambling site operators in other
| countries, yes
| adolph wrote:
| > but may not arrest/fine until such criminal trespassers get
| off the ferry in UK
|
| 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].
|
| 0.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraterritorial_jurisdiction
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extradition
| jojobas wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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'.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > Kiwifarms stopped serving UK IPs, not because of fear of
| enforcement
|
| That's exactly what anyone wanting to save face would say
| though.
|
| > they don't anyone British jailed. The UK landing page
| straight up says 'use Tor'.
|
| 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).
| cft wrote:
| Can probably arrest the founder in Heathrow, like Durov's
| arrest in France.
| CaptainOfCoit wrote:
| > The Act expressly anticipates that it will have extra-
| territorial effect
|
| It also continues like this:
|
| > 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"
|
| 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?
| Hamuko wrote:
| > _Wouldn 't this mean that the Act only applies to services
| explicitly design/targeting UK users/visitors?_
|
| 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.
| piker wrote:
| 4chan.co.uk value decimated by this analysis
| yupyupyups wrote:
| Oh no!
| mikkupikku wrote:
| 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.
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| 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?
|
| 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.
|
| If the former, and considering the existence of a .uk
| TLD, they probably are considered to be "targeting" that
| market.
| Hamuko wrote:
| You get one automatically assigned based on GeoIP. It's
| even mentioned on Wikipedia.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki//pol/
| sensanaty wrote:
| That's only on /pol/ though, and it's based on GeoIP. No
| other board has flags other than complete meme ones like
| /int/
| fer wrote:
| Off topic, thread moved to /bant/ >>420694069
| 3abiton wrote:
| 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.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| 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.
| CaptainOfCoit wrote:
| Could you help a fellow out and translate what it actually
| means in plain language?
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| The duties extend to the use of the service in the UK.
| josefx wrote:
| But it doesn't seek to block 4chan, it seeks to impose
| penalties.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| Block is the only realistically imposable penalty in this
| case.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| 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.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| If non-payment of the fine became a criminal matter,
| would the operators of 4chan be at risk when leaving the
| US and entering a country willing to arrest them on
| behalf of the UK?
| 833 wrote:
| Blocking UK users from your service does not put you out of
| scope of OSA, according to Ofcom.
|
| 4 days ago:
|
| > "Services who choose to restrict access rather than
| protect UK users remain on our watchlist "
| lelandfe wrote:
| It is worth noting that the other sites swept up in this
| current batch have had their investigations closed by
| restricting, though.
|
| My read on "remain on our watchlist" was them monitoring
| for if that block lapses, etc.
|
| I do expect UK's internet insanity to reckon with VPNs
| sooner rather than later, though.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| Look at this page: https://www.4chan.org/advertise
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
| array_key_first wrote:
| Comply, leave, or fight the law if you think it's stupid.
|
| Lots of laws are stupid. If you think they're stupid, you're
| allowed to try to fight them.
| lazide wrote:
| 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.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| Yes, sure, they can fight the law - in UK. It's not what
| they are doing.
| vintermann wrote:
| 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.)
| FabCH wrote:
| Note, they don't earn money from users. They earn money from
| advertisers.
|
| 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.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| >Note, they don't earn money from users. They earn money
| from advertisers.
|
| 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.
| FabCH wrote:
| 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.
|
| The difference is significant.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| 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?
| mikkupikku wrote:
| 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.
| fer wrote:
| You can buy passes with a regular credit card
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Not these days. If you go through the process of buying
| one, crypto will be the only option given.
| topspin wrote:
| > It's just that this... legal authority... isn't quite
| enforceable outside the UK jurisdiction.
|
| That appears to be the widely held understanding in this
| particular case.
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| Have we not seen, and are we not seeing now, ample examples of
| similar abuses of power?
|
| So I see much of the rhetoric, and also this lawyer's
| flippancy, as naive. 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.
| cess11 wrote:
| 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.
| ntoskrnl_exe wrote:
| 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.
| aboringusername wrote:
| Just reading the first correspondence from Ofcom and this section
| in particular:
|
| > What should I do if there is confidential information in my
| response?
|
| > 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).
|
| > 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'
|
| > 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
|
| > 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.
|
| > 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.
|
| So ofcom's position is:
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| 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!
|
| Good job UK!
|
| (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)
| paxiongmap wrote:
| "The least bad thing that Ofcom and the Government could do is to
| quietly let the matter drop whilst focusing on education."
|
| 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.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >This generalises very well for all Government.
|
| The government shouldn't be dropping things. It should have the
| power to pick those things up in the first place.
|
| It's like a fishing stop. Even if you get off with a warning
| the whole interaction just shouldn't have happened.
| alt227 wrote:
| > education being about producing pliant workers over
| independent, thinking human beings.
|
| 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.
| EarlKing wrote:
| Generations of wave solder machines and pick-and-place
| machines beg to differ...
| crtasm wrote:
| "Irony is overwhelming" does not appear within the article;
| should be removed from the title here.
| dang wrote:
| Ok, we have removed irony from the title above.
| silexia wrote:
| 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.
|
| We must resist and do everything we can to shrink government
| power and grow our personal rights and freedoms.
| antisol wrote:
| This reminds me of when Australia tried to force twitter to block
| a video globally: https://news.rebekahbarnett.com.au/p/elon-musk-
| wins-latest-c...
|
| In one of the more enlightened things Elon has done in the last
| few years, he fought back, and he won.
|
| 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.
|
| Here's a fun sample of a totally unbiased article from the time:
| https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-20/elon-musk-reacts-to-e...
|
| 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.
| bn-l wrote:
| Oi, 'av you got yer internet loisence?
| jjangkke wrote:
| Jokes aside, what on earth is going on with the UK?
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
| robk wrote:
| Yep that sums it up. Scary.
| OvbiousError wrote:
| 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.
| treesknees wrote:
| 4chan, the owner/company, does not operate out of the UK. It's
| a US company. They are only bound to US laws.
|
| 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.
| patrickmay wrote:
| 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.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| 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".
| EarlKing wrote:
| 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...
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| 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.
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| The People's Republic of UK.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| 4chan is _available_. 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.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Here's an example demonstrating why this is insane:
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| Lol. Here's my policy. I declare my extra-territorial effect.
| Because your house is not my territory, it's mine now.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| Ofcom does know that they're dealing with 4chan, right?
|
| Ultimately all of these sorts of regulations rely on people
| feeling the need to comply. 4chan feels no needs, least of all to
| comply.
|
| It's the immovable object of online forums. It has not
| encountered a true unstoppable force. I doubt it ever will.
|
| If they want it "gone" they'll have to both block it at the
| infrastructure level leading into the country _and_ keep people
| from using internet infrastructure that isn 't subject to these
| blocks from within the UK. That's... not really possible.
| devjab wrote:
| 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.
|
| Contrary to HN and other USA tech forums might think, this will
| likely be recieved favorable by the the UK public.
| chmod775 wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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.
| ekjhgkejhgk wrote:
| I hate the Ofcom and the clowns that pass for British government.
|
| 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.
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| >The first amendment doesn't give people rights: people already
| have those rights.
|
| Says who? Prove it. Go to Russia and say something bad about
| the government and see how well this right you think you
| magically get holds up.
| icepat wrote:
| Regardless of if you agree with the US Constitution's
| perspective on self-evident rights, your point here does not
| negate what they said, simply indicates that the Russian
| government is not constrained in the same way the US
| government is.
| seanw444 wrote:
| Infringement on a right doesn't mean it doesn't exist. The
| perspective with which we look at rights vs. privileges
| matters in a society, so it's not just semantics.
| smlavine wrote:
| Says God, would say the framers.
| nairboon wrote:
| Says the amendment: "Congress shall make no law...."
|
| https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-1/
|
| Why would an US constitution amendment have any effect in
| Russia?
| ekjhgkejhgk wrote:
| Russia is completely irrelevant to the argument I presented.
| As a separate point, Russia is also a shithole which I refuse
| spending time thinking about.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| 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.
| hexbin010 wrote:
| 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
| whimsicalism wrote:
| 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.
| pessimizer wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| https://youtu.be/lJatJ-Hi2_s?t=66
|
| more recent: https://youtu.be/Hyn_VHtSU48?t=35
| lawlessone wrote:
| They probably made the mistake of assuming they had a
| reciprocal relationship.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/us-visa-polic...
| whimsicalism wrote:
| there is no 'right to enter America' and fwiw i seem to
| recall that the UK has a bad habit of banning American
| musicians for the content of their songs.
| chimprich wrote:
| Like the US's bad habit of banning British musicians for
| the content of their songs?
| https://edition.cnn.com/2025/06/30/uk/bob-vylan-uk-band-
| glas...
| whimsicalism wrote:
| seems like a reciprocal relationship to me. i'd also say
| the recent US stances are an aberration whereas the
| history of UK immigration policy is a better reflection
| of core governing principles.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >recent
|
| >aberration
|
| McCarthyism would like a word
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Chaplin#Limelight_a
| nd_...
| xbar wrote:
| Cheers, UK.
| throw7 wrote:
| 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.
| therein wrote:
| 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.
| NoiseBert69 wrote:
| Might up ending a big problem if your flight has to diverge
| to UK.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| And let's not forget governments all over the world will
| call in fake bomb threats to force planes to land to arrest
| passengers.
|
| And with a bit of effort, the UK could call on friendly
| countries for extradition (such as Canada). They'll have to
| convince the judge that the crime is bad enough for
| extradition, but I'm sure they can come up with something.
|
| It all depends on how much the UK really cares. In
| practice, this is probably just a big act by Ofcom so they
| can say "we've tried everything, we'll have to go for a
| full ISP-level block as a last resort".
| johndhi wrote:
| I'd think it would be allowed for UK to:
|
| 1. Tell 4chan or its registrar l to take down .co.uk urls
| (maybe?)
|
| 2. Tell UK ISPs to ban UK visitors from viewing 4chan
| i_am_jl wrote:
| They can, but they have to ask a court to enforce any sort of
| block. I imagine that's coming soon.
| lawlessone wrote:
| Now that you mention it, that's probably why they sent this
| letter. They know it's pointless but they want a paper trail
| to show they tried to find other solutions before requesting
| a block.
| themafia wrote:
| > Tell UK ISPs to ban UK visitors from viewing 4chan
|
| Too bad the UK public can't effectively tell Ofcom off.
| riazrizvi wrote:
| 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.
| Razengan wrote:
| Put anyone in charge of any space and they'll want to control
| what people say and think there.
|
| Hell look at HN and literally anywhere. Everybody has their own
| "ideal" world.
|
| I for instance don't want anybody talking shit about anime or
| video games ever.
| pureagave wrote:
| 100%. We need to look no further than what the US government
| tried to do to Twitter, YouTube and Facebook during the
| pandemic.
| Razengan wrote:
| And what they're doing to TikTok now
| bawolff wrote:
| Well yes, because those who don't quickly lose users due to
| bad signal-noise ratio
|
| When was the last time anyone visited an unmoderated usenet
| group?
| cft wrote:
| 4chan is well, moderated, but it's outlived Facebook with
| real names.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Did the government ever moderate usenet?
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| If speech in the U.K. was moderated like HN, the situation
| would be greatly improved.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I imagine you'll be saying this with tears flowing from
| your eyes after the UK blocks HN.
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| God forbid.
| ryeats wrote:
| Nope, just the Ministry of Truth, God doesn't even have
| to get involved.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| Until you get put in prison for reading out a headline
| wrong lol
| martin-t wrote:
| The evolution of governance of online communities mirrors
| that of the real-world.
|
| 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.
|
| I have online communities will transition into something
| resembling democracy where moderators are elected from
| members by members.
|
| ---
|
| 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.
|
| And of course, such positions attract people who want power
| for its own sake and who have agendas they want to push.
| mrkstu wrote:
| You vote for the moderation you like with your digital
| feet- see X vs BlueSky
| Razengan wrote:
| > _moderators in pretty much all online spaces are
| effectively dictators_
|
| This. How do 1-10 or 20 or even 100 people get the "right"
| to decide what millions of people talk about and see?
|
| What's keeping them from burying/boosting opinions about
| shit they have strong personal feelings about?
|
| Steve Huffman/Spez of Reddit literally edited users'
| comments, and they autoban anyone saying "Fuck Spez"
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >While HN is fairly lenient
|
| HN is _NOT_ 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.
|
| 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.
|
| And not politics unless it's positive towards the ideology
| of VCs
|
| 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.
|
| HN, like most places that are actually good to participate
| in, is a strict, tyrannical dictatorship that _usually_
| uses it 's powers to shape behavior towards "discussion",
| but what that means is entirely up to dang and now tomhow.
|
| 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.
|
| 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 _correct_ , they pick narratives that _feel the
| best_ and in the modern world, that is almost never the
| "correct" one. Brains hate nuance, but reality is nuanced.
|
| 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.
| mjr00 wrote:
| 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...
|
| HN has incredibly strict moderation, and to be clear,
| that's a _good_ thing. It keeps discussion in line and
| useful, for the most part.
|
| > 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.
|
| 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.
| pstuart wrote:
| 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.
| Razengan wrote:
| Oh please. Vote-based social networks are way too
| vulnerable to burying the truth and boosting lies.
|
| 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.
|
| And usually no amount of corrections can outshout a
| lie/mistake with 100+ votes.
| econ wrote:
| There has to be a better formula to design this game. It
| seems valuable enough to explore.
|
| It will be hard to design a formula that can only be
| gamed by making quality contributions.
|
| A quality discussion requires parties who disagree,
| exchange of ideas and facts and ideally some kind of
| eventual agreement.
|
| The hardest part is to make it enjoyable to use.
| SunshineTheCat wrote:
| 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.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Maybe a very elderly parent, trying to ground their adult
| child who they are now dependent on.
| busterarm wrote:
| As an adult child in such a situation, it's actually worse
| than a toddler...
| riazrizvi wrote:
| 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.
| watwut wrote:
| Under no circumstances should be US businesses treated as
| authorities. They are not mom nor should have any kind of
| leadership position.
| michaelt wrote:
| On the other hand, the limited size of the British market
| limits Parliament's ability to pressure foreign companies.
|
| 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.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Significantly less than 10%.
| Vespasian wrote:
| 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.
|
| The EU is big and rich enough to force Big Tech into
| submission under threat of loosing the market.
| riazrizvi wrote:
| 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.
| lofaszvanitt wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
| grayhatter wrote:
| > These slowly degrade societies, like it or not.
|
| So, thought crimes?
| lofaszvanitt wrote:
| Maybe think a bit more about it. Will be really hard
| since you are in your own bubble.
| jrflowers wrote:
| That's a lot of words to say yes
| 6r17 wrote:
| This is not reddit. I do not understand how such low
| hanging opinions are on this. There have been
| publications and tons of enactments from both govs,
| research labs, companies just sucking out every social
| media.
|
| It's not like we are not warning you, you have netflix,
| amazon, google, whatever you want - somehow pirating an
| American movie is an offense in Europe - but abiding by
| the same logic is not acceptable - same goes for Assange
| and Snowden - why the did we abide with American
| shenanigans if that's just one sided ?
|
| And are you getting ready for the turn-over ? Because all
| it takes is some mad politicians - alternatives - and I'm
| not sure the status quo is going to last while AI is
| booming - more than that - people are increasingly
| hostile to US and it seems it's going to continue this
| way if the toddler attitude is kept over.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| 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.
|
| Where I think they are going wrong is that they are trying to
| levy fines rather than just blocking the business.
|
| 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.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| The problem with relying on parents is that they're either
| reckless or simply unable to prevent the kids from smoking.
|
| By the time they're teenagers, it's pretty easy for them to
| access anything on the internet regardless of the controls
| implemented.
|
| 4chan is a cesspool, and society is worse off letting it
| fester, but you arn't solving this problem by "personal
| responsibility" of parents.
| mothballed wrote:
| 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.
| malfist wrote:
| Depends on the state. You absolutely cannot order alcohol
| online in Kentucky
| mothballed wrote:
| buywinesonline.com (random retailer I found) says they do
|
| Buy Wines Online currently does not ship alcohol to AL,
| MI, MS, UT, HI, AK
|
| Says it requires an "adult signature" but anyone who's
| signed for fedex/ups knows they don't check your ID. I
| can say, when I was in high school, they did not check...
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| I think smoking is a little different for a few reasons.
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| social media is clearly physically addictive. America's
| turned into a neonazi democracy partly because of this.
| exoverito wrote:
| Psychologically perhaps, but to say physically addictive
| is not precise.
|
| 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.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| 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.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| 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.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| > It is not possible to censor the internet when VPNs are
| freely available.
|
| The obvious next step is to ban VPNs too or to block
| connections to their servers.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| There are ways around this too. When the VPN entrance
| point is a static IP a ban may work but what happens when
| a product shows up that spins up dynamic VPSs in the
| public cloud? All the cloud providers have free trials
| that let people do this for free forever. Sounds
| difficult but surely people will come up with a
| streamlined approach if push comes to shove. Even in
| china where using a VPN is a major crime they are unable
| to stop people from using them.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| 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.
| James_K wrote:
| 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.
|
| I don't want any of these "services" thank you very much.
| Inflict them on your own people, not us.
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
| zettabomb wrote:
| 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.
| James_K wrote:
| Let me put this very simply to you: if I go to a country
| where the age of consent is 14 and start a business
| streaming child porn to America, I should be stopped from
| doing that. This is the same principle with a lesser
| offence.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| You will stopped from doing that by American law. The
| difference between this and that is that Ofcom believes
| it can regulate conduct that never touches British soil.
| Ofcom notably is not setting up a "great firewall," but
| instead sending takedown notices to websites about
| content that is already blocked from British IPs.
| jolmg wrote:
| > You will stopped from doing that by American law. The
| difference between this and that is that Ofcom believes
| it can regulate conduct that never touches British soil.
|
| You're showing yourself to believe that America can
| regulate conduct that never touches American soil.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| America won't go after you. America will go after
| Americans who access your site and American ISPs will
| block your site. That's not America regulating your
| behavior. You're still free to do whatever you want.
|
| If you enter America, there may also be consequences, but
| you don't need to enter America.
| jolmg wrote:
| > If you enter America, there may also be consequences
|
| That isn't much different. Say an adult American drinks
| alcohol in America; then they travel to a country where
| alcohol is illegal. Should they be prosecuted in that
| country for having drank in America?
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| > That isn't much different
|
| There's a world of difference here. Ofcom is claiming to
| be able to shut down an American website for content
| generated in America, stored in America, and shown only
| to Americans. There are no UK citizens in this chain at
| all. This sets up Ofcom as having global censorship
| authority even over content seen elsewhere.
|
| > Should they be prosecuted in that country for having
| drank in America?
|
| In my opinion, no, but some countries are hardasses about
| this. If you want to do things that are illegal in
| certain places, you should not plan on traveling to those
| places. Usually, they will just refuse you entry but you
| kind of do put yourself at their mercy if you touch their
| soil. This is how the world works.
| zettabomb wrote:
| I don't disagree at all. But it would then be the
| American government's job and responsibility to block
| this.
| hax0ron3 wrote:
| 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?
|
| 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.
| mothballed wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| 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.'
| James_K wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing
|
| 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.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| 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.
| James_K wrote:
| I bloody wish I could! Sadly, these things aren't up to
| me, and the companies involved would probably pay more
| bribes to your gangster president to get him to sanction
| our economy if we tried.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| The US has great relations with many countries that ban
| AirBnB or Uber. The reason they operate in your country
| is because the people in your country want them.
| HeckFeck wrote:
| 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.
| gchamonlive wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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.
| ok123456 wrote:
| It's a very simple problem to solve. Free speech is absolute.
| Anyone who claims otherwise is a temporarily embarrassed hall
| monitor.
| dathinab wrote:
| but it isn't absolute anywhere
|
| It's not absolute in the US because the US constitution
| only protects from the governmental limiting it, which
| means there is a lot of potential to effectively and fully
| legally limit free speech. And even the government gave
| itself a lot of limitations where through excuses and
| loopholes it can limit free speech (e.g. from teachers in
| public schools).
|
| Then there is the question of what even is "speech", in the
| us spending money can be an act of speech but wouldn't that
| make bribing an act of free speech even though it clearly
| shouldn't be legal?
|
| Should systematically harassing/mobbing people with the
| intent to drive them into suicide be protected by free
| speech? It's speech, but you would need to be a very cold
| hearted person to think that this shouldn't be a crime.
|
| Is leaking trade secrets free speech when you do it
| vocally? It would be strange if that where no crime but
| technically you do so by speech.
|
| What if you systematically rail up people with deep fakes
| and all kind of misinformation? Is that free speech? Before
| WW2 many intellectual would probably have argued that
| people aren't that easy to mass rail up and as such it
| should be free speech. But after Hitler gained power in
| exactly that way the position is more one of "if people
| systematic rail up the population and spreed misinformation
| en mass with the intend to overthrow the government" then
| letting them do that is pretty dump thing to do.
|
| So no "speech" not only is free speech not absolute, it's a
| pretty bad idea create absolute free speech protection. And
| both in small and large cases this has been proven again
| and again through history.
|
| This doesn't mean that censorship is right either.
|
| Like with everything in live "extremes" are close to never
| a good thing to peruse.
|
| Anyway you know what is even more embarrassing then being a
| hall way monitor, it's to never question your believes and
| insisting they are right even when its repeatedly shown to
| you that there seems to be some problem with them. But
| seriously, why edit you response to add an insult against
| anyone who doesn't share your opinion??
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > It's not absolute in the US because the US constitution
| only protects from the governmental limiting it, which
| means there is a lot of potential to effectively and
| fully legally limit free speech.
|
| That is not a limitation on free speech; it's a
| recognition of the right to free association.
| ok123456 wrote:
| "If people systematic rail up the population and spreed
| misinformation..." You mean like what western governments
| do daily to China?
| mmooss wrote:
| There are other limits: Fraud, slander, yelling fire in a
| movie theater, etc.
| pixl97 wrote:
| You're right, speech should not be limited... in fact I am
| telling everybody about the time you beat your wife and
| abused your kids. And I'm putting $100,000 in to
| advertising this all over the place and ensuring every
| forum is littered with this fact along with your name and
| address...
|
| Hopefully you see simple solutions come with their own
| complex problems.
| ok123456 wrote:
| That falls under libel laws, which is a civil tort. There
| isn't an administrative or ministerial apparatus fining
| you based on the presumption that you violated a speech
| code.
| jrflowers wrote:
| Exactly. Free speech is why there are no repercussions
| for posting people's credit card numbers
| Balinares wrote:
| So it's absolute until it's something you don't like.
| Gotcha.
| mothballed wrote:
| There have been some American thinkers like Murray
| Rothbard that argue for absolute free speech including
| threats and libel. It's true though that most Americans
| are absolutely full of shit as soon as you dig in the
| slightest on their views on free speech.
| Nevermark wrote:
| Free speech doesn't include the freedom to use speech to
| do illegal harms (that are themselves, not speech).
|
| In other words, "Speech + Offense" is prosecutable, for
| illegal "Offense".
|
| You don't get a hall pass to use speech to commit a
| crime, and not be culpable for the crime.
|
| Fraud, libel, harassment, giving false testimony in
| court, colluding with competitors to artificially
| increase prices, broadcasting a copyright work, signing
| your name (just your name!) to an illegal contract, etc.
| all may involve speech, but the offense is defined by the
| non-speech functional impact.
|
| Convincing someone to kill someone for you is not legal,
| because murder is not legal.
|
| People generally have to prove that the speech was
| intentionally or recklessly geared to cause harm to
| others.
|
| Although many cases may be clear, there isn't a
| mathematical separation between the two, so we have
| courts and precedence, and further reviews, as the
| practical means of drawing the line.
|
| And that is true for the vast majority of laws and
| rights.
| mothballed wrote:
| I don't think that's the case in the US. For instance, if
| you take a picture of a patient you are treating, go home
| and send that picture to your wife and say "treated this
| lady for syphilis today" you are violating HIPAA despite
| the fact you're telling 100% truth, conveying it
| privately with no expectation or desire it will ever
| impact the victim, and literally are only conveying it as
| information to be consumed and not acted on then it is
| still illegal.
| andrepd wrote:
| So it's not absolute?
| Flere-Imsaho wrote:
| Isn't this what Defamation laws protect against?
|
| "Free speech" doesn't mean it can't be challenged.
|
| /not a lawyer
| jenscow wrote:
| But if "free speech is absolute" then it can't be
| overridden by any other law.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| 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.
| kjellsbells wrote:
| Important correction:
|
| s/civil servants/lawmakers/g
|
| 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.
| mothballed wrote:
| 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.
| manquer wrote:
| The Chevron doctrine - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevro
| n_U.S.A.,_Inc._v._Natura....
|
| This concept in the U.S. is also evolving since 2024
| decision reducing the strength of this legal protection.
|
| 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.
|
| Civil servants always have a lot of say in direction of
| governance even if not directly enshrined in law or
| recognized by the court.
|
| 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.
| downrightmike wrote:
| 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.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| 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.
| qwertyuiop_ wrote:
| We settled this in 1776.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolutionary_War
| cosmicgadget wrote:
| From the attorney's post:
|
| > 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.
|
| Initially this seems like disrespect for another country's
| sovereignty. But really the crucial thing is:
|
| > We explained to the UK that the Online Safety Act had a
| snowball's chance in hell of being enforced in the United States
|
| Ofcom has to go through the motions of telling 4chan they can't
| smoke in Paris because of the (very on-brand) nanny law.
| PaulRobinson wrote:
| Not quite.
|
| 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
| [...]"
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| Are Ofcom claiming jurisdiction in the US? No, they're claiming
| jurisdiction in the UK. Which, I hasten to add _they are
| legally required to do by the Online Safety Act_ , by the
| government they are an agency of. If they didn't, the
| government would literally be breaking its own law.
|
| 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.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| 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.
| noAnswer wrote:
| They could follow the example of the Japans CP industrie
| and just geo-block everyone. That is at least honest.
| delfinom wrote:
| >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.
|
| 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.
| tamimio wrote:
| From https://prestonbyrne.com/2025/10/16/the-ofcom-files/
|
| > consistent with the UK legal doctrine known as parliamentary
| supremacy, which holds that the UK Parliament has theoretically
| unlimited power
|
| 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.
| fair_enough wrote:
| It seems the once "Great" Britain cannot let go of its grandiose
| delusions of ruling over and "civilizing" the entire known world.
|
| 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.
| 833 wrote:
| Ofcom said this four days ago:
|
| > "Services who choose to restrict access rather than protect UK
| users remain on our watchlist"
|
| 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?
|
| It is about power and control, and nothing else.
| maffyoo wrote:
| what happens if access is unrestricted from UK users and the
| content becomes available again. Reads to me that they will
| monitor sites to ensure this doesn't happen. Surely logical..
| tycho-newman wrote:
| Parliament can make any law.
| flumpcakes wrote:
| I think the premise of this is simple, and a lot of people seem
| to not be understanding this...
|
| 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.
|
| In practicality this law for the most part will just mean either
| websites block the UK or UK ISPs are forced to block websites.
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| > why wouldn't it have the power to hold that entity
| accountable?
|
| 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.
| flumpcakes wrote:
| It does have 'jurisdiction' because it applies to the
| citizens: it is offering a service to UK citizens.
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| I don't think this is a hard concept to grasp.
|
| 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.
| trothamel wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
| stickfigure wrote:
| Someone has to be willing to extradite. I'm sure China,
| Russia, and Iran would love to prosecute all those pesky
| political dissidents abroad.
|
| I'll be pretty shocked if someone ever gets extradited out
| of the US for not showing a cookie banner.
| flumpcakes wrote:
| I agree and in the majority of the cases 'enforcement' is
| usually just a block at the ISP level.
| knorker wrote:
| > why wouldn't it have the power to hold that entity
| accountable?
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| 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 _the US_ 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 _by US
| law_. Foreign laws will not get US constitution bypass unless
| the US constitution itself allows it.
|
| 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".
|
| What is the UK government going to do, send bobbies over to
| attack 4chan owners with nerve gas on US soil?
|
| 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?
|
| 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).
|
| 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.
|
| Also, from their reply:
|
| > 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.
|
| Why should parisians care? Why would France cooperate with
| enforcing such laws?
|
| If POTUS orders that taking $50k in cash as a bribe is not to
| be prosecuted, then you won't be prosecuted.
| globalnode wrote:
| I wish there was a mandatory 4 yr degree for prospective
| politicians whose syllabus was designed by the UN or something.
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