UK communications regulator confirms £20,000 4Chan fine

29 comments

1. They will never see this money.

   It’s symbolic at best, and will become evidence of how shambolic and toothless the act is overall…

2. 4chan’s response to the fine was probably a 500-page PDF of anime memes and racial slurs.

3. This fucking government is a joke lmao. They will never see that money.

4. I can only assume this is designed to send a message to legit sites rather than scare asshats who run anonymous image boards.

5. >Services who choose to restrict access rather than protect U.K. users remain on our watchlist

   Absolutely insane comment from Ofcom.

6. Apparently 4chan is now owned by Hiroyuki Nishimura (and other investors). He apparently lives in Paris but has always refused to pay any fines levied by anyone.

   And everyone knows 4chan is easily accessed by anyone of any age in the UK via a VPN so the OSA is a complete joke.

7. This fine will hit 4Chan where it hurts

   They may be forced to downsize to a smaller bedroom in their parents’ basement and sell their collection of dank memes on eBay

8. I hope they don’t fucking pay it , fuck this censorship shit.

9. How do 4Chan make money?

   Even if they could find advertisers willing to place ads next to racist shit-talk and edgelord provocation, nobody who would see those ads has any kind of money

10. This is such a de ja vu moment. I’m from Russia and I witnessed when rules like this were implemented there, hidden by the “we are protecting the kids” mask, similar fines were issued and many website just ignored it, like 4chan will do. This lead to the goverment pushing internet providers to implement techincal measure to be able to ban such websites, Roskomnadzor (basically Ofcom on steroids) are now issuing the list of the websites should be banned and internet providers just fetch it and apply on their network routers. I wonder how long will it take till the goverment/Ofcom will start asking Openreach, Hyperoptic, etc to do the same, as they will have to do something with websites that don’t have an actual business entity in the UK, hence are not going to pay, such as 4chan.

11. Porn sites still on the first page of Google results with no restrictions in the UK.

    This legislation is a joke. It’s not fit for purpose. It’s toothless.

12. This governments committment to making my internet browsing experience as painful as possible is almost admirable in their absolute unwavering dedication. I do love having to flip VPN servers constantly to access chunks of the internet because certain servers are blocked by certain websites. Living in the UK was already grim but clearly Tories and Labour felt it just wasn’t quite miserable enough.

    Still it’s better than having all my details leaked like the dafts sods who actually went and verified their ID on services like discord.

13. I wonder whether this will have political costs.

    The online safety act is deeply unpopular with the US government, Ofcom fining and punishing US companies may draw Washington’s ire.

14. 4chan won’t pay. In fact, i’m hedging bets they’ll start leaking info out and show the OSA is a complete joke

15. Going after the small worm.

    Meta’s Algorithms are much more unsuitable for Internet Safety.

    Zuck says jump the UK government says how high.

16. Nearly there. On pace to be world beating in the North Korean style of censorship of the internet. Well done.

17. incredible, the UK has a position that makes 4chan look like the good guys

18. Do they know the difference between 4chan and 4channel? In advance of a block, I hope so.

19. Absolutely laughable. They are never seeing that money and will be told to fuck off along with 97 other slurs.

20. Boggles the mind they’re going after websites yet refuse to do anything about GBNews or News Corp.

21. I remember when we used to laugh at China for it’s censorship and internet firewall blocking websites that the Government didn’t approve of.

22. Go check their entire statement, they’re happy that UK citizens now can’t access a suicide prevention forum. OFCOMs message is clear, your sacrifice is worth it if it stops the remote possibility a small child will see porn on a suicide prevention site. Those running OFCOM need their heads sorting out, absolutely disgusting.

23. Fuck Labour, simple as. The fact they’re speed running an oppressive authoritarian regime is mad, the fact they’re almost doing worse than the Tories is crazy.

    This policy was such a fucking quick win for them.

    “Tories wanted to introduce an oppressive big daddy privacy invasive policy. We have repealed it and are looking for other ways to protect our children who go online.”

    But no, instead they decide to implement this in the most heavy handed and shit way possible. Then follow it up with a bunch of “you’re all paedophiles” as their party line, then followed it up with online ID. It’s staggering how shit they actually are, like so out of touch with the common man its unreal.

24. Next they’ll try fine The Pirate Bay. That’ll be amusing.

25. Why the fuck am I siding with 4chan? I hate this timeline.

26. Absolutely deluded thinking that websites that operate in other counties and have no UK presence aside from some users will give the slightest toss about UK specific laws. Just going to lead to a load of the internet geo-blocking the UK to avoid dealing with frivolous time wasting nonsense.

27. This is one of the few times I wish Trump would intervene.

28. People will die due to the OSA. Mostly children who’ve lost access to mental health support groups and adults losing access to that and addiction support groups

29. They appear to have not done an ounce of research into 4Chan at all if they think 4Chan will respond to this in any way other than doing what they’re doing.

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