And the OSA has faced a rocky rollout in the UK. The law can penalize platforms for not verifying users\u2019 ages before they access pornographic or otherwise \u201charmful\u201d content, or for failing to remove illegal material. When it took effect in late July<\/a>, several major U.S. companies \u2014 including Reddit, Bluesky, X, and Grindr \u2014 were forced to implement age verification systems that haphazardly blocked some or all access for users who didn\u2019t want to hand over an ID or face scan. Wikipedia has expressed concerns it would have to expose anonymous editors and moderators to comply with the OSA, and is currently suing in UK court<\/a>.<\/p>\n Byrne\u2019s legal goal, if Trump doesn\u2019t intervene, is more aggressive than Wikipedia\u2019s: he wants a US federal court to declare that the OSA is not enforceable on American companies. \u201cReportedly, they [the U.S. government] have pushed back on the UK on this one issue, but ultimately, it doesn\u2019t matter. Because one lawyer, a solo practitioner working in his free time, armed with the First Amendment, can bring the OSA to a grinding halt at the shoreline of the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n But he and associates are also pushing hard for a backchannel deal, and Byrne told The Verge that he had begun reaching out to members of the administration on behalf of his clients after Trump was elected. \u201cThe relevant client and I looked at each other and I said, listen, I think we\u2019ll have a lot easier time contacting some people in the DOJ and saying, \u2018Hey, did you know that this is happening and it\u2019s infringing on Americans\u2019 free speech rights?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The Verge confirmed that Byrne had made contact with Congressional offices; the State Department did not return a request for comment regarding whether they were in contact with Byrne. Although Byrne said was not in active conversation with the White House or Congress regarding this case (\u201cI wouldn\u2019t call them \u2018partners,\u2019 the communication between our legal team and [the government] has been mostly one way\u201d) his clients had been seeing quiet results. Previously, the Biden Administration had been serving notices from Germany to one of Byrne\u2019s clients for violating the online safety law NetzDG, but Byrne argued that they had done so in a way that circumvented the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty. \u201cWhen we made contact with the [Trump] government over Ofcom, we disclosed the misuse of the MLAT procedure to serve foreign censorship demands under the Biden Administration,\u201d he continued. \u201cThe notices [from Germany] have since stopped.\u201d<\/p>\n The Trump administration\u2019s definition of a \u201cdiplomatic solution\u201d might be more aggressive than a lawsuit. In July it raised tariffs on Brazil by 40 percent after Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Morales charged U.S.-based companies and U.S. citizens with legal violations for their social media content; earlier that month, Rumble and Trump Media, the Trump-founded company that owns Truth Social, filed a joint lawsuit<\/a> alleging that Morales was targeting their users\u2019 American rights to privacy. (Morales\u2019s visa was also revoked by the State Department, as well as those of several other Brazilian judges.)<\/p>\n But Rumble and Truth Social \u2014 as well as more mainstream platforms like Reddit, Wikipedia and Bluesky \u2014 have less baggage than Byrne\u2019s latest clients. Gab, Kiwi Farms, and 4Chan have reputations as cultivated sources of sexist, racist, and white nationalist content, linked to acts of fatal violence and harassment. Gab, a proudly and openly white nationalist social media site which has long refused to remove antisemitic content from their platform<\/a>, went temporarily offline in 2018 after a mass shooter used it to announce his attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Kiwi Farms community organizes harassment campaigns<\/a> \u2014 with particular vitriol against transgender people \u2014 that have been tied to multiple suicides. 4Chan, the primordial soup of unsavory internet culture, has helped spawn, among other things, mass shootings<\/a>, QAnon, and Gamergate.<\/p>\n These sites allow their users to post anonymously, and they\u2019re unsurprising targets for Ofcom, whose initial complaint against 4Chan<\/a> said that the site had failed to offer a risk assessment about its userbase and was not complying with Ofcom \u201csafety duties.\u201d The complaint said 4chan could be subject to the law\u2019s general fine of either \u00a318 million or 10 percent of qualifying worldwide revenue, whichever is greater. Ofcom declined to comment, citing the complaint\u2019s status as an ongoing investigation. (A fourth site, which offers information about methods of suicide, was also targeted; Byrne says he\u2019s been in contact but does not currently represent it.)<\/p>\n Byrne is no stranger to representing lighting-rod, right-wing tech companies in court. Parler, a platform founded as a conservative-friendly alternative to Facebook, was among his former clients. \u201cI\u2019ve been saying no to foreign governments for eight years, because I was willing to represent free speech websites,\u201d he told The Verge, and from his perspective, these were simply three more sites whose First Amendment rights were being targeted by Europeans. \u201cThe First Amendment allows Americans to talk to foreigners, to grant anonymity to foreigners, and not censor foreigners,\u201d he said. \u201cThe First Amendment does not disappear because there is a contrary foreign rule on foreign shores.\u201d<\/p>\n The US government directly defending them, instead of sticking with a safer embattled platform as a poster child, would be a show of force \u2014 and if successful, a demonstration that the OSA is toothless against any service with Trump\u2019s backing, no matter how extreme its content. The administration\u2019s protection of American speech abroad would stand in stark contrast with its approach inside the country, where the same State Department that\u2019s pushing back against Europe\u2019s digital laws is also using social media posts to deny and revoke student visa applications, targeting them for posting pro-Palestine content online.<\/p>\n Murky battles over digital sovereignty date back to the dawn of the internet, said Milton Mueller, the head of the Internet Governance Project and a professor at Georgia Tech. In 2000, he notes, the French government sued Yahoo<\/a> for hosting an auction site that sold Nazi artifacts and was globally accessible \u2014 including to users in France, where buying and selling Nazi memorabilia is criminalized. Yahoo, which is based in the U.S., argued that they and their users were protected under America\u2019s First Amendment rights. Eventually, they came to an agreement to simply block the objectionable Nazi content in France, which soon became the prevailing solution to any issue of social media content infringing laws in other countries.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was an undermining of the global accessibility of information, and one of the first steps towards the fragmentation of internet content into the territorial jurisdictions of states,\u201d he told The Verge. <\/p>\n In addition to seeking to avoid potential fines posed by the OSA, Byrne wants to break that detente. \u201cNone of my clients, including 4chan, will allow themselves to be deputized by a hostile foreign government which wants to censor its own people,\u201d he wrote. \u201cOfcom has the power, if it wants, to get a court order and serve that order on UK-based ISPs to DNS block 4chan. That is entirely a domestic UK matter for Ofcom and the British courts to decide upon.\u201d<\/p>\n If the suit \u2014 or Trump administration intervention \u2014 favors 4chan and other Ofcom targets, the result could be a blow against the DSA, OSA, and similar laws.<\/p>\n \u201cI think what makes it most interesting in this case,\u201d Mueller added, \u201cis that the US government, apparently, [would be] backing 4Chan\u2019s rights.\u201d<\/p>\n Correction, August 23<\/strong>: a previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Rumble was a previous client of Byrne\u2019s. He has not represented Rumble and currently does not.<\/p>\n 0 Comments<\/a>Follow topics and authors<\/strong> from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.<\/p>\n Senior Reporter, Washington<\/p>\n Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n PlusFollow<\/p>\n See All by Tina Nguyen<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n PlusFollow<\/p>\n See All Policy<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n PlusFollow<\/p>\n See All Politics<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n PlusFollow<\/p>\n\n
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Tina Nguyen\n