4chan will refuse to pay daily UK fines, its lawyer tells BBC (www.bbc.co.uk)

submitted 4 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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

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[-] [email protected] 33 points 4 weeks ago

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

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

[-] [email protected] 27 points 4 weeks ago

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

[-] [email protected] 17 points 4 weeks ago

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

[-] [email protected] 14 points 4 weeks ago

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

[-] [email protected] 11 points 4 weeks ago

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

[-] [email protected] 5 points 4 weeks ago

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

[-] [email protected] 8 points 4 weeks ago

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

SO WHAT THE FUCK IS THE FUCKING PROBLEM THEN?!

[-] [email protected] 10 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

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

[-] [email protected] 8 points 4 weeks ago

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

[-] [email protected] 23 points 4 weeks ago

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

[-] [email protected] 12 points 4 weeks ago

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

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

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

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

[-] [email protected] 2 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

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

The rest are copyright infringement.

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

[-] [email protected] 2 points 4 weeks ago

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

[-] [email protected] 5 points 4 weeks ago

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

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

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

[-] [email protected] 2 points 4 weeks ago

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

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

[-] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago

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

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

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

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

[-] [email protected] 3 points 4 weeks ago

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

[-] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago

I didn't even think it was accessible? I tried accessing it donkeys ago and my ISP had it blocked. Maybe there was a parental control enabled or something. Who knows.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 4 weeks ago

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

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

[-] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

But why do that when they can just shift the burden onto the other party (the website), and demand money from them too?

[-] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

In this case; the UK is reaching too far. Genuinely speaking; they don't have the right to fine you if you don't live or operate in that country. 4chan never did have any legal presence in the UK; even if it did accept 'donations' from UK citizens.

At worst; the UK can block 4chan from being accessed in their country and seize any money sent to 4chan by their citizenry in the future. I doubt anyone would care if that's what they did.

The US specifically even states in it's constitution that no citizen shall have laws imposed on them by another country that restrict their freedoms.

this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2025

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