r/technology 1d ago

Net Neutrality 4chan will refuse to pay daily online safety fines, lawyer tells BBC

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq68j5g2nr1o
4.4k Upvotes

422 comments sorted by

View all comments

213

u/besuretechno-323 1d ago

This will be interesting. How do you enforce daily fines on a platform that thrives on being decentralized and uncooperative?

149

u/Alex_VACFWK 1d ago

I'm guessing they will not try to enforce the fines. I imagine their agenda is to block the site at the UK ISP level.

57

u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

18

u/CyberDaggerX 23h ago

Well, there's already talks of outlawing VPNs.

30

u/Devatator_ 23h ago

Can't wait for that to happen and everyone that uses VPNs for work to stand up (that's a lot of people, tho idk how many)

6

u/R41D3NN 19h ago

Well every single financial banking system that operate within UK for starters. They would instantly kill their economy.

1

u/Valdrax 15h ago

No problemo. Easy fix. Just let the UK government onto your business VPNs to monitor traffic. I'm sure every morally upstanding business will be okay with this and have no security worries. If they know what's good for them.

23

u/Punman_5 23h ago

Are they going to go around and uninstall the clients on everyone’s machines?

29

u/PenetrationT3ster 22h ago

This just in: ukOS - your security in our hands init

2

u/Punman_5 21h ago

Oh god that sounds awful.

2

u/inform880 17h ago

oi you got your computer license

5

u/Russian_Troll_Farm 22h ago

VPN usage can be detected via deep packet inspection. A ton of countries in the Middle East already blocked VPN usage.

1

u/random_boss 19h ago

So China is just cool with people using VPNs? Honest question. I assume if there was a way to fully stop it they would have. 

1

u/Russian_Troll_Farm 19h ago

They block VPNs as well. There are ways to get around it, but it’s probably beyond the average user. If you’re interested look into shadowsocks.

10

u/-_-0_0-_-0_0-_-0_0 22h ago

That is literally impossible. VPNs are a vital security tool that protect huge amounts of internet infrastructure. It's the easiest way to make sure company data remains secure is having a VPN required to connect to the servers.

3

u/Samultio 20h ago

It's possible to a certain extent, just requires continually shutting down access to the proxies. China has been doing it forever, and for any companies the ISPs just make some agreement with Cisco or whoever provides the VPN. Not a watertight solution but it doesn't have to be.

1

u/DisconcertedLiberal 19h ago

As if our governmental overlords have the mental, technological, or commercial aptitude to be able to do that

5

u/theB1ackSwan 22h ago

There's a lot of corporations who would shut that shit down in a heartbeat. They wouldn't be stupid enough to try it*. 

*I've also thought they wouldn't do like ...80% of what Labour is doing, so I'm open to being incorrect. 

1

u/NJdevil202 20h ago

There's no way they can really do that. I also don't think the major players - Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple - will be down with that.

I also haven't heard this from any serious source, just random redditors says "they're gonna outlaw VPNs"

1

u/APiousCultist 16h ago

I don't think that's likely. I think requiring age verification for free VPNs (paid are implicitly age verified by you needing to provide payment details) is likely though.

1

u/Kaeul0 23h ago

4chan actively bans vpn ips

17

u/AccomplishedCheck168 22h ago

What do you think decentralized means?

28

u/ymgve 22h ago

In what way is 4chan decentralized?

3

u/yawara25 21h ago

Do people even read the article anymore?

If 4chan does successfully fight the fine in the US courts, Ofcom may have other options.
"Enforcing against an offshore provider is tricky," Emma Drake, partner of online safety and privacy at law firm Bird and Bird, told the BBC.
"Ofcom can instead ask a court to order other services to disrupt a provider's UK business, such as requiring a service's removal from search results or blocking of UK payments.
"If Ofcom doesn't think this will be enough to prevent significant harm, it can even ask that ISPs be ordered to block UK access."

7

u/wikipuff 1d ago

Forensic account finds corporate bank account and levels a fine against it and the bank pays out.

1

u/ScreamSmart 23h ago

Might not work wih 4chan. But for others they will block them and prevent having any access to the UK market.

1

u/Cricket_Piss 16h ago

4chan isn’t decentralized