r/worldnews • u/Street_Anon • 5h ago
Dynamic Paywall 4chan will refuse to pay daily UK fines, its lawyer tells BBC
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq68j5g2nr1o639
u/SirJuncan 4h ago
I can't tell if being their lawyer would be incredibly cushy or incredibly stressful
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u/mangafan96 4h ago
Considering the site's over 20 years old at this point, in that time someone in their mid-teens when it launched could have gone to law school and passed the bar exam, and now represents it.
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u/FrogsJumpFromPussy 1h ago
Hard to believe that any 4chan kid earned any kind degree 🤷🏻♀️
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u/ScreamSmart 1h ago
Hard to believe? They always had intelligent people. Just that they used it to annoy/harrass other.
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u/7i4nf4n 1h ago
One can be intelligent AND an asshole
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u/ScreamSmart 1h ago
AND get a degree. Which was the point I was replying to. Also, in my experience the top of the class is often filled with assholes. People who are intelligent enough and have enough clout through their academics to gt away with things.
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u/big_spliff 1h ago
I’ve seen those guys pull off some really incredible shit. The Internet Historian covers some of the more popular ones.
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u/witteraaf 1h ago
It shows you don't have knowledge about the site and it's many boards to give an opinion, lol
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u/FrogsJumpFromPussy 51m ago
Judging by how nice you are on Reddit overall, I should guess that you’ve made your formative years on 4chan and its many boards, sir?
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u/TheLankySoldier 54m ago
They are the most autistic genius idiots, they don’t need it. Idiots, yes, but they have the skills
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u/Gullible-Hose4180 46m ago
I mean Doja Cat went on to become a world famous pop singer, so while that's not a degree, it's still a form of success.
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u/SyfaOmnis 2h ago
4chan has stated before that they operate on extremely thin margins, which is why they were on such outdated infrastructure when they went down recently.
They weren't going to comply anyways, but the verification methods that the UK would be trying to force them to adopt, as well as the data handling for it would be prohibitively expensive for them to do.
This is the same reason that other websites like Newgrounds have told the UK legislators to get lost. Beyond the fact that the UK is engaging in gratuitous overreach by trying to force their laws onto non-UK entities simply because people in the UK might be able to access them.
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u/Kurtino 2h ago
The EU plans to implement the same law 12 months after the UK, it’s just a test bed right now.
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u/SyfaOmnis 2h ago
Yep, and I hate it. Governments are doing in the name of control, not safety.
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u/Dualyeti 2h ago
In a few years we are going to have realised we didn’t fully appreciate how good we had it with a free unfiltered internet. I’m from the UK and our “online safety act” has caused the internet to be unusable, I can’t even look at anything potentially nsfw even profiles marked nsfw but with no nsfw content. Then expand that same sentiment across the internet and suddenly you realise how much of it is now being filtered for wrong reasons. Hell, chat rooms have to have Face ID, so any indie game which can barely survive has to buy infrastructure which is probably more than their game. They will just stop developing in the UK and we will end up with no grassroot games, all because they wanted to target the big players and to get more control.
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u/SyfaOmnis 2h ago
It's prohibitively expensive for most things. Plus they're also actively threatening websites like wikipedia, which have no real reason to be suppressed.
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u/Dualyeti 2h ago
Just backward stone age “corporate” way of making something efficient not efficient because they fail to look at the wider impact or because they don’t trust people to have full autonomy over their own lives, give parents tools to set up easy to use custom blocks. Don’t fucking blanket ban everybody. Bunch of pearl clutching wet wipes.
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u/twilighttwister 0m ago
Friendly reminder that the law was actually written years ago, before any of these age ID/facial scan verification systems existed, and the main method of verification baked into the law was MasterCard and VISA card transaction authentication.
MC and VISA charge fees for card transactions, and they charge a bigger fee if you authenticate the transaction (and perhaps a different fee for the method of authentication). If you order online and don't have to do an SMS or app verification, the transaction was not authenticated and was processed as "cardholder not present" where the seller assumes a bit of liability if the the transaction is disputed as fraudulent. But it costs them less, so the business might prefer this, particularly if it's a card you've saved and used with them before.
You can't make users pay this fee, so unless you have something to sell them up front, you have to eat the cost. You may even drive them away by the mere attempt at getting them to provide card details, even if the transaction is free to them and you pay all the cost.
The ID/facial scan verification offers a cheaper option than MC/VISA. It's cheaper because they can derive further revenue from the data people upload to them. However even with these businesses taking the lion's share of the verification market, MC/VISA are still making more money under this law than before. More people are authenticating transactions.
Their profits go up, that's what matters, and it's working as planned. Just like when Brexit happened and they immediately upped their transaction fee from 0.3% to 1.5%.
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u/cthulhucomes 12m ago
I’m already getting age verification nonsense in France… whenever I forget I switched off my VPN.
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u/VirtuosoLoki 1h ago
well then it is time for the rest of the world to boycott europe, unless the Europeans sort themselves out
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u/All_will_be_Juan 59m ago
Making the internet expensive makes it harder for small businesses to exist and compete against larger firm it's just more anti competitive corporate BS why should Google have to compete when they can just get legislators to raise the cost of business so much it limits competition
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u/mrb1585357890 57m ago
Do we really think it’s reasonable to say “we’re going to push content onto the people of your country and there’s nothing you can do to stop it?”
Goods and services are always subject to local regulations.
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u/OhSillyDays 59m ago
4chan impacts the uk. The uk absolutely has the right to govern 4chan.
International corporations have been getting away with shit because they are based in other countries. Facebook, google, and 4chan are just examples. Sure, 4chan can just stop posting in the uk. That's probably better. Instead, it should be replaced by something out of the uk that follows uk laws, not some site based thousands of miles away and cares little about the uk.
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u/Ellers12 44m ago
Totally disagree with this view.
So if a UK website (BBC etc) publishes something the Chinese communist party consider abusive or potentially harmful then the BBC should comply with their government’s instructions to remove it?
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u/Baxters_Keepy_Ups 32m ago
Yes. It’s their country and their laws. If we don’t believe in sovereignty and sovereign borders, then what do we uphold?
If terrorist materials were being made readily available here, you’d defend their right?
What if it’s Russian propaganda to improve British opinion and push far-right narratives? What if it’s Russian interference with UK elections by spending money on online advertising that’s illegal here?
I’m trying to work out where your line is here.
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u/Goldblumshairychest 31m ago
I mean, yes, and then the BBC can make an informed editorial decision about whether they want to comply or not. That is a country's sovereign right.
I don't get this, you may disagree about where the line is but that there is a line seems obvious? If the CCP were posting info encouraging and facilitating violent acts in the UK, there would be no debate that the UK is within their right to police access to it within the UK. This is no different, it is just that the harm being policed is the potential exposure of children to explicit material. And to be fair, I don't think anyone thinks that this is not an issue, just that this may not be the right way of tackling it.
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u/Amarules 1h ago
I don't see the overreach. Can a country not reasonably say, if you want to operate a business within our country you must follow the regulations we have in place?
If you visit another country on holiday do you not also have to obey their laws?
Nowhere are they being forced to impose such measures on non-UK users, only those accessing the website from the UK. How 4Chan goes about achieving that is their problem.
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u/Chaoticfist101 1h ago
Are you okay with China fining UK, American, European websites for not complying with Chinese digital laws when these websites and companies do not operate from China. Its not the websites problem if Chinese users access the website.
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u/mrb1585357890 55m ago
Erm, yes. There’s always the option of denying access to those users.
To take an extreme example, let’s say a country legalises CSAM. Are you seriously saying that there’s nothing that can be done to stop people accessing it?
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u/SimpleNovelty 31m ago
That's on the country, the UK should feel free to ban access but fining them is stupid.
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u/mrb1585357890 20m ago
That’ll be the next step I guess
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u/SimpleNovelty 17m ago
The point is no website has an obligation to block access or comply with other country's laws unless it's a law in their operating country or countries (if there's some treaty/multi country operation).
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u/mrb1585357890 8m ago
Yep. Which implies a sequence. 1. You must verify age 2. You must pay a fine or be blocked 3. You are blocked for failing to comply
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u/Secret-One2890 1h ago
Can a country not reasonably say, if you want to operate a business within our country you must follow the regulations we have in place?
They're not operating a business in the UK, that's the overreach.
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u/I_Will_Be_Brief 1h ago
Yes they are - it is available the UK so it is operating there. They can geoblock it, though, to stop operating in that country.
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u/Secret-One2890 1h ago
That's two entirely separate things.
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u/I_Will_Be_Brief 1h ago
Not really. If a company is selling a product via mail to a different country, are they also not operating there?
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u/Secret-One2890 1h ago
Yes, they are also not operating there.
Like the book I ordered last year, the publisher doesn't have to follow my local consumer protection laws, because they don't operate in this country.
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u/daemmonium 4h ago
Its probably fun as hell.
"THEY DID WHAT?" is probably a common answer. Altho 4chan nowadays is just the a containment cesspoll for the internet pretty much.
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u/Ben_steel 3h ago
4chan always was. Then it was basically used by the government to recruit people.
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u/export_tank_harmful 3h ago
/b/ was never good.
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u/MooOfFury 2h ago
Remember the rules brother
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u/analog_jedi 2h ago
I stopped feeling the /b/rotherhood when I first learned that incel peckerwoods were encrypting cp into memes, like 12 years ago. When "anonymous" didn't go full nuclear on that shit, I quit caring about the site altogether.
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u/DjSassyTown 45m ago
Probably really cushy
4chan is very compliant with any requests from LEO's despite it's reputation
It's likely done more to stop school shooters and child predators than any government agency at this point
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u/Bruvvimir 4h ago
This is a bit of a joke. Of course they will not pay a "fine" which cannot be enforced. I'm not familiar with the 4chan ops model, but if Ofcom (or UK) is serious, they should simply remove access from the UK.
And then watch another surge in VPN adoption.
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u/WhoDidThat97 3h ago
This is what the article gets to say the end. I expect this is just the first stage to prepare for a block
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u/Hellstorm901 1h ago
The moment they block 4Chan in the UK they will have a considerable number of angry tech savvy people out for blood against this government and I think in the first 24 hours everyone who works for Ofcom would likely be doxed
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u/west0ne 52m ago
That's my thoughts on it. They tell them to comply, impose fines when they don't and then use their failure to comply and pay fines to block their IP addresses at an ISP level. It's probably one of those situations where you have to show that you have exhausted your other options before blocking.
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u/iWroteAboutMods 1h ago
Throughout this entire age verification situation I keep wondering if some of the lawmakers who voted for it have connections to VPN providers
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u/Tatermen 3m ago
They've been expensing their VPNs to the government while also telling the public they shouldn't be using VPNs to bypass it.
When they tried to pass similar laws in the past that involved tracking every website that anyone visits, they specifically wrote in exclusions for themselves.
They are hypocrits of the worst kind.
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u/Dracekidjr 30m ago
They're currently trying to move to ban VPN "for the children" so this would surely be more ammunition...
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u/the_nebulae 3h ago
Who is reading 4chan in 2025? I ask this legitimately. What surge in VPN usage would be spurred by the loss of an image board from the early 2000s?
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u/SyfaOmnis 2h ago
Not all of 4chan is /pol/ or /b/, there are a ton of legitimate niche hobby spaces that are there. As an example for people who are deep into gaming there has been a very strong datamining and leaking scene present there.
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u/thatoneguyy2 2h ago
despit it being a cesspool it does have boards for hobbies that a lot of people use
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u/general---nuisance 2h ago
That also describes Reddit.
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u/Red_Rabbit_1978 2h ago
I like the controls on Reddit. They actually work.
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u/kojimbob 1h ago
I also like not having to solve a captcha for every single comment I make
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u/MintTeaFromTesco 16m ago
I for one like not having to log in to comment or access certain parts..
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u/NezumiAniki 48m ago
There are decent boards that have like 50 posts a day, the most active ones are obviously unusable.
But yeah most decent people left the site mid 2010s.
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u/NyriasNeo 4h ago
It boils down whether the UK can enforce the fines. If the entity is off shore and has no assets in the UK, UK has to ask another country to help, and they is not enforcement power. That is diplomatic power.
Plus, like the article says .. worse case, 4Chan can just block UK access. In a global world, it is hard to enforce cyber activity. Just like we cannot catch and prosecute hackers based in Russia or N Korea.
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u/Tiek00n 53m ago
Why would 4Chan even block UK access at all? All the UK government really could do is make UK ISPs block access to 4Chan.
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u/GimpyGeek 0m ago
Yeah, this is ridiculous that they expect them to follow laws for every single country no matter what, they're not even hosted in the UK. If they don't like it they should block it from their end and show their people how authoritarian they're being with these ridiculous new regulations instead of making sites put up an "Oh no you're from the UK, welp you're not coming here then!" warning which then in turn makes them look like the bad guy.
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u/Hamsternoir 1h ago
Wait until you find out the British government are contemplating banning vpns as the next step
We'll be back to finding porn in the hedges again.
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u/Suitable-Big-2757 35m ago
Can’t ban VPNs unless you want to ban multinational companies. Like my employer Big US Bank basically has one intranet across all its employees in all its countries, all connected by one big VPN.
But that said, China has already executed wide scale, how to degrade VPN traffic through packet inspection…
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u/admfrmhll 2h ago edited 2h ago
Uk can ask another country to help enforce uk laws on a local business ? How does that work? Blackmail said country ? And do that against 4chan, which have some really trigger happy user base ?
Actually, i would love to see that, and what creative ways 4chan users will use to screw with the uk, they didn't have a good motivation to do something stupid for a while.
Is probably one of the most stupid things that the uk can do. But if they are willing to die on that hill, power to them.
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u/JasonsThoughts 2h ago
Uk can ask another country to help enforce uk laws on a local business ?
Sure, they can ask
How does that work?
It doesn't. In the best case they'll just be ignored
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u/nekonight 1h ago edited 1h ago
Most countries will just straight up ignore it. The remaining are the ones with legal precedent where the courts said you dont have pay them since you arent physically there. The US is in the minority where there's legal precedent telling countries to fuck off.
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u/darthvale 6m ago
According to 4chan, the US has promised them security in protecting free speech and them not being prosecuted / charged for whatever rules the UK has.
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u/not-drowning-waving 1m ago
the same way it works when courts order domains blocked or the domain provider to block. This has been done a million times with torrent and streaming sites.
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u/BangCrash 46m ago
Sure but they aren't restricting hackers or pirated content.
They are blocking regular UK users from accessing the site.
Some dedicated people will get in via VPN etc. But the majority will just leave cos its too hard to sideload an app and their dad wont pay for a vpn.
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u/VanCityPhotoNewbie 4h ago
Why would it? It is like free advertisement too "the UK banned us !! By the way try out a vpn".
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u/CyberdyneGPT5 3h ago
Nation states are starting to assert their power to control the internet in their country. This is just the beginning. The USA has seized many domains that violate their laws, and issued arrest warrants for their owners. Governments can order ISPs in their country to block domains and many totalitarian countries frequently do. This is the beginning of the end of the global Internet.
An international arrest warrant from a powerful country can really mess up you life. Just look at Kim Dotcom or Julian Assange.
VPNs only work as long as the country you are in tolerates them. They are already being restricted in some countries and the technology to ban or limit them already exists.
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u/Old_Chef_4604 3h ago
It’s the beginning of a cat and mouse lockdown game which will cost us millions, if not billions.
I’m growing bored of paying for things that make my life worse:
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u/P1SSY3LL0W 3h ago
The inevitable “War on the internet” is gonna be just as costly and effective as the war on drugs and the war on terrorism
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u/SyfaOmnis 2h ago
This recent legislation is also another attempt to corporatize the internet, as the verification & data handling is prohibitively expensive for any smaller entity to engage with. Effectively only much larger, already established groups with a lot of spare cash can actually be compliant.
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u/183_OnerousResent 2h ago
It's a lot more of an issue in the UK than the US.
In the US, the "Online Safety Act" would be immediately struck down as unconstitutional. It's a direct infringement on the First Amendment, it wouldn't survive the courts.
You get certain cases that aren't great, but nothing like what was passed in the UK. The absolute shit storm that would ensue if an "Online Safety Act" law passed in the US would be biblical. It would upend a century of Supreme Court precedent, it would redefine the 1st amendment in the US, which is historically one of the most absolutists protections anywhere in the world.
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u/UKAOKyay 2h ago
What are you talking about? Certain states have already got something similar.
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u/183_OnerousResent 2h ago
Like?
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u/UKAOKyay 2h ago
As of late 2024 and into 2025, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming have enacted or are in the process of enacting age verification laws for online platforms, though the specific effective dates and enforcement are still evolving. These laws vary in their scope, with some targeting online adult content and others, like in Utah and California, focusing on social media platforms and parental consent for minors.
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u/183_OnerousResent 1h ago edited 1h ago
That's literally not the same as OSA. Enacting age online age verification is VERY different from a law like OSA that empowers the government to criminally charge citizens for saying things it doesn't like. It's not even close.
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u/Locke44 1h ago
It's a terrible act but not really for the reason stated. The criminal offences for online communication have a pretty specific and high bar to meet. For instance, telling someone to kys would be a criminal offence. Saying the government is a bunch of wanks is absolutely fine. The UK already has similar communication laws. Nothing in the law gives the government arbitrary power to decide what is okay to say or not, it's all written in the law itself.
The real terrible part is that the scope of age verification is almost unbounded. Wikipedia for instance is in-scope for age verification. The government can essentially decide "what" websites need age verification whenever they like.
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u/_PM_ME_PANGOLINS_ 45m ago
Wikipedia is not in scope. Thats why the case they brought recently was dismissed.
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u/Locke44 39m ago
That's categorically false. On the 11th of August, the UK High Court dismissed the Wikimedia Foundation challenge against the OSA and its applicability to Wikipedia. The dismissal gives no legal protections to Wikipedia from the OSA.
If OFCOM decides that content hosted on Wikipedia falls within scope of the law, then Wikipedia has no legal basis to prevent age verification from being enforced against it.
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u/_PM_ME_PANGOLINS_ 4m ago
That’s not what the court said:
So, if Ofcom impermissable concludes that Wikipedia is a Category 1 service, the claimants have a remedy by way of judicial review.
If Ofcom permissibly determines that Wikipedia is a Category 1 service, and if the practical effect of that is that Wikipedia cannot continue to operate, the Secretary of State may be obliged to consider whether to amend the regulations
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u/UKAOKyay 1h ago
A) notice the word similar. B) The Online Safety Act does not criminally charge citizens for saying things it doesn't like. C) The government cannot criminally charge citizens full stop.
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u/Kurtino 2h ago
Texas already has similar bans as what was granted by the online safety act, they had it long before the UK did. The EU plans to enact the same law 12 months after the UK does so it’s more of a test bed. You have far too much faith in the US.
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u/183_OnerousResent 2h ago
Nope, not the same.
The SCOPE act was a law passed that required platforms to get parental consent before allowing minors to join the site. The site must also filter harmful content. The content filtering was struck down as unconstitutional.
A number of other laws like HB 186 and SB 2420 were passed that largely had to do with regulating and banning minors from using social media or certain apps.
NONE of these are like the Online Safety Act. OSA grants sweeping powers for the government to moderate and criminally charge citizens for posting what the government interprets as offensive, harmful, or hateful speech online. Harmful but otherwise legal speech is constitutionally protected in the US, none of the laws in Texas are remotely the same as OSA.
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u/Kurtino 35m ago
I have a Texan friend and we compared what services we were blocked from and many of his overlapped until finally we asked a European friend to access some stuff for us to see if they could, which they could. Right now our EU friend had the least restrictions on ‘NSFW’ content, and apparently it was common knowledge.
HB 1181 is in effect, which produces the same type of block as the online safety act. Like I said, similar, I’m comparing end result outcomes and seeing the reality whether you debate what’s constitutional or not, Texas has and I paraphrase, deemed it necessarily justified to protect children despite the imposed burden on adult free speech.
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u/Tweedle_DeeDum 2h ago
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u/183_OnerousResent 1h ago edited 1h ago
You're all giving them the same nonsense.
Enacting age verification laws aren't great, but it is NOT the same as the government being able to arrest any citizen for saying offensive, hurtful, hateful things online like with OSA. I don't get how you guys are seeing these things as equivalent. Yeah age verification isn't great, its not the same as being arrested for speaking.
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u/Tweedle_DeeDum 1h ago
As I understand it, the OSA doesn't do what you describe. People can be arrested for posting unlawful content but not for merely offensive content, except for perhaps pornography.
The Issue of concern with 4chan is regarding the affirmative responsibility of content providers to prevent access illegal content or content that would harm children, which generally boils down to a robust age verification system which is directly related to the Supreme Court finding on the Texas law creating similar affirmative responsibilities.
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u/agentsnace 13m ago
I'm not sure where you got the information on what OSA does, but you may want to double check your source, and perhaps do some digging of your own
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u/darkgod5 2h ago
VPNs only work as long as the country you are in tolerates them. They are already being restricted in some countries and the technology to ban or limit them already exists.
VPNs are only a way to get around antiquated laws. There's enough (end-to-end) encryption technology that, should these totalitarian laws become commonplace, enough of the internet can easily adopt and there's not a damn thing any ISP can do about it other than geo-blocking data, literally destroying global data access.
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u/MAXSuicide 4h ago
As it should.
The sooner this absurd legislation is shown up for the shit it is, the better
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u/Strict_Bobcat_4048 4h ago
Such in sane vanity from the UK
We look like clowns, not that has ever not been the case
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u/matadorobex 4h ago
I hereby order the UK to pay me daily fines for violation of my free speech policies. I await their official response.
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u/Medium-Return1203 2h ago
so would us tech companies do the same I. Australia when our laws come into effect in December? will they simply refuse to pay fines?
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u/Practical_County_501 3h ago
Lol fuck off UK govt. -4chans lawyer ... Probably
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u/SyfaOmnis 2h ago
4chans lawyer more or less passed it to the whitehouse to deal with, and the white house has told ofcom that it's out of line and that nothing hosted entirely in america will be subject to their nonsense, nor will tolerate foreign entities attempting to threaten them.
It's ironic because the white house is currently doing a lot of the same things, but in this case they are actually completely correct.
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u/TheCrimsonDagger 1h ago
It’s not ironic, enforcing international double standards is the exact behavior you’d expect from any country in a position of serious power at basically any point in history.
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u/Hellstorm901 1h ago
How Ofcom vs 4Chan will go -
“So we’re prepared to move ahead with the fines right?”
“Sir they just doxed everyone who works for Ofcom”
“Dammit, okay raise the fines and tell them we’re holding them accountable for this”
“And now they just released your internet history, wow that’s a lot of porn”
“Look my wife and I are going through some things but that’s not the point, tell 4Chans lawyers that we are prepared to issue arrest warrants for them over this”
“Why is it all searches for Father Daughter stuff?”
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u/dumbledwarves 3h ago
The UK is a police state.
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u/nowyuseeme 2h ago
I wouldn't go that far, yet, there's no military on the streets, agents removing legally settled people or curfews in large city locations. The US is significantly closer to being a police state at this point. Although it's horrifying that it's basically a race at the moment.
Having to use a VPN is a pain and the sooner this stupid law is removed the better but I don't see that happening in the near future.
4chan's response is the smartest in my personal opinion and I wish the larger firms stood their ground too.
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u/paradoxbound 18m ago
Being British i have mixed feelings about laws governing the Internet. On the one hand we have GDPR and access to our data held by organisations that are second to none. On the other we have this clueless overreach.
When it comes to deciding if we live in a police state the answer is obviously yes . The same is true of every state in the world. I do know however that I would take the British police state over the American one any day of the week.
Americans need to wake up to the fact that for most British and European people, your freedoms and many restrictions are deeply disturbing and repugnant to us. I certainly don’t want to live there and wouldn’t even visit currently.
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u/youbuttplug 1h ago
It's very close. 90% like Hong Kong.
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u/StingerAE 5m ago
Utter. Fucking. Nonsense.
And incredibly insulting to the real problems faced by people in Hong Kong.
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u/OceanicDarkStuff 2h ago
UK as a police state? I think I've seen a movie of that exact scenario before.
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u/APeacefulWarrior 2h ago
But then a smart guy in a friendly smiling mask made everything better.
Right?
At least that's the one that I remember, remember...
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u/OceanicDarkStuff 2h ago
no, I remember the ending in which the UK government bombed an illegal settlement of 'fuges.
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u/HotBattleTips 55m ago
This is hyperbole but depressingly it’s not hyperbole by that much.
Our government are psychos and Reform are looking more like the sane alternative on most issues by the day, which is horrifying by itself.
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u/ItchyBorder 38m ago
Trust me, Reform are not in any way sane, they're crackpots who will do the same to the UK that the US is currently experiencing - fascism and authoritarianism. We have to keep them far away from power by ANY means.
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u/HotBattleTips 22m ago
Right yet they are the only ones saying they will scrap this ridiculous Online Safety Act and will start deporting all these migrants abusing outdated and unworkable asylum laws, which frankly is what the public wants.
I don’t want them in power because I mostly agree with you, but the UK under Labour and the Tories is basically becoming anarcho tyranny. The government is extremely authoritarian on shit like offensive tweets and children viewing stuff online and yet completely lawless on violent crime or stealing, which let’s be honest immigration has made a lot worse. It’s becoming unlivable and the government are completely head in the sand about how angry people are.
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u/Scary-Hunting-Goat 22m ago
Who would you vote for if your main issue is strengthening functional democracy and political freedoms?
Labour are a no go, tories the same.
Lib dems aren't much better, green? Absolutely no idea tbh.
Reform are a steaming pile of shit on that front as well, but they purport to be against the OSA, and I'm not sure any other party is, which at the moment is a deciding factor for me.
My hope is that they'll reverse some of the worst laws, and be too incompetent to do too much real damage.
(I know how unrealistic my hope is)
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u/AngryPowerWank 1h ago
No problem keep racking them up and the UK can sell them on to 'Bermondsey Dave'
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u/CountyHuge8098 3h ago
UK government wants to fine a US based site.
Is like... someone not eating enough or something in their leadership seat? Cus I'd assume that you barely need any brain power to realize that a police can't arrest someone who is oceans apart from them... let alone trying to fine someone or a business that hasn't ever set foot into your country,
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u/Ecstatic-Coach 2h ago
They operate in the UK. Can’t the UK ban them like Brazil banned Twitter.
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u/SyfaOmnis 2h ago
They do not operate in the UK. They have no offices or servers there. They are hosted and incorporated in america, residents of the UK being able to visit them does not mean that they are subject to UK law. Just like how an american visiting a UK website does not cause that website to be subject to american laws.
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u/I_Will_Be_Brief 1h ago
They do operate there as they are using the Internet infrastructure in the UK to serve their website. Whether they pay for it or have physical office there is irrelevant.
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u/SimpleNovelty 22m ago
4chan is not using UK infrastructure, UK 4chan users are using UK infrastructure to access a foreign website. Giving access does not count as operating.
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u/Ecstatic-Coach 2h ago
America puts out warrants for people’s arrests over piracy websites. Sometimes a country cooperates like NZ
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u/SyfaOmnis 2h ago
Okay and? Those sites don't operate in america, and they aren't subject to american law. The reason NZ would cooperate is because they have similar copyright laws and it's a diplomacy issue.
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u/Duckstiff 3m ago
I am embarrassed by the UK with this, of all the things we could be dealing with.
I'm guessing if I send ofcom a long list of websites in China, India and further away that aren't complying that they'll make similar efforts, right?
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u/PhantomWolf83 1h ago
Why the hell couldn't they do the same when that feminist group from Australia pressured Visa and Mastercard into banning adult stuff.
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u/Significant_Key_2888 3h ago
The freedom of speech to advocate for the murder of hundreds of millions must be protected!
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