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From the attorney's post:

> The infinite character of that power was most famously summed up by English lawyer Sir Ivor Jennings, who once said that “if Parliament enacts that smoking in the streets of Paris is an offence, then it is an offence”. This line is taught to every first-year English law student.

Initially this seems like disrespect for another country's sovereignty. But really the crucial thing is:

> We explained to the UK that the Online Safety Act had a snowball’s chance in hell of being enforced in the United States

Ofcom has to go through the motions of telling 4chan they can't smoke in Paris because of the (very on-brand) nanny law.

Not quite.

Ofcom in their reply make their point clear: "The [Online Safety] Act explicitly grants Ofcom the legal authority to regulate online safety for individuals in the United Kingdom [...]"

They are stating that companies operating in the UK and providing services to UK individuals, are required to conform with UK regulations in relation to those services, under UK law.

As an American business, you can choose to ignore that, but that has consequences if any of your board of directors ever sets foot in the UK.

The US does this, and US lawyers understand this. If I open an online poker and sports bookmaking site in the UK (where such sites are completely legal), and take business from all over the United States thereby breaking federal law, I can expect to be met at the plane door the next time I take a shopping trip to NYC. Arguing that my servers and my business are located in the UK is not going to impress the federal judge I'd appear in front of in the morning. Stating the US laws against my activities have a snowball's chance in hell of being enforced in the UK is surely going to risk me being charged with contempt.

The Online Safety Act is ridiculous on many levels, but in the same way that Google does certain things in relation to Tiananmen Square searches in China, and every tech company engages in regulatory alignment for the entire Middle East, the UK has asked that US companies do certain things in the jurisdiction of the UK. I'd argue, less harmful and egregious things in some respects.

Should the UK do this? No, probably not. I think it will just make VPN software vendors richer, and UK citizens - particularly children - barely any safer.

Are Ofcom claiming jurisdiction in the US? No, they're claiming jurisdiction in the UK. Which, I hasten to add they are legally required to do by the Online Safety Act, by the government they are an agency of. If they didn't, the government would literally be breaking its own law.

TIL that 4chan's lawyer is about as grown up, mature and able to engage in critical thinking about the law as the people who post on his client's site.

Not quite. There are well-established legal mechanisms for Ofcom (or anyone) to try to engage legally with companies domiciled in the US and with no locus in the UK. Rather than using these mechanisms, they have tried to short-circuit the process by sending emails that have no legal force.

Hmmh. If some powerful law enforcement agency was coming after me to stop my website, I sure would hope they would first send me an email asking me to stop.

What “well established process” would apply here ?

The US-UK Mutual Legal Assistance treaty imposes obligations on Ofcom which they have not met, 4chan claims:

“None of these actions constitutes valid service under the US-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, United States law or any other proper international legal process.”

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/71209929/1/4chan-commun...

MLAT applies only to a narrow set of legal procedures, essentially around criminal activity. I’m a lawyer but this is very specialist stuff. I’m not expert enough to opine on whether MLAT applies here but - simply judging by the quality of their respective legal work on display - I’m minded to believe that Ofcom knows what they are doing. OTOH 4chan’s rhetoric reeks of FUD.

4chan is 100% FUD and is playing to the gallery.

This is nerd sniping of a different sort. I’m guessing they are aiming to drum up American sentiment for their actions, and because its 4chan.

4chan is perfectly aware of its reputation, and if that wasn't enough, it's worth noting they banded with kiwifarms on this one:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyjq40vjl7o

>Lawyers representing controversial online forums 4chan and Kiwi Farms have filed a legal case against the UK Online Safety Act enforcer, Ofcom.

Drumming up public support is a no-go. Rather, I think the intent is to make the stance that if the UK wants to prevent citizens from accessing sites if they are underage, then the UK can do just that, rather than expect random companies around the world to comply.

The way the UK has chosen to do that is to ask companies to find the way that works best for them, rather than impose a single government-owned firewall solution. Those that don't will face UK fines in UK jurisdictions, which they may or may not care about.

The china point is interesting because it's false. Google doesn't censor their results in china. There was a five year period some 20 years ago where they did, but prior to that period, and after that period, they didn't. China still does business with google. This is because china understands that it is their own responsibility to censor their internet. If google is unwilling to do so, they are satisfied with blocking all google services in china.

At a certain point in internet censorship, you exit the arena of sensible, free countries, where everybody can agree to get along and enforce each other's blocks, and enter the realm of a censorious authoritarian country that must constantly patch holes in their filters to protect their citizens from badthink. The UK has entered the second realm, but hasn't realized it yet. They see someone refusing to enforce their block for them as the ultimate scorn. In fact, it is what the vast majority of websites already do to china, iran, or any other similar country. Following regulations implies a willingness to play ball. When you no longer want to play along, you ignore the regulation instead.

>every tech company engages in regulatory alignment for the entire Middle East

Can someone expand on this a bit? I'm passingly familiar with the Chinese Google example (though I thought Google left the market rather than bend the knee?) but I know nearly nothing about the Middle East angle.

They bend the knee for censorship requirement. (Not only that, they provided machine learning based filtering service for other Chinese search engine at the time)

According to Google, the China government tried to infiltrate Google's internal computer system. In response, Google stopped the censorship over night, and withdraw from China market shortly afterward.

I still remember night, when _all_ Chinese search engine stopped censoring because Google stopped their filtering service.

The China tech company have evolved much since those days, and they are now much better at censoring compare to what Google had in the early days of the internet.

I worked for a company that asked users for their gender, with language along the lines of "choose the gender that best matches your identity."

There was a special case for Middle Eastern countries that removed this language.

On a photocopier, if I switch the language to Arabic, Hebrew disappears from the list of options.

Now I want to try this on my AIO printer but I’m afraid I won’t be able to read enough Arabic to get back to the Language menu :D

"Hello HR? I think our printer's been hijacked."

This is so funny

> though I thought Google left the market rather than bend the knee?

Not even close. They bent the knee first; they left afterwards.

Not at all. They refused Chinese requests, left the market and closed offices.

Still the gold standard for how US companies should have responded to Chinese censorship demands.

Can you explain what do you mean?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_China

> On 26 January 2006, Google launched its China-based google.cn search page, with results subject to censorship by the Chinese government.

> In January 2010, Google announced that, in response to a Chinese-originated hacking attack on them and other US tech companies, they were no longer willing to censor searches in China and would pull out of the country completely if necessary.

They never had a problem censoring their results. They claimed to pull out "in retaliation" for being hacked; realistically, they noticed that China didn't want them to succeed, and gave up on trying.

I think that's leaving out a lot of context that the "Controversies" section of that Wikipedia entry, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_China#Controversies, better explains.

First, in 2006, there was still a general belief I think that Western companies could profitably exist in China and be, if not a "force for good", than at least a force for slightly more openness. Google's options were either to not be in China at all, or to be in China and abide by their laws. So when they censored search results in the 2006-2010 time period, at least they told you they were doing it and that it was at the demands of Chinese authorities. I think it's a fair debate to have on either side whether this was a good thing, but I think it's a gross oversimplification to present that this was a simple black-and-white decision and that Google "never had a problem censoring their results."

Perhaps you could quote something from that section that you feel is relevant here. It didn't look relevant to me.

> Google's options were either to not be in China at all, or to be in China and abide by their laws.

OK. So, they chose "be in China and abide by their laws", and you think it makes sense to characterize that as "they left the market rather than bend the knee"? Those are exactly opposite descriptions. They bent the knee rather than leave the market. That's what happened.

4chan is not "operating in the UK". They accept and respond to packets from the UK. If the UK government doesn't like this, they can block 4chan themselves.

That's serving UK users while knowing that they aren't legally allowed to.

That's an interesting view.

If I were to fly to the USA, purchase something that was illegal in my home country (and explicitly state I was going to take it back home), then took it back home - would the vendor be prosecuted?

No because the sale would have had to occur in the place that it is illegal

If I fire off an agent to buy items at random times from a list which is updated in country, where does the purchase of the list items happen?

Obviously, yes. A crime is a crime, so what difference does it make what country it was committed in?

I'm sorry that you are not familiar with how laws work but it's kind of a big concept and I don't really have time now to teach it to you. I would recommend Wikipedia or perhaps ChatGPT to get started.

Law systems usually state explicitly their jurisdiction domain, depending on the level of offense.

If they came to your home country, very possibly yes.

? Of course they wouldn't.

Bartenders from other countries don't get locked up the moment they enter the US because they served alcohol to someone (a US citizen?) between 18 and 21. The US does not have jurisdiction over alcohol sales in other countries.

In this scenario, what's more likely to be illegal is bringing the item into the country.

It's difficult to make physical analogies to these types of internet laws. What makes them 'tricky' is how they are not physical.

If they pack the alcohol up in a crate, and then ship it to the person after they make the order in person? Less clear yes?

If the consumer goes to a place it is legal, and consumes it there without bringing any back, most people would say ‘meh’. Depending on the product. Hard drugs and sex work, being two common exceptions that some countries get more worked up about even traveling to ‘enjoy’ it.

But ship it back (especially hard drugs or sex workers!), and almost all people get more concerned.

The issue here is exactly why customs typically is a mandatory ‘gate’ for packages AND passengers entering a country.

Similar, one could say, to a giant country level firewall?

And why it is so lucrative for smugglers, which are defacto performing a type of arbitrage eh?

If you are purchasing any form of financial service that involves moving money around and said financial services provider also happens to interact with a US based financial entity, then yes, Uncle Sam will make life very difficult.

And no before you ask crypto won't solve this because Uncle Sam demands USD stablecoins to have sanctions mechanisms built in and clearing entities that don't implement KYC etc. will find themselves subjected to prosecution in other ways.

How many other laws can I passively break in other countries I have no connection to?

As many as you like, as long as you never travel to that country. Or that country has an extradition treaty with yours.

Mmmmmhhhhhhh…What if I buy some goods (say electronics) in the EU from a foreign firm (v.gr. China) using mail and these goods do not comply with the EU’s regulations? I really do not know the proper reply to this.

Then you’re the importer of record and the compliance burden is on you.

OK, got it. Thanks!

Customs will destroy the package. They do not start fining random foreign companies for sending you the package.

That’s what customs is for.

The regulation - and the actions Ofcom are taking - are saying "look, you can deal with this, or you can get blocked and pay our fines the moment we have a way of being able to enforce them. What's it going to be?". 4chan are saying neither. Which means they're going to get blocked.

A darknet drug dealer could make the same argument, probably with little success.

> The US does this, and US lawyers understand this. If I open an online poker and sports bookmaking site in the UK (where such sites are completely legal), and take business from all over the United States thereby breaking federal law, I can expect to be met at the plane door the next time I take a shopping trip to NYC.

Countries do things like this when they're run by fools and they can do this because the fools have weapons and prisons. What good has it done the US? Can US patrons of offshore internet Bitcoin casinos no longer find them available? Not a chance.

But then on top of being completely ineffective, it causes exactly what you're saying -- other fools in other countries want to treat the foolishness as precedent for doing it themselves.

Which is why the people in the various countries should put a stop to all of it, before it spreads and they find themselves in a foreign prison because their flight had a layover in a country with a law they didn't know about. And countries themselves should retaliate like hell whenever anyone tries to do it to one of their citizens.

That's the crucial part. Lots of people who do business in other countries either want to, or need to, visit the US from time to time. Whether for a "shopping trip to NYC", or for business reasons. That's why it's a big deal when the US wants somebody.

On the other hand, I'm not particularly concerned about some tyrannical regime on the other side of the world that doesn't like the kind of content I have on my site. I'll postpone the research until I actually need to fly over their airspace or something.

Where does the UK currently stand in the spectrum between "country that everyone wants to visit sometime" and "country that nobody gives a fuck about"? It used to be firmly on the former side, but it seems to be drifting away to the latter side every year.

> That's the crucial part. Lots of people who do business in other countries either want to, or need to, visit the US from time to time.

That doesn't do them any good because the set of people who never intend to set foot in the US is still vastly larger than the number of people required to set up an offshore internet casino.

> On the other hand, I'm not particularly concerned about some tyrannical regime on the other side of the world that doesn't like the kind of content I have on my site. I'll postpone the research until I actually need to fly over their airspace or something.

Most people can't even name every country, much less tell you what their laws are. And then you'll be breaking them without even knowing, and if that's regarded as a legitimate reason to incarcerate someone then what are you supposed to do? Suppose you have to choose between a layover in Egypt or in Hungary, do you even know which one's laws you might have broken at any point in your life?

> Where does the UK currently stand in the spectrum between "country that everyone wants to visit sometime" and "country that nobody gives a fuck about"? It used to be firmly on the former side, but it seems to be drifting away to the latter side every year.

The problem is if you get on a flight to Paris you have no control over whether it might get diverted to London.

If diverting planes becomes a big enough problem for ordinary businesspeople and not just prominent opponents of certain dictators, I'm sure someone will build an app that helps us plan flights accordingly. Traveling from the US to France and need to avoid UK airspace? Sure, let's take a quick layover in Spain. Have you done any of the following things in the last x years? OK, we'll make a big detour around China this time.

Don't let slippery slope arguments take you into the dystopian future quicker than the world itself seems to be willing to.

> If diverting planes becomes a big enough problem for ordinary businesspeople and not just prominent opponents of certain dictators, I'm sure someone will build an app that helps us plan flights accordingly. Traveling from the US to France and need to avoid UK airspace? Sure, let's take a quick layover in Spain. Have you done any of the following things in the last x years? OK, we'll make a big detour around China this time.

There are two major problems with this.

The first is that you don't actually know which countries you have to avoid. There isn't going to be an app that can walk you through every law in every country.

And the second is that you're not the one flying the plane. You thought you were going to Charles de Gaulle but the weather in Paris is worse than expected or some drunk driver crashed the gate and drove out onto the runway and they're diverting all the planes, so after you're already in the air you find out you're actually going to Heathrow.

> Don't let slippery slope arguments take you into the dystopian future quicker than the world itself seems to be willing to

They already do stuff like this. The fact that they do it is now being used as a justification for doing it more and elsewhere. You can watch people telling you that slippery slope is a fallacy as they're greasing the hill.

> And the second is that you're not the one flying the plane. You thought you were going to Charles de Gaulle but the weather in Paris is worse than expected or some drunk driver crashed the gate and drove out onto the runway and they're diverting all the planes, so after you're already in the air you find out you're actually going to Heathrow.

Such a system would presumably account for possible diversions and plot your flight accordingly.

And yes, that is a thing that some of us do actually need. For example, while I have lived in the West for the past 18 years, I'm still a Russian citizen, and if I ever set foot there again they will likely have some questions for me regarding all the money for the war effort in Ukraine (see Ksenia Karelina for an example). Thus I would very much appreciate the ability to book a flight that is guaranteed to not be diverted to Russia or to any country that is likely to extradite to Russia, and I would pay money for such a service.

> Such a system would presumably account for possible diversions and plot your flight accordingly.

I mean, that's fine if you want to avoid Russia while flying from California to Quebec, but you don't really need an app for that one. Whereas if you're within the plane's fuel supply of where you don't want to be, how are you supposed to know ahead of time what kind of nonsense is going to happen while you're in the air?

The plane could have a navigation failure over the ocean and end up arbitrarily far off course. Some first class VIP could have a medical problem which is going to force the plane to divert anyway and then the nearest city with the right kind of hospital is in the place you don't want to be. And what if you end up St. Petersberg not because you had a layover in Finland but because Helsinki was your intended destination?

You can't account for any possible contingency obviously, but you can still account for most. Start with just determining possible diversions on the route as it is supposed to be. That route can in turn be replaced with a heatmap of historical routes the planes on it have actually taken. And so on. The point is to not be on a plane that can be diverted to a country where you really can't end up at any likely point of its regular route.

> They already do stuff like this.

Who?

I can't think of a single case other than Ryanair 4978, a plane that was carrying a Belarusian opposition activist over Belarusian airspace. Not saying this was justified in any way, but even Belarus didn't dare to touch any foreign passengers.

If you're aware of any actual case of a first-world airliner from country A being forced to land in country B to have a citizen of country C arrested, please provide links.

Since we don't use cold-war classifications like 'first-world' anymore, I'll refer simply to National Airlines with long-established US and European route access from country A being forced to land in country B to have a citizen of country C arrested.

This excludes the (arguably contentious) incidents like:

- 1954 in Israel where forced a Syrian passenger plane to land in order to gain hostages which it then hoped to exchange for captured Israeli soldiers. - 2012 in Turkey grounded a Syrian plane in 2012 in order to detain and transfer a suspect to the US. - 2016 in Ukraine grounded a plane with military jets to have a citizen of country C arrested

Leaving the following three exemplars:

Egyptair Flight 2843 - EgyptAir forced to land at a NATO base in Italy in the 80s by US fighter jets due to PLO members onboard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achille_Lauro_hijacking#Interc...

Aeromexico Flight 006 - The US diverted a France-Mexico flight to Canada in order to detain and transfer a suspect to the US https://www.cbsnews.com/news/aeromexico-flight-diverted-pass...

Bolivian president's jet - Bolivian president's jet rerouted amid suspicions Edward Snowden on board with France and Portugal accused of refusing entry to their airspace, with plane forced to Land in Vienna due to pressure of US State Department https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/03/edward-snowden...

Thanks for the detailed list.

A common theme in the last two cases is that the perpetrators did not actually force the plane to land in their own territory. They merely refused entry, forcing the plane to divert to a third country. This means that if they wanted somebody detained, they needed cooperation from that third country. Which only works if the person to be detailed had done something that is also illegal in that third country.

This is different from AnthonyMouse's scenario. Let's return to the hypothetical example of the UK messing with a JFK-CDG flight. The UK can refuse entry to their airspace, "pushing" your plane away. So you might have to refuel in Ireland and enter France over its Atlantic coast instead of crossing Southern England. But you will not be "pulled" into the UK, unless Keir Starmer fancies being treated like Lukashenko in the eyes of the world.

The only example of an actual forced landing is the EgyptAir, which was 40 years ago and had hijackers on board. I'll leave it to you to decide whether that's enough of a precedent to justify being paranoid today.

This isn’t about visiting for shopping. Billions of people, the vast majority of humanity, manage just fine without ever taking a holiday in the US.

What matters is if any of their assets are ever denominated in USD, or ever use the international banking system that is also controlled by the US. No other country has that kind of long arm jurisdiction.

The thing I can't understand is that people keep bringing this up as if it's supposed to justify doing it because the US could actually make it work, but then there are still a zillion offshore internet casinos which is strong direct empirical evidence that it does not in fact work.

Yes, that's the special thing about the US. Nobody can even use a phone without the US getting involved in one way or another.

The UK on the other hand...

> They are stating that companies operating in the UK

They are not operating in the UK. ISPs in the UK have chosen to make content from the USA available in the uk (or more accurately, do nothing to prevent it being available)

but ISPs do not have the power to decide if something is infringing a rule or not.

Thus Ofcom goes through the motions of telling 4Chan "hey I think you're not compliant" and if 4Chan says "lol, I'm not serving UK people" _then_ the UK authority will tell the ISPs to block it (and the will be on the hook if they don't).

There are clear laws now, so they do have the power to decide if something's against those laws. This is besides the point I'm making though.

Ofcom should be telling the ISPs to take action, not the sites, since the ISPs are the "importers". They should never involve the site in the first place, and certainly not by trying send them empty threats of fines.

If I open a service to pick up stuff from whatever US shop a UK customer wants and then ship it to him would I not be on the hook for the contents? I don't think customs would be impressed with the argument that I don't have the power to inspect sealed packages handed over to me.

> Google does certain things in relation to Tiananmen Square searches in China

What does Google do with Tiananmen square searches in China? I can't access google here at all.

It is a mass killing event which the Chinese government pretends never happened and/or suppresses the information of. Phrases will be banned/filtered from all digital services in China relating to it. From Wikipedia:

> The Tiananmen Square protests, known within China as the June Fourth Incident, were student-led demonstrations held in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, lasting from 15 April to 4 June 1989. After weeks of unsuccessful attempts between the demonstrators and the Chinese government to find a peaceful resolution, the Chinese government deployed troops to occupy the square on the night of 3 June in what is referred to as the Tiananmen Square massacre. The events are sometimes called the '89 Democracy Movement, the Tiananmen Square Incident, or the Tiananmen uprising.

> Between 200 and 10,000 civilians were killed. The Red Cross states that around 2,600 died and the official Chinese government figure is 241 dead with 7,000 wounded. Amnesty International's estimates puts the number of deaths at several hundred to close to 1,000. As many as 10,000 people were estimated to have been arrested during the protests.

So what is Google doing? That was the question. Google isn't available in China.

> Phrases will be banned/filtered from all digital services in China relating to it.

Google was complying with, what I assume is the law in, China and censoring searches for things China doesn't want talked about. Google has since left China, apparently bowing down wasn't enough.

In 2010 Google decided to stop censoring results in China.

>We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn

https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-chin...

Disclosure: I work at Google.

Completely whitewashed, for all the good it does Google.

Do you have evidence that Google is filtering searches in China?

Disclosure: I work at Google, but not on search.

https://blogoscoped.com/archive/2009-06-04-n13.html

This is obviously pretty old, but as people have noted even this level of censorship didn't save Google in China.

In 2010 Google decided to stop censoring results in China.

>We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn

https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-chin...

your comment seems very insightful but for the layman that I am it seems to ignore the source of international law reach.

the usa does at lot of leg work to set up legal frameworks, suck as forcing transpacific "partnership", which enforce usa IP law overseas etc.

they can enforce some things, like gambling and financial rules, and now intellectual property overseas because there are specific accords for those. every thing else, even hacking and spying, they must wait for the "criminal" to land on it's jurisdiction.

why is this changing anything on all of that?

also, your example of google/china would let this play out opposite of what you suggest: uk gov would please US law to keep doing business there. i fail to see the relevance on that also.

>As an American business, you can choose to ignore that, but that has consequences if any of your board of directors ever sets foot in the UK.

The board of directors for a private company is generally secret in the US. Only the "manager" aka president/CEO/whoever at the top is generally named publicly, as well as legal agent.

I suspect that MI6 could find a US private company's directors names if they wanted to. We're not talking about nuclear launch codes here.

I suspect MI6 has much better things to do.

MI6 is involved in intelligence, not criminal work.

Are you implying intelligence never does crimes,

or only MI6?

Not really that easily? Generally, only the legal agent for the private company will know and the direct hires of the board i.e. the CEO/CTO/whoever they name up top. Sometimes board of directors can get named in court records but with the public records redacted. But outside of that? Not even the IRS knows unless the directors get compensation.

MI6 would have to commit a few physical in person crimes to get any details out of any reasonably well run operation.

Honestly I'm surprised to learn that 4chan has a board of directors.

In general, many things you think are grassroots are actually highly corporate astroturf.

Now?!

Add in the list of Directors and Consultants from the Big 4 who are ex-servicemen with various TOP-SECRET clearances and/or working for the Military-Industrial complex. If the US wants to stop that, then the opposing nation has very little to say in the matter unless they're a Superpower.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...

Same can be said for extra-territorial arrests and extraordinary rendition when suitably large Corporate entities like the MPAA are involved. Non-violent Internet copyright infringement charge brought by the United States, even when its not a crime in the country of origin, is enough to bring the hammer down

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Dotcom#Extradition

>They are stating that companies operating in the UK and providing services to UK individuals

did you mean to say "companies operating in the UK and(including) companies providing services to the UK"? because the way you wrote it, it would not apply to 4chan

and what is not being mentioned by most commenters is, if the law is unenforceable on a US corp, what is the chance that an individual associated with 4chan Inc could find themselves individually arrested were they to set foot in a Commonwealth country or somesuch

I would expect the US not to ignore such an arrest so its really a question if going after 4chan this way is worth causing a diplomatic incident.

4Chan operates out of the US. The UK can ban it if it wants but it can not unilaterally make demands of 4chan and expect courts to enforce them, because it has no jurisdiction over 4chan's activities.

[flagged]

> TIL that 4chan's lawyer …

…also suffers from delusions of grandeur, apparently: “Britain will be spinning hard to minimise the noise in the media.”

Ironic considering that U.S. does long arm enforcement all the time, often successfully. You can often read stories about U.S. seizing random foreign websites, bitcoins and shit on this very forum. I guess the part where Britain looks “very silly” is that UK’s long arm is much more likely to be ignored than US’s long arm since British Empire’s sun has set?

> as if we haven’t yet shucked-off the American Revolution, let alone colonialism.

I can’t even.

[flagged]

Technically yes, but arresting US citizens will have implications and you can expect the us will protest via diplomatic channels. It is very unlikely UK is interested in that.

Not that countries don't prosicute laws for crimes outsiden of their border, but the bar for what they will is higher.

The bar for British is arresting old ladies saying nasty things online, so practically their bar is already gone.

No, the older women are being arrested for protesting in the streets in support of an organisation our government has deemed to be aligned with terrorism. It’s entirely silly but not as silly as your example.

No, the older women are being arrested for protesting in the streets against an organisation that is committing terrorism, because the government has deemed that actual terrorism is not terrorism and opposing terrorism is the real terrorism, and a bunch of nonsensical things like that.

I think you consuming too much right wing American media.

I think you're willfully ignoring how authoritarian your country is.

Last I checked I don’t think we were stopping people at the border because they said mean things about our government.

https://freespeechunion.org/french-philosopher-to-challenge-...

So your counter is to show that we won’t let a blatant racist in? I think a lot of folks in the UK would consider that a good thing.

Just out of genuine curiosity, what media are you consuming to have this view of the country?

So you are okay with people being denied entry because of their words, just certain words?

In a country that doesn’t have the first amendment, yes.

Again, genuinely interested in what media you’re consuming to have this view of the UK.

Isn't it interesting that your view of right and wrong is different in different countries - that you think certain things are wrong in your country but right in other countries.

Not wanting to have your people and culture erased is not racist.

But they are not arresting american old ladies unless they have done something wrong while in the UK. That's the line that you can expect to cause a diplomatic shitstorm.

The were arrested for encouraging people to burn down hotels with people inside… they went to prison because they pleaded guilty to racial hatred offences

[dead]

> Initially this seems like disrespect for another country's sovereignty.

Right, it's nothing of the sort. It's a proactive quip to highlight the absolute sovereignty of Parliament. Jennings is emphasising that Parliament has the ultimate legal authority to make any law, no matter how absurd, impractical, or unenforceable.

> Ofcom has to go through the motions of telling 4chan they can't smoke in Paris because of the (very on-brand) nanny law.

The thing is, Ofcom can still issue fines, and enforce these fines against anyone in the UKs legal scope advertising on 4chan.

The UK already claims extraterritorial jurisdiction in some extreme cases like pedophilia and terrorism.

> The Act explicitly grants Ofcom the legal authority to regulate online safety for individuals in the United Kingdom, and this expressly includes conducting investigations into, and imposing penalties for, non-compliance by providers of online services with their duties under the Act. […] The Act expressly anticipates that it will have extra-territorial effect

I don't see anything wrong here: Sure, Ofcom can have the legal authority to regulate online safety worldwide. It's just that this... legal authority... isn't quite enforceable outside the UK jurisdiction. How unfortunate!

There is plenty of precedence for this, and I am about to fudge a bunch of details. The basic point is that the United Kingdom can make any law it sees fit to any place or person. Even though it may only exercise punitive issues once they arrival inside the physical jurisdiction. So the example I was taught, the UK can pass a law banning smoking in Paris, but may not arrest/fine until such criminal trespassers get off the ferry in UK. This means that the Sovereign power is omni-whatevers, unless you explicitly say otherwise eg The UK Legislated their way out of South Africa and Canada expilictly. If 4Chans money ever passes through a UK bank, I'm sure Ofcom will grab what they can. It's a very British shakedown.

The United States (eg. illegal gambling, hacking), South Korea (smoking cannabis abroad) and many other countries operate the same way.

> South Korea (smoking cannabis abroad)

And gambling, too. Remember in 2013 when all those celebrities got busted for gambling in Macao?

> After getting caught gambling illegally, Shinhwa’s Andy, Boom and Yang Se Hyung received their punishments.

> On November 28, the Seoul Central District Court sentenced Andy, Boom, and Yang Se Hyung to monetary penalties. Andy and Boom must pay 5,000,000 won, while Yang Se Hyung will pay 3,000,000 won.

> The fines were dependent on how much money each person bet. Andy spent 44,000,000 won, Boom 33,000,000 won, and Yang Se Hyung 26,000,000 won.

> The three are all currently pulled out of all schedules and self-reflecting on their actions.

> Meanwhile, Lee Su Geun, Tak Jae Hoon, and Tony An are waiting for their first trial to take place on December 6. They bet more than several hundred million won.

https://web.archive.org/web/20140215040022/http://mwave.inte...

There's also all the countries that have laws regarding sex-tourism abroad as well.

That's different in that it prosecutes citizens of those countries for things done outside their borders, not unrelated people doing things elsewhere.

America will prosecute Americans for doing certain things that are illegal inside America outside its borders. As another example, if you take a boat to international waters and kill someone on it, you're going to get arrested and prosecuted when you get home.

America will not arrest or prosecute someone from the UK visiting Thailand as a sex tourist.

Ok, hypothetically though, and going back to the smoking in Paris law, if the UK banned smoking in Paris, and a French citizen proven to have smoked in Paris vacations in the UK, the only thing stopping the UK from prosecuting them is that it would be kinda "act-of-war-ish" to start imprisoning French citizens. Technically they could under their own law, they just wouldn't dare since they don't want to start a major diplomatic incident or war.

Once you're in another country's jurisdiction, all bets are off. You're subject to those laws, unless there's a treaty or similar saying that you're not. In another post, I mentioned writing nasty blog posts about Kim Jong-un. If you do that, it's probably a very bad idea to visit North Korea.

In this case, the operator of 4Chan is free to blow off the UK's law. They may wish to account for that in future travel plans, though.

This is one of those technically true but defacto false things. Its legal under UK law, but if they want the variety of benefits they get from the US then it isn't. If the UK government starts arresting vacationing Americans for things that aren't a violation of US law, its all a matter of if the US governments wants to make an issue of it. Maybe you get lucky and nothing happens, or maybe you lose your military protection and 25% of your GDP. Plus your tourism businesses take a hit. You really want to take that risk?

But given the behavior of the UK government lately, doing something suicidally stupid seems on brand for them.

This is why we are not travailing the US right now.

Because you think ICE will arrest you for being an illegal immigrant? If you seriously believe this, then probably its best you don't go outside anymore.

Every time the media reported something like this, turned out they were leaving out something important. Like the professor who was smuggling biological samples into the US. Turns out that's illegal, that's why she went home. If you aren't doing something like that, you will be fine.

As someone who has travelled a fair bit across the border between Canada and US, CBP agents have always tended to be dicks drunk on their power. I've seen plenty of blatant abuse at the border. So really the only thing that needs to happen for CBP to ruin your day is for an agent to have a bad day for their own. The only difference between then and now is that they're given more tools to do so and actively encouraged to use them.

Yeah these people that think there is any measurable risk to going to the US as a normal tourist or businessman respecting US laws while there really need to get out of whatever bubble is feeding them that fear.

This is also why a lot of people refuse to travel to the UK now.

That's reasonable.

The US have done this a lot, luring “hackers” and other criminals to the US and then arresting them.

I declare categorically that UK law does not apply to me, here in California.

However, if I'm going to break one of their laws that they feel very strongly about, I'm probably not going to travel to the UK. That's just begging for something bad to happen. Why risk it?

So in this case, if you know the US is looking for you, why, oh why, would you travel to the US?

They can issue an arrest warrant, though, and then file an extradition request to the US which you then have to fight.

The US doesn't extradite citizens for things that are not a crime in the US.

That's the "you then have to fight" bit.

[dead]

There are a few cases of claiming universal jurisdiction criminalizing what citizens of other countries do even outside the country, but that's generally things like crimes against humanity.

> America will not arrest or prosecute someone from the UK visiting Thailand as a sex tourist.

Sure it will. Citizenship is irrelevant. If you travel abroad to have sex with underage people and then come to the US, you can be prosecuted regardless of your nationality.

Boats are considered the territory of the flag state.

You are saying that when US citizens engage in illegal gambling in other parts of the world, the US sues and threatens the foreign gambling venues? That South Korea sues marihuana dispensaries in the US when they sell to visiting Koreans?

The equivalent is the US threatening to arrest the operators of those venues when they set foot on US soil.

But in any case, this is different, as the US has only declared these activities as illegal in the US. They haven't enacted laws saying you cannot gamble outside the US.

When it comes to antiterrorism stuff, it's a totally different story. If I go to the Middle East and provide money to an organization on the US terrorist list, then yes - I can definitely be prosecuted for it if I enter US jurisdiction. And it goes even further - I don't need to enter their jurisdiction. The US can just have me extradited if there is a treaty.

> When it comes to antiterrorism stuff, it's a totally different story. If I go to the Middle East and provide money to an organization on the US terrorist list, then yes - I can definitely be prosecuted for it if I enter US jurisdiction. And it goes even further - I don't need to enter their jurisdiction. The US can just have me extradited if there is a treaty.

Moreover, the US government can have you seized and brought to the US without a treaty (or even in violation of a treaty), which may become a diplomatic and/or international legal issue between the US and the state where you were seized, and may subject the agents doung the seizing to personal legal difficulty in that state, but has no bearing on the validity of the criminal process brought against you once they haul you back to the US. See, e.g., U.S. v. Alvarez-Machain, 504 U.S. 655 (1992).

As we have recently seen, the US may send the military to sink your boat and kill you if they think you might be planning to break a US law. Whether this is legal or not is another matter.

Or at least, they’ll claim they did it for that reason after they blow up your boat and kill you.

Notably, if you survive, they’ll send you back home without bothering with a trial?

The USA has gone after gambling site operators in other countries, yes

I think he is saying that once US citizens return to the US, then they will be arrested.

The US has seized non-US citizens, abroad, for acts committed abroad, over which the US asserts (and exerts) extraterritorial jurisdiction, not just US citizens, and not just waiting until they enter the US on their own.

If they were talking about the US arresting US citizens, then the equivalent would be Ofcom sending a fine to the UK visitors of 4chan. That's clearly not what they're doing.

Sure, but those laws apply to US Citizens, and typically aren't enforced until the person returns to US soil.

Sovereignty is a big thing in international politics. Countries as a whole are loath to meddle in other countries domestic affairs, even in extreme cases like genocide/ethnic cleansing. Violating weird online protection laws are not the sort of thing a country is going to risk an international incident over.

Sure you can find some examples of countries that violate those norms, but they are the exception not the rule.

This case is more like UK bans selling cigarettes and tries going after a Parisian tobacconist.

Good reminder that what happens on the server stays on the server, but what happens on the client happens wherever the client is.

Yes if the Parisian tabaconist sells in the UK. What happens in France is a French concern.

Not exactly. It's like if a brit goes to paris to buy cigarettes, the UK is stating that it's the tabac's job to refuse the transaction.

They can say whatever they want, but the UK can't conduct an extra-territorial police action in france. They can bar subject from traveling to france instead. The onus is on the UK.

They're not going to Paris, are they? 4chan brings their services into the UK. The US does the same thing: Kim Dotcom comes to mind.

In the complaint[1], they explicitly state "4chan has no presence, operations, or infrastructure outside of the territorial limits of the United States." So, no, 4chan is not bringing their services into the UK: UK users send requests that travel to the US and hit 4chan servers/CDNs there.

[1] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/71209929/1/4chan-commun...

No, the ISPs who operate the ASes and routers that make up "the internet" are the ones who bring the service to the UK.

4chan does not reach out to UK users in any way, only responds to their incoming requests.

It really is analogous to UK users going to a foreign country, buying something that their home country has an issue with, having a third party ship it to their home country, and then their home country getting mad at the store.

To argue the details, no they don't bring their service to the UK. Rather, they surface their services where ever their servers are. And then "the internet", other people's hardware and such that they have no control over, bring it to the UK. I know it's pedantic, but this particular thread is _about_ the pedantics.

You can argue that either way. It's not the best analogy. I extrapolate in another comment in this thread.

NZ agreed to cooperate with the US request. That made all the difference. If the US agrees to allow UK to proceed, then that's trouble for 4chan.

From what I've heard, their servers are in the US, so UK residents are connecting to the US to access the site and not the other way around. 4chan sells memberships that allow users to bypass some of the rules. If they accept payment from UK banks (no idea if they do or not), then perhaps the UK can make a claim they're doing business in the UK.

4chan brings their services into the UK

How exactly do they do that? Do they have peering agreements with UK-based ISPs?

> They're not going to Paris, are they? 4chan brings their services into the UK.

They don't bring their services to the UK, ISPs and other network operators do - the UK can go after those and force them to implement the Great Firewall of Britain but that would be less popular so they don't yet.

> The US does the same thing: Kim Dotcom comes to mind.

Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi. The UK can try to go after US citizens abroad if they want to but they will quickly find out why that's a bad idea.

The most important difference between this and Kim Dotcom is the US has a lot of weight to throw around, evidently having enough to lean on the governments of small countries like NZ. In the case of 4chan though, it's a once-great but now relatively minor country trying to have their way with an American company, meanwhile America has laws explicitly for the purpose of telling the British to fuck off with the imposition of any of their free speech violating antics against Americans.

The US entertainment industry has a lot of weight to throw around.

Time to stand up Hadrian's Firewall!

There was an Australian case, I'll look it up, but the relevant bit, the publishing of the web page happened on a computer in Australia, which they claimed (successfully) gave them jurisdiction

But what does successfully mean? An Australian court can rule on it, but Australia is going to have to take it up with US State from there. Or send the navy, I guess...

I'm nearly at the point of saying that a tobacco sales isn't the best analogy here.

I could be milk, right? Or a sheet of paper.

I'll concede that it's not terribly far fetched. If the french entity produced a good that is illegal in the UK put it in the post to be delivered to the UK, then we have something like an analog to producing HTML in one place and displaying elsewhere.

However, the thing about sovereignty is that you don't have it if you can't enforce it.

No, more like the Parisian tobacconist had the audacity to sell tobacco to some Brits without asking Ofcom.

yes, where said Brits were in Britain and the tobacco was shipped there.

No, the tobacco was being served from France, the Brits used British pidgeon carriers to bring the tobacco to Britain.

Which doesn't sounds so absurd if you replace “tobacco” with “cocaine” and “Parisian” with “Colombian”.

Still sounds absurd to me.

> UK bans selling cocaine in the UK and tries going after a Colombian cocaine dealer in Columbia.

I'll neutrally note that this is why Trump is blowing up Venezuelan fishing boats currently: https://www.npr.org/2025/10/15/nx-s1-5575699/why-is-the-trum...

(I'll less-neutrally note that this is also absurd, and probably criminal.)

They likely do not have a flag state and could be considered pirates. Fisherman dont have 100k worth of outboard motors either.

Which law allows the death penalty for allegedly transporting drugs?

Shooting first and asking questions later is how we got into this mess of deporting us citizens.

Sections 105 and 108 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea allows any country to go after drug smugglers in international waters but it does require that a court in that country approve of the action. It's certainly worth questioning if a court can issue a preemptive ruling on a proposed action against alleged drug smugglers. There's also the issue that Maritime Law is weird, convoluted, and probably sanctions most state actions if you dig around enough.

Since you are going all lawyer on this one, you should know they weren't flying any national flag. Technically, if you do this in international waters you are a pirate and anyone can legally do what the US did in that situation. Maritime law is very old and has some interesting provisions in it. The parts you quote only matter if a national flag is being flown at the time.

Cite on not flying any national flag?

Both the US and Venezuela are non-parties to United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

That is the war on drugs yes?

It still sounds absurd to me. Nations should not be in the business of passing laws that apply to extraterritorial actions of foreign citizens. I know that it happens, especially with the US, but IMHO it’s just not how things should work.

This has become far too normalized due to decades of bad behavior by the US, and it’s going to come back to bite us as US power declines. Just wait until 30 years from now when you can’t safely visit anywhere in the far East because you made a subversive comment about China. Although I’m sure the same people will hypocritically wail and gnash their teeth about the laws made by those people, when of course our extraterritorial laws are just fine.

The end punishment will still end up being that 4chan is not allowed to do business in the UK. If they want their website to work in the UK, they should follow UK law.

Then the UK should just step up and pass a censorship law, not do this song-and-dance about fining businesses outside their control.

If this kind of BS becomes too common then running a small internet business will become impossible. Even if you don’t do business in a country, you will have to consider whether or not they might consider you in violation of some obscure law and then consider whether or not that country has the leverage to impact your business or even your own personal safety. It’s utterly ridiculous. This would spell the end of the global internet, except for megacorps. It’s already a tough business environment as it is.

The status quo is that some countries have these laws, but they are generally ignored unless you’re a citizen, you manage to do something geopolitically significant, or you get involved in transnational crime rings. This seems acceptable to me. If countries don’t like the free internet, then ban it so we can all see what you’re really up to.

> This has become far too normalized due to decades of bad behavior by the US, and it’s going to come back to bite us as US power declines.

This has been happening long before the US started doing it.

If anything, it's normalized in the US because of the bad behavior prior to the US doing it. China's a great example. What does brutally crushing dissent internally and abroad without even a facade of a single care about human rights get you? Well, in their case, damn near superpower status. Been that way since at the very least Nixon's administration.

The net effect was people started to wonder why we bother with the inefficiencies of "rights" and "privacy". The concern for human rights shown since the end of WWII in the West (particularly the US) is an exception, not norm, in history.

>The net effect was people started to wonder why we bother with the inefficiencies of "rights" and "privacy".

Who are these people you're talking about, tankies, faschists?

The Chinese have the government that they deserve. They screw each other over, and what goes around comes around. It's a cautionary tale, not an example to follow.

What about marijunana? It's absurd for the UK government to try and go after a legal California weed store.

If the California stores ships to the UK, you can be certain that they will.

And they'd be right to do so as a country has sovereignty over what is allowed or not in their country, not matter the country of origin of the seller.

They have a right to stop the packages at the border. They have no right to go after the stores themselves and more importantly they have no power to do so unless the US helps them, which they would never do over a free speech issue.

It does if the attempted enforcement is sending a notice of a fine to Pablo Escobar.

Ok then, thank you, I'll file that demand as appropriate.

Now if the UK sends warships to the country, ok. Good luck with sending warships to invade the US.

> but may not arrest/fine until such criminal trespassers get off the ferry in UK

Many entities assert extraterritorial jurisdiction [0] for a broad range of activities. The critical question is if the offense would be categorized under an existing extradition treaty's list [1].

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraterritorial_jurisdiction

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extradition

> The Act expressly anticipates that it will have extra-territorial effect

It also continues like this:

> This does not mean that the Act extends to all use of in-scope services globally. […] “The duties extend only to the design, operation and use of the service in the UK and, for duties expressed to apply in relation to ‘users’, as it affects the UK users of the service”

Wouldn't this mean that the Act only applies to services explicitly design/targeting UK users/visitors? So if you're building a general service for no particular residents/citizens, the Act doesn't apply to you? Or am I misunderstanding something?

That's not what the text means, but even if it did, you cornered yourself, since if you have no particular care for UK users, you won't care if they are blocked from your general service.

Blocking UK users from your service does not put you out of scope of OSA, according to Ofcom.

4 days ago:

> "Services who choose to restrict access rather than protect UK users remain on our watchlist "

It is worth noting that the other sites swept up in this current batch have had their investigations closed by restricting, though.

My read on "remain on our watchlist" was them monitoring for if that block lapses, etc.

I do expect UK's internet insanity to reckon with VPNs sooner rather than later, though.

Sure, its cheap and easy. Plus you know those UK users will just get a VPN and come anyway so you don't lose a thing. Its only 4chan that wants to make this public. They don't have much in the way of advertising revenue so there isn't much damage that can be done to them. Either way, the actions of the UK government are largely irrelevant again.

If the UK government bans VPNs, now they have more people in jail for speech violations than Russia and a more restricted Internet than China. The jokes write themselves at that point. It also becomes a virtue to dunk on the UK government worldwide. All to keep people from reading a site that the majority of people have no interest in. Its sad really...

That's strange, because protection is supposed to be implemented by blocking.

Could you help a fellow out and translate what it actually means in plain language?

The duties extend to the use of the service in the UK.

Remember that they're threatening a fine, and failing to pay fines can be a criminal matter. Simply blocking the site would be less of an issue, at least in terms of legal consequences.

If non-payment of the fine became a criminal matter, would the operators of 4chan be at risk when leaving the US and entering a country willing to arrest them on behalf of the UK?

The UK has already arrested foreign nationals for speech violations when they traveled to the UK. I'm sure that's doing wonders for the British tourism industry.

But it doesn't seek to block 4chan, it seeks to impose penalties.

Block is the only realistically imposable penalty in this case.

>Wouldn't this mean that the Act only applies to services explicitly design/targeting UK users/visitors?

Clearly not considering that there's nothing in 4chan that would make it explicitly targeted towards the UK. Unless Ofcom is saying something and doing the opposite.

I low key want to see official documents stating the name of some of those threads: all the "bongland" and" have you got a loicense" threads with some of their respective comments.

4chan does have very minor explicit support for UK users; on some boards it puts a UK flag on their post (as it does with all other countries and territories.) It could perhaps be argued that this constitutes the site being consciously designed with UK users in mind. Hardly matters though, there's nothing the UK can do about it. They aren't a superpower anymore and it's time for them to realize it.

I am not a 4chan user. How is this flag assigned? Automatically by 4chan based on some criteria? Or chosen at will by the user?

Presumably if the latter, one may express their support of the flag of their choice; or indicate their heritage; or any number of other reasons.

If the former, and considering the existence of a .uk TLD, they probably are considered to be “targeting” that market.

You get one automatically assigned based on GeoIP. It's even mentioned on Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki//pol/

Non compliance will require the setting of a security flag in the IP header.

https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3514.txt

That's only on /pol/ though, and it's based on GeoIP. No other board has flags other than complete meme ones like /int/

Off topic, thread moved to /bant/ >>420694069

4chan should troll the UK by replacing the UK flag with a roman one or another past occupier of their choice.

During the Euros they replace the British flag with flags for England, Scotland and Wales on the sports board.

4chan.co.uk value decimated by this analysis

Oh no!

It’s presumably meant to be effective against global corporations like Meta and Google that have significant operations in the UK. They can be liable for non-compliance globally and Ofcom doesn’t have to show it occurred within the UK.

Yep, then and their German counterpart have many times asked Facebook to censor stuff for the entire world and they've complied every time.

The concern is they decide a site non-compliant, can't do shit about it in absence of British presence, then go after Britons accessing the site.

Kiwifarms stopped serving UK IPs, not because of fear of enforcement but rather because they don't anyone British jailed. The UK landing page straight up says 'use Tor'.

> Kiwifarms stopped serving UK IPs, not because of fear of enforcement

That's exactly what anyone wanting to save face would say though.

> they don't anyone British jailed. The UK landing page straight up says 'use Tor'.

There's a contradiction here: if you want to protect British citizens from being jailed for accessing a website then you should tell them not to use your website, not “use an alternative way to connect", because that will still get people to jail if they get caught by other means (I don't think you can, in fact be jailed for accessing a website in the UK in the first place).

[dead]

Can probably arrest the founder in Heathrow, like Durov's arrest in France.

Look at this page: https://www.4chan.org/advertise

It explicitly says that 7% of their users are coming from UK. If UK blocks them, they will loose noticeable part of advertising revenue. If there was no money at stake, they could just ignore Ofcom and sleep well. But they appear to be very agitated about the fact that they may loose their second biggest market.

Honestly, I don’t understand anyone on 4chan side here: they are de facto in UK jurisdiction because they earn money from that user base, so either they comply or they leave. All of this freedom-of-speech and US lawsuit hype is just a distraction circus.

Note, they don’t earn money from users. They earn money from advertisers.

This is important because if it was advertisers, it would be much easier for UK to have actual power over them, since the UK business actually would be under UK jurisdiction.

4chan gets money by selling (with crypto) "passes" to their users. These passes allow users to post using VPNs. Being banned in the UK will increase demand for these passes, probably increasing 4chan's revenue over all.

You can buy passes with a regular credit card

Not these days. If you go through the process of buying one, crypto will be the only option given.

>Note, they don’t earn money from users. They earn money from advertisers.

It doesn’t matter. They loose the audience - they loose advertising revenue. The only difference is that UK cannot seize the money to collect the fine (the fine now is the price of the return ticket), but the fine wasn’t big anyway and complete loss of the market has bigger economic consequences. UK doesn’t have power over US corporation, but they have power over their distribution channel and they have full sovereign right to exercise that power.

That assumes UK deploys technical measures to prevent their own citizens from accessing the website, which costs more political capital than fining a corporation. Or makes it illegal to access the site, which is even more unpopular.

The difference is significant.

Realistically, UK is a big market for 4chan, but is 4chan big enough for UK? What share of its 70M+ population will flip their vote because of this specific case? How many people will just switch to Reddit or something else and won’t even connect that block to any political party?

No, it really isn't. Plus the free advertising this gets them will be worth more than any market other than the US.

If they hope that they will get more audience from elsewhere because of this, it certainly explains all the circus.

Comply, leave, or fight the law if you think it's stupid.

Lots of laws are stupid. If you think they're stupid, you're allowed to try to fight them.

Well, you’re allowed to try to fight them in some places, some of the time - with often severe consequences if you don’t win.

If you think foreign laws directly targeting you are stupid, not only do you have few ways of fighting them, trying to fight them might often be criminalized as well ("foreign interference" laws etc.)

Yes, sure, they can fight the law - in UK. It’s not what they are doing.

You seem to be under the false impression that 4chan makes money, as in, is profitable. It's very much not. Nor does advertising, much less UK advertising, constitute an important influx of money into the "business".

A rather strange conclusion from my words. I do not assume it’s profitable, but it’s pretty logical that a for-profit organization running a service that is based on user engagement will have its revenue from the sources linked to the audience, be it advertising, subscriptions or donations. If you cut a visible slice of that audience, it’s going to impact the revenue. It’s still not profitable, 10 years after acquisition? May the investors be blessed for their charitable attitude, but it doesn’t change anything.

What makes you think it's a "for-profit organization"? Or that it has investors?

It does have investors according to sources cited by Wikipedia. Whether it’s non-profit or for-profit LLC and on what terms it was acquired doesn’t matter at all.

if the uk wants to be a authoritarian state then do it properly and not this grey area of "you're passively sending packets so you're fined a billion dollars so you block us"

it's worse than china's firewall

> It's just that this... legal authority... isn't quite enforceable outside the UK jurisdiction.

That appears to be the widely held understanding in this particular case.

I'm not so sure. This isn't a strictly black letter law matter. It probably should be, and I'd prefer that it was, but I see political angles to this.

Right now, it is improbable that Trump's DOJ has any interest in doing Ofcom's bidding in the US for UK "online safety" violations, real or imagined. But a world where the US DOJ might does exist. We're the political vectors aligned differently; say, for example, Ofcom was pursuing 4chan for "supporting" ISIS in the UK, I think few people would be surprised learn that Trump's DOJ was eager to "investigate," and perhaps synthesize some indictable offenses, and perhaps even extradite.

Have we not seen, and are we not seeing now, ample examples of similar abuses of power?

So I see much of the rhetoric, and also this lawyer's flippancy, as naïve. Given the optimal set of office holders and sufficient moral panic over some matter, Ofcom et al. could very well have real leverage in the US.

Sure, that would require the Democrats win an election first. I wouldn't hold my breath on that one. Its not like Trump is the most inspiring candidate. When you lose 2 out of 3 to him, perhaps time to take a long look in the mirror. But no, the dems will probably run someone like AOC next time and lose badly. Even worse, once 2030 comes around there is a new census. This matters because enough people have moved from blue to red states that Republicans will no longer have to win any swing states to win both the House and POTUS. Unless something dramatic changes, like say the Dems run a southern governor instead of a coastal progressive, then we are looking at quite a while before we have to worry about that.

PS Don't yell at me about this, I'm just explaining the situation.

> Unless something dramatic changes

Dramatic things happen with regularity. Wars, viruses, economic calamities... there is no predicting any of it. For all you or I know 4 years from now the (D)s will own everything. Maybe then Ofcom gets a hearing. Maybe Ofcom doesn't exist any longer. This misses the point.

The point is that the hubris exhibited here, in this forum, and also by this lawyer, behaving as though there is some perpetual immunity in effect, is naïve. It is entirely plausible that some foreign regulator with intentions that happen to align well with the prerogatives of prevailing office holders right now or at any point in the future could have have powerful leverage in the US.

It doesn't go nearly as far as US legislation such as the trade embargoes against Cuba, Iran, or Venezuela. In that the US effectively harms any company that does business with a sanctioned country by sanctioning the company in the US. By the same logic, the UK could sanction any company that does business with 4chan and prevent it from doing any business in the UK.

> The [Online Safety] Act explicitly grants Ofcom the legal authority to regulate online safety for individuals in the United Kingdom

And so they should, within the borders of the UK.

It's illegal to own unlicensed firearms in the UK. In the US, it is legal. UK authorities can prevent ownership of firearms in the UK via penalties, prevent firms from selling firearms in the UK, and set up import controls to prevent people from importing guns bought abroad. They cannot prevent foreign companies from selling firearms abroad.

Ofcom can institute penalties for UK consumers who access illegal content, prevent firms from providing such content on UK soil, and put up firewalls to prevent people from digitally importing such content into the UK. They cannot prevent foreign companies from providing such content.

Ofcom is being lazy and is trying to offload the responsibility to foreign firms.

Safety and liberty are often at odds. Let the UK decide the balance for their citizens and let their citizens bear the benefits and costs of implementing the measures.

> They cannot prevent foreign companies from providing such content.

Said companies often find it less burdensome to comply than the option of being outright blocked from the market. Brazil did that a couple times with a couple different companies. If a company wants to provide services to a given jurisdiction, it needs to comply with local regulations.

What does it mean to provide services in a jurisdiction?

4chan offers services at it's web servers which are in the US. People from the UK come over, access the servers in the US, and then import the content they see into the UK. 4chan is offering services locally in the US. People come from all over the place to access those services in the US.

Fine. That’s not what’s going on here.

It's entirely up to 4chan whether it decides to comply or not.

No it’s not. Ofcom has no jurisdiction to make a US company do anything. The Internet is a global marketplace. If the UK wants to remove itself from this marketplace, like it did from the EU, it will need to do the blocking itself. But Ofcom knows what the government blocking access to information looks like and they don’t have the balls to do it.

It was done before. Brazil did that to WhatsApp and Twitter and both companies voluntarily complied with the court requests. Rumble remains blocked because it decided it wouldn't comply with the Brazilian court orders.

Those companies were operating in Brazil. They had income booked in Brazil that could be impounded. They had employees there and offices and had to comply with local laws.

4chan isn’t in the UK. 4chan doesn’t have UK employees or offices. 4chan doesn’t book income on the UK. 4chan didn’t have any thing to do with the UK at all.

If this isn’t convincing, consider this: legally what is the difference from Afghanistan requesting anything not legally in compliance with Taliban’s laws be restricted? Would you support that? Legally that is what is going on here.

At one point Elon Musk fired every employee in Brazil in order to prevent that. It didn’t work - the were blocked. After that, Elon caved and named a local legal representative. X has been, since then, very cooperative.

Afghanistan can block anything they want within their borders and hold anyone in contempt if they refuse to comply. Whether I support that or not is immaterial - I would have to comply in order to continue making other content or services available to Afghanistan residents. Being entirely blocked would be worse.

Their executives might be in trouble if they ever visit the UK though.

If they want to run that sort of banana republic nonsense in violation of international laws and norms, they can choose to do so (and make an international incident).

What international law or norms are being violated here? Near as I can tell, this is the UK trying to avoid using the mechanisms of international law or norms to impose domestic law on international firms?

UK has no sovereignty here.

Strange that this is framed as a national sovereignty issue not an issue of UK government’s overwrought free speech repression and its utilization of corporate bullying to that end. This is exactly the thing we don’t want democratic governments to do - congeal with corporate power against their people. Appealing to legality when the laws are themselves unjust is not a defense. The online safety act is broad and vague and not in the interests of UK citizens, so sovereignty appeals are completely disingenuous here. When we talk about sovereignty what we are really referring to is the power of the UK government over its people and the subservience expected of entities like 4chan to that end.

We see these exact same mechanisms in the US and that’s precisely why we should not manufacture rationalizations for this kind of policy - the societal decline as a result of this cynical trend is clear.

It is an issue of national sovereignty because the UK is trying to force foreign civilians to enforce their laws outside of their jurisdiction for free, by way of bullying, threats, and illegal fines.

What the UK does within their own borders is their business. They don't have any right to force foreign entities to censor themselves or tl block UK citizens, as if that's even a technically feasible request.

The UK's free speech situation is bad, yes, but that's not the problem we're talking about here. The matter at hand is the UK trying to censor free speech by foreign citizens outside the UK and is using illegal threats to do so.

This is all theatrical. They already know that what they want is a section on what can be see or not within its borders. After this case has been processed and maybe some others some genius will say that internet should be a subset of the whole internet. That's nothing new. For years during war times the post office had followed letters from and to specific destinations/people for conference.

> UK government’s overwrought free speech repression and its utilization of corporate bullying to that end.

If the citizens of the UK wish to express discontent, they are free to vote for a different parliament so they enact different laws. We who live outside the UK have no say on their laws.

The UK is much like the US in that democratic processes are co-opted and undermined by special interests to the point that governments engage in suppression of free speech and mass surveillance against their populations. (What’s unique to the UK is that it’s government is largely subservient to the US in the international dragnet.) We are all human and share the same human rights regardless of our nationality.

> The UK is much like the US in that democratic processes are co-opted and undermined by special interests

A judge will not find this comment amusing, or a justification for breaking the law. You can, of course, engage in civil disobedience, but keep in mind it doesn't shield you from consequences.

Precisely, mine is a moral not legal argument against shallow moral appeals to “sovereignty”.

This is true but it is still ultimately up to the British people to fix. 4Chan cannot change the free speech situation in the UK but they can refuse to help the government censors because they are not under their jurisdiction.

The government got 33% of the vote. Please tell me how I can vote for a sensible government.

The government as it is, was elected by 100% of the vote. The party heading the Executive branch had fewer than 100% of the vote.

That is not the case. The government was elected with 33.7% of the vote.

You were trying to make a distinction between "government" and "executive" -- that's not how it works here, matey. His Majesty's Government is the party in power (or whichever grouping of MPs can hold the confidence of parliament), it is not all the other MPs - they are the opposition.

We don't have an "Executive". We have His Majesty's Government, they head all the departments, they command the civil service, they control the legislative timetable. The rest of the MPs and Lords are just plebs who get to vote on things. The opposition don't get to propose legislation, except when the Government feels generous and lets them (opposition days).

FPTP creates individual constituencies of roughly 70,000 voters, and the candidate who gets the most votes in one constituency wins a seat. The other candidates in that constituency get nothing, and all votes for them are completely wasted (unlike in other voting schemes). Candidates are usually a member of a political party. The party with the most seats gets first opportunity to form a government.

The 2024 general election was won by Labour with 9,708,716 votes (33.70%) out of 28,924,725 cast. Turnout was 60%, there could've been 48,208,507 possible votes.

The 2019 general election was won by the Conservatives with 13,966,454 votes (43.63%). 2017 was 42.3%. 2015 was 36.8%. 2010 was 59.1%. 2005 was 35.2%. 2001 was 40.7%. You can see the last result was the lowest vote share in decades.

And yet, 33.7% of the vote nets you 100% of the power. Thanks, FPTP!

FPTP forces coalitions to form before the vote, as otherwise they never get power.

In alternative systems, you vote and then coalitions jostle to form a majority afterwards.

> That is not the case. The government was elected with 33.7% of the vote.

My point is that all votes were counted. Some people disagree with the winning choice, but it’s still their legitimate government chosen in a free and democratic election.

I notice you didn't use the word "fair" though. Probably because FPTP is not fair.

In FPTP, if your vote doesn't elect the winner in your constituency, it was wasted. Even if you voted for the eventual government party in a seat that the party didn't win. Your vote did not count. In other electoral systems, it does count.

FPTP means that one vote in one area (e.g. a "safe seat") is not equal to one vote somewhere else. Knowing the geographical distribution of preferences makes gerrymandering possible, and elections have been won not by fair voting, but by unfair redistricting.

FPTP massively punishes any "similar" parties with a vote-split, meaning parties have to become mega-alliances and ultimately they are ground down to just 2 parties. That's the only stable configuration. Any third party has to be mercilessly destroyed, otherwise it will start taking votes from the party it is most similar, leaving their opponent an easy victory.

That's what happened in the 2024 election: Reform UK no longer had the electoral pact they had with the Conservatives in 2019 (where Reform UK voluntarily withdrew from any seats the Conservatives were likely to win), and as a result, the vote-split between Reform UK and Conservatives let Labour romp home to victory.

* Labour got 63% of the seats with 33% of the vote.

* Conservatives got 18% of the seats with 23% of the vote

* Reform UK got 0.8% of the seats with 14% of the vote

* Lib Dems got 11% of the seats with 12% of the vote

That is manifestly unjust. Reform got 5 seats for 4,117,610 votes while Lib Dems got 72 seats for 3,519,143 votes. If that's democratic then I'm a banana.

My impression is that most UK citizens do in fact support their nanny state and its policies, so this is rather an example of democracy in action.

Your 'impression'.

From the polls, yes.

There are polls for different aspects of OSA but not the OSA itself. For example protecting kids online is popular (big surprise). Yet no polls I can find that frame the OSA itself or the OSA with its trade offs. Seems like the standard practice of asking leading questions so that pollsters can frame popular opinion in some already-decided way.

In few years agreeing with you will be considered unsafe

Consider this a glomar response.

Obeying in advance makes them stronger.

They're not being lazy. The political reality is that the people of the UK are mostly sick of this shit so harassing the sources (4chan and others) is gonna cause less pushback for the same results than fining people.

We agree in essence. I just called the avoidance of dealing with the pushback laziness.

> and set up import controls to prevent people from importing guns bought abroad.

In this example 4chan is 'importing' it's content to the UK. I agree though, Ofcom should just go straight to banning these websites that won't comply, rather than this silly and pointless song and dance. Ultimately that's the only real enforcement tool they have. For certain websites that will be enough (Facebook, etc.) for them to follow whatever law for the regions they want to be accessible in.

> In this example 4chan is 'importing' it's content to the UK

No, UK ISPs are importing 4chan into the UK. At no point is 4chan involved in the importing of it's content. It could even be argued it's not involved in exporting it either.

> It could even be argued it's not involved in exporting it either.

It is providing content to IPs located in the UK, therefore, it's knowingly exporting content. If the user bypasses controls using VPNs or proxies, it's a different thing, but I would expect 4chan to make a reasonable effort on their side in order to prevent a sitewide block.

I don't know if you know this, but when you put a website online there isn't a big switch that says "TURN ON TO SERVE TO UK"

When a resource exists on the internet, it is available to everyone. That's how the internet works. There is no mechanism by which to exclude any given country. You can try to geolocate the IP for every individual visitor, but that's a ridiculous burden for website operators and it also doesn't even work.

Ofcom is trying to censor the entire global internet. If they want to censor the UK internet, they have much, much better tools.

They're trying to enforce extrajudicial law by way of threats and bullying instead of actually taking proactive steps to "protect" UK citizens from dangerous memes.

Ofcom has the right to censor the internet within the UK. They do not have the right to an opinion about what private entities do in other countries.

> I don't know if you know this, but when you put a website online there isn't a big switch that says "TURN ON TO SERVE TO UK"

No, but it's a relatively trivial setting to block IP ranges, especially for a service the size of 4chan.

> You can try to geolocate the IP for every individual visitor, but that's a ridiculous burden for website operators and it also doesn't even work.

It's not a ridiculous burden (the ranges are easy to obtain - I did it before) and it's not expected to be 100% effective against a dedicated user because proxies exist.

It is a strange definition of relatively trivial to ask each and every person on the planet who has served content to be aware of all constantly changing local judicial content restrictions, to identify the location of their users, and to identify which specific bits of the content they are serving is problematic.

It is a massive global undertaking involving untold collective man hours developing, implementing, and updating. They may as well be adding an invisible 1/2 pent tax on every man woman and child like some sort of hidden global sovereign.

This is a war they lost long ago and they keep trying to take power to which they are not entitled. The correct answer is like the Boston tea party dumping their imperial assumptions into the ocean.

If they want to block content they should take the responsibility to do so themselves. Even just blocking advertisers who fund problem sites would probably take care of whatever problem they are trying to solve.

Not all people who serve a website need to be aware of that - I don't think my personal blog will be declared illegal anywhere, for instance. If a post is, I might just spare myself the pain and remove it. If a country wants to notify me, I'm pretty easy to find.

Now, for a relatively high-profile website such as 4chan, who deliberately dodges responsibility for the content it knowingly hosts, I'd say it is not a huge effort. They have the staff for that kind of thing. If they decide they aren't complying, then the UK government might order UK-based ISPs to block access and they will comply - as they did many times before. The people in charge of the company might face charges if they ever set foot in the UK, but that's a risk they need to balance.

And, in the light of legislation that sanctions whoever does business with sanctioned companies, sanctioning advertisers can go a long way to force compliance.

> It is providing content to IPs located in the UK, therefore, it's knowingly exporting content

This is not true. There are many steps before the content is provided to IPs in the UK, with the pertinent ones being after it reaches the ISP from the backbones.

I certainly wouldn't. Let the UK block if they want to. At least the voters there will know who to be angry at.

Why would anyone sane be angry at not being able to access 4chan?

Those people are already angry at so many things it would be hard to measure the change.

The only ones angry here are Ofcom/the UK government. Everyone else thinks this is stupid/hilarious.

If I order something from AliExpress shipped from China, I’m importing it, and the vendor exporting it. They’re not importing it to me, and I’m not exporting it to myself.

Same thing if I make a web request for content on a server overseas.

Alibaba has warehouses & hubs in Europe (and I assume the US), where it first imports to its own subsidiary here, so this is somewhat debateable.

Ok- a transcontinental pizza order from a slice shop in Beijing, then. AliExpress’s logistics are obviously not relevant to the metaphor.

With Alibaba it gets complicated. There are things like duty free warehouses where things can be on US soil but legally have not yet been imported. But that does not apply in the UK. 4chan does not have servers or proxies in the UK. If it did, Ofcam can go after those local entities and I would not bat an eye.

4chan is exporting. The consumer is importing. That distinction matters.

Perhaps the terms import and export aren’t suitable for internet content? Perhaps new terms with legal implications are needed for internet age?

That might be the case. However, we should not invent new things where old things suffice. Maybe it is as simple as importing digital content, and all that is different in this case is the medium. It's already illegal to import DVDs that contain illegal content into the UK. The person or company that is doing the importing is on the hook. Apply that logic to the the internet medium and we're all set.

As was mentioned in another thread, it is simpler to go after the companies abroad than to build out measures that would prevent such import. Those measures would probably take the form of some sort of firewalls. They would be noticeable to the British people, and the British people, being sensitive about their civil liberties, would not like that. It's easier for Ofcam to go after a couple bigger companies, impose no cost on the British public, and tramp national sovereignty into the ground a bit along the way.

More odious nannying by silly civil servants. If Britain is to restore cultural leadership it needs to move policy away from this horrible trend of policing what people say and think, and focus its energy on better policing what people do.

I don't mean this to be as insulting as it may, but the UK government trying to police US businesses has always felt like a toddler trying to ground his mom.

Maybe a very elderly parent, trying to ground their adult child who they are now dependent on.

As an adult child in such a situation, it's actually worse than a toddler...

I don't think its unreasonable for a government to ask company to abide by its laws if it want to do business with its citizens.

Where I think they are going wrong is that they are trying to levy fines rather than just blocking the business.

Oh, and the whole age verification thing is bonkers. I'm a parent of 2 teenagers, I don't think its asking too much for a parent to be responsible for what children see and do on the internet.

It is not possible to censor the internet when VPNs are freely available. The more you try the more it backfires. By telling your kids they cant see a website they are sure to visit it, all they have to do is google for a free vpn.

> It is not possible to censor the internet when VPNs are freely available.

The obvious next step is to ban VPNs too or to block connections to their servers.

There are ways around this too. When the VPN entrance point is a static IP a ban may work but what happens when a product shows up that spins up dynamic VPSs in the public cloud? All the cloud providers have free trials that let people do this for free forever. Sounds difficult but surely people will come up with a streamlined approach if push comes to shove. Even in china where using a VPN is a major crime they are unable to stop people from using them.

The obvious solution to crimes that are hard to enforce is to up the penalties until the deterrence effect is sufficient to stop most people.

Off the top of my head here are some ways you could fairly easily shut down VPNs.

The big one is to start whitelisting good protocols only. That means everything must be https and you have to at least pass the hostname in plaintext. Random traffic on UDP ports is now illegal as it is assumed to be VPN traffic.

Another one is to pass a law telling ISPs to flag customers with traffic patterns only to a single IP address, set of IP addresses, or a single ASN. This means that you can’t just tunnel everything to your VPS in Amsterdam.

You might also pass a law that still allows, say, ssh and random UDP traffic, but with the provision that bandwidth on any non HTTPS ports is capped at 200kbps. You only use ssh for running a shell after all — why would you need more than that! /s

ASNs are a fun feature of the internet in that there are a lot of them but they are finite and scale on the order of organised human activity, mostly businesses. That means it is eminently tractable to categorize them all and regulate traffic from residential ISPs to commercial services ISPs only, and throttle traffic from home users to hosting providers. This already happens — try connecting to Reddit from anything other than a residential IP address.

You can do UDP like VPNs over https, by opening multiple channels and round robining packets to get around head of line blocking.

Disruption at the technical level will prove excessively convoluted and impractical to enforce, for censorship-resistant VPN technologies continue to evolve at an accelerated pace – Amnezia and XRay2 serve as exemplary cases in point.

A far more expedient course lies in legislative control: the imposition of a licensing requirement for VPN usage, coupled with punitive measures – fines and imprisonment – for defiance thereof. A few well-chosen prosecutions, conducted publicly with a fanfare and pomp and without leniency, would suffice to instil both fear and obedience amongst the populace.

As ever, the familiar refrain of «think of the children» would provide an acceptable veneer of moral justification to soothe the public conscience.

> Random traffic on UDP ports is now illegal as it is assumed to be VPN traffic.

You do realize that things other than VPNs use UDP right?

The whole post is so nonsensical I would have assumed it's all sarcasm, but the single tag in the middle has me confused.

I think buy the time your kids can order, pay for, and configure a VPN they are old enough to look at boobies on the internet.

>It is not possible to censor the internet when VPNs are freely available.

What's stopping VPN providers from being forced to censor the internet?

Other VPN providers not being forced to censor the internet? VPN providers in the US will never have to bow to censorship as long as the first amendment is doing its thing

If you honestly believe you can control what your two teens see and do on the internet, you've either got them chained up in a closet, or you're wrong.

Having worked with children from 10 all the way up to 18 in a residential setting, I couldn’t agree more.

In a way they are like addicts: you love them and want the best for them but you absolutely have to be on your guard for egregious breaches of trust cropping up without warning. Children / teenagers / young adults can be driven by curiosity, peers, and lack of judgment into all kinds of dreadful behavior, and it can come from the least likely ones just as much as the obviously naughty ones.

The best we can do is to warn them in advance, accept that mistakes will be made anyway, and support them in learning from their mistakes. Keep at it for even a short while and you too can experience the shock of how your most charming, academically brilliant, upstanding star pupil is found throwing up a bottle of vodka she just drank!

There is a fairly big gap between chained in the closet and completely free access to the internet. There is also a lot difference between catching a glimpse of some porn and spending hours in their bedroom exploring the darkest corners of the internet.

I don't have them chained up, but I'm also not concerned they are become radicalized, or damaging themselves watching snuff films and goatse.

With parenting it’s not a case where you have 100% airtight control over everything with no possible leaks. It’s a spectrum where you impose expectations combined with some controls.

The parents I’ve seen who give up and make no efforts because they think it’s impossible to perfect control everything don’t have great outcomes. This applies to everything from internet to drinking alcohol and more.

I went through it and circumvented it completely in the 90s when the only way online was a computer with a modem in the living room. It's so much easier today, its absolutely trivial to circumvent anything you're doing. Old smartphones from "a friend's brother" are easily hidden and can be used on wifi you don't control.

All it takes is the kid wanting to go behind your back, the rest becomes easy for them. The only chance you have is establishing a good relationship with your kid and instilling good values. You can't actually control them online unless you lock down their life like a supermax prison.

The problem with relying on parents is that they're either reckless or simply unable to prevent the kids from smoking.

By the time they're teenagers, it's pretty easy for them to access anything on the internet regardless of the controls implemented.

4chan is a cesspool, and society is worse off letting it fester, but you arn't solving this problem by "personal responsibility" of parents.

You can legally order pipe tobacco and cigars on the internet in the US without showing ID. When I was a kid you could do it with wine too, and I doubt that's changed. I don't find it to be a problem.

Depends on the state. You absolutely cannot order alcohol online in Kentucky

buywinesonline.com (random retailer I found) says they do

Buy Wines Online currently does not ship alcohol to AL, MI, MS, UT, HI, AK

Says it requires an "adult signature" but anyone who's signed for fedex/ups knows they don't check your ID. I can say, when I was in high school, they did not check...

Kentucky has some weird laws. You can ship, but only if the distillery makes less than so many gallons of stuff per year

There is a wide gulf between ‘your county sheriff will get angry if they find out’ and ‘UPS/Fedex will not deliver it in a nondescript brown box’.

I think smoking is a little different for a few reasons.

It's physically addictive with harsh withdrawal symptoms that makes it difficult to quit; and it has significant healthcare costs for the wider community when smokers eventually get sick and die prematurely.

Nobody is going to get addicted and die prematurely from reading 4chan. Cleaning what you consider a cesspool is not the job of the government. These laws are about kids stumbling into the cesspool before they are ready.

Parents can choose to just not give their kids phones till they are 12 or 13 (highschool). Before that, internet access is on locked down devices in the family room with somebody else around.

Personally I think once your kids are about 13-14 you have probably had your chance to pass on your morals, they need to be mentally prepared to encounter bad stuff on the internet and deal with it.

There used to be speculation that smokers actually cost less to the government, since they get lung cancer and die before they would get their pensions, or soon after, and therefore the government wanted people to smoke.

I mean, point 1 in favour of this theory is the fact that tobacco is legal, while most drugs aren't.

social media is clearly physically addictive. America's turned into a neonazi democracy partly because of this.

Psychologically perhaps, but to say physically addictive is not precise.

The government in general has been becoming increasingly authoritarian and centralized far before social media, see the abuses of the CIA and MK ULTRA, Operation Mockingbird, COINTELPRO, the War on Terror. You use the term neonazi, yet I hope you're honest enough to recognize the left also has dark authoritarian impulses. It was only a few years ago that we had ruinous lockdowns, widespread censorship, illegal mandates for experimental medical interventions, mostly peaceful riots, a 30% spike in homicides, anarcho-tyranny with the prosecution of Kyle Rittenhouse and Daniel Penny, etc.

Part of cigerettes adficrive physical is the action and cues.

I agree thwres no chemical component but addictiond are broadee than just external chemical iintroduction.

How is nicotine different from dopamine? Both are addictive chemistry. One comes in little sticks, the other comes in a black glass and metal slab.

I have yet to hear of someone being physically ill from dopamine withdrawal.

Plus, there is plenty of dopamine (or other brain juice) to be had from more healthy activities.

Is the democrat party on the left?

I see it as a problem of inconsistency that is common in situations where a parochial performer has their moments on the big stage, and follows it up with faceplants.

https://www.best-poems.net/milne/disobedience.html

You are missing the point. US has a lot of harmful cultural exports and one of them is streaming, where people degrade and humiliate themselves for money and the like. Then there is yt shorts, then 4chan, then social media.

These slowly degrade societies, like it or not. At least someone tries to do something to weed out the utter, batshit crazy adults, actually childminded idiots, who think the world is their playground.

Any way I see it this is a slow virus, a weapon of sorts. Just politicians usually have their heads lodged in their own back orifice, hence slow reacting.

> These slowly degrade societies, like it or not.

So, thought crimes?

This is not reddit. I do not understand how such low hanging opinions are on this. There have been publications and tons of enactments from both govs, research labs, companies just sucking out every social media.

It's not like we are not warning you, you have netflix, amazon, google, whatever you want - somehow pirating an American movie is an offense in Europe - but abiding by the same logic is not acceptable - same goes for Assange and Snowden - why the did we abide with American shenanigans if that's just one sided ?

And are you getting ready for the turn-over ? Because all it takes is some mad politicians - alternatives - and I'm not sure the status quo is going to last while AI is booming - more than that - people are increasingly hostile to US and it seems it's going to continue this way if the toddler attitude is kept over.

People can be as hostile to the US as they want, it's all noise until they develop comparable capabilities.

Why do u put a space before a question mark? thats super weird bro u should try to learn anglais better

Setting aside whether it’s true, that’s not a thought crime by any definition.

The argument as I understood it was 4chan's existence, degrades society.

4chan's whole gimmick is that you can say whatever you want, because you don't have to identify yourself when you say it. It's a way for Internet denizens scream their intrusive thoughts into the pseudovoid.

If expressing intrusive thoughts makes society worse, and should be controlled. That, arguably makes expressing thoughts a crime. You shouldn't be allowed to think or say thing.

I guess you could insist that thinking is different from expressing, and that thinking is fine as long as you repress the inate human trait and desire of expression... But I feel that's a stupid line in the sand to draw given my intent was to point out 4chan doesn't make society worse, tolerating ideas you don't like generally improves society. It's how you behave that matters.

In other words, If 4chan didn't exist, people would behave better.

If you weren't exposed to those thoughts and ideas, you would behave better.

If you didn't have a thought....

Your reasoning is way off. You’re a human being, not some creature running on autopilot. And you’re fully capable of thinking and acting with some intelligence.

What’s happening online just drags things down. People chasing clicks, money, and attention by any means. When platforms like 4chan or influencers resort to gimmicks or self objectification to get views, it encourages people to act less like thoughtful humans and more like they’re reverting to base instincts - like animals. It normalizes shallow, attention-hungry behaviour and chips away at basic self-respect and awareness. One idiot can lead a hundred astray.

Why is it ok for a young woman to put a paper bag on her head in a live chat session, in order to gain more subscribers? Or swallow insults after insults? Is this ok? I don't think so.

You want to tolerate ideas like GGG movies and Dick Wadd gay videos where black guys sodomize whitebois acting as nazis and then piss in steel bowls and force them to drink it from said bowl? How do these "ideas" improve society hm? You need these things to be tolerated?

This whole idea that anyone can do anything and people will decide what's best for them is absolute hogwash.

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I agree and other countries (as well as the US) should educate their children so they are prepared and don't fall into that trap of brainrot consumption.

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US businesses can get bent. Half my country is rotten and hollowed out, all the shops replaced by Amazon. Screw them. Uber wants to come over here and put our local cabbies out of work, then bring them all back on lower wages with higher fees. Screw off. Air B&B destroys affordable housing all across Europe and turns cities into tourist hell. Oracle comes over here and they're trying their damnedest to get their hands on our valuable NHS data. Facebook (now Meta) comes over here and shows horrific content to young children, wrecking the mental health of teens, especially young girls. Twitter (now X) wants to pollute my country's politics with American fascist nonsense while its owner promises to donate hundreds of millions to far right political parties across the content.

I don't want any of these “services” thank you very much. Inflict them on your own people, not us.

American technology companies operate by finding technological solutions to evading the law, then counting on being too big to fail once regulators catch up. These companies do not provide innovative products, they abuse monopoly power to dominate industries. The Chinese are smart enough to make their own versions of all this stuff so that they aren't under the US yoke and I want the same here (sans the dictatorship of course). I want to replace every horrid US machine with something FOSS or publicly owned, and every regulatory step towards that is a win in my book.

Maybe instead of turning your nose up at other countries that dare to regulate your tech overlords, you should try to get your politicians to do the same thing.

Tough luck, if you don't like it, then you (or your government) should block those websites. It's not job of the US businesses nor US government to enforce another country's laws.

Let me put this very simply to you: if I go to a country where the age of consent is 14 and start a business streaming child porn to America, I should be stopped from doing that. This is the same principle with a lesser offence.

I don't disagree at all. But it would then be the American government's job and responsibility to block this.

You will stopped from doing that by American law. The difference between this and that is that Ofcom believes it can regulate conduct that never touches British soil. Ofcom notably is not setting up a "great firewall," but instead sending takedown notices to websites about content that is already blocked from British IPs.

> You will stopped from doing that by American law. The difference between this and that is that Ofcom believes it can regulate conduct that never touches British soil.

You're showing yourself to believe that America can regulate conduct that never touches American soil.

America won't go after you. America will go after Americans who access your site and American ISPs will block your site. That's not America regulating your behavior. You're still free to do whatever you want.

If you enter America, there may also be consequences, but you don't need to enter America.

America may well go after you and we have a large military to do it with. most often a simple diplomatic message will shut you down - most countries have their own child porn laws, and the exceptions (if any) are going to face problems as this is something the us takes seriously.

You picked a bad example - there are many US crimes that you could get away with if done elsewhere within the local laws, it generally isn't seen as worth bothering with when done elsewhere if the other country doesn't care.

> If you enter America, there may also be consequences

That isn't much different. Say an adult American drinks alcohol in America; then they travel to a country where alcohol is illegal. Should they be prosecuted in that country for having drank in America?

> That isn't much different

There's a world of difference here. Ofcom is claiming to be able to shut down an American website for content generated in America, stored in America, and shown only to Americans. There are no UK citizens in this chain at all. This sets up Ofcom as having global censorship authority even over content seen elsewhere.

> Should they be prosecuted in that country for having drank in America?

In my opinion, no, but some countries are hardasses about this. If you want to do things that are illegal in certain places, you should not plan on traveling to those places. Usually, they will just refuse you entry but you kind of do put yourself at their mercy if you touch their soil. This is how the world works.

Singapore does exactly that, and they explicitly warn outbound Singaporean travelers that any drug use outside Singapore will be prosecuted as if it has happened in Singapore.

If it's just the outbound Singaporeans, that would be different because they'd at least have the citizenship to claim jurisdiction on.

They're warning everybody, not just Singaporeans. It's just that Singaporeans are the most likely to go travel abroad, have some fun, and then come back like nothing has happened. But if somebody inbound gets caught in a random drug test at the airport (they do that), he's going to be prosecuted just the same no matter their citizenship. There were several (in-)famous examples of this happening.

A positive drug test at the border is quite different from being prosecuted for taking drugs in another country.

Dunno about “should”, but they certainly can be.

You must not remember the Kim Dotcom raid.

Yeah, extradition treaties are a thing, and I believe he wasn't a citizen of New Zealand so the US actually could make the request. The hypothetical above can be narrowed to "you are doing something completely legal in your country of citizenship or some other non-extradition country but illegal in the US" if you want to get more precise about it.

We are America. We can do whatever we damn well please because we have the biggest guns and most money. Welcome to the how the world really works. Not saying it’s right.

I've sympathy for what you're proposing - on-shoring our own tech - but the Online Safety Act is a terrible law and it should've been repealed yesterday. It will do nothing to advance those aims, and plenty to stifle innovation in the UK tech space. Ofcom can get fucked.

So ban those businesses from operating in your region. Don't pretend that Ofcom can regulate the content that is viewed around the world just because you're upset about things in your country.

I bloody wish I could! Sadly, these things aren't up to me, and the companies involved would probably pay more bribes to your gangster president to get him to sanction our economy if we tried.

The US has great relations with many countries that ban AirBnB or Uber. The reason they operate in your country is because the people in your country want them.

If your countrymen want to use Uber, Air B&B, Oracle, and Facebook, should you try to stop them from doing it, even if you personally dislike those companies?

You are making the same argument that Trump is making with the tariffs. Personally, while I can see some good arguments for protectionism, I'd rather have the choice to decide whether or not I want to buy Chinese products, rather than the government making the choice for me.

Closer to the point: having Uber in a place with a licensed taxi trade is basically the same thing as removing licensing and then granting a monopoly on one business to operate taxis.

So you two are on completely separate frames of thought. One party sees it as a matter of choice, the other sees it as removing choice because one party has a monopoly on avoiding the regulations.

The issue here is IMO more so that the taxi driver should be able to operate a taxi business without a license without having to go through Uber. Ultimately what is happening in a lot of places is the guys with medallions will basically use agents of the state to violently enforce their racket (which Uber breaks up, but then monopolizes), or alternatively in some places in Latin America the entrenched taxi drivers will simply shoot to kill their competitors that don't have cartel sanctioned 'medallions.'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing

Do some research on why these services are so attractive before you give your opinion on it being a good thing. What these companies are doing should be illegal under US law as well, but they have paid your president to make that issue go away.

I personally think that FB, Uber, RBNB, Oracle, Google, Amazon, and literally every american SASS should be completely forbidden from Europe. Period no discussion at all. Given the state of current America, given the reactions even on this very post that do not see how Cambridge Analytics has damaged the entire world - yes, I think it would be safe to put a good 10 year ban on every US web tech. It would fasten up Europe and leave out the important decision to someone who can actually make a difference instead of being washed out by some reddit / twitter with fake russian bots. Let the economics just move away and make the decisions for people who are in a state of hypnosis instead of playing with mass control and then calling it "freedom".

Keep your american movies and social networks please. Btw why is TikTok banned in US?

Are there any other aspects of Xi Jinping Thought you think Europe should adopt?

Yes I do - for example ; any American that wishes to make a company in Europe will need to have a European voucher which is the owner of the service - so the money doesn't flow out of the country trough some UberMornonization app with $millions to ultimately do colonization.

There is 0 reason for us to let american suck away important infrastructure tools, benefits that goes with it, or even benefit from tax exemption trough the best company framework there can possibly exist.

I still haven't got an answer here - why is TikTok US owned ?

Its cute that you think Europe has the ability to replace those services.

I *personally* have a freaking orchestrator, mail server, git server, faster than rocksdb DATABASE ENGINE, freaking world of warcraft and faster than NGINX for static. It's cute that you think you have the capabilities to imagine what Europe can or cannot do.

We've got plenty of servers, electricity, network hardware and people who code. We are missing the oxygen in the room, which American services all collectively sucked out. Banning those services will open some potential for innovation.

I think what your missing is a regulatory framework that wont immediately screw you. Just look at how far behind you are with AI. AI is nascent so you have no excuse about "oxygen" or whatever.

It's cute that you think anyone is going to kiss your American ass.

Top 3 messaging apps in europo

1) whatsapp (facebook)

2) telegram (incorporated in dubai)

3) messenger (also facebook lmao)

Under no circumstances should be US businesses treated as authorities. They are not mom nor should have any kind of leadership position.

No you’re right. Instead of a multi-billion dollar organization supporting the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people, serving directly their millions of customers, we would be better off running this with a team of Oxbridge literature and PPE alumni, armed with a hodgepodge of constituent letters accompanied by stiff emails by one or two members of parliament funded by god knows who, who otherwise have no skin in the game.

Corporations have skin in a game - namely to keep their power, prevent competition from arising, make sure the workers are squeezed with less options so that they demand less salaries.

Capitalism works when there is a competition between companies. Corporations are everything but that.

On the other hand, the limited size of the British market limits Parliament’s ability to pressure foreign companies.

China may be able to bully Apple into letting it snoop on its citizens’ icloud backups, but when the UK wants the same illiberal snooping powers, with 10% the population it’s 90% easier to walk away.

It's quite ironic that they would have an easier time enforcing that if they were still part of the EU and could have been the deciding factor towards more regulation faster.

The EU is big and rich enough to force Big Tech into submission under threat of loosing the market.

Well, it's not ironic. That's one of the main reason why countries form coalition: to increase their collective bargaining power globally.

The ironic part is that parts of the pro Brexit movement were convinced (from their messaging at least) that it worked the other way around.

Significantly less than 10%.

Put anyone in charge of any space and they'll want to control what people say and think there.

Hell look at HN and literally anywhere. Everybody has their own "ideal" world.

I for instance don't want anybody talking shit about anime or video games ever.

100%. We need to look no further than what the US government tried to do to Twitter, YouTube and Facebook during the pandemic.

And what they're doing to TikTok now

Well yes, because those who don't quickly lose users due to bad signal-noise ratio

When was the last time anyone visited an unmoderated usenet group?

Frankly, LLMs with transparent prompts, as well as user-side filters based on LLM prompts (e.g. "Don't show me comment threads talking shit about Attack on Titan") could do a better and more "fair" job than meat-based moderators now.

They won't have personal biases, don't need to sleep (ending the infamous "mods are asleep, post xxx" waves), their prompts would be visible to everyone, and there could be ways for the users themselves to update the space's rules/prompts.

LLMs have their own biases.

But either way, I want people like dang to be the ones moderating and managing a community - call it "personal bias" if you'd like, but they have a vision for the space, and as long as I as a user think that that vision is of a community I want to be in, then it's fine. If I no longer think it is... I leave.

4chan is well, moderated, but it's outlived Facebook with real names.

Did the government ever moderate usenet?

The evolution of governance of online communities mirrors that of the real-world.

First, everyone did what they wanted. As conflict became more common, power hierarchies started to emerge. we're now at a stage where every place needs to be governed, yet its members have no influence over who does it.

I have online communities will transition into something resembling democracy where moderators are elected from members by members.

---

While HN is fairly lenient, moderators in pretty much all online spaces are effectively dictators, they are not elected and they cannot be removed by ordinary users, no matter how many disagree.

And of course, such positions attract people who want power for its own sake and who have agendas they want to push.

> moderators in pretty much all online spaces are effectively dictators

This. How do 1-10 or 20 or even 100 people get the "right" to decide what millions of people talk about and see?

What's keeping them from burying/boosting opinions about shit they have strong personal feelings about?

Steve Huffman/Spez of Reddit literally edited users' comments, and they autoban anyone saying "Fuck Spez"

If HN had existed in 1800 abolitionists would have been banned.

Society does not progress by people being nice and hugging eachother.

>While HN is fairly lenient

HN is NOT fairly lenient. HN has a very strict set of rules (applied with infinite discretion) and absolute bunches of tiny rules and quirks that are completely hidden and no real transparency of any kind.

HN has basically an official party line for heavens sake! This is a site for disseminating information about VC things and driving engagement about things that VCs want people to talk about and think, driving traffic to Paul Graham things, and advertising YC businesses and people and ideology.

And not politics unless it's positive towards the ideology of VCs

There aren't official punishment policies or official ways to appeal anything. There's no higher power to call out to. There's a semisecret clique of users.

HN, like most places that are actually good to participate in, is a strict, tyrannical dictatorship that usually uses it's powers to shape behavior towards "discussion", but what that means is entirely up to dang and now tomhow.

The internet requires such behavior because it's just too easy to participate in a non-genuine way and entirely escape any retaliation. You cannot shun a human in an internet setting like you can in real life. The social tools humans and other animals use to shape community behavior are impossible online.

This idea that if we just let people speak absolutely free on the internet things will work better is hilariously uninformed. Humans do not pick or latch on to narratives that are correct, they pick narratives that feel the best and in the modern world, that is almost never the "correct" one. Brains hate nuance, but reality is nuanced.

It's funny, the same exact people on here who insist they can't ride the bus or walk around cities because they freak out if a homeless person accosts them seem to be blind to the concept of how other people's free expression can have a chilling effect.

Yes this is absolutely correct. I can think of more content that's disallowed on HN than content that's allowed: no politics (for the most part), no flamewars/aggressiveness/name-calling, no self-promoting links to your OnlyFans, nothing hugely offtopic, etc. And that's on top of very aggressive moderation of things other social media sites are filled with but are de facto banned here: shitty puns or jokes, one-line zingers, meaningless affirmation comments like "So much this" or "This is the way", nitpicks about submitted articles or personal swipes at the authors' politics...

HN has incredibly strict moderation, and to be clear, that's a good thing. It keeps discussion in line and useful, for the most part.

> It's funny, the same exact people on here who insist they can't ride the bus or walk around cities because they freak out if a homeless person accosts them seem to be blind to the concept of how other people's free expression can have a chilling effect.

I've seen that the term "gatekeeping" is recently starting to be reclaimed as people realize this, to emphasize that while anyone is welcome to participate, the community is not required to bend its rules or standards to accommodate new people. i.e. anyone is welcome to use the bus, but openly shooting heroin while you're on it won't be tolerated.

> Humans do not pick or latch on to narratives that are correct

Oh, the Party-Approved Correct Narrative.

Nazi/fascist narratives were sure as hell correct in 1930s-1940s Germany, mind you, and have been becoming correct again worldwide since 2020.

You vote for the moderation you like with your digital feet- see X vs BlueSky

That's like saying you vote for the government by moving to a different state.

This[0] blog post puts it nicely - you _can_ move but you lose all your connections and sometimes even you data.

[0]: https://overreacted.io/open-social/

The moderation of this site is top notch and a key component of its quality, and I say that as someone admonished by dang more than once.

yes, them constantly locking threads about content they don’t agree with is stellar

Do you think that there should be zero moderation of this site?

Oh please. Vote-based social networks are way too vulnerable to burying the truth and boosting lies.

It just takes the first 3-4 viewers to downvote you to prevent the next 10000 people from seeing what you said. There's no downside to downvoting just because you don't like what someone says, even if it's true.

And usually no amount of corrections can outshout a lie/mistake with 100+ votes.

There has to be a better formula to design this game. It seems valuable enough to explore.

It will be hard to design a formula that can only be gamed by making quality contributions.

A quality discussion requires parties who disagree, exchange of ideas and facts and ideally some kind of eventual agreement.

The hardest part is to make it enjoyable to use.

Maybe transparent AI is the only way to fairly govern masses of people?

Let people regularly vote on which prompts should be added/removed, and have the AI justify all of its decisions, show which information it used etc.

I was thinking of discussion platforms but for general government I had a great idea: we know how to write and publish new laws but we are terrible at unpublishing outdated garbage laws. AI would be great for finding all laws that it thinks are dubious, impractical or otherwise undesirable in today's context and zeitgeist. There can be various manual deletion processes for different categories of absurdity.

An automated internet trial with robot judges and lawyers nominating users for warning banners of shame.

I believe this is likely true and will become evident in time to most, but not all, carbon based systems.

That's the most dystopian thing I've read today

Dystopia is the status quo: A handful of people controlling access for millions.

Vote manipulation is a non-issue here because users require a minimum of 500 karma to vote, and because the site is so much smaller than Reddit it can take months to reach that threshold. Downvoting is also capped so that you're very unlikely to get pushed back below the 500 karma threshold unless you are consistently making comments that the community doesn't like. I post things I know won't be well-received here all the time and it's quite rare for a comment to go below -2 karma, but comparatively common for these sorts of comment to get flagged despite not breaking any rules.

4chan was great in 2015 precisely because anyone could comment, but it's a young man's website in that scrolling through a 300 comment thread to find the worthwhile parts of the discussion will require upwards of fifteen minutes, whereas on Reddit or Hacker News most of that sorting is already done. This does have censorial effects, so it isn't ideal for controversial topics like politics, but it's better for almost everything else.

What stops people from setting up and aging (or buying) sockpuppet accounts to the point where they control 10+ or even 100+ flag-capable / vote-capable HN accounts, and then using them as a network to deny or boost certain topics? This kind of behavior almost certainly goes on here.

> What stops people from setting up and aging (or buying) sockpuppet accounts to the point where they control 10+ or even 100+ flag-capable / vote-capable HN accounts, and then using them as a network to deny or boost certain topics?

It’s a single board with a full-time moderator and almost everyone on it has a background in information technology. These kinds of networks leave very obvious signatures, and the site simply isn’t a big enough place for them to hide.

> This kind of behavior almost certainly goes on here.

Do you have any examples?

Of course, only the site admins would be able to show you actual examples. But this kind of stuff happens everywhere on the internet where you can post for free, so there is no reason to think it's not happening here.

> Of course, only the site admins would be able to show you actual examples.

I’m not asking for timestamps or evidence, I’m asking for general instances where you believe vote manipulation may have occurred.

>But this kind of stuff happens everywhere on the internet where you can post for free

This isn’t true.

> the site is so much smaller than Reddit it can take months to reach that threshold.

You can get there in days if you just spot a few bandwagons to hop on.

> I post things I know won't be well-received here all the time and it's quite rare for a comment to go below -2 karma, but comparatively common for these sorts of comment to get flagged despite not breaking any rules.

Yep, there's no downside to frivolously downvoting/flagging: It just takes a 2-3 people to hide your comment from the majority of the users as soon as it's posted, easy for a PR firm with paid people watching a topic like hawks.

Sometimes when I get insta-downvoted in a heated topic, if I delete my comment and repost later, the first few votes are positive. So it's clearly dependent on luck/time, which it shouldn't be.

I and others suggested this years ago: Maybe votes shouldn't have any effect for the first 12 or 24 hours.

If speech in the U.K. was moderated like HN, the situation would be greatly improved.

I imagine you'll be saying this with tears flowing from your eyes after the UK blocks HN.

God forbid.

Nope, just the Ministry of Truth, God doesn't even have to get involved.

Until you get put in prison for reading out a headline wrong lol

Important correction:

s/civil servants/lawmakers/g

Civil servants didn't create, write, or pass the law. They simply got handed a flaming, bad smelling paper bag and got told to implement it.

> Civil servants didn't create, write, or pass the law. They simply got handed a flaming, bad smelling paper bag and got told to implement it.

The bag is handed by the legally elected government body in charge of making laws. I assume the UK citizens who elected their representatives agree with the policy.

In this case no. Interestingly, in the US in agencies like the ATF the civil servants make the regulation and enforce it, binding as law. In immigration it's even crazier -- civil servants create the policies, enforce them, and act as the judge.

The Chevron doctrine - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevron_U.S.A.,_Inc._v._Natura....

This concept in the U.S. is also evolving since 2024 decision reducing the strength of this legal protection.

Practically all countries have some version of this, few hundred lawmakers and their staff cannot reasonably set every single policy and micromanage its execution for every for government function.

Civil servants always have a lot of say in direction of governance even if not directly enshrined in law or recognized by the court.

The classic 80s satire Yes, Minister is good illustration of the parliamentary version of how it happens in say England even if not enshrined in law so to speak.

Civil servants aren't slaves. At the very least they have the option to quit.

Unfortunately, Britain, like America, is seized by the worst of both worlds because conservatives and business interests have captured the electorate and narrowly agree on authoritarian nonsense.

Britain is ruled by a far left government.

Left and right doesn't really matter - all western politicians do what benefits the rich at the expense of everyone else. If they didn't they wouldn't even make it on the poll.

Correction. They benefit everyone else at the expense of the middle class.

They might benefit the rich, but they also benefit the lower classes very much as those are the ones they need to vote for them.

And they take all that from the middle class that had to pay for mostly everything for mostly everyone.

What nonsense - Starmer and co are as neoliberal as they come…

I’ve come to align with Trump’s right wing politics, based on their direct announcements on Youtube and policy decisions. What they are doing makes economic and strategic sense. I have also come to see the general hostility as emanating from people who are fed deranged distortions on the Trump admin’s decisions, likely fostered by narrow business interests and foreign entities who don’t care about the plight of America. This is after 23 years of Democrat support, since I moved to this country.

Aure, i also have vbrain damage that aligna and cherry pivkd what i like

You seem to be suffering from a stroke - seek medical attention immediately.

On the one hand if you police what people say and think you risk moderation being weponized into censorship. On the other hand if you don't you risk big corp weaponizing free speech into misinformation.

It's not a simple problem to solve, and it's not like having one problem is better than the other, because both devolve outside the boundaries of democracy.

It's a very simple problem to solve. Free speech is absolute. Anyone who claims otherwise is a temporarily embarrassed hall monitor.

You're right, speech should not be limited... in fact I am telling everybody about the time you beat your wife and abused your kids. And I'm putting $100,000 in to advertising this all over the place and ensuring every forum is littered with this fact along with your name and address...

Hopefully you see simple solutions come with their own complex problems.

That falls under libel laws, which is a civil tort. There isn't an administrative or ministerial apparatus fining you based on the presumption that you violated a speech code.

So it's absolute until it's something you don't like. Gotcha.

You have to prove that an actual crime or harm was involved. There is some nuance there, but there absolutely is not a censorious bureaucrat issuing warning letters and fines for things they don't like.

The point is that you're now defending a completely different position from "Free speech is absolute." Determining what should count as "an actual crime or harm", how it can be proven, and so on, is pretty much the entirety of the problem you were claiming to have solved.

[flagged]

Free speech doesn't include the freedom to use speech to do illegal harms (that are themselves, not speech).

In other words, "Speech + Offense" is prosecutable, for illegal "Offense".

You don't get a hall pass to use speech to commit a crime, and not be culpable for the crime.

Fraud, libel, harassment, giving false testimony in court, colluding with competitors to artificially increase prices, broadcasting a copyright work, signing your name (just your name!) to an illegal contract, etc. all may involve speech, but the offense is defined by the non-speech functional impact.

Convincing someone to kill someone for you is not legal, because murder is not legal.

People generally have to prove that the speech was intentionally or recklessly geared to cause harm to others.

Although many cases may be clear, there isn't a mathematical separation between the two, so we have courts and precedence, and further reviews, as the practical means of drawing the line.

And that is true for the vast majority of laws and rights.

I don't think that's the case in the US. For instance, if you take a picture of a patient you are treating, go home and send that picture to your wife and say "treated this lady for syphilis today" you are violating HIPAA despite the fact you're telling 100% truth, conveying it privately with no expectation or desire it will ever impact the victim, and literally are only conveying it as information to be consumed and not acted on then it is still illegal.

That is breaking a law that protects patients' privacy. Nobody should distribute private information given to them under an agreement to maintain privacy.

Nobody is forced to abide by HIPPA, without their consent. Nobody is forced to sign a HIPAA agreement.

In fact, nobody is forced to work in the medical professions, or look at private medical data, in the US. And no law prohibits asking a patient or caregivers if they are ok with some harmless informal sharing, and explaining the urge to them...

This is similar to the voluntary civil jeopardy of signing an NDA before being informed of trade secrets. Penalties may vary.

This is a recklessly misinformed understanding of HIPAA. It applies even if you've never signed a "HIPAA agreement."

My understanding:

HIPAA prohibits share private medical information that isn't yours. Regardless of signing anything or how you got it.

And no medical establishment can (legally) share records with you, without a legal purpose, and documentation you know your obligations or are legally allowed to have the information.

Nobody cares what your opinion is, without an explanation.

This is HN. Two-way curiosity and friendly discussion are encouraged. Enlighten me, instead of posing, please.

Yes you understand now. Every time you understand, you move the goal posts. You've moved them twice now, this time simply declaring the speech you don't like "isn't yours." At first it was about offenses that cause harm, then it was essentially about contract law. And then when you found out there was no contract, then you just moved the goal posts to the patient owning the information inside the provider's brain.

There is no curiosity in your approach, you know in your heart of hearts you're simply backtracking and then shifting the posts everytime your claims are wrong.

I was certainly thinking about things more. Part of a normal discussion is people try to be clearer with their thinking as they discuss something.

And clarifying can be either or both tuning reasoning or tuning communication.

You realize you can nit pic at almost any comment with some validity?

And you didn’t include any of your own substantive thoughts, which I apparently moved closer to, until your second comment after I asked you for them?

So what to do? Just communicate in a positive and clear way yourself if you have something to add.

I come here to learn. I would rather learn from you than wonder why you make negative comments, in a discussion where you and your thoughts are welcome.

Exactly. Free speech is why there are no repercussions for posting people’s credit card numbers

So it's not absolute?

Isn't this what Defamation laws protect against?

"Free speech" doesn't mean it can't be challenged.

/not a lawyer

But if "free speech is absolute" then it can't be overridden by any other law.

Any absolutist position on any topic is almost certainly wrong. This includes absolutist free speech. The bar in the US is if the speech has some benefit to wider society to allow. And we are very lenient on what we call benefit in these cases. Anyone that tells you the US has absolutely free speech is either lying or just wrong. And in the real world, you can't run society with any absolutist policies including absolutist free speech policies.

That being said, the UK government can pound sand and should be embarrassed by its behavior. UK isn't a serious country anymore. If you want to know why Americans don't really care what others think, this is a really good example as to why. Total clown show...

This is no solution. We as a society can define free speech as being absolute, and this is fine, I'm onboard. We still need to handle the consequences from this decision.

but it isn't absolute anywhere

It's not absolute in the US because the US constitution only protects from the governmental limiting it, which means there is a lot of potential to effectively and fully legally limit free speech. And even the government gave itself a lot of limitations where through excuses and loopholes it can limit free speech (e.g. from teachers in public schools).

Then there is the question of what even is "speech", in the us spending money can be an act of speech but wouldn't that make bribing an act of free speech even though it clearly shouldn't be legal?

Should systematically harassing/mobbing people with the intent to drive them into suicide be protected by free speech? It's speech, but you would need to be a very cold hearted person to think that this shouldn't be a crime.

Is leaking trade secrets free speech when you do it vocally? It would be strange if that where no crime but technically you do so by speech.

What if you systematically rail up people with deep fakes and all kind of misinformation? Is that free speech? Before WW2 many intellectual would probably have argued that people aren't that easy to mass rail up and as such it should be free speech. But after Hitler gained power in exactly that way the position is more one of "if people systematic rail up the population and spreed misinformation en mass with the intend to overthrow the government" then letting them do that is pretty dump thing to do.

So no "speech" not only is free speech not absolute, it's a pretty bad idea create absolute free speech protection. And both in small and large cases this has been proven again and again through history.

This doesn't mean that censorship is right either.

Like with everything in live "extremes" are close to never a good thing to peruse.

Anyway you know what is even more embarrassing then being a hall way monitor, it's to never question your believes and insisting they are right even when its repeatedly shown to you that there seems to be some problem with them. But seriously, why edit you response to add an insult against anyone who doesn't share your opinion??

> It's not absolute in the US because the US constitution only protects from the governmental limiting it, which means there is a lot of potential to effectively and fully legally limit free speech.

That is not a limitation on free speech; it's a recognition of the right to free association.

"If people systematic rail up the population and spreed misinformation..." You mean like what western governments do daily to China?

or the Chinese government does about the West

but no, it's not about that, it's more about how e.g. Hitler took over Germany. Systematically rilling up people, spreading systematic misinformation about how the Jews supposedly backstabbed German and how the world economic crash between WW1-2 was another devious plan of them etc.

like the difference is its very dump for a country to let people destabilize it with such means, it's still ethically wrong to do so about other countries, but less of an potential existential thread to democracy

There are other limits: Fraud, slander, yelling fire in a movie theater, etc.

Misinformation has to be the dystopian word of the decade. Scary how many eat that up.

England was cooked in WW2. While the USA was landing on hte moon and back, the UK borrowed $1Billion dollars because they caused a deficit after the war. Rather than moving forward, the monarchy held the UK back from progress. And they still are, Brexit was the latest scheme. charlie isn't going to help them get out of the 18th Century.

Brexit was as much Putin's achievement as the second term of Trump is.

I agree it was enabled by the corrupt class, but initiated elsewhere.

Putin was doing just fine under Biden. In fact, if you take into account these last weeks, Trump is taking a much tougher stance on Putin than Biden did.

I think the premise of this is simple, and a lot of people seem to not be understanding this...

The UK can make a law and apply it however they see fit. 4Chan is providing a service to UK people (a website you can access) and is not implementing the law. Ultimately the UK cannot enforce this law until money destined to/from 4Chan passes through the UK or people associated with the site visit UK territories.

In practicality this law for the most part will just mean either websites block the UK or UK ISPs are forced to block websites.

But this law was designed for the websites and platforms that will not be willing to do that as they make money off of UK citizens, such as Amazon/Facebook/Youtube/etc.

If a website blocks UK users then the law doesn't apply as it is only concerned with protecting UK citizens. If a foreign company was shipping drugs or guns to UK children, or your choice of obvious contraband, then why wouldn't it have the power to hold that entity accountable? This is how it has always worked and I am not seeing why this is a problem just because it's in the digital space.

Putting the burden on site operators to geoblock UK users is not only placing an incredible burden on individual operators, it doesn't even work.

It is not the responsibility of foreign companies to enforce or even acknowledged the UK's laws. If the UK has a problem, they have tools to solve it on their own soil. If they want to enforce their laws they need to pay for it.

The UK is trying to bully and scare foreign website operators regardless of scale or type of business into paying to enforce UK laws outside of the UK.

If they want a website blocked, the only way to make that work is to block it and pay for it themselves.

Relevant here is that 4Chan appears to explicitly target the UK users for commercial purposes, and potentially (via subcontract to Cloudflare) serves to UK customers from equipment located on UK soil.

Whether one agrees with the policy aims of the OSA or not, there are some complex jurisdictional and enforceability issues at play here. Unfortunately it’s not as simple as you make out.

> […] and potentially (via subcontract to Cloudflare) serves to UK customers from equipment located on UK soil.

Still, not quite.

Servers in the UK ≠ targeting the UK – courts on both sides of the pond will ask whether the operator directed activity at the forum. Merely serving content from UK edge nodes because a CDN optimises latency is usually incidental and does not, by itself, show a «manifest intent» to engage with UK users. There is an established precedent in the US[0].

If a UK-established CDN processes personal data at UK nodes, the CDN itself may be subject to UK GDPR. That does not automatically drag a non-UK website operator into UK GDPR unless it offers services to or monitors people in the UK. Accessibility or passive CDN caching alone is insufficient. And modern UK statutes mirror this; for example, the Online Safety Act bites where a service has a significant number of UK users or targets the UK – not simply because a CDN happens to serve from UK equipment. From the horse's mouth: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-c...

Then there is a nuance – explictly configured Cloudflare (1) vs automatic «nearest-edge» (2) selection:

1. Explicit UK-favouring config (for example, rules that prioritise UK-only promotions, UK-specific routing or features tailored for UK users) is a relevant signal of targeting, especially when combined with other indications such as UK currency, UK-specific T&C's, UK marketing or support. In EU/UK consumer cases the test is whether the site is directed to the state – a holistic, fact-sensitive enquiry where no single factor is decisive.

2. Automatic «nearest-edge» selection provided by a CDN by default is a weak signal. It shows global optimisation, not purposeful availment of the UK market. US targeting cases say much the same: you need directed electronic activity with intent to interact in the forum; mere accessibility and generic infrastructure choices are not enough.

[0] https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F3/293...

We are essentially saying the same thing. 4chan targets UK users through advertising and equipment location.

I am no fan of the OSA but this spat is also not showing 4chan or its fan-base to be particularly mature or legally savvy (quelle surprise).

I was delineating a particular nuance – that the mere utilisation of Cloudflare does not, by itself, render 4Chan subject to the classification of «targeting UK users», save for the instance in which they issue a distinct monthly remittance to an entity denominated «Cloudflare UK» for the edge node services provided during the preceding period.

I.e., if a machine (the Cloudflare control plane) elects to route traffic through an edge node within the UK as an optimisation measure, such an act does not, in itself, constitute the possession of equipment within that jurisdiction — nor would it be readily ascertainable before a court of law.

Historically speaking, the Ofcom/UK approach is orthodox rather than novel. Ofcom’s sequence – information notices, process fines for non-response, then applications to court for service-restriction and access-restriction orders that bind UK intermediaries – is a modern, statute-bound version of a very old playbook. If a service has no UK presence and refuses to engage, the realistic endgame is to pressure UK-based points of access rather than to extract cash from an foreign entity.

What is new is the medium and the safeguards, not the underlying logic: regulate the domestic interface with out-of-jurisdiction speakers.

Agreed.

I was merely citing use of Cloudflare as evidentiary, not determinative.

I am not so sure about the relevance of billing entity. I suspect that how Cloudflare chooses to bill is as much driven by tax (especially transfer pricing) as anything else. I also think there are as-yet-unanswered questions about the role of CDNs and similar “global” infrastructure providers, and the impact of using their services as subcontractors (cf intermediaries), in interpreting jurisdiction. These services are obviously different to the “traditional” autonomous systems (routed networks). I am not sure that the law has caught up with this yet. But that is a tangent.

Thanks for the thoughtful debate.

Likewise, thank you for a meaningful and civilised discourse.

To expand upon your observations regarding the role and the function of global infrastructure providers — what I find most disquieting is the manner in which the Internet has degenerated from a realm of open discourse, at times resembling the untamed frontier, into a labyrinthine construct of proliferating legislation and extrajudicial interference by a multitude of states.

The result is a regulatory morass so burdensome that, in certain instances, it proves more expedient to disregard an entire jurisdiction than to endeavour compliance with its statutory dictates. Even when such legislative efforts are conceived without malice, their consequences are seldom benign — the attendant escalation in implementation costs can be considerable. By way of illustration, conformity with the EU’s GDPR must now be accounted for at the very architectural level of a solution, with financial implications that are far from negligible.

All goes to the saying “this is why we can’t have nice things”.

I'd love some of what you're smoking.

I assume companies wouldn't need to comply with tax law either unless countries in which they operate pay them to pay their dues.

> why wouldn't it have the power to hold that entity accountable?

Literally because the entity is not under the jurisdiction of the UK. The UK can force domestic companies to block the website but they cant force the website itself to do anything. The claims of fines against 4chan are therefore nonsensical. Probably just part of the legal proceedings prior to blocking the site I guess but still strange to see.

It does have 'jurisdiction' because it applies to the citizens: it is offering a service to UK citizens.

If I had a website operated outside of the US, where you can download US citizens private medical records and phone conversations, I would be liable to breaking US law.

If you do not want to be held accountable to a regions laws, then you do not offer a service to or deal with data that relates to that regions citizens.

I don't think this is a hard concept to grasp.

Jurisdiction does not imply enforceability. There are laws from your country that you can break while not even being in that country and be held accountable.

Simply offering a service to UK citizens isn't enough to provide jurisdiction. If I run a lemonade stand, and a UK citizen walks up a pays a dollar for a glass of lemonade, then that doesn't give the UK jurisdiction over the lemonade stand.

That's what's happening here - a webserver is operating entirely out of the UK, with no nexus. UK citizens send requests to it - just like all other countries citizens do, so either the website would be covered by all laws or just the places where it has nexus.

This is especially true in the US, where speech is strongly protected - making Ofcom's assertion that its regulation overrides the first amendment especially egregious. The UK government's behavior here is a bit shameful.

> If I run a lemonade stand, and a UK citizen walks up a pays a dollar for a glass of lemonade, then that doesn't give the UK jurisdiction over the lemonade stand.

You are allowed to sell lemonade to British tourists. But if you're shipping lemonade to the UK, you are subject to UK lemonade regulations. That doesn't mean that the UK has jurisdiction over your business and can shut it down or anything like that, but if you travel to the UK or UK banks handle your transactions, they have the right to seize funds and shipments, close your accounts or detain you if you set foot in the UK. Your choice are: follow UK regulations; stop shipping lemonade to the UK; or continue as you were, never go to the UK, and know that the UK can always ban shipments from your stand.

The US does the same thing all the time, and even worse[1]. Lots of piracy sites located in jurisdictions where US copyright laws don't apply are seized by US federal agencies and replaced with a notice about piracy. Those sites haven't broken any laws in the countries they're hosted in, they have no legal presence in the US, and yet the domains are banned/seized and administrators detained if they ever step foot on US soil. The UK is not threatening to seize anyone's site.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_In_Our_Sites

Why is it the website operators job to figure out where people are from? It isn't even generally possible for them to do correctly. A better analogy would be that a british person hired someone who looked and sounded american to go to the us to buy some lemonade and have it shipped to the uk where having it breaks the law, and then blaming the lemonade stand.

> Why is it the website operators job to figure out where people are from?

Why not? It's their responsibility to comply with UK laws if they want to keep serving British customers and making money off of them. Just because the service is provided online doesn't mean it can go on unregulated. You're acting like this is something new that websites haven't had to do for decades.

> > Why is it the website operators job to figure out where people are from?

> Why not?

Because laws vary from location to location, and it's an unreasonable for a [UK] agency to make demands from an exclusively [US] group under the assumption that they are aware of every possible law in existence. Someone in the [US] can't expect to have reasonable influence over the laws in the [UK] that they're now required to follow? That's a blatantly unfair system. That's why not.

But actually why? You confidently assert that because it has happened before, that's the way it should always be!

You're still trying to apply rules for jurisdiction, that don't map well to the Internet. If I was sending someone to the UK to buy and sell, I think your arguments would make sense. But that's not the analogy that applies here. The better analogy is, people from the UK are traveling across jurisdictional lines, and buying from my shop, based exclusively in my country. My country feels privacy and anonymity are important fundamental rights, and my business exists to that end. Here, instead of trying to control UK citizens, and making it illegal for them to travel to the US to do something they want to prevent, they instead are trying to force the US group to attempt to doxx every user and exclude some of them.

That feels insane to me, what's your take on that examplev

Also, I feel it's important to note, part of the reason they're using this specific tactic, is because they're aware how impossible and intractable their demands actually are. To call internet geolocation complex or error prone would be an understatement. So based exclusively that they're demanding someone other than them should tackle a near impossible task, should be enough of a reason to reject the demand. Legal or not, unreasonable demands deserve rejection.

> under the assumption that they are aware of every possible law in existence

That's why Ofcom started the correspondence, to inform 4chan of laws it may not have been aware of.

> Someone in the [US] can't expect to have reasonable influence over the laws in the [UK] that they're now required to follow

UK companies comply with US laws all the time if they want to continue serving US audiences. I wish this wasn't the case, but this isn't new. Similarly, lots of US news websites aren't available in the EU/UK because they don't comply with GDPR. None of this is new, there's lots of precedent for it.

> You're still trying to apply rules for jurisdiction, that don't map well to the Internet

Sure they do. When I go to boards.4chan.org, the server recognises my request, including where it's coming from, and returns some content. Similarly, when I buy lemonade from a company, they see my shipping address and ships the lemonade. Seems to me like it maps pretty well.

> To call internet geolocation complex or error prone would be an understatement

All other service providers have imposed IP-based limits and that has satisfied Ofcom, so no need to make it more complex than necessary.

> Legal or not, unreasonable demands deserve rejection.

Of course, 4chan is free to reject the demands, just like The Pirate Bay (based in Sweden) have rejected demands from the US government, that was always an option. Ofcom is making the demands to then be able to enforce the OSA, for example by blocking 4chan, without 4chan saying they were not aware of the demands.

> Sure they do. When I go to boards.4chan.org, the server recognises my request, including where it's coming from, and returns some content. Similarly, when I buy lemonade from a company, they see my shipping address and ships the lemonade. Seems to me like it maps pretty well.

How do you suspect a given IP address maps to a geographical location?

Does ofcom supply a list of IP addresses based in the UK? What if it's a US resident using a VPN or other anonymizing tool such as Tor?

Like I said, Ofcom is satisfied with IP-based geolocation implemented by other services, so those what ifs are not relevant.

If you don't understand exactly what the parameters are, how can you 1) be sure you're doing it correctly, and not still in violation i.e. has ofcom publicly stated they've reviewed it and agree it's acceptable, or have they just moved on while ominously stating they'll be watching? Seems like a needless risk to hope ofcom doesn't decide they did it wrong and demand retroactive fines. 2) defend the action if they do later to continue or change their mind about if any action is enough?

It's a mistake to ignore the problems and realities of some solution, or half solution, caused a legal demand from without a reasonable claim of jurisdiction.

Honestly, It's a wild take to assert that an ip based geoblock that's guaranteed to be buggy is fine or acceptable just because ofcom hasn't figured out how buggy it actually is yet. Just as it is equally insane to suggest that a foreign government should be able to compel, (or willing to demand) some action by anyone.

A good start would be to use geoip. It's not perfect, but it will almost certainly be enough to make UK happy (the same happens when detecting European for GDPR purposes).

Lmao, why would a web server operator need to care where their clients send requests from? Imagine if half the countries in the world required this, each with distinct requirements on how to handle traffic from their jurisdictions. Insane. Relieve us of the misery of acting as though OFCOM’s requests are reasonable- they are not.

> But if you're shipping lemonade to the UK, you are subject to UK lemonade regulations.

I was with you up until here. Shipping to a physical address, where if you don't specify the country name, it won't arrive. Is very different than shipping to an Internet address, which has no "reasonable" connection to a physical location.

> Your choice are: follow UK regulations [give up the core gimmick of your entire site]; stop shipping lemonade to the UK [the shipping analogy really breaks here, how? and what about vpns? what if the other endpoint is in the UK but the address isn't?]; or continue as you were, never go to the UK, and know that the UK can always ban shipments from your stand.

I don't disagree that [country] can make laws that make society worse... But I don't think it's reasonable to defend them as if these actions aren't egregious. There's the armchair arguments that I enjoy as a thought experiment, but it's still important to point out how antisocial this behavior is.

> The US does the same thing all the time, and even worse [...]

There's an argument to be made they're using a domain registratar in the US, which is subject to those laws (obviously). But what about [other disappointing behavior] because it's worse. Is exactly the example you're arguing against. Precedence of bad stuff is still bad, ideally everyone would point out it's bad, and suggest alternatives to the bad thing, no?

> But I don't think it's reasonable to defend them as if these actions aren't egregious

I'm not defending the Online Safety Act, I think it's a horrible and stupid law. On the other hand, I will defend GDPR, which uses a similar legal framework of enforcement. My argument is that the UK is within its rights to implement and enforce laws as they see fit, not that the laws are good.

> My argument is that the UK is within its rights to implement and enforce laws as they see fit, not that the laws are good.

The argument you are making, is that the laws, and the behavior they're enabling is reasonable.

That may not what you meant to convey, but to abuse an analogy, it is fruit from the poisoned tree. You can't defend some action, without by proxy defending the source. Either the law is reasonable, and ofcom is acting reasonably, or the law is unreasonable, and ofcom is acting unreasonably trying to enforce it. Correct or not, or technically legal in the UK or not.

You can defend the actions of ofcom, as not illegal, but that's not what you're doing, and not the context of this thread.

> The argument you are making, is that the laws, and the behavior they're enabling is reasonable.

I am doing no such thing.

I don't think you're aware of what you're communicating then. Because that is exactly what comes from defending them, and you are defending them.

> The UK is not threatening to seize anyone's site.

Yet? :)

Countries claim juristiction for thing outside their borders all the time. however they place a much higher bar on what they claim. Lemonaid stands are likely safe, but even if it is legal where you live the US will claim pedopillia laws aganst you they can get you.

part of the high bar is claiming juristriction requires sending your army. (Sanctions are often used too which might or might not work). That is why the threat is if the directors travel to the uk - that gives them sone power - but still expect US government to do 'things' if the arrest any US citizen on this.

> If I run a lemonade stand, and a UK citizen walks up a pays a dollar for a glass of lemonade, then that doesn't give the UK jurisdiction over the lemonade stand.

It does... to correct your example, the UK citizen is paying a dollar for the lemonade while in the UK.

Are you saying that if I had a website hosted in Russia that pretended to be your bank and stole all your money from phishing that is perfectly legal?

>Are you saying that if I had a website hosted in Russia that pretended to be your bank and stole all your money from phishing that is perfectly legal?

Website hosted in US publishing truth about Ukraine war - even calling it a war is already a felony in Russia - is it legal or illegal?

I'm personally against stealing money, and i'm for calling a war a war, yet how do we formally codify that into law - there are 200 countries and at any given moment, especially while online, you're probably violating some law of some country. Before internet globalization, the geography based jurisdiction was such an objective approach. Now it is more like "catch me if you can" which is obviously not a solid foundation to build on. Like that plane that had emergency landing in Minsk, and the Belorussian dissident flying on that plane was arrested by the Belorussian police. And many here on HN were critical of MBS when Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul - what if our plane has to make an emergency landing in Riyadh ...

> Website hosted in US publishing truth about Ukraine war - even calling it a war is already a felony in Russia - is it legal or illegal?

That's illegal in Russia. Russia has fined Google more money than exists in the world. It doesn't mean anything, but you bet the CEO of Google isn't going to visit Russia. Russia can choose to block any websites that hurt their feelings. Much like the UK and 4Chan.

> what if our plane has to make an emergency landing in Riyadh ...

Then you hope to God that the people with the bone saws don't read hackernews.

> Website hosted in US publishing truth about Ukraine war - even calling it a war is already a felony in Russia - is it legal or illegal?

Try hosting one of those sites and then fly to Russia and let us know. I think you’ll find it’s quite illegal and will be enforced to the fullest extent of the law the second you enter their jurisdiction.

It turns out it doesn’t actually matter whether you or I think the law in question is BS. We don’t run Russia or determine what laws they enact.

So, my original point was that a business is not under the jurisdiction of the UK just because it offers a service to UK citizen - I probably should have mentioned I'm not in the UK.

Whether the website is illegal or not would depend on Russian law in your example. I'd also suspect that other laws might apply, like wire fraud. Some of those would likely be enforceable in other countries.

Someone has to be willing to extradite. I'm sure China, Russia, and Iran would love to prosecute all those pesky political dissidents abroad.

I'll be pretty shocked if someone ever gets extradited out of the US for not showing a cookie banner.

I agree and in the majority of the cases 'enforcement' is usually just a block at the ISP level.

"Offering to" is a nonsense term. The website exists on the open internet regardless of jurisdictional borders. A UK citizen must actively go to the website, initiating a connection from within the UK and requesting data from an IP address that may or may not have some kind of relationship with geography.

4Chan isn't popping up unbidden on people's phones. Wither a UK citizen chooses to visit a website is no business of the website operator.

To say that 4Chan is somehow responsible for the actions of unknowably many private citizens is absurd. If the UK wants to enforce internet censorship within their borders, that's their own business. Putting pressure on wholly independent foreign businesses for the crime of existing is not reasonable. This is just as bad as US credit card companies censoring adult material from the entire global online economy.

They're trying to censor large parts of the global internet for everyone, not just their citizens. If they cared about UK citizens so much, they'd do something like proactively blocking noncompliant websites to force them to immediately either comply or fuck off. They should be trying to protect their citizens instead of trying to bully foreign companies they have no jurisdiction over. It's their responsibility to enforce their laws, not the US courts.

Jurisdiction only applies within a sovereign country. If there's some dispute that crosses national lines, you don't call the International Bureau of Investigations to send International Agents in to drag the perp before the Planetary Supreme Court.

Yeah this line of thinking worked really well for Assange

> why wouldn't it have the power to hold that entity accountable?

If I transmit insults of dear leader Kim Jung Un on amateur radio, then those radio waves will reach DPRK. I likely would be breaking DPRK law.

Why wouldn't they have the power? Same reason my decree that guns are now banned in the US is not even refuted, but ignored.

4chan has no obligation or even reason to even respond to the UK except as entertainment (this reply was entertaining), and to send a message to the US that (in its opinion) the US government cooperating with the UK on this would be illegal by US law, the only law that matters to the US legal system. Other countries laws only matter insofar as they are allowed by US law. Foreign laws will not get US constitution bypass unless the US constitution itself allows it.

It's as if DPRK demanded to have a US citizen extradited in order to be executed for blasphemy. All that US citizen cares about is to give a heads up to the US that "if these people come knocking, tell them to go fuck themselves".

What is the UK government going to do, send bobbies over to attack 4chan owners with nerve gas on US soil?

What's the alternative? I'm sure there are countries where it's illegal for women to show their faces on TV. Why wouldn't that country have the power to hold any website where women's faces are shown accountable?

On a more depressing note, as is super clear in the US lately, crime is perfectly legal, if your friend (or POTUS you bribed) orders you to not be prosecuted. Or pardons you for being a drug kingpin and mobster ordering murders of innocent people (Ross Ulbricht).

Power ultimately comes from the exercise of violence. The UK cannot exercise state violence on US soil. That's a US monopoly under very harsh penalty. On US soil only US law (or in the case of Trump, lawlessness) can de facto be exercised.

Also, from their reply:

> The infinite character of that power was most famously summed up by English lawyer Sir Ivor Jennings, who once said that “if Parliament enacts that smoking in the streets of Paris is an offence, then it is an offence”. This line is taught to every first-year English law student.

Why should parisians care? Why would France cooperate with enforcing such laws?

If POTUS orders that taking $50k in cash as a bribe is not to be prosecuted, then you won't be prosecuted.

I think you are confusing breaking a law, and enforceability. I agree with the gist of your argument though, the UK cannot _force_ a US only company, but it doesn't change the fact it is breaking UK law.

> I likely would be breaking DPRK law. Why wouldn't they have the power?

They do as a sovereign nation. But what most people seem to be missing is that you're not going to DPRK and the US Government doesn't care so you can go about your life breaking DPRK law as much as you want.

They can’t possibly be breaking UK law because the service isn’t even being provided in the UK. UK users are accessing US servers to get service.

> UK users are accessing US servers to get service.

That's called offering the service to UK users. I don't host my blog in 165 times in each country in order to let people to access my content/services.

Is your claim that you have a multinational business, just because of a single webpage? Do you file sales tax reports in all 165 countries?

> > > UK users are accessing US servers to get service.

> That's called offering the service to UK users.

It is not – not under US law, not under common law (in the UK/Commonwealth).

Under US law and in common law systems generally, a website being merely accessible from country XYZ does not, by itself, constitute «offering a service» into XYZ. Courts look for purposeful targeting of, or meaningful interaction with, users in that place. Mere accessibility is not enough. See [0] for a precedent.

1. The US approach in a nutshell.

a) Personal-jurisdiction basics: a court needs «minimum contacts» that the website operator created with the forum. The US Supreme Court has previously stressed that the plaintiff’s location or where effects are felt is not enough if the defendant did not create forum contacts.

b) The «Zippo sliding scale» test distinguishes passive sites from interactive, commercial ones. Passive presence online generally does not create jurisdiction. See [1] for a landmark opinion.

c) The Fourth Circuit’s ALS Scan test says a state may exercise jurisdiction when the defendant directs electronic activity into the state, with a manifest intent to do business or interact there, and that activity gives rise to the claim. Simply putting content on the web is not enough. Again, see [0] for an established precedent.

2. The common law/European «targeting» idea

a) UK and EU courts apply a similar targeting notion in various contexts. The CJEU in Pammer/Alpenhof held that a site must be directed to the consumer’s member state; mere accessibility is insufficient. UK cases on online IP use also examine whether activity is targeted at UK users. See [2] for an established precedent on the other side of the pond.

b) Data-protection law is also explicit: the GDPR applies to non-EU operators when they offer goods or services to people in the EU or monitor them. Recital 23 and the EDPB’s guidelines list indicators such as using a local language or currency, shipping to the territory, local contact details, and targeted ads. Accessibility alone does not trigger the rule.

To recap, if a US-hosted site simply serves content that UK users can reach, that alone does not mean the operator is «offering a service» to the UK or its citizens under US law or general common-law principles. Liability or regulatory reach typically turns on targeting and purposeful availment, not mere availability. Circle back to [0] for details again.

[0] https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F3/293...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zippo_Manufacturing_Co._v._Zip....

[2] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...

> I think you are confusing breaking a law, and enforceability.

I'm not. My comment and other replies to you are telling you that YOU are.

We're saying that your question doesn't make any sense.

nitpicking like this is asinine

It's as if DPRK demanded to have a US citizen extradited in order to be executed for blasphemy

Not really. It's more like DPRK messaging a private US citizen directly, repeatedly and incessantly, that they will be executed for blasphemy. Ofcom is not using proper diplomatic channels here.

Why should parisians care? Why would France cooperate with enforcing such laws?

Everyone here seems convinced that Parisians should care about this, because the majority opinion seems to be that it's perfectly acceptable for the UK government to arrest Parisians for having ever smoked a cigarette in Paris, should they set foot on UK soil. I do not agree that this is a defensible application of law.

The question is will France stand for arresting people for smoking in Paris if they travel to the UK. The gonernment of France can allow that or they can retaliate in various ways. Just a diplomatic message is likely enough to make the UK back down - but who knows maybe the two won't agree and go to war.

They want to block things, but don't want the optics of being one of "those" countries with a national firewall. So we get things like this.

That's what it seems like.

Instead of getting court orders and ordering ISPs to block the sites, the UK is pushing off the responsibility for age verification onto the companies/site owners whether they are actually under UK jurisdiction or not.

Because if instead the UK just managed it internally, and started ordering ISPs to block, they'd be criticized foor being like China, and the citizens would start placing their blame on the government instead of the private companies that are pulling out of the market.

That part I understand, it surely looks awful.

The ID side of things though? Having your citizenry send their personal information to foreign companies all across the globe? It's a disaster waiting to happen.

We already have hadrian's firewall blocking some piracy sites.

Given the constant stream of crazy things I read about the UK, I'm surprised that a national firewall is off the table given their laws and attitudes around what would be protected speech here.

That will be after introduction of the digital ID, mandatory tagging of pal the traffic with your identity and backdooring/declaring e2ee Apps unlawful.

This reminds me of when Australia tried to force twitter to block a video globally: https://news.rebekahbarnett.com.au/p/elon-musk-wins-latest-c...

In one of the more enlightened things Elon has done in the last few years, he fought back, and he won.

Interestingly, here in AU, there was a storm of media outrage at the time, saying all kinds of nasty things about Musk, making all kinds of assertions about how he was super arrogant and wrong to insist on upholding american's freedom of speech, with no attempt to justify why. It was almost like we were just expected to assume that AU law applies everywhere on earth.

Here's a fun sample of a totally unbiased article from the time: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-20/elon-musk-reacts-to-e...

Strangely, when the court order wasn't upheld because AU laws don't actually apply outside our country, and the gubmint that was so outraged and "ready to take him on" lost badly on every point, there was no huge storm of media coverage about that.

Hopefully the machinery of various governments will continue to grind away at silicons valleys influence.

Be careful what you wish for.

Ofcom said this four days ago:

> "Services who choose to restrict access rather than protect UK users remain on our watchlist"

How does withdrawing service from UK users not "protect UK users"? How does age verifying UK IPs provide more protection than withdrawing the service entirely?

It is about power and control, and nothing else.

what happens if access is unrestricted from UK users and the content becomes available again. Reads to me that they will monitor sites to ensure this doesn't happen. Surely logical..

"Comply with our laws, or cease to exist".

I think that because the UK speaks english, they’ve come to believe they somehow have similar levels of extraterritorial power as the US. Just a general symptom of way too many people consuming US media/political content.

That hyperbole is about the scale of the US military budget. The UK is nowhere close to the US in terms of its belief in "extraterritorial power". You are taking one instance and wildly just making things up

Doing business in the US is existential for most multinationals, so they do have extraterritorial reach - hence the US taxation system, US banking regulatory system, WTO, etc. Not so for the UK, especially post-brexit.

The difference, of course, is that the US actually has extraterritorial power. The idea that you would compare the UK's perception of their power to the US's perception of its power seems to be the kind of mistake the person you're replying to is referring to.

Standing next the the US when it does things (or rather to the left and two steps behind the US) is not being like the US.

https://youtu.be/lJatJ-Hi2_s?t=66

more recent: https://youtu.be/Hyn_VHtSU48?t=35

The extraterritorial power of the US has no legal basis on the jurisdictions it's exerted.

What legal basis do you think it could possibly have? There is no world government telling countries what they can and cannot do to each other.

There are treaties and international conventions, as well as the ICC and other supranational bodies that prosecute abuses by nation states and individuals responsible for the actions.

But, largely, that was my point - it's entirely illegal, and a "might makes right" situation.

They probably made the mistake of assuming they had a reciprocal relationship.

https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/us-visa-polic...

there is no ‘right to enter America’ and fwiw i seem to recall that the UK has a bad habit of banning American musicians for the content of their songs.

Like the US's bad habit of banning British musicians for the content of their songs? https://edition.cnn.com/2025/06/30/uk/bob-vylan-uk-band-glas...

seems like a reciprocal relationship to me. i'd also say the recent US stances are an aberration whereas the history of UK immigration policy is a better reflection of core governing principles.

>recent

>aberration

McCarthyism would like a word

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Chaplin#Limelight_and_...

Is there a solution where we can compel parental control to be enabled by default on kids phones?

That would seem to be least intrusive option.

Using the internet in the UK/EU is such a horrible experience, every cookie pop-up is a reminder how badly thought out these rules are.

> Using the internet in the UK/EU is such a horrible experience, every cookie pop-up is a reminder how badly thought out these rules are.

Technical cookies don't require any consent so every time you see a cookie banner the website owner wants to gather more data about you than necessary. Furthermore, these rules don't require cookie banners, it's what the industry has chosen as the way to get consent to track their users.

Or the website owner doesn't want to take the risk and ads a banner even if the site strictly doesn't need one.

So when I see a tracking cookie dialog on a web site, either 1. the site collects more data than they need to in order to run the site or 2. they don't and the site's management is incompetent. Both are pretty good reasons to avoid that particular web site.

There's no risk, they know what they are doing because the law doesn't just mandate the banner, it mandates you to know which third party service you're sharing the data to.

Check the banner next time, you'll see how many “partners” they do sell your data to.

that seems like an issue with the website owner to me

A lot of websites for smaller businesses will not be run by technical people, they'll be run by business people or otherwise who don't understand cookies beyond "I see cookie banners on every website I visit, therefore to avoid legal trouble I need one too", you can't expect someone like that to understand the difference between tracking cookies and technical cookies.

We're a small business, <10FTE, and have no cookie notice at all. We don't track people.

Ah yes of course. How could I forget about poor Mom & Pop Co. and their 186 business partners that they want to share my personal data with. Surely we can't expect such a small operation to know what they are doing.

That's not the point I'm making, I'm saying whoever in Mom & Pop Co. set up the website may well not understand the difference between the cookie types and even if they are using no tracking cookies and sharing no data, they may well put a cookie notice on their website anyway as they're so common they think they're normal, the law allows for huge fines, and they're doing it out of an abundance of caution.

It's very easy to make websites without needing cookie popups in EU/UK. Every cookie popup is a reminder of how stale the thinking around tracking and data sharing is!

If you do not use personalized advertising, I presume. Which may drop your ad revenue by somewhere between 20% and 60%.

You could also drop the ads completely and choose an honest business model instead.

Until then I will shed no tears about your slightly lowered effectiveness at manipulating people into acting against their own best interests.

UK mobile networks and ISPs have had age-restricted content filtering enabled by default since ~2013-14.

This policy was pushed by David Cameron, who was the prime minister at the time:

https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/the-internet-and-porn...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23401076

Some would argue the point is to be intrusive... The most cost effective and simplest solution to kids watching porn would be regulation around on-device filters. Why the UK didn't do this and instead tried to regulate the entire internet should be questioned – is this really about the children watching porn?

When purchasing an internet-enabled device the UK could regulate that large retailers must ask if the device is to be used by an under 18 year old. If they say yes, then they could ship with filters enabled. They could also regulate that all internet-enabled devices which could be sold to children should support child filters.

If we did this then whether or not a child views NSFW material it will be on the parent, instead of the current situation where whether a child can view NSFW material online depends on the age verification techniques of Chinese companies like TikTok or American companies like 4chan.

> then they could ship with filters enabled

All mobile network connections already come with content filters enabled in the UK, adult or not, and has to be explicitly disabled.

Yes but to be clear, using wifi or a VPN can bypass that. It's not an on-device filter.

Yes but wifi costs money - only adults have wifi. It's effectively already age restricted.

Is this a joke or reference I'm missing?

No it's not a joke at all.

When you buy wifi, they already make sure you're an adult. They ask for proof of residence, you sign a contract. Children cannot buy wifi. Go ahead and try - no ISP is going to write a contract with a child.

Wifi, like tobacco and alcohol, is already age restricted.

The problem is the adults buying it then turn around and just... Hand it to children. That's not the fault of the law or society.

Like, okay the store clerk might make sure when I buy a pack of menthols I'm of age. But if I just go home and hand my kid the pack of menthols, all bets are off. That's not the store clerks problem, he can't and won't get in trouble for that.

Parents and establishments are being stupid here. Same applies for public wifi. Don't want kids to use it? Okay, give it a password, only tell the password to adults. Easy peasy.

The law can't stop parents from being stupid.

> But if I just go home and hand my kid the pack of menthols, all bets are off. That's not the store clerks problem, he can't and won't get in trouble for that.

But it is society's problem, and within society's capacity to attempt to manage.

https://www.childline.org.uk/info-advice/you-your-body/drugs... says it's illegal to give a child cigarettes, and the cops can confiscate them if you're 16 or below.

> The law can't stop parents from being stupid.

Sure, but reality also often means smart, caring parents still can't stop kids from... being kids. I've lived in places where half a dozen public wifi hotspots were available; even if I didn't, chances are I'd have to let my kids on wifi for homework, on computers I don't have admin rights to because they come from the school.

They can't go sign up for a new internet plan, but that's hardly required.

> But it is society's problem, and within society's capacity to attempt to manage.

Sure, to an extent, but not really: we give parents a lot of freedom here.

> Sure, but reality also often means smart, caring parents still can't stop kids from... being kids. I've lived in places where half a dozen public wifi hotspots were available; even if I didn't, chances are I'd have to let my kids on wifi for homework, on computers I don't have admin rights to because they come from the school.

Okay, then lock down those networks. We don't need to lockdown the Internet as a whole.

In reality, most of those networks already are locked down.

Try searching up porn on, say, hotel wifi, it won't work.

We already have the solution.

> Try searching up porn on, say, hotel wifi, it won't work.

I… very much doubt that.

What? Why are you doubting that?

I can't even search for porn on cellular networks and I'm in the US.

Hotels, Starbucks, my job, the library - they all block porn. The idea that kids just have free access to a wild internet is legitimately made up. Schools block that stuff too - universities, even.

As I've said, this solution is not solving this problem because this problem legitimately does not exist. It's solving a different problem. What that problem is, is for you to find out.

My cellular network (Google Fi / T-Mobile), as far as I can tell, has zero content blocking. Hotels used to officially put porn on the TVs via pay per view. I'm very skeptical that they widely block it.

I have high-school aged kids; they all trade techniques for getting precisely that "free access to a wild internet". It's a game of whack a mole, and school IT administrators are on the losing side.

Yes so lets go ahead and burn the entire internet so your kids, specifically, don't see boobies or something.

The reality is that it is YOUR responsibility to control what your kids see. If you fail, I do not care. They are not my kids. Not only do I not care, nobody cares.

You can absolutely lock your kids down and make sure they get no internet access. I know because I grew up without internet. Everything is very much in reach. Do that, or don't, again I don't care.

My mobile carrier blocks porn. I know because I'm an adult and sometimes I want to watch porn, and I have to use a VPN.

What you should do is call up whoever you are giving money to for internet and ask them about blocking. If they tell you they don't offer that product, then you, as a consumer, should cancel your subscription and go to another carrier.

What are you talking about when you say "when you buy Wi-Fi"? If you walk into a coffee shop, or a hotel, or just about anywhere, you get Wi-Fi for free. Are you talking about buying mobile service from an operator?

Buying internet access from an ISP or a mobile carrier?

Both require being an adult.

And, "free wifi", like you're talking about, already blocks porn. So problem solved, right?

What's actually the issue here? Because nobody seems to be able to articulate it. What problem are we solving?

>> Buying internet access from an ISP or a mobile carrier?

But neither of those is "buying Wi-Fi" - that's why I'm confused.

Yes absolutely. It's at the service provider level.

I'm happy to have popups with "Reject All" button. If there is no "Reject All" button I close site immediately.

Cookie regulations are perfectly Ok, businesses which want to add 429 vendors and data processors to simple internet shop or corporate blog is not.

If you use cookies only for legitimate basic local functionality (like login and shopping cart on online shop site) you SHOULD NOT have any popups, there is exemption for such use cases in the regulations. Only if you want to sell data or pass it for processing to third party you need popup. Simply don't.

Having done several rounds with parental control, I'd say -- nfw. We were worried more about timesink than anything else, but over a long period of time, it mainly boils down to knowing your kids, trusting them, with checkups. The tech is just not there to actually control what happens on a device.

White listing worked for a while (months) when they were young, but it was super-high touch and stuff just broke all the time. You try to whitelist a site, but you have to then figure out all their CDNs.

Restricting specific sites works, sort of, until they find some place that hosts that content. Blocking youtube doesn't work(*), every search engine has a watch videos feature. (Why are you spending 3 hours a day on DDG?) There's really no way to segment youtube into "videos they need to watch for school" and "viral x hour minecraft playthrough". Somehow, we've managed to combine the biggest time waste ever with a somewhat useful for education hosting service.

That's leaving out the jailbreaks that come from finding an app's unfiltered webview and getting an open web escape there.

There's basically no reliable method for filtering even on locked down platforms.

* there's probably a way to kill it at the firewall based on dns, but that's iffy for phones and it's network wide.

It's totally doable to block YouTube with pihole, and also to make it blocked only on certain devices.

The regex are: (^|\.)youtubei\.googleapis\.com$ (^|\.)ytstatic\.l\.google\.com$ (^|\.)ytimg\.l\.google\.com$ (^|\.)youtube-ui\.l\.google\.com$ (^|\.)youtube\.com$ (^|\.)ytimg\.com$ (^|\.)googlevideo\.com$

You can create groups and assign devices to them, and assign the block rules only to certain groups.

The only annoyance with this is that it blocks logging into Google since they redirect to YouTube to set a login cookie as part of the Google login process. If you're already logged into Google though, everything works as normal, and you can always disable pihole for five minutes if for some reason you got logged out and need to log back in.

My kids figured out disabling Wifi disabled the Pihole within hours, and that was when they were ~9. They are intelligent opponents and a very fast moving target.

On Android, it's technically possible to use an always on VPN to still use pihole even when on cellular data, but unless there are some mdm controls on the phone, one can obviously disable the VPN.

> The tech is just not there to actually control what happens on a device.

Neither is the tech for locking down all online identity to government-controlled access... But I have strong opinions about which one everybody should/shouldn't start creating!

Maybe they're called parental controls because they control the parents (by limiting and bundling choices).

Age restricted filtering of the internet is the default on all UK mobile networks as far as I know, it might even be the law that it defaults to filtering. You have to actually ring them up and say you want the filtering switched off or some do it as part of the sign up process.

All the routers also come with filtering settings as well and ISPs ship with the filtering on by default, since that is the law and has been for several decades.

It's generally just a toggle in the account settings so no need for a phone call, but yes. It is default-on when you take out a new broadband connection or mobile phone contract.

disgusting

my dream is when ISPs are allowed to sell this, but not allowed to call it internet access.

> Using the internet in the UK/EU is such a horrible experience, every cookie pop-up is a reminder how badly thought out these rules are.

That's what the advertising-dependent implementers who deliberately made it shittier than necessary (stuff like "you have to decline each of our 847 ad partners individually") want you to think, at least. It's mostly malicious compliance.

The funniest part of the banners is that most websites just buy a service from a third party to manage compliance, and some of those third party service providers have added "decline all" style buttons and one click solutions to all that use them, and are even friendly enough to save that choice in one of the "necessary" cookies.

But people (like my girlfriend) still click "Allow all" because they don't seem to realize that the legislation requires the website to still function if you decline unnecessary cookies!

The banner is literally an attempt to FOMO you into accepting cookies you never need to accept!

IMO the EU is somewhat in dereliction of Duty for not punishing cookie banner sites

Oh, its funnier than that. The most sophisticated data trackers don't even use cookies anymore. Anyone you would have to worry about getting that data hasn't used cookies in years. So the entire exercise punishes small companies that don't do anything with the data except pre-populate fields for you. But big tech companies that the law was targeting don't have to change a thing.

"Cookie banners" and the GDPR aren't just about cookies - they apply to all forms of tracking.

The cookie popups is such a painful representation of Europe tech in general.

Like you can configure your browser to do whatever you want with cookies - blocking them all, blocking only third party ones, etc. - there is no need for government regulation here.

But the legislators are completely tech illiterate and even the general public supports more interference and regulation.

The legislation simply says if you collect more data about your users than necessary, you must inform them and they must consent. This has nothing to do with cookies or any other tech.

The question a user should ask is why is this website collecting my data. Marketing and adtech companies are trying to shift this question to why is the EU making websites worse.

> there is no need for government regulation here

You don't need to care about this if you respect users' privacy in the same way you don't need to care about waste water regulation when you don't pump waste into rivers.

No, that legislation is perfectly fine! It's the pesky websites who can't get their grubby hands off of private data. They could very well do away with some of the tracking, and have no popup at all, fully legally! But they all chose not to, and would rather annoy everyone with the pop-up.

I'd welcome a ramp-up of the legislation: outlaw the kind of tracking that needs the banners currently outright. I'm sure a lot of websites would just geo-block EU as a result (like how some did because of GDPR), but I bet the EU-compliant visitor tracking solutions would suddenly skyrocket, and overall, nothing of value would be lost, neither for the users, nor for the website administrators.

It’s a bit of both.

It’s not possible to rely on browser controls as-is, because they do not differentiate between necessary and optional cookies.

Browser vendors could agree standards and implement them, exposing these to users and advertisers in a friendly way.

But they haven’t shown any interest in doing this.

I wonder why?

Without laws forcing companies to properly declare which cookies are "necessary", this control you imagine does nothing, as every company simply sets their advertising cookies as "necessary"

One of the hundreds of reasons do_not_track failed. You cannot do something that trusts the website operators, because they are egregiously untrustworthy.

The cookie banner everyone keeps bitching about is a direct example of this. No website is required to have a cookie banner. They choose to, because they know most users click "Yes to all", and then complain about the regulators, instead of the assholes asking you to consent to sharing your data with nearly a thousand third parties

And "browser vendors" will never do anything, because 90% of the market is a literal advertising behemoth, the rest of the market is owned by a company that makes money only when you do things not through the web browser.

What is considered a “strictly necessary” use of cookies is set out in law in a quite a number of countries.

My point is about UX: it could be much slicker if the browser industry standardised the consent mechanism.

You make a good point about lack of incentives.

The only ones who are tech illiterate are the ones still repeating this nonsense in 2025.

Install uBlock. In its settings: Filter Lists -> Cookie notices

The simplest solution is to require all online devices to have a "child mode" that can be activated during setup, and require all parents to enable this for minors under 16. In this mode, the device takes screenshots every few seconds of active use, and makes this viewable on the parents' devices as a timeline. This must be private with full end-to-end encryption and limited data retention in the clients (7 days or so).

It's much simpler than blocking, and much more effective. Most parents don't know what to block proactively, blocklists are imperfect, and the biggest threats are hiding in the most innocent looking apps (Discord, Roblox, Reddit, even just messaging with friends from school).

Yes, let's get kids used to surveillance from a young age. What could possibly go wrong.

Sure, but you'd need to apply it to all phones, because what's stopping a kid from buying an adult smartphone if they have the money? And smartphones can be dirt cheap.

Also remember that the pop-up is an industry choice, the rules only mandate that a user should opt in, not how. No laws mandate the cookie banners, no regulations say they should be obnoxious.

> Sure, but you'd need to apply it to all phones, because what's stopping a kid from buying an adult smartphone

There's no need, that's already the case.

All phones (the network account attached to the SIM actually, not the phone itself) comes with a content filter enabled by default in the UK, adult or not.

> All phones (the network account attached to the SIM actually, not the phone itself) comes with a content filter enabled by default in the UK, adult or not.

Neither resident nor frequent visitor to the UK, so I'm behind the times when I ask: I beg your fucking pardon?

Is there further reading on this inane nanny-state horror, ideally via a Wikipedia article on the law or gentleman's agreement amongst the carriers?

Furthermore, is this more common than I assume, and I simply don't notice because I don't stray too far from the mainstream?

> I beg your fucking pardon?

Yep, my thoughts exactly when I first encountered it.

> Is there further reading on this inane nanny-state horror

I tried to look something up but it seems the articles and news about the (new) Online Safety Act has taken over all of the search results (and it's not something I want to search too hard at work). I even asked an LLM but it couldn't provide sources and simply said it was "voluntary" and "industry standard". The rest of its output was drowned in the new Online Safety Act.

I suppose thanks to the OSA the old system is now history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_Uni...

I think you show identification (like when buying alcohol) when buying the phone/contract, and the block is removed. Or, this can be done later.

> Sure, but you'd need to apply it to all phones, because what's stopping a kid from buying an adult smartphone if they have the money? And smartphones can be dirt cheap.

What's to stop that same kid to buy a porno dvd? Or to download a torrent of a porno? Or a porn magazine?

I suppose it'd be the same thing in the UK - kids cannot buy knives.

Come to think of it, parental control would be a neat application for something like Apple Intelligence. A local system service that is "trustworthy enough" to monitor everything on screen, and written content too.

Parental controls only need look for an RTA header [1] that would need to be legislated to be served from any adult or potentially adult user-generated content site. Not perfect, nothing is but it would take an intern maybe half a day to add the code to clients to check for said header. Adding the header on the server side is at trivial. Teens will bypass it as they can stream and watch together porn and pirated movies in rate-PG video games that allow defining a "movie player" but small children on locked down tablets would be fine.

[1] - https://www.rtalabel.org/index.php?content=howtofaq#single

That "unlabelled whack-a-mole" problem is exactly what a system-level visual classifier would block.

I am not sure what you mean. Are you saying a daemon would recognize a video player that is streaming porn from within a video game? Who is installing this daemon?

A client checking for a header is more than sufficient to block small children from seeing porn and that is 100% more than we have today. No extra memory or CPU required important on tablets or phones handed to children. No privacy invasion by daemons or other third parties.

Kid: "Mommie they said go to pornhub.com for games but it ask for password"

Mom: "Dumb trolls are picking on you, I will deal with them."

The phone manufacturer. I don't think it would otherwise be possible without root. And it's quite a computationally heavy thing where security and privacy are important. It'd have to be secure (no sending information). That's why I suggested Apple, they have the vertical integration to do this kind of thing. In theory. Also it's a good counter to governments trying to censor the internet itself if children can be protected at the device level.

How about this. We implement RTA headers on the server and checks for the header on the clients, get little ones squared away and in parallel have Google and Apple start working on your local AI daemon. The header should take one code change cycle to get in place, maybe a couple weeks realistically assuming the goal posts are not on wheels.

But "we" are not in control of "the server". I agree though it's worth doing, adult content should be tagged as such. But it doesn't handle the case of non-compliance.

"We" are not in control of the server or phone client or tablet applications. Should the 5-eyes or 9-eyes countries pass a law to use RTA headers on servers and look for the header on user-agents that should suffice to get basic coverage for kiddos by default and parents can disable the checks if they so desire.

This would enable/catalyze an order of magnitude more child abuse than anything that can happen on the worst cesspits of the internet.

I don't see how a content blocker would do that.

Why Apple Intelligence when screen recording has been a feature for parental control systems for ages?

I mean a classifier to identify anything that looks sus.

Edit: also something like this needs deep OS integration.

I hate that the internet is being destroyed in the name of iPad kids

i love how screen time is only detrimental to young minds, and older minds are somehow immune to its evils.

> Is there a solution where we can compel parental control to be enabled by default on kids phones?

What do you mean? Parents can easily set this up before they give them to their children.

"The least bad thing that Ofcom and the Government could do is to quietly let the matter drop whilst focusing on education."

This generalises very well for all Government. Shame we're a couple of generations into education being about producing pliant workers over independent, thinking human beings.

>This generalises very well for all Government.

The government shouldn't be dropping things. It should have the power to pick those things up in the first place.

It's like a fishing stop. Even if you get off with a warning the whole interaction just shouldn't have happened.

> education being about producing pliant workers over independent, thinking human beings.

You cant have things like computers and smart phones if you dont have millions of pliant workers mass producing them for you. If you want the technological world that we live in to be possible then you should accept that it requires this concept. If everybody is a creative independant free thinking individual, then nobody is a worker drone in a factory churning out phones, laptops, or the materials and components that go into them.

Generations of wave solder machines and pick-and-place machines beg to differ...

Id love to see a wave solder machine mine some cobalt...

Mass education was formed to destroy local cultures and languages in the prussian empire and revolutionary french to make sure people were compliant and wouldn't revolt against the state's control, it has never had anything to do with making people thinkers. This is the stated purpose, and always has been.

[flagged]

Neither of these things happen, but even if either was miraculously true, should the onus be on the entirety of society to self-censor, or on the kids parents to parent properly (IE use parental controls and supervise screen time)?

Entire society to self censor. Individual parental level controls are ineffective. It’s like keeping your child from having a smart phone at school but then they just become a social pariah since everyone else has one. It only works if no kids are allowed to bring their smartphones to school.

That's still not on the onus of society, but just on the school.

It’s an analogue for society though.

> TikTok destroys our boys by turning them into trans

???

Do you really believe that?

It’s a conservative talking point, I’m pretty progressive on most things but yeah I think this one has validity.

From https://prestonbyrne.com/2025/10/16/the-ofcom-files/

> consistent with the UK legal doctrine known as parliamentary supremacy, which holds that the UK Parliament has theoretically unlimited power

This is also true in Canada for the most part, while in theory with the adoption of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms as part of the Constitution Act, 1982. This Act prescribes that “the Constitution of Canada is the supreme law of Canada” (s.52), Thus constitutional supremacy replaced Parliamentary supremacy in Canada, in reality, the parliament can invoke s. 33 of the Charter, the notwithstanding clause, allows Parliament and the provincial legislatures to override certain provisions of the Charter, Canadian legislatures are still partially supreme. Which means the law can stand even if it violates those rights. This clause, which can only be used for a five-year term that is renewable, applies to specific sections of the Charter, including fundamental freedoms, legal rights, and equality rights, but not democratic, mobility, or Aboriginal rights.

I don't understand why the British government's solution is to impose orders on British ISPs as they have done with other websites that they want to block, rather than try to impose on a company based in another country.

It's because of s long history of being a nanny state, and now they have bi-partisan political drive to export this.

Oi, ‘av you got yer internet loisence?

Jokes aside, what on earth is going on with the UK?

It seems to have serious demographic issues and actual ethnic English are understandably angry at having been largely vilified as Nazis and far-right for wanting to protect their heritage and identity.

To reach into draconian surveillance and censorship to quell its own natives of the land who has lived there for thousands of years at the behest of those that have arrived from far away lands with a drastically incompatible culture with the British is a recipe for civil war.

> drastically incompatible culture with the British is a recipe for civil war.

That is the true reason for the surveillance state and these new transgressions. If you’ve had that thought it stands to reason they have also.

It's not just the UK really, they are just a bit further ahead than the rest of the western world.

Yep that sums it up. Scary.

This is a really well-written article. The whole thing is so absurd and this makes it so clear.

FWIW I agree with the intent of the Act, and am generally in favour of a sovereign firewall.

Edit: In a nutshell - almost every other transfer of goods and services across national borders is subject to quality standards. Why do we give a pass to a system that allows deep, individualised access to people's personal lives and mental processes?

I'd argue transfer of services is not really an issue. People buying services from a foreign entity is a pretty fringe case, and most legitimate businesses will try to establish a local presence for that anyway.

Sovereign firewalls are mostly used by countries that have them for censorship and surveillance, and I think letting governments use a pretext of digital services being able to avoid tolls and taxes to establish such a powerful tool would be a huge mistake.

Right now you're downvoted for expressing an opinion that I believe deserves a deeper discussion.

I don't want the government to decide which thoughts I can access and which ones I can't, but I also understand that allowing a foreign power (let's say Russia, although "the US" works just as fine) to freely run undercover propaganda and/or destabilization campaigns without any recourse doesn't look good either. And while I agree with "when in doubt aim for the option with more freedom", I can understand those who share your position.

What about domestic entities running undercover propaganda campaigns - as we have seen e.g. with Cambridge Analytica? Should we maybe focus on the more fundamental problem of our democracies being vulnerable to propaganda campaigns rather than making sure that only "good" and "sovereign" propaganda campaigns are allowed?

> Should we maybe focus on the more fundamental problem of our democracies being vulnerable to propaganda campaigns

Step 1 is reduce your attack surface :) As a second point, democracies are propaganda campaigns - it's a feature, not a bug.

I believe that national cultural and societal norms play a key part in self-regulation. I think it's too much to ask for those balancing forces to work as effectively without first turning down the firehose.

Being able to implement any decision by running a targeted campaign discouraging it's opponents from voting and swaying the undecided can't be a feature or we have very different understanding of democracy.

By closing up we defend us from some threats, but open gates wide for others. Foreign actors compete against much stronger domestic media machines and as you mentioned have to operate in foreign cultural environments. Gaining true influence also always involves financial flows, not just propaganda campaigns, so it is sure possible to mitigate these threats without closing information flow.

Consider the opposite threat of democracies being undermined from within. If some internal "threat actor" gets control of the executive branch and of the media and also can prevent information flow from the outside, very little can be done against it.

I think it is critical to keep in mind this second possibility even when the first threat seems more urgent.

There are entire political industries openly dedicated to swaying the undecided! It's a messy business, but that's what we have.

Propaganda is not necessarily to gain influence or money. Eg: Country x just wants to mess with people's heads and turn them on each other to weaken a rival country. Or: Country y runs a crafted propaganda campaign against a rival. As a result, some sector of its own economy starts doing better at the expense of its rival.

>If some internal "threat actor" gets control of the executive branch and of the media and also can prevent information flow from the outside, very little can be done against it.

I understand the scenario (it's far from new), but that's what the design of any particular democracy is supposed to minimise. Term limits, separation of government powers, etc.

Something needs to be done. The outcomes are manifestly bad. I can't take the pro-freedom intellectual argument seriously unless it's coupled with a suite of pragmatic solutions to the negative side effects I am observing with my own senses. The intellectual walls of text just aren't papering over that reality.

Propaganda campaigns are one thing, but the reality is these laws target stupid ass shit like porn.

Is that a made up problem? IMO: yes. That's a PARENT'S responsibility, not mine.

There are legitimate arguments in favor of a national firewall. Nobody is making them.

>The outcomes are manifestly bad.

That's just as bad of an argument as so-called intellectual walls of text. Nothing needs to be done, the outcomes are not bad. My argument is as strong as yours.

The Internet Research Agency organizing multiple Black Lives Matter protests due to control over approximately 50% of the largest identity-based Facebook groups is just one small example on a long list of examples of social unrest and the consequential ushering in of sectarianism and destruction of democracy that the current status quo is enabling. The pro-freedom types do not even know this is happening let alone have any solutions to it. Turning a blind eye is all they have. So until they show an awareness of the existence of the issue I will be siding with the only people who have put any effort into addressing the problems.