I absolutely don’t care what happens to 4chan, but UK starting to sue the internet for being available there and not complying with their bullshit is worrying.
4chan refuses to pay UK Online Safety Act fines, asks Trump admin to intervene
Submitted 1 day ago by 0x0@lemmy.zip to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
brsrklf@jlai.lu 1 day ago
NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
I don’t want the 4chan users to flock someplace else.
HarkMahlberg@kbin.earth 1 day ago
Believe me, they've already been everywhere you've been. It's not like once you post on 4chan you're forbidden from making accounts on every other website.
rozodru@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
They’ve already “flocked”. The site and userbase is a shell of its former self and it’s hey day is long passed. The users aged out or just went to places like kiwi farms, random discord channels, etc.
I mean you’re on Lemmy, a good chunk of old 4chan users are here, so you’re amongst them.
stardustsystem@lemmy.world 1 day ago
If there’s someone prepared to argue in court about why the UK’s Act is a terrible idea, holy crap it is NOT 4chan
paraphrand@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I wonder how discovery would go.
omgboom@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
“Your honor here is 30 terabytes of beastiality porn, we think what you want is somewhere in there, have fun going through it”
paraphrand@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
Coming back to this thread later, I’m surprised that it’s mostly being negative regarding 4chan.
I’m use to people defending it when it comes up. Even defending it to my face in synchronous spaces online. The dissonance always weirded me out.
It’s good to see.
Treczoks@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
I’m pulled back and forth with this one. On the one hand, 4chan is a shithole that should be taken care of. On the other side, UK laws that try to govern the internet are so overly deranged shit.
sleen@lemmy.zip 19 hours ago
“Taken care of”, so how does this kind of perspective differ from the protection law?
Treczoks@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
Properly dealing with hate crimes is different from controlling the internet more or less in general.
Let the internet be free, but also keep it free from hate.
FriendBesto@lemmy.ml 13 hours ago
Look at bigger picture. Ignore that it is 4Chan and imagine it is a site that you actually like or care about. That is the point.
The reason they go after 4Chan is because they want to normalise this general type of censorship and hope people are gullible or biased enough that they will or would let obvious authoritarian censorship slide because they know some people dislike the site. It is s manipulation and how you shot the Overton Window towards general censorship.
The point is that the UK should never do that and the law is bad. Whenever you see shit like this, switch the “thing” in question to something you like and be honest to yourself and think if you would be okay with it.
If they can do it easily to things you dislike, then they can as easily do it to things you like.
The fact that is Labour, or the equivalent of the USA Democrats trying to hinder public speech in other countries via this insane laws is something worth noting. Any side can do this.
MBech@feddit.dk 13 hours ago
Are EU privacy laws trying to govern the internet also deranged?
I don’t agree with the laws the UK have on this matter, but trying to govern the internet is absolutely nothing new, and most of the time the internet fucking loves it, and praises the EU for trying to do so.
hal_5700X@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Can we just block the UK from the Internet. So they can have their own Internet, like China. That will solve a lot of problems.
Part4@infosec.pub 23 hours ago
If you are not in the UK, this shit UK law doesn’t affect you in any way. 4chan will just be blocked by UK ISP’s, and people will put up proxy sites that will get regularly block blah blah blah like thepiratebay.
Unless the shithead Trump, whose voted-for-twice America actually could do with being isolated from international life, intervenes and our pathetically weak government yet again fails to stand up for itself.
HereIAm@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
But it does effect everyone. Don’t you think the lack complete backlash to the online safety act is emboldening similar ideas in the rest of the world, especially the EU? Yes, we’ve stopped chat control like 2 or 3 times already, but it’s being brought up again now.
Silinde@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
Let’s face it, Starmer’s tongue is shoved so far up Trump’s fettid arsehole, he can taste his mouthwash. Trump only has to tweet about it and that spineless twat will capitulate and make it the government’s most important mission to ensure “international cooperation”, or some BS.
OldChicoAle@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Dominoes
wewbull@feddit.uk 1 day ago
Go 4chan!
Not often I get to say that, but this is one case.
cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
you definitely don't have to praise the website for paedophiles.
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
So has Twitter, Youtube, Insta, Facebook and Lemmy.
SorryQuick@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
He’s praising the site’s action, not the site itself.
LaunchesKayaks@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
Wait I thought 4chan died
bss03@infosec.pub 13 hours ago
The hacker known as 4 Chan is BACK, baby!
Schwim@lemmy.zip 14 hours ago
Not dead. Just irrelevant.
ebolapie@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
4chan is a very stubborn website
nandeEbisu@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Calling 4chan the most hateful site on the Internet ignores the fact that xitter is a thing.
The kind of hateful rhetoric and grooming are not unique to 4chan, they happen on Facebook, discord, and roblox. 4chan has just been a minimally filtered representation of underground online cultures for decades now meaning it’s still just as much a font of creativity as it is a cesspool of internet refuse.
andros_rex@lemmy.world 1 day ago
4chan has been mostly dead as a place of creativity for years. /b/ is mostly creepshots, AI generated porn, and a guy who has been spamming a picture inviting you to eat Andy Sixx’s shit for like 5 years now. /pol/ is basically Stormfront lite.
/lit/ and /mu/ were some of the best parts of 4chan but are shells of their former selves, some of the sfw boards sometimes have things of value but it’s time to move on.
IcyToes@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Just because you’re comfortable with racial and homophobic slurs in most posts, doesn’t mean it’s not hateful.
I detest Elon and xitter as much as anyone, but there is zero comparison. If anything, it just shows how far you’ve gone.
tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 23 hours ago
I checked one of those site traffic estimators and got 2 to 2.5 mil monthly views for 4chan vs 120 mil for twitter. So if every single 4chan user was a nazi, it would only take about 2% of twitter being nazis to equal that. Seems like there might be more nazis on twitter these days tbh.
angstylittlecatboy@reddthat.com 1 day ago
4chan’s creativity died when the first Soyjak was posted.
paraphrand@lemmy.world 1 day ago
“4chan asks Donald Trump for help”
What a weird world.
BigDanishGuy@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Indeed, feeling the need to check, I can tell you that we’re not in the onion anymore…
sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 hours ago
I guess it makes sense that they’re natural allies.
dogs0n@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
I hope this encourages more companies/sites to fight back against stupid laws. If most keep complying, it’ll only get worse for them in the future when they make even worse laws.
Pull out all UK servers and ignore uk fines (assuming thats legal wherever u reside… idk how that works) or just pull out of uk.
I hope a country like switzerland or something lets companies host servers there for europe without enforcing dumb laws from uk/european union.
Pamasich@kbin.earth 20 hours ago
I hope a country like switzerland or something lets companies host servers there for europe without enforcing dumb laws from uk/european union.
Not going to happen with Switzerland and EU laws. Being completely surrounded by the EU, we're really bad with leverage and are already struggling to not have worse and worse deals forced on us. Plus, we have our own Chat Control type law coming up (which is why Proton is leaving). There's no way we'll take a stance against EU law.
dogs0n@sh.itjust.works 16 hours ago
Wow thats a shock. I suppose the second best option would be any country outside of europe, even though the connection speed wouldn’t be that fast, it would still be useable.
FriendBesto@lemmy.ml 13 hours ago
The EU wants to go after encryption. By introducing means to be able to see messages in services before they are encrypted and sent. Law is currently being discussed.
Basically:
“Trust us bro, we will have the means to read your stuff but we promise to never read them or abuse it. Trust us.”
chunes@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Why would an American website pay fines because of the laws of a random country?
stoly@lemmy.world 1 day ago
If you offer a service in a country you are subject to their laws.
deathbird@mander.xyz 1 day ago
I’m not sure I like the idea that you’re “offering a service” in a country simply by being a data service that can accessed from it.
Someone from Australia can call me and we can chat. It doesn’t mean I or my phone carrier are offering a service in Australia.
dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 hours ago
My website is my website. You visit my website, my website does not visit you.
CoffeeTails@lemmy.world 1 day ago
What does that mean? Arent most sites available everywhere by default?
FriendBesto@lemmy.ml 13 hours ago
The internet is open. It is not up to a site to block a country just because. Which is what happened here, and this why their law is dumb and over reaching.
The argument is more like:
“UK citizens, via the open internet could see your site, and we have now decided that we do not like it. We are not going to complain via diplomacy or via your country’s existing Laws or policing agencies, as such, you must pay us £20,000 in fines, per day, for exisitng because we say so. Despite you having no interests, employees or infrastructure, at all, in our country.”
ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
Trump admin: “We literally want the same exact thing.”
FriendBesto@lemmy.ml 13 hours ago
The Biden Admin tried and failed in some fronts and got censorship working in others.
CriticalMiss@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I don’t really understand how this works. If I’m a company whose entire infrastructure is in the US (for example, I don’t know if 4chan is like that) how can I get in trouble with the UK? I don’t have a legal entity there, I’m not doing any business on their soil whatsoever, how can they enforce their laws against me?
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
They’re “doing business” there by serving ads to their citizens, that’s the legal basis for suing them. Whether that goes anywhere depends on the laws governing the business and any leverage UK has (say, going after advertising who do business with the company and in the UK).
dogs0n@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
I think it only works if the country you are in allows it to happen, as in they have an understanding with the UK (in this case) to follow through with legal stuff. If they were in russia (for example), the UK probably couldn’t enforce anything.
Think it is down to the government of your country.
abbiistabbii@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
OK so Trump is going to have to choose whether or not to side with fucking 4chan, you know, the site with regular pedophilia threads.
Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
And how would Trump siding with nonces be a surprise?
NOT_RICK@lemmy.world 1 day ago
It’s been a long time since I’ve browsed that cesspool, but I remember all the pedos getting banned and going over to the other image boards like 8chan. Been more than a decade though and that was when moot still ran things
Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
I really hope he says no, just because 4chan deserves the leopards.
sleen@lemmy.zip 19 hours ago
Why, because they are opposing the safety act just like we are. It just seems a bit naive.
starman2112@sh.itjust.works 8 hours ago
Lots of people here happy to cut off their nose to spite their face. 4chan losing this battle means everyone loses it
Warl0k3@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Man, either they strike a blow for online censorship or the UK laws do one decent thing and take out 4chan. Hilarious they’re trying to invoke trump tho like, when has that ever worked, he doesnt care about his bootlicking supporters…
Drewmeister@lemmy.world 1 day ago
It wouldn’t be the first time that he’s done something because Barron says all of his supporters want him to.
cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
can't wait for 4chan and trump to both die
uk just needs to dns block all of 4chan
LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
This is the best thing for everyone.
If Trump intervenes: Trump is forced to either acknowledge 4chan and potentially even be positive of it
If Trump intervenes: UK is forced to weaken the OSA
If Trump backs down: He looks weak, UK gets EU a win against American corpos
brsrklf@jlai.lu 1 day ago
UK gets EU nothing, UK has left EU.
And the way their politics have gone to shit with mass surveillance and powerful lobbying from anti-LGBT groups, I prefer them not being represented in EU anymore.
LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
It’s a win by non-Chinese western governments against American tech oligarchy’s desire to be above the law. Which makes it a win for the EU.
Yes UK politics are fucked. Rest of Europe catching up as well. But I don’t envision a scenario where this clash between various bastards is anything but a win for anyone who isn’t a bastard.
Mrkawfee@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Airstrip 1
mrslt@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I mean, they’re already creating the Ministry of Truth…
altphoto@lemmy.today 1 day ago
Everyone watch orange goo protect kids.
Pamasich@kbin.earth 19 hours ago
I'm a bit confused by comments on this topic. Do sovereign countries not have the right anymore to decide their own laws and issue punishment when they're not followed?
Like, they obviously can't enforce these fines. This article says as much. The fines can't be enforced, but if 4chan ignores them, that opens the door for other measures like delisting the site from search engines or blocking access to it from the UK (these two examples are taken from the article). Which are fair measures imo.
Like, to the people saying UK can't do laws which apply to services which are merely accessible in the UK and have no physical presence there, do you also apply this logic to the GDPR, which works the same way? The US has these laws too, like COPPA iirc. It's not really something the UK came up with, it's a bit of a standard with laws like this as far as I know.
Hubi@feddit.org 19 hours ago
Some laws are bullshit and I commend everyone who decides to ignore them.
This has already happened to a number of sites and services, with some voluntarily blocking access from the UK. 4chan’s approach is just a bit different in the way that they are waiting to get blocked instead of doing the blocking themselves. It sucks for citizens from the UK, but they are the ones that put the people in power who created those laws.
This has also been the case already. There are a number of American websites that will just straight up deny you access if you visit them from a EU country. Some even cite GDPR as the reason for being blocked. I don’t think it’s the best solution, but I accept it because I wouldn’t want to visit that cannot comply with it anyways.
FriendBesto@lemmy.ml 13 hours ago
The UK government is basically testing the waters of what it can get away with and also normalising the notion that they could even bother/dare to ask for this to be done in the first place.
It is about shifting the Overton Window for the normies. Especially, over time. For example, the first people to be cancelled or removed from social media years ago, like almost 10 years ago, it was done with some bad fanfare, and the people who did it, Twitter, etc… I remember said that they did it even despite some internal strife over the notion of censorship. Now, people can get cancelled on a dime and no one really cares all that much.
If you told someone 20 years ago that you should pay ca$h out of your ien pocketas to get a corporate microphone that listens to you, your family, your children constantly so it can play songs for you and tell you the weather and gives some other conveniences, 99% people would say that you would have to fucking insane to do that. Being such a breach of fucking common sense and reasonable privacy. Look at people now. Shifting the Overton Window works for fun, control and profit.
Of course, if the US does not play along, then UK’s bill goes nowhere outside the UK, or maybe they will try with weaker geopolitical cointries. But governments do this type of thing all the time, under a, “We will push until someone else finally pushes back,” mentality.
If the UK really wanted to go after 4Chan, they could contact the FBI or whoever in the USA that could serve relevant via proper channels. This has always been available to them, but this is not about that, it is about censorship and control. Obviously.