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EmbarrassedHelp 1 days ago [-]
Ofcom is currently threatening a Canadian forum that exists to help people with depression. Ofcom claims that geoblocking blocking the UK is "insufficient":
> I've also gone back to Ofcom explicitly telling them the UK was now geoblocked (twice now) and I received a response that this was insufficient.
Ofcom really thinks that their laws apply globally.
pwdisswordfishy 16 hours ago [-]
> Ofcom really thinks that their laws apply globally.
How silly of them. Obviously, only the US jurisdiction can do that.
kulahan 15 hours ago [-]
Ofcom could do it too if they had like 25 aircraft carriers and 2 of the 3 largest air forces on the planet, the best intel network, the most advanced tools, the backing of a $25T economy, the…
nehal3m 15 hours ago [-]
Might makes right I guess.
hdgvhicv 15 hours ago [-]
US is losing a war on washing, hardly fear inducing
Toilets are nice to have, but not REQUIRED when you are on a ship. Tongue in cheek
yostrovs 9 hours ago [-]
Ireland doesn't have a military.
Mr_Bees69 4 hours ago [-]
They have ~8k troops.
yostrovs 3 hours ago [-]
Exactly. 0.23% of GDP. It exists only to be able to say that it exists. But it's not in NATO. The Irish will protect themselves if things go bad.
nslsm 13 hours ago [-]
As much as I dislike the results of that, the opposite would be worse.
danlitt 13 hours ago [-]
The opposite? Literally any justification would be "opposite". Any justification is better than no justification!
wongarsu 12 hours ago [-]
The rule of law is worse than might makes right? Or what do you perceive as the opposite of "might makes right?"
pc86 8 hours ago [-]
What is stopping you from breaking a given law if there is zero chance you'll be jailed or killed for doing so?
8 hours ago [-]
mothballed 8 hours ago [-]
Social ostracism, loss of voting rights, loss of licensing, loss of ability to volunteer for some of your children's activities, loss of job opportunities because your name is on a docket or list of sexual offenders, higher insurance rates, loss of rental options, possible difficulty obtaining a passport or getting a visa, potentially being dropped from certain bank activities during due diligence, etc
Being jailed with some books and lots of time to work out sounds nice sometime, especially during times when home life is toddlers or baby screaming at you and waking you 24/7 and all your time is spent tending to others' needs so you have no personal agency anyway, the rest does not.
pc86 7 hours ago [-]
All of those other things (except maybe social ostracism), are also backed up by the force of the state and it's honestly kind of concerning you don't see that.
Even debanking only happens because the banks themselves face fines from the state, which if unpaid leads to loss of licensure, after which continued operation leads to... jail. You only need a passport because if you try to push through security without one, you're going to jail. I'm sure if I wanted to waste my time I could follow the thread on all the other ones too.
Social ostracism is a good point. Perhaps the exception that proves the rule?
mothballed 7 hours ago [-]
I absolutely agree with you in substance. My main point is I think jailing is way overused and of usually of dubious value. It's extremely expensive, harms the victims (they literally have to pay taxes to pay for the aggressors), of dubious value in most cases, functions as criminal university, does little rehabilitation.
Of course it needn't be a centralized state per se. Somalis for example use 'xeer' law which is a scalable legal system that starts peer to peer and appealable upwards, mostly based on restitution/fines and ostracizing those who do not pay (eventually to the point, they could become 'outlaws' that have no protection from crime themselves).
I think restitution based legal system is ideal, but of course that would flip on its head the current system where the state ousts the victim and becomes the victim themselves and deprives the victim of restitution instead turning it into a big cronyism money making machine for themselves at the expense of everyone else. It would also mean the end of most 'victimless' crime, and god knows the wailing and nashing of teeth that would come when you couldn't prosecute someone for smoking a left handed cigarette because there is no victim to prosecute the case [or on behalf of].
nehal3m 7 hours ago [-]
Your moral compass?
bluefirebrand 9 hours ago [-]
Rule of law is always implicitly backed by might makes right. The law is in control of the military and police after all.
pc86 8 hours ago [-]
Ideologically maybe not, but practically speaking, of course. Your government can only enforce its laws against you because if you resist you get put in a cage forever or they kill you. At the end of the day, that's the reason.
bheadmaster 10 hours ago [-]
Always has.
philipallstar 13 hours ago [-]
Now apply your critique to Ofcom.
nehal3m 12 hours ago [-]
Gladly. In practice it’s true, but that doesn’t make it morally justified.
PixyMisa 14 hours ago [-]
That has been true throughout history.
exe34 15 hours ago [-]
Picture an astronaut holding a gun: always has been.
13 hours ago [-]
gilrain 8 hours ago [-]
The cooperation of allies is more powerful than all of that, and the US is woodchipping their allies as fast as possible. Their power will disappear astonishingly quickly.
lostlogin 14 hours ago [-]
Speaking as a New Zealander, this is correct. Having the FBI raid Dotcom was quite the show.
jopsen 9 hours ago [-]
Well, someone operating a business refusing to pay fines in the UK might want to avoid traveling to the UK.
Not a big loss, but something to keep in mind. There is a risk the UK has long memory.
tracker1 5 hours ago [-]
Well, I already don't travel to countries where police are regularly not paid... not to mention countries where people are jailed for memes and what I consider free speech issues... so UK has been out for a few years as far as I'm concerned.
pc86 8 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
solid_fuel 14 hours ago [-]
Good news/bad news, our current leaders are far too incompetent to successfully plan and execute a regime change operation. Bad news is they're stupid enough to try anyway and have a lot of weapons.
philipallstar 13 hours ago [-]
They don't need to change a regime. Just cut off a major ally of China and Russia.
PeterisP 11 hours ago [-]
The Iran war was one of the biggest economic boons Russia could hope for; the disruption of oil and gas exports from Middle East with the associated spike in global prices brought Russian economy back from the dead, as now their exports are so much more valuable.
guerrilla 11 hours ago [-]
They're not though. They're lofting sanctions on Russia just to help try to survive this war.
Levitz 11 hours ago [-]
It's not the first time I see comments similar to this and I honestly can't even begin to grasp how anyone can think that the US is in any way shape or form at risk from Iran.
solid_fuel 48 minutes ago [-]
I'm sure people said the same about the USSR invading Afghanistan.
The US right now cannot keep its bridges from collapsing. It cannot keep its children safe from men with guns. It cannot keep its citizens fed or housed. It is failing to provide adequate healthcare for a majority of its population, it cannot even keep its children vaccinated against measles. Our science agencies are being run by crackpots. Our mass media is being combined under one single owner.
This doesn't even consider the impending existential challenges of climate change.
And this nation, instead of fixing its crumbling domestic infrastructure - educational systems, health care systems, or anything that would benefit the citizens of the US - has chosen to launch an attack against a foreign nation that has already cost 10s of billions of dollars and will likely cost vastly more.
All the political and economic capitol that is required to maintain and improve stable conditions is instead being poured into murder in a desert thousands of miles from home.
galangalalgol 9 hours ago [-]
If it spends enough to trigger the debt bomb literally pounding sand, that could do it. It isn't Iran that is the danger though. The US could just walk away any time and be fine.
myrmidon 7 hours ago [-]
I'd argue that Vietnam and Al-Qaida/Afghanistan/Iraq where much lesser "risks" than Iran, and those still left lasting scars on US society, self-image and standing.
guerrilla 7 hours ago [-]
Well, why don't you open Bloomberg or the Financial Times to understand why. The damage being caused is potentially civilization-ending. At the very least, this is already going to be very expensive for everyone for many years.
ndsipa_pomu 12 hours ago [-]
Which regime is trying to be changed though? The backlash to starting a war for no credible reason and tanking the world economy along with increased fuel prices could conceivably force a regime change in the USA.
pc86 8 hours ago [-]
The US regime is changing with the next presidential election regardless of the outcome (or lack thereof) of this war. Short of a nuclear exchange or China invading Taiwan or San Francisco, nothing is changing that.
ndsipa_pomu 7 hours ago [-]
Trump's private army taking guard outside the white house with the new military-grade defensive ballroom might change matters. Who exactly is going to force him to leave?
pc86 7 hours ago [-]
What are you talking about?
I sure hope I'll see you back here on 1/20/29 saying over and over again how wrong you were and how stupid this comment was but I'm sure you'll have some excuse, or pretend you never said it.
estebank 6 hours ago [-]
He already tried to overturn one election. What makes you think that he wouldn't try again?
hellojesus 5 hours ago [-]
There are quite explicit constitutional limits to his ability to be elected to a third term. Short of a mitary-style takeover, there is nothing he can do to change that (discounting the scenario of constitutional amendment).
solid_fuel 46 minutes ago [-]
The same limits he ignored in 2021?
ndsipa_pomu 3 hours ago [-]
Who would be enforcing those constitutional limits? I didn't think that a convicted felon could run for president, but here we are.
ndsipa_pomu 3 hours ago [-]
It's just a possibility given the co-opting of ICE agents into performing like Trump's private army. I'd much rather never see that happen and have to live with making a dumb comment.
15155 1 days ago [-]
> Ofcom really thinks that their laws apply globally.
The cries of a long-since-dead empire slowly fading into geopolitical irrelevance.
onetimeusename 21 hours ago [-]
I didn't see it that way. It seems like NGOs and IGOs have been pushing for internet restrictions for a long time. There has suddenly been a push for age restrictions allegedly because of abuse material. This happens annually. Some international group claims there needs to be something draconian abolishing encryption, or some other privacy invading measure to stop child abuse and help security. The laws are 1000s of pages and appear out of nowhere and we're expected to believe it's organic and that politicians are deeply concerned about the issue.
So it really wouldn't be hard for the same legal framework that restricts age to happen in the US. It just takes compliance on our part. The UK is just one tentacle of the legal bureaucracy. It wouldn't surprise me if a bill appears called the Online Child Safey Act or something like that soon and it happens to coincide with a bunch of issues Ofcom raises in this lawsuit.
toofy 21 hours ago [-]
> It seems like NGOs and IGOs have been pushing for internet restrictions for a long time. There has suddenly been a push for age restrictions allegedly because of abuse material. This happens annually.
we’re seeing some good evidence the most recent pushes were secretly funded and directly written by meta, the corporation. [0][1]
according to the link in there,
> Rep. Kim Carver (R-Bossier City), the sponsor of Louisiana's HB-570, publicly confirmed that a Meta lobbyist brought the legislative language directly to her.
and they’ve put as much as 2 billion dollars into it. and yes, that’s billion, with a B.
corporations openai, meta, and google were absolutely backing the push for the age verification bill in california and ohio. [2][3][4]
Reading the original research and stripping away the motives implied by the bot, the data is aligned with another interpretation. Namely that Meta is going with the flow and using the opportunity to push for regulation that impact its interests less, while affecting its competitors more.
The original research is riddled with baked in conclusions, and has not been verified independently. Its also mostly LLM generated.
Aurornis 17 hours ago [-]
> and they’ve put as much as 2 billion dollars into it. and yes, that’s billion, with a B.
The original report that cited the $2 billion number was AI generated slop. The $2 billion number wasn't from Meta, it was from Arabella Advisors.
The AI-generated report showed only about $20-30 million in lobbying efforts per year across all lobbying.
Even the Show HN post was full of AI slop, claiming things like "months of research" when the Claude-generated report showed it began a couple days prior.
So please stop repeating this AI generated junk. It dilutes any real story and the obvious falsehoods make it easy for critics to dismiss.
w4der 12 hours ago [-]
> only about $20-30 million
That is still an absurd amount of money
Aurornis 8 hours ago [-]
That’s on all lobbying efforts combined. It’s not out of line for a company of that scale that is trying to do things like build data centers and other such activities.
There’s a motte-and-bailey fallacy happening with that “Meta spent $2 billion” report where the $2 billion number is used as a hook but then replaced with a different argument if the other parties are observant enough to see that it’s BS
pc86 8 hours ago [-]
What's absurd is lying by two orders of magnitude and expecting people not to completely ignore everything you have to say because of that.
intended 17 hours ago [-]
India is considering these bans. I suspect every country in the world is thinking of them.
I work in safety, and you are right in that this comes up every year. The pressures have been building up and it’s coming to a head. However:
0) Techlash is a thing, and HN regularly underestimates the vehemence and anger behind it.
1) There IS an organic component, driven by voters globally.
2) It is also meta and governments, taking advantage of a crisis to further their ends.
Governments globally are tending towards authoritarianism. Tech firms impact most of the world, but are barely responsive to even the American government.
Voters around the world are increasingly terrified of what tech is doing, while tech is entirely unresponsive to their concerns. Tech is very firmly the bad guy today, when it used to be the “good guy” in the 90s.
So governments are more than happy to be seen as putting tech in its place, while gaining more power for themselves.
A few anecdotes about how bad the safety side is: NDAs are so prevalent and tech is so averse to customer support, that safety teams have no formal signal sharing methods.
The number of requests to recover accounts, point out fraud, or even to address CSAM, that go through WhatsApp, slack, discord, etc. is heart breaking.
To be blunt, it’s a Kafkaesque fuck up that the whole world is stuck in, and people are pissed.
speefers 11 hours ago [-]
[dead]
raverbashing 16 hours ago [-]
Honestly there's nothing more corrosive and corrupt than "politics behind the back" from NGOs
It's 90% corporate lobbying with a "do gooder" varnish
observationist 24 hours ago [-]
Not so slowly. They've gone from a more or less respectable smaller country to more or less politically, culturally, and economically irrelevant in less than 10 years. I even question whether it's rational to allow them to have nukes; they should probably be required to give them up to some country that has a shot at remaining a stable and predictable geopolitical entity over the next century.
joegibbs 22 hours ago [-]
Their cultural decline seems to have definitely accelerated recently. Even 10-15 years ago it seemed like there was so much more British influence in the media, a lot more films and television set in Britain. It seems like the London Olympics were a kind of last hurrah. Even here in Australia which has always historically had more British influence than anywhere else it's receded - there's very little focus on their internal politics, much more on the politics and culture of the United States, even more than you'd expect given the population difference.
eucyclos 20 hours ago [-]
The genteel class turning on jk Rowling was definitely a Waterloo moment in British cultural strength.
bouncycastle 16 hours ago [-]
it's ironic though, that you wrote your comment in English.
moring 15 hours ago [-]
That is only historic influence, though. Britain does not control the English language and cannot exert any further influence through it.
lukan 12 hours ago [-]
Well, Monthy Python does still reach some people, but apart from that it is fading away it seems ..
estebank 6 hours ago [-]
The lingua franca has changed before...
aquariusDue 13 hours ago [-]
Yeah, but whose English?
munksbeer 8 hours ago [-]
I think you meant,
"but whom's English"
heavyset_go 18 hours ago [-]
It's deliberate isolationism, the same isolationism that drove Brexit
NoMoreNicksLeft 17 hours ago [-]
There are two kinds of "isolationism". In the first, the person becomes a hermit refusing to interact with anyone.
In the second, a cult grabs hold of the person and isolates them from their families and loved ones so they can brainfuck them. And, I suspect this has happened to the UK. England doesn't want to be a land for the English, because to do so would make them racist. They have strength in their diversity. Blah blah blah. And the English can't be allowed to talk with anyone else or they might realize how fucked-in-the-head all that nonsense is. They are under the spell of a cult, not as individuals, but collectively. And that cult won't be done with them until it's taken everything from them and coerced them to sign a "billion year contract". And to top it off, you're blaming it on them.
notahacker 14 hours ago [-]
Don't mistake Brits' general disinterest in engaging with foreigners whose perspective on the UK begins and ends with lecturing us on "England for the English" with us not being able to talk with anybody else...
NoMoreNicksLeft 9 hours ago [-]
Oh look! It's the Monty Python "Ahm not dead yet" skit, out in the wild...
joe_mamba 16 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
DeathArrow 15 hours ago [-]
Am I reading these views on HN? I had to check, it seems yes. :)
philipallstar 13 hours ago [-]
Diversity of views and expertise seems like a good thing.
rounce 12 hours ago [-]
Except in this case it’s unhinged gibberish.
dTal 12 hours ago [-]
But not diversity of race, apparently.
philipallstar 12 hours ago [-]
That's neither here nor there. Just get the best people. Or are you against the current racial makeup of the earnings of the top NBA players?
dTal 11 hours ago [-]
In case it wasn't clear, my comment was sarcastic. To be absolutely clear, I don't agree with racial discrimination.
So that we don't talk past each other, here is a summary of my perspective of the discussion so far:
NoMoreNicksLeft dropped an unhinged rant about "England for the English", including a clearly sarcastic and mocking reference to "They have strength in their diversity".
joe_mamba chimed in with "diversity is bad", and added that Germany has the same "issue".
DeathArrow expressed incredulity at witnessing open racial segregationism on HN.
You replied to DeathArrow with "diversity of opinions is good". It was unclear whether you were defending the expression of segregationism on HN, or disagreeing with the premise of it. In any case you didn't signal that you recognized the extreme irony.
I attempted to point out the irony with as few words as possible, and apparently failed to communicate well enough.
philipallstar 10 hours ago [-]
Ah I think I understand. I definitely think the point is worth making that England seems to be one of the only places on earth that doesn't value - or even recognise the existence of - its own native population, even as a point of debate. It's definitely nothing to do with segregation, which is just something else.
No one in most countries would argue that their native population doesn't exist as a category. In fact while in the US the native Americans have been treated very badly in the past, that hopefully doesn't happen too much today, and they are quite honoured in some ways.
joe_mamba 9 hours ago [-]
>No one in most countries would argue that their native population doesn't exist as a category.
Germany?
indiangenz 10 hours ago [-]
The biggest racial discrimination in today's UK is their inability to arrest and put an end to grooming gangs. Get educated on the subject to understand whats being insinuated by the slogan they have "diversity" as their strength. Most of western Europe & UK are unable to handle crime committed by certain groups, for fear of being labeled racists. Well, there is a teacher in UK in "hiding" because he offended the wrong people. In summary, UK neither has the soft power nor the moral authority to influence anyone in the today's world.
notahacker 6 hours ago [-]
the UK has incarcerated plenty of participants in grooming gangs from a diverse range of ethnic groups (and elected none of them President).
No matter how many accounts you create to amplify the Epstein-associate media message that only other ethnicities participate in the systematic sexual abuse of children and get away with it, you're still not getting an invite to the island...
AlexeyBelov 9 hours ago [-]
Exactly the accounts you most expect. Thank you for pushing back.
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 11 hours ago [-]
> witnessing open racial segregationism on HN
You are misinterpreting something. "Diversity" is not exclusively about race.
dTal 11 hours ago [-]
The comment that started all this was explicitly about race. Here's a quote:
> England doesn't want to be a land for the English, because to do so would make them racist. They have strength in their diversity. Blah blah blah.
philipallstar 10 hours ago [-]
But not about segregation.
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 10 hours ago [-]
Yes, but the comment DeathArrow responded to, which is apparently what started all this bickering about racism (collapse that comment to see what I mean), was not.
joe_mamba's use of "diversity" reads as being about diversity of opinion; it only appears to be about race given the context you pointed out.
Seriously, what part of "United people are dangerous for the elites" suggests that the people should segregate themselves and each other?
dTal 9 hours ago [-]
I have a hard time believing that, sorry. joe_mamba literally quoted the same use of the word "diversity" that I did, and concurred with the sentiment - that it "leads to division". And went on to add that Germany was also "under the spell of a cult".
You're suggesting that joe_mamba simply used a paragraph of barely-veiled racist drivel as a jumping off point to make a completely unrelated and totally-not-racist point about how diversity of opinion is harmful and "leads to weakness"? And agreed with the "cult" rhetoric for good measure?
Why exactly should we ignore the context? An excess of charity, perhaps? How are we supposed to interpret "similar issue in Germany" without the context?
6 hours ago [-]
dTal 12 hours ago [-]
It used to be widely known that tech nerds are socially impaired.
Then they built the future and earned a lot of money and status, and now Silicon Valley is a hotbed of neofascist thought.
Turns out that if you give enough power to people who wrangle machines, they start thinking about wrangling people the same way.
Nerds are extremely dangerous. Through their work they quickly absorb the axiom of "predictability is good, unpredictability is bad" and from there to conclusions like "heterogeneity is dangerous and unpredictable" and "behavior of actors in a distributed system must be constrained". Put DevOps in charge of society and expect to get humans treated like cattle, not pets.
philipallstar 12 hours ago [-]
This was already happening, it's just they were on your team and you were happy. One of the most obvious things to have happen is the overriding power of the left in tech and all the right (and centre-left) people warning that when the pendulum swings all the left-wing people who love giving authority more power will regret it. As though all authoritarian left wing countries in history were not evidence enough, they have to learn the lesson the hard way.
dTal 11 hours ago [-]
Firstly, I don't appreciate, at all, being told what "team" I'm on, or the smug tone that I'm now "learning a lesson". When you come on HN, leave that sort of thing at the door, please. I'm being polite but I'd like you to imagine this worded in the strongest possible way that is acceptable for whatever culture you happen to be from. Include swear words if it helps.
I don't know of any "big tech" going out of its way to enforce left wing values. Bandwagoning on large scale social movements, sure, in a "play it safe" kind of way, the same way literally every company gets all rainbow-y during Pride month - it's profitable, or they wouldn't do it. If you resented that, what you resented was having a minority opinion.
The relatively recent shift towards right wing values is also rooted in self interest. It doesn't indicate some kind of change of heart, it simply signals recognition of a power shift - the opinions of people / users / customers now matter less than the opinions of certain authoritarian right wing governments.
philipallstar 10 hours ago [-]
Unless you think I appreciate your first paragraph, it's a bit hypocritical to do something I don't appreciate while berating me for same.
> I don't know of any "big tech" going out of its way to enforce left wing values.
I believe you, and I think that is exactly the problem.
> The relatively recent shift towards right wing values is also rooted in self interest
I agree, but this is why neither left nor right should be cheering for corporations enforcing hate speech rules (set by whomever is in power), shadow bans for the right wing voices, bans for people questioning the efficacy of the covid vaccine, or for questioning vaccine mandates, etc etc. The opinions of authoritarian left wing people for 10 years are now being ignored (well, not in HR departments and all the other places left wing authoritarianism exists) and the left seems to view that change as a rise in authoritarianism.
joe_mamba 9 hours ago [-]
Are you saying that merely stating the practically proven fact of "diversity leads to political and social division" makes someone a neo fascist? Or did I misunderstand your comment?
matheusmoreira 20 hours ago [-]
It's irrational to allow anyone other than yourself to have nukes. That's the whole point of having them, and the reason why nobody is going to bother asking for permission. No country with any self respect wants to end up becoming another Venezuela.
harry8 18 hours ago [-]
Did it work out better for North Korea or Iran?
matheusmoreira 18 hours ago [-]
North Korea is still standing and even got Trump to play diplomacy. Only reason Iran got attacked is the fact they didn't have nukes yet.
Venezuela showed everyone what happens when you're a toothless country. USA shows up at your door uninvited, fucks your shit up, takes your oil and kidnaps your president for good measure, just to tack on some extra humiliation.
Don't get me wrong, Maduro deserved an even worse fate than what he got. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. It's still a cautionary tale for nations worldwide. It can happen to you. China continues to erode the economic power of the USA. They could very well discover one day that their military might is all they have left. Who's to say they won't suddenly decide to capitalize on their advantage before it evaporates?
kelvinjps10 17 hours ago [-]
As Venezuelan nothing angers me more than someone naming Maduro as our president, and that in some way I should feel bad about it. The guy and his government were pure evil.
matheusmoreira 17 hours ago [-]
You guys should have been the ones to personally get your hands on him. Hope you're doing alright now. Situation is far from perfect but at least one tyrant is gone.
kelvinjps10 6 hours ago [-]
We have tried so many times, and tbh if Venezuelans were the ones doing it this time so many civilians would have died. Because the military people that can do something about it, are so comfortable with all the stuff they have.
Hikikomori 12 hours ago [-]
IF he had played ball with the US they would have left him in charge no matter what he did to the population.
andrewflnr 4 hours ago [-]
No one should feel bad for Maduro, but the reasons Maduro was evil had very little to do with the actual reasons the US grabbed him. Trump's motives were pure greed, and that's a terrifying reason for kidnapping a foreign head of state. And at least as far as I've seen, it didn't even help. Literally every other part of his regime is still in place isn't it?
DeathArrow 15 hours ago [-]
Yes Maduro and his cronies are pure evil. But it's not another country business to intervene, kidnap or assassinate leaders.
Muromec 14 hours ago [-]
It should be UNSC acting on the arrest warrant from Den Haag sending the president snatchers, but that version of world police didn’t live up to expectations, so back to big shaitan ut goes
nslsm 13 hours ago [-]
Every country has the president they deserve. You had Maduro because you didn’t oppose him.
21asdffdsa12 13 hours ago [-]
Iran would be attacked even with nukes. If you promise relentless war- and nuclear attacks via proxxies - you basically show that game-theory does not apply to you. Religion explicitly states that MAD does not apply to them too. And they life by that.
So Iran with nukes, would be nuked 1 day after. No matter the cost.
Its similar to the a medieval pope having nukes, and everyone else being heretic witches. You just pick the size of the stake you burn on at that point.
What the west wishes the world to be and how they think everyone does see the world, does simply not apply. No matter how Nash pure. The All defector defects in all games..
Hikikomori 12 hours ago [-]
This US regime isn't any different than the ayatollah, they also want christian sharia laws and to oppress women.
21asdffdsa12 11 hours ago [-]
I wish you had traveled the world and would have seen whats really on the ground, instead of staying in your bubble and earlying out with a "everyone is just like me".
The us is the most harmless empire that ever was.
The most extreme case in the us evangelical bullshit is a daily buisness case.
Hikikomori 7 hours ago [-]
How it currently is and what the people currently in power wants can be different things right?
DivingForGold 13 hours ago [-]
Nicaragua and Cuba next
drnick1 24 hours ago [-]
The UK has been declining for at least 50 years, it isn't a new phenomenon. It's only really relevant culturally; after all EU countries are forced to speak English or they wouldn't be able to communicate, even after the UK's departure from the Union and some unsuccessful attempts at increasing the place of French.
jacquesm 21 hours ago [-]
Not having the UK in the EU makes English a better choice, not a worse one. It was one of those things where the UK had a 'home court advantage'. This is one of the strangest fringe benefits and of course there were some countries that tried to jockey for position but fortunately that didn't go anywhere.
swiftcoder 13 hours ago [-]
And hey, now that the UK exited stage right, Ireland gets to be the de-facto owner of the English language in the EU :D
jacquesm 12 hours ago [-]
The benefits keep stacking up!
Joking aside, that was one of the worst own goals in history.
consp 23 hours ago [-]
While it's the defacto public language (and the one of the required languages). These days all EU communication is done though either the translation service or governmental variants of it making it pretty much irrelevant due to most official languages being served (there seem to be some exceptions but they are minor in the grand scheme of things).
oytis 13 hours ago [-]
OK, I can see how you can call UK irrelevant, but unstable? Currently it looks much more stable that the major nuclear powers of US and Russia.
FuckButtons 20 hours ago [-]
The thing about an independent nuclear deterrent is that it’s completely irrelevant what anyone else thinks about you having one.
remus 5 hours ago [-]
> economically irrelevant in less than 10 years
The UK has the 6th highest GDP in the world. Pretty high bar if that make you economically irrelevant.
tremon 4 hours ago [-]
That's mostly because of London's financial center, where a lot of foreign money is laundered; the city's GDP is comparable in size with small EU countries like Belgium or Ireland. If you take London out of the equation, what's left has an average GDP of only 30k per capita [0].
A quick comparison with [1] (using 1 GBP ~ 1.30 USD) shows that London would rank #8 in Europe (between Denmark and Norway), while the rest of the UK would come in somewhere around #25, between Spain and Italy.
Sure, if you exclude the wealthiest parts of the country then it does look significantly poorer. Just as if you exclude California then the GDP of the US drops significantly. The point was whether the UK is economically relevant, not whether the economy is ethically sound (which is quite a nebulous question I'm sure you'll agree).
Daviey 19 hours ago [-]
"allow"? Under what authority and governance would you remove them?
pydry 8 hours ago [-]
American exceptionalism is a law unto itself.
12 hours ago [-]
nradov 17 hours ago [-]
Not that I necessarily disagree but rationality doesn't enter into it. I mean Pakistan is probably less stable than the UK but I guess they're allowed to have nukes now?
ExoticPearTree 16 hours ago [-]
> I mean Pakistan is probably less stable than the UK but I guess they're allowed to have nukes now?
Is there a nuke authority that I did not know about who decides who should and should not have nukes?
eucyclos 15 hours ago [-]
Do you mean the International Atomic Energy Agency?
12 hours ago [-]
philipov 24 hours ago [-]
> some country that has a shot at remaining a stable and predictable geopolitical entity over the next century.
Which country do you believe could possibly qualify for such an impossible task?
nemomarx 23 hours ago [-]
China's probably making the best argument for it now.
gerdesj 21 hours ago [-]
China's wot?
fc417fc802 21 hours ago [-]
I don't personally like their government but at this point they certainly have the appearance of long term social and political stability. More than most western countries for the time being.
nozzlegear 19 hours ago [-]
> they certainly have the appearance of long term social and political stability
You could've said that exact same thing about the US just 10 years ago when Obama was president.
17 hours ago [-]
pydry 8 hours ago [-]
The only real difference between Obama's foreign adventures in Libya and Trump's in Iran was that Obama lied to the security council to get their approval first.
Trump isnt all that different in character to previous administrations he just takes bigger risks and doesnt bother with the mask.
nozzlegear 6 hours ago [-]
The person I was replying to was talking about China's own long-term social and political stability, not their foreign policy. If you're suggesting that Obama's boondoggle in Libya was the catalyst that led to Hillary Clinton's loss in 2016 and Trump's first presidency, that's intriguing speculation. But I don't think his foreign policy is relevant to the overall topic since it was largely milquetoast for the American public at the time, and certainly didn't cause any immediate domestic instability like we're seeing with Trump.
ungreased0675 19 hours ago [-]
China has a host of factors that make their current system very fragile. I doubt they make it five more years before turbulence hits.
defrost 13 hours ago [-]
They'll likely skate over the current turbulence that's already hitting many non-China countries.
China has been preparing for a global energy crisis for years. It is paying off now
As other Asian economies race to conserve energy, China has huge reserves of oil and gas as well as alternative energy sources like wind and solar
I've been hearing that since the 1990's when it first started to become apparent that their economy was on track to overtake the rest of the world within a few decades.
It hasn't happened yet. Is there something you perceive as especially problematic now, as opposed to the last 30 years?
fc417fc802 18 hours ago [-]
I'd be interested to read about that if you have any particular pointers to resources to share.
pydry 8 hours ago [-]
Been hearing that said repeatedly since 1989.
I've never once heard it from somebody who correctly anticipated China's rise though. The imminent collapse story just quietly changes every 5 years or so.
If the US has an imperial rival one thing you can almost guarantee is that the predictions of economic collapse will be as frequent as they are absurdly overblown and as always, This Time It's Different.
andrewflnr 21 hours ago [-]
Totalitarianism aside, I'm not sure about the stability either. Personally I suspect Xi Jinping's reign will end with some kind of bang, either an economic one or something relating to invading Taiwan.
fc417fc802 20 hours ago [-]
A dramatic end to his reign doesn't have to imply social or political instability (though it certainly could).
nemomarx 20 hours ago [-]
Would the us currently defend Taiwan? I think they might get the chance to just take it, especially if we get another president like Trump in 28.
andrewflnr 16 hours ago [-]
No idea, honestly. But if I lived in Taiwan I would be shitting bricks.
slavik81 15 hours ago [-]
Taiwan's biggest problem is that the average age is currently ~45 and in 15 years it will be ~55. It's going to be hard to keep the economy going once half the country's retired.
fc417fc802 20 hours ago [-]
If Japan became involved would the US then become embroiled?
peyton 19 hours ago [-]
Yes obviously. We would erase President Xi and his family as well. What are they going to do, cross the Pacific? Our total willingness to do is unconditional.
imtringued 13 hours ago [-]
That's true, but the one child policy has backed them into a corner.
A society that is unwilling to replace itself will inevitably decline.
defrost 13 hours ago [-]
The policy in place for 36 years, that ended 11 years ago had pros and cons, but it hasn't backed them into a corner of inevitable decline.
> the one child policy has backed them into a corner
A policy that ended a decade ago, and was only ever marginally successful (even at the height of the restrictions their birth rate was nearer 1.4 than 1.0)
ralferoo 11 hours ago [-]
The one child policy was only for cities anyway. Agricultural areas were permitted, even encouraged, to have more children. There were other exceptions, like twins (obviously), if the first baby was disabled, etc. Later on, couples were allowed two children if both parents came from single-child families.
ta9000 20 hours ago [-]
> Totalitarianism aside, I'm not sure about the stability either. Personally I suspect Xi Jinping's reign will end with some kind of bang, either an economic one or something relating to
That’s a pretty big aside.
andrewflnr 4 hours ago [-]
Not sure why you replied over here, but yeah, it sure is. Just trying to be clear about separating the moral judgement from the prediction.
andrewflnr 23 hours ago [-]
One or more of the Nordics.
WastedCucumber 22 hours ago [-]
At first I took the comment about transferring nukes as a bit of a joke, but you make a fair point. Let Iceland have em!
fc417fc802 21 hours ago [-]
Greenland can make a competing bid on the basis of a pressing need.
jacquesm 21 hours ago [-]
That's one that I didn't have on my bingo card for 2026 but it is funny to contemplate.
gerdesj 21 hours ago [-]
So, Sweden.
andrewflnr 21 hours ago [-]
They're also starting to talk about a joint nuclear program.
morkalork 18 hours ago [-]
As they should be
urbandw311er 23 hours ago [-]
It’s kind of sad to read your arrogant and xenophobic rantings. I’m not sure you’re really down for the sort of inclusive and open minded discussion that normally takes place here.
wolvoleo 22 hours ago [-]
I would normally agree but if you see Brexit and the kind of "people" that are getting ready to take over power (Reform UK), I do have to say I understand some of this sentiment.
magospietato 23 hours ago [-]
Living here the decline is tangible. And this is West Oxfordshire; not one of the poorer parts of the country.
An example in microcosm: a local village suffered road flooding due to failed maintenance of water pipes. Our rent-seeking privatized water company effected the minimum repair required by regulation.
The next section of old pipe burst almost immediately, flooding the road further for most of January, utterly destroying the surface, through the road base in many places. Even at a crawl it's difficult to avoid tyre damage.
Over a month later the water repairs were effected. Then shortly after some local roadwork notification signs were put up.
Those expecting repairs to the moonscaped road were disappointed: instead the relentless bureaucracy of British local government installed traffic calming measures on top of the broken road, as the work had already been booked and could not be stopped by any means as even basic roadworks lack any degree of dynamism in their execution.
All this still needs to be made right. These small scale failures will compound and compound until the entire state is drowned in the consequence of its incompetence.
robocat 19 hours ago [-]
> An example in microcosm: a local village suffered road flooding due to failed maintenance of water pipes
Your example only compares against the UK past.
It has zero relevancy because it says nothing about relative change against other countries.
Anecdotally for the USA, I went to New Orleans last year, and I was stunned at the rotting infrastructure. Coming from New Zealand, the USA seems to be trying to copy the trajectory of Argentina.
Then again, I see serious problems in my hometown (e.g. sewage treatment plant) and country (e.g. big problems with rail, ferry, air, electricity, 3 waters). Apart from the societal issues that it seems all countries are facing.
tjwebbnorfolk 18 hours ago [-]
I was in New Orleans last year and everything looked brand new. The whole city was basically rebuilt 15 years ago.
mbg721 18 hours ago [-]
New Orleans in particular is highly variable in what you see, depending where you visit.
robocat 18 hours ago [-]
I know what a rebuilt city looks like, because I come from one. Hurricane Katrina was 2005. Christchurch Earthquake was 2011. In my opinion, my home town has recovered better and faster from destruction than New Orleans has.
I also live within a floodzone. There is a high probability I will learn how we deal with flooding in the future (different flooding - shallower and lacking the winds and hopefully better pre-planning for avoiding harm).
> everything looked brand new
Absolutely not, to me.
And the conversation is regarding infrastructure. A bunch of Christchurch infrastructure is brand new.
dgroshev 22 hours ago [-]
We need to recognise the difference between the GP rant and what you're describing. The austerity is undeniably still reverberating through the country. It will take years for this ship to turn around, although it is being turned around. For example, in just about a month we're getting European-style rents with the Renter's Rights Act, which is transformational. We can and should do better, and everyone can contribute to solving those issues, but after a decade of nothing the necessary changes are finally being implemented.
But the rant is entirely counterfactual. Britain is a very rich country with beautiful and recovering nature, a healthy and educated population, one of the more capable armies in Europe, a functioning deterrent, and a relatively healthy political system. We just got two new parties becoming credible threats to the "main" two (regardless of the parties' views, the political competition itself is a much healthier situation than the American duopoly)! We just abolished hereditary peers, which is a constitutional change (and it can just be done)! Below the everyday media noise, we're doing alright as a democracy.
wdutch 22 hours ago [-]
The UK is still a respected "brand" in most of the world despite what chronically online people say. British education is the most sought-after in many countries for example.
jjtwixman 12 hours ago [-]
It's important to realise that the US is full of fascists obsessed with the perceived decline of Europe. They love to shit on Europe. I think it's about distracting themselves from the abject moral, political and economic failure of voting for Trump twice.
decremental 20 hours ago [-]
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maest 17 hours ago [-]
Fyi, large states in the US routinely have rolling blackouts and brownouts.
Texas, California (the richest state lmao), Puerto Rico, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi etc
remarkEon 16 hours ago [-]
Fyi, this is not true. California has them but they are not routine, and are a function of internal political dysfunction that is quite unique to California. The grid here is still extremely fragile, and vulnerable to e.g. cyberattack and other disasters, but let's not get carried away.
death916 16 hours ago [-]
California at least only has blackouts when pge causes another fire.
bromuk 24 hours ago [-]
I mean the US have nukes and they’re hardly stable and predictable.
Allow them to have nukes, who are you lol
marcus_holmes 18 hours ago [-]
Given that the nukes that the UK has is Trident, which is a US system that the UK cannot use without US cooperation [0], it seems entirely appropriate that the USA gets to decide if the UK has nukes.
[0] Yes, the UK can fire them without US approval, but the actual hardware is maintained and supported by the USA, and they have to be shipped to the USA regularly for maintenance. If the USA decided that the UK should not have nukes, there's not a lot the UK could do about it, the Trident system would have to be scrapped entirely and replaced with some completely different system. Which the UK doesn't really have the capability to do and it would cost a fortune to acquire that capability.
ta20240528 16 hours ago [-]
Come now American people,
The UK and France have long had a project 'on the shelf' to substitute the missiles with the French M51 ballistic missiles.
They don't want to do it, they'll do it if they have to.
Nursie 18 hours ago [-]
That's only the delivery method, the warheads are UK-designed and built.
So yes, if the US withdrew support then the existing nuclear program would be pretty fucked for a while, but the US couldn't unilaterally de-nuclearise the UK.
Chaosvex 15 hours ago [-]
Imagine thinking that there aren't national security contingency plans for this sort of thing.
observationist 24 hours ago [-]
>who are you lol
The US.
Who else on the planet would have the effective power to possibly even think about who should and shouldn't have them, while plausibly being able to do anything about it?
jjtwixman 16 hours ago [-]
Then you're in no position to throw rocks. The US is currently humiliating itself on the world stage in a fashion that makes Brexit look positively sage in comparison.
inopinatus 20 hours ago [-]
Given how the situations w.r.t Ukraine & Iran escalated, the US is the only country that has specifically and publicly demonstrated it's inability on both counts.
We can't give Ukraine their nukes back because they were decommissioned (and they were rotting at the time), but there'd be no nation more deserving.
Corollary: no individual nation is able to shoulder such responsibilities.
k33n 19 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
reverius42 17 hours ago [-]
> the US fully having its way with them
So the Straights of Hormuz are totally reopened, right? Any day now?
AuryGlenz 15 hours ago [-]
It’s pretty damned hard to completely secure any area from a potential attack when all one side needs is a drone.
That’s a pretty specific high bar when we’ve destroyed most of their navy, Air Force, etc, all within a couple of weeks.
solid_fuel 13 hours ago [-]
> It’s pretty damned hard to completely secure any area from a potential attack when all one side needs is a drone.
Man, maybe the US should have had a contingency plan to address the drone issue before launching an unprovoked attack.
> That’s a pretty specific high bar
It's the bar that matters.
kergonath 13 hours ago [-]
> It’s pretty damned hard to completely secure any area from a potential attack when all one side needs is a drone.
Right. So maybe get a good plan before showing up and bombing all the things? We are not setting the bar, Trump told us why he expected to do in Iran. It was about as realistic as Putin’s fantasies about Ukraine surrendering on day 3.
x3ro 13 hours ago [-]
Funny that's what Israel kept saying about Hamas too. "We'll have killed all of them any day now". But really they were mostly blowing up civilian buildings and , well, civilians. But I'm sure in the case of the US its not propaganda /s
kergonath 13 hours ago [-]
> Re: Iran, the US fully having its way with them.
Sure, everything is fine. I am sure Iran will be a peaceful democracy any day now.
In reality, none of Trump’s stated goals are likely to happen any time soon.
dgroshev 18 hours ago [-]
> recused itself
Surrendered.
reverius42 17 hours ago [-]
More like abandoned an ally because the new government prefers a former adversary on the other side of the conflict.
skinnymuch 16 hours ago [-]
Ukraine never really had nukes. Only technically.
NATO is bad for the world so any one fighting it are pretty cool. Which seems to be Russia and Korea.
PUSH_AX 23 hours ago [-]
Probably a country that has done so in the past, like the UK…
ta20240528 16 hours ago [-]
China. If they wanted to.
dgroshev 22 hours ago [-]
This is an entirely delusional twitter-brain take.
Despite its problems, the UK is still a sixth largest economy, a cultural powerhouse (how many Hollywood actors are British?), with a lot of soft power, a capable and currently renewed nuclear arsenal (Astraea and Dreadnought are on track), a globe-spanning network of alliances (from AUKUS to Japan deploying to the UK first time in their history to being one of the closest and most unwavering allies for Ukraine), and a constitutionally healthy and adaptive system of government (we just passed another constitutional change and it's not a big deal, we can just do that).
Frankly, this meme stinks of projection. Going from a shining city on a hill to a place where public executions by state backed paramilitaries are just another partisan talking point, that starts Special Military Operations with no plan or goal, that threatens to annex territory of its allies in about a year is an achievement. I guess projecting this free fall on the UK makes living through it more bearable.
marcus_holmes 18 hours ago [-]
The UK used to be the 4th largest economy [0] so being 6th is still indicative of decline.
Just to be clear you're saying only the top 2 countries by GDP are "economically relevant"?
AuryGlenz 15 hours ago [-]
I think they’re saying they used to be one of the big boys. Now they’re just a regular boy.
oneeyedpigeon 7 hours ago [-]
Weird, America usually goes "Regular, Big, Mega, King Size, Super Size, etc.", not the other way round!
reverius42 14 hours ago [-]
When was the UK last in the top 2 countries globally by GDP? Certainly pre-WW2?
They're still in the same cluster of countries by GDP as the #3 country so falling from #4 to #6 doesn't look so drastic.
ralferoo 11 hours ago [-]
True, but the the UK has under 30% of the population of the US and less than 6% of the population of China.
If you compare per capita, it's a very different story. USA is around $93k, UK $61k and China $15k. So about 2/3 of the USA's and more than 4x China's. This was using my figures calculated from your table and the population figures I found elsewhere.
An actual source of GDP per capita [0] puts the USA at 9th globally, UK at 20th globally and China at 74th.
When you factor in that the US's GDP figures are quite skewed because there are lots of multinationals headquartered in the US. If you ignored just the Mag7, who all derive the majority of their income outside the USA, the USA would be significantly further down that GDP list.
>Despite its problems, the UK is still a sixth largest economy, ... Going from a shining city on a hill to a place where public executions by state backed paramilitaries are just another partisan talking point, that starts Special Military Operations with no plan or goal, that threatens to annex territory of its allies in about a year is an achievement.
Why would you use the economy to defend the UK's status and then point to a bunch of non economy stuff to try to knock the US? The US is the largest and has been for awhile. Isn't that what mattered to you? Plus, pointing out that a bunch of prominent UK residents leave to participate in US industry hardly seems a point in favor of how well the UK is doing.
dukeyukey 20 hours ago [-]
They didn't put it very well but they're right that being the 6th largest economy, and likely to become the 5th or 4th quite soon puts a hole in the "economically irrelevant" accusation.
dgroshev 22 hours ago [-]
It's not "knocking the US", it's an example of the (likely, projected) decline. The size of the economy is an example of why "irrelevant" is delusional. Two different points.
The "prominent UK residents" don't "leave" the UK. Benedict Cumberbatch lives in London, despite constantly starring in Hollywood films. It's an example of the UK culturally punching way above its weight in proportion to its population.
ribosometronome 20 hours ago [-]
> it's an example of the (likely, projected) decline
Again, you just used the present size of a nation's economy to argue that a nation isn't in decline when someone was talking about the ongoing decline of a nations politics, economy, and culture. It seems odd to me you're able to, for other countries, understand that the present moment can be viewed with both historical and likely future context.
>The "prominent UK residents" don't "leave" the UK. Benedict Cumberbatch lives...
Plenty move, but that wasn't the point I think anyone was making. If I wanted to say they were moving to the US, I would have said that instead of "leave to participate in US industry". And all of that ignores that the original commenter was talking about the decline of British media rather than saying that they're aren't talented Brits. It's not like they they're saying the UK had a bunch of great actors ten years ago and they suddenly died. Them working in American industry rather than the UK producing it own is, I'm pretty sure, the sort of point the commenter you replied to was making.
dgroshev 18 hours ago [-]
> more or less politically, culturally, and economically irrelevant
I feel like we're reading different posts.
22 hours ago [-]
jjtwixman 16 hours ago [-]
The Yanks see in the UK their own inevitable decline. The British Empire disappeared, and every time they turn on the TV and see their retarded paedophile in chief struggling to express even one single coherent thought, they must surely know they are witnessing the end of their own empire.
They're just lashing out, emperor has no clothes, their empire is collapsing, and those who are paying any attention at all, are fully aware of it. All they have left is to go on the internet and shit on Europe for daring to regulate their precious social media companies (that elsewhere they generally admit we would be better off without). They are desperately clutching onto this tech-company-based nationalism. It's absolutely pathetic.
RobotToaster 22 hours ago [-]
> they should probably be required to give them up to some country that has a shot at remaining a stable and predictable geopolitical entity over the next century.
I really hope this wasn't posted by an American....
yieldcrv 14 hours ago [-]
I think its an attempt at resurgence
cineticdaffodil 23 hours ago [-]
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nephihaha 23 hours ago [-]
Long dead? Within living memory. Britain still has colonies with millions of people in them.
stackghost 22 hours ago [-]
>Britain still has colonies with millions of people in them.
Britain does not have colonies. You might be thinking of the British overseas territory but the total population of those islands is less than 400,000
zelos 12 hours ago [-]
Not to open a can of worms, but there are probably people who still consider Northern Ireland a colony.
graemep 9 hours ago [-]
They can consider what they like, but it is factually wrong. People in NI get to vote in UK elections.
A reasonable case can be made that it should be Irish territory, not British, but that is a territorial dispute.
wolvoleo 22 hours ago [-]
A small colony doesn't count?
reverius42 16 hours ago [-]
I think it was in reply to the "with millions of people in them" comment.
stackghost 20 hours ago [-]
They're not colonies. An overseas territory is not the same thing as a colony.
__d 15 hours ago [-]
The people living there might struggle to identify the difference?
loeg 14 hours ago [-]
Are you calling them stupid?
imtringued 12 hours ago [-]
Mauritius and La Réunion are doing much better than say Madagascar.
nephihaha 13 hours ago [-]
You can rebrand something as a territory or a dependency (or a DOM-TOM in the French case) but they're still the same. Even during the height of colonialism many of these places had some self-government and even democracy (Hong Kong). That was partly a practical consideration as many of them were so far away they had to run themselves to some extent.
But not all of Britain's colonies are far away.
nephihaha 13 hours ago [-]
"You might be thinking of the British overseas territory"
Not just them, but I'll leave it at that.
Some years ago when the United Nations started critiquing colonies, the British overseas ones were rebranded as "territories" and "dependencies." (The French still have overseas colonies, the so called DOM-TOMs, and also some nearer to home.)
Some of these overseas ones like Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands have overwhelming support for British rule thanks to an aggressive neighbour. Some of these remaining colonies have active independence movements with varying support.
williamdclt 9 hours ago [-]
> the so called DOM-TOMs
Fun fact: they've not been called that in 23y, they're DROM-COM
stackghost 5 hours ago [-]
>Not just them, but I'll leave it at that.
Okay then if you're just going to be cute and nonspecific there's no point in continuing this discussion. I'm not interested in trying to decipher vague insinuations.
tredre3 23 hours ago [-]
I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you over the sound of a screaming eagle spreading freedom.
9 hours ago [-]
heavyset_go 15 hours ago [-]
These are the "duties" Ofcom is demanding of site owners and operators:
- to conduct a suitable and sufficient illegal content risk assessment;
- to use proportionate measures to prevent individuals encountering priority illegal content;
- to use proportionate systems and processes to minimise the length of time priority illegal content is present;
- to swiftly take down illegal content when it becomes aware of it;
- to specify in its terms of service how individuals are to be protected from illegal content; and relating to content reporting and complaints procedures in relation to illegal content.
Reads to me like they're legally prescribing that all web content is to be automatically fed into AI models in order to assess the content's appropriateness and "risk", and then "swiftly" censor the content if it's deemed too risky or illegal.
That's the only method that will scale, can be done "swiftly" and won't have the government kicking down your door if someone posts something illegal on your platform while you're sleeping or on vacation.
miohtama 15 hours ago [-]
Guess how one gets "a suitable and sufficient illegal content risk assessment"?
You need to buy it from compliance companies which lobbied for the law in the UK, run by ex regulators.
It means you have to do your paperwork so you can’t then pretend you “didn’t know” csam can exist on your website when repeatedly pointed out.
As far as regulation goes this is pretty light and allowing. It’s more annoying than not having any laws at all sure, but zero regulation regime failed (from the point of view of powers that be).
Next on the escalation ladder is govt writing the rules for you that you either take or leave
Levitz 11 hours ago [-]
4chan is and has for a long time been in cooperation with US law enforcement. You can literally, right now, enter the site and when reporting a post there's an option to report a post as breaking US law.
If the UK is not happy about how the site deals with such matters, the UK can block the site.
>Next on the escalation ladder is govt writing the rules for you that you either take or leave
No. This is not "next". This is "now" but the UK doesn't want to actually look to be doing what they are actively doing, and now we've got this mess.
raxxorraxor 11 hours ago [-]
This won't solve anything and "being annoying" to everyone on the planet isn't a trivial overstep. I don't see any sense in your statement that "no regulation" failed.
remus 5 hours ago [-]
> Guess how one gets "a suitable and sufficient illegal content risk assessment"?
This stuff is not magic, you can just do it yourself.
verisimi 11 hours ago [-]
It's all just a money making scheme
speefers 11 hours ago [-]
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agilob 1 days ago [-]
>Ofcom really thinks that their laws apply globally.
I don't get it. Shouldn't this be done at the ISP level? (Well, arguably it should not be done at all, but...)
Otherwise each company, everywhere in the world, no matter how small, has to follow the arbitrary demands of every nation state? How does that make any sense?
schnitzelstoat 12 hours ago [-]
Spain blocks all of Cloudflare during big football matches because people might use it to watch pirate streams. :/
roysting 1 days ago [-]
It’s really kind of unfortunate that people ignore the fact that the ruling powers seem to always follow the same MO, yet everyone falls for it over and over again; first they go after the dregs that they’ve made beyond the pale for pearl clutching polite company, e.g., I think over a year ago, when the German government first went after Gab followed by something like, if not Ofcom itself.
I don’t recall the outcome exact outcome or what has happened since, but I think Gab basically told them off in a similar way, i.e., “ummmm, this is America, silly Europeans” and may have even submitted the foreign demand letters to Congress and for whatever reason may have still geo-blocked the UK and at the same time has blocked VPN IPs because they found it effective at blocking pornography and the bad actors who emanated from a certain country. The effect though is that they’ve effectively barred the UK from participating in free speech in America if that’s still the current state of things. I suspect that is exactly what the tyrannical forces have worked out too, and which is why they’re demanding something other than just geo-blocking.
If you agree to VPN blocking, you effectively enforce the geo-block as well as unmasking users for five-eye de facto domestic surveillance. But they only came after those horrible horrible “Nazis” that insist on their rights to free speech, “…and I did not speak out.”
The point is, regardless of what one thinks of Gab, the powerful and tyrannical elements clearly go after those the mainstream population hates due to the two minutes of hate, so to say, which people have been conditioned to loathe; where the tyrants refine their tactics and the strategy, and practice and normalize the process for when they are ready to go after the mainstream populace… which seems to be approaching. And then the mainstream people are shocked and surprised because they believe it all came out of nowhere, when they just ignored it all along.
This of course is not just limited to the digital realm, the tyrannical forces will always come after scapegoats, and the exposed and low hanging fruit, or and even deliberately cause the “troublemakers” to identify themselves so they can be tracked, monitored, and picked off if need be.
This is not new, and people seem to fall for the same tricks over and over and over.
andai 22 hours ago [-]
Yeah, it's the same way with using AI to scan private messages before they're encrypted.
Even if you agree that this should be done for the currently stated reasons, the precedent is horrifying.
To quote Snowden, we're building the infrastructure of mass surveillance. (And then hoping nobody's going to come along and use it.)
towledev 23 hours ago [-]
The fact that unsympathetic targets are the first to be targeted need not be viewed as strategic. Other targets would be defended, which is a reason not to target them. Unsympathetic targets lack defenses and are therefore most likely to be targeted, all other things being equal.
We grant fully that it’s a slippery slope, ofc. But is the end of the slope in mind at the outset? Maybe, but not certainly.
roysting 20 hours ago [-]
I don't think it needs to be seen as "strategic", beyond that most effective people start with a proof of concept that is low risk. You are right, being pragmatic is surely the primary motivation to follow that pattern, but that too is inherently strategic. The strategy being; plan, test deploy the process, measure responses, adjust, redeploy, etc. We know this inherently strategic process even if it is a bit different outside of software development.
watwut 13 hours ago [-]
I mean, this logic is how USA walked itself into fascism. Right wing extremists were poster child for who must be protected at all cost, systematically, regardless of how it affected everyone else. And now they are in government taking a swing on everyone else.
bethekidyouwant 23 hours ago [-]
“Vpn” blocking is a game pf cat and mouse, not an absolute .
raxxorraxor 11 hours ago [-]
> Ofcom really thinks that their laws apply globally.
It really paints this authority in a special light if they believe they can force their rules on everyone on the planet. To be honest, I think this needs immediate psychological evaluation because you have to have a very distorted view on reality. Even if you give a lot of leverage to authorities being detached. But certainly the authority is very overwhelmed with itself and the world.
But while we are at it I demand that Ofcom removes it presence from my internet too. Perhaps flood some DNS server, so ofcom.uk to point to 4chan...
itake 18 hours ago [-]
Not saying this is the same, but there are depression forums where the admin / mods promotes and sells “permanent solution” kits.
People really should turn to medical professionals and not internet strangers for help.
If everyone turned to medical professionals the system would fall apart. Many try but fail to find a space in the current system. Internet forums / llms offer another path that many have used to move forward.
Its like telling people don't talk to friends and family only go to a professional. This is how we end up in a worse mental crisis.
heavyset_go 15 hours ago [-]
> People really should turn to medical professionals and not internet strangers for help.
For your own safety, you are to only discuss your health with NHS certified healthcare providers and no one else. Doing so with others can lead to unprovoked, unsanctioned and dangerous anecdotes, advice and memes. Worse, you might find community and make friends with people who have similar life experiences, which can distract from your state sanctioned treatment plan. This extends to your friends and spouse, they might mean well, but they are not medical professionals.
Your health is your private matter, let's keep it that way!
kunley 12 hours ago [-]
Your sarcasm sounds like we'd be living in some extreme 1984-like dystopia, while the reality is: there is more bullshit one can read online than a bullshit one can get from a poor doctor/therapist.
From my experience, the best one can do is to get a good and affordable therapist by a word of mouth.. and sometimes one can get lucky as such person is doing also service for a state, for free. Main point is to actively start searching
lukan 12 hours ago [-]
Main point with depressed people is, they often do lack initiative and enthusiasm to go find that unicorn therapists. When you are struggeling already in general and then you have to struggle even more to maybe find help (and then you don't know whether you can afford it) .. no wonder people turn to online help and LLM'S.
So yes, you are right in that activly start searching is the better way. But that insight is often lost on the target audience.
kunley 11 hours ago [-]
Well in my European country therapists hourly rates are very flat and practically the same as hourly rates for physiotherapists, massage practitioners and basic doctors, plus an LLM can really quickly tell that, so it is much faster to get to know if one can afford it than to look for a general solution of the whole problem.
Neil44 11 hours ago [-]
That's just how the law works apparently, if there's a UK law passed that makes smoking illegal in Paris then smoking is illegal in Paris. The practicalities of this are to be worked out later.
bmacho 11 hours ago [-]
Smoking in Paris is harmful to the health of UK citizens residing in Paris. I'm not sure why UK hasn't banned that yet.
When OSA was announced I really expected the US to state clearly that they wouldn't let UK to threaten US citizens with millions of fines if they practice their rights to Free Speech.
Because this is what's happening, the UK is making open threats against US citizens when they practice their rights to Free Speech. See e.g. Lobsters' take on it: they just wanted to have a webforum in the US but they couldn't because a foreign country threatened them with huge fines. No protection from the US.
"Just geoblock UK" seemed like a good enough in practice solution, although it is more action needed than I'd prefer.
__s 9 hours ago [-]
geoblocking should be on ofcom. they should be able to order UK ISPs to block non-compliant sites. everyone gets their own great firewall
bmacho 8 hours ago [-]
I don't know how I missed this. Yes, geoblocking should be on ofcom. If they don't like my forum, then instead of sending me a ridiculously big check, putting me on interpol, capturing me at the airport etc, just tell their ISPs to block my forum.
tw04 21 hours ago [-]
The US thinks their laws apply globally so why wouldn’t Europe expect the same. We will be dealing with the fallout of Venezuela for generations.
culopatin 21 hours ago [-]
So because a window is broken in the neighborhood you go out and smash your own?
notahacker 13 hours ago [-]
Nah, in context it's more like if your neighbourhood police have been sanctioning counterfeiters across our borders for years, we're not going to take lectures on how inappropriate it is for our neighbourhood police to pick on your pimps too seriously.
diego_sandoval 1 days ago [-]
I think anyone running a website should avoid visiting the UK from now on.
tim333 1 days ago [-]
The UK I don't think has arrested anyone for running a website.
Hamuko 1 days ago [-]
I don't think it's a great argument considering that the law in question is the Online Safety Act 2023.
tim333 12 hours ago [-]
There are a lot of things you can worry about in life. I'm not sure not visiting countries due to things zero people have had a problem with is productive. I'd be more worried visiting the US with the ICE stuff, although I accept that's rare but there's real cases like https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/21/karen-newton...
raxxorraxor 11 hours ago [-]
Pointing at someone even worse underlines how the behavior in question, here a law, is a complete failure.
Well I guess sudden cardiac arrest is even worse than silly internet rules.
jdkee 23 hours ago [-]
The police in the UK have arrested more than 12,000 citizens for online speech.
Looking through that article, one of the examples is "The wife of a conservative politician was sentenced to 31 months in prison for what police said was an unacceptable post."
"The wife of a Conservative councillor has been jailed for 31 months after calling for hotels housing asylum seekers to be set on fire."
This is pretty clear incitement to violence.
The UK has problems, but it's not very useful to throw all of these cases together to make a big number, it really rather undermines the point.
(edit - looking at the video posted in a sibling comment is enlightening. The number actually convicted of anything is around ~400 and this includes a lot of direct incitement to violence, stalking and all sorts. Which are similarly illegal in the US. The US right-wing talking points are as usual a load of crap.
None of which is to say I think the UK has things right, and that number of arrests is clearly a problem in itself, but as usual the "OH MY GOD look at what's happening over there! Muh free speech!" from the US commenters is hypocritical and myopic)
rcxdude 18 hours ago [-]
Most of those cases in that number aren't even online posts, but stalking and harassment through other means of communication.
speefers 8 hours ago [-]
[dead]
dukeyukey 20 hours ago [-]
Why? I run a few.
jwlake 22 hours ago [-]
Anyone owning 4chan should be very anonymous and only operate in a very friendly jurisdiction. Normal websites, no one cares.
reverius42 16 hours ago [-]
Is 4chan much worse than X (or rather, is X much better than 4chan) these days?
hdgvhicv 15 hours ago [-]
The owner of X is more powerful than the owner of 4chan
bargainbin 24 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
badc0ffee 22 hours ago [-]
> We’re not a police state like the US, there’ll be no action unless there is irrefutable proof, of which they’ll have none and can acquire none unless the person readily admits it.
A gf asked to go on a trip to England/Ireland and I told her I will go to Brazil or Colombia before I go to the UK. Im not going to risk getting in trouble because I made a post online or discussed immigration or trans people in the wrong way according to them.
Reason077 23 hours ago [-]
> "Im not going to risk getting in trouble because I made a post online or discussed immigration or trans people in the wrong way according to them."
This is a mis-truth which has been spread by Joe Rogan and his ilk. Political speech is very much protected in UK law. You won't get in "trouble" if you make posts against immigration or trans people. J.K. Rowling and Ricky Gervais certainly haven't been locked up.
Yes, there have been cases, such as the infamous Cowley Hill School case where Hertfordshire police arrested a couple over their posts in a school WhatsApp group. However, such arrests are illegal and in that case the police had to apologise and pay compensation.
What will get you in trouble in the UK is threatening violence against people or posting hate speech that encourages others to do so. But this is also true in the USA and in most countries.
troad 22 hours ago [-]
> Political speech is very much protected in UK law
With "protected political speech" being defined as which flavour of the established, incompetent elite you prefer this year.
People have been arrested in the UK for holding blank signs within vicinity of Palestine marches. People have been arrested over protesting Charles' coronation. To say nothing of thousands of people arrested every year over tweets.
Political speech is basically criminalised in the UK at this point. This is not an establishment worth any of our respect.
hunterpayne 21 hours ago [-]
You forgot the part where they are literally debating if to get rid of jury trials or not because the government didn't hire enough judges.
alexfoo 6 hours ago [-]
Not quite. They're debating whether to get rid of some jury trials, only for trials that have an "either-way" decision and carry a sentence of less than 3 years.
The changes would mean instead of 3% having juries it would be down to 2.25%.
This would also be reviewed once the existing backlog has been seen to. "This means that currently a suspect being charged with an offence today may not reach trial until 2030."
dukeyukey 20 hours ago [-]
Worth pointing out the US has similar restrictions already. Why is the UK catching flak for discussing this?
hdgvhicv 15 hours ago [-]
Far right podcasters. The ones cheering people losing jobs and being jailed over quoting the US president
> arrested in the UK for holding blank signs within vicinity of Palestine marches.
Got a source on this one?
Supporting Palestine in the UK has never been illegal. Supporting the specific group "Palestine Action" has been as they were for a while a proscribed terrorist organisation due to what was (IMHO) some property crimes committed against defense contractors by some of their members. Totally wrong, and has now been struck down in the courts, but saying "you can't support palestine" is also wrong.
> Thousands of people arrested every year over tweets.
The source I saw on this one had clear examples of violent threats and calls to set buildings full of people on fire, so I'm not sure this is clear either.
hdgvhicv 15 hours ago [-]
They were breaking in and damaging US military
The group itself offered training courses on Ho to sabotage the U.K. military
I wonder what would happen in the US with such a group
Reason077 13 hours ago [-]
They broke into an RAF base, and defaced/damaged UK military hardware (spraypaint on aircraft). This is a serious crime, but in no way does it meet any reasonable definition of terrorism. There are plenty of laws under which those responsible can be charged, it was a ridiculous overreach to use anti-terror laws.
More concerningly, prescribing Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation had a suppressive effect on lawful protest against the Israel-Gaza war, since any supporter of Palestine might be considered a member of Palestine Action and therefore, legally, a terrorist suspect.
13 hours ago [-]
alexfoo 6 hours ago [-]
> > arrested in the UK for holding blank signs within vicinity of Palestine marches.
> Got a source on this one?
Not quite arrested but the closest I can find is someone threatened with arrest if they wrote certain things on the blank sign:
The UK Police seem to have switched to a policy of knowingly arresting people erroneously and then releasing them and apologising afterwards.
(At least it is just arresting people and releasing them rather than shooting them and then apologising afterwards whilst also exonerating the officers involved.)
The article does link to an incident in Russia where a protester was dragged away for holding up a blank sign.
Dylan16807 23 hours ago [-]
> You won't get in "trouble" if you make posts against immigration or trans people.
Not to say anyone would actually get in trouble for just some opinion posts, but I don't know why you went with "against" here, I think "for" is the more likely one to make the current UK (or US) government upset.
TeapotNotKettle 23 hours ago [-]
“Burn old fella burn”, felt like political speech - but that didn’t work out so well.
Blikkentrekker 18 hours ago [-]
> What will get you in trouble in the UK is threatening violence against people or posting hate speech that encourages others to do so. But this is also true in the USA and in most countries.
The line is quite thin and ambiguous though. If they want to get someone they will and find that various remarks “encourage violence”.
Almost any opinion that isn't nice can be argued to encourage violence.
6031769 10 hours ago [-]
Unless they are Ricky Jones, of course.
specproc 1 days ago [-]
No chance I'd go to America, as they definitely check that sort of thing at the border now.
Not sure how often that happens coming to the UK, yet.
throwawaytea 1 days ago [-]
It happens to citizens of the UK everyday, so I'm not really into finding out how tourists are treated.
marcus_holmes 18 hours ago [-]
You are the victim of misinformation and need to check your sources.
2postsperday 24 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
sva_ 22 hours ago [-]
I just went there as German and it actually went really smooth. They just asked me why I'm visiting and I said to visit a friend/tourism, took less than 2 minutes. So I think this is FUD
fc417fc802 21 hours ago [-]
That's usually how it goes with the US as well but every now and then they decide to search someone's electronic devices.
Of course AFAIK this can happen pretty much everywhere at this point so your only hope is being a citizen of a country that doesn't allow it for locals (such as the US) and then not traveling. Or wipe your devices prior to traveling.
n3t 22 hours ago [-]
Ireland, in contrast to Northern Ireland, is not part of the UK.
Not like good ole America where you can get arrested for mocking Charlie Kirk.
hunterpayne 20 hours ago [-]
Nobody was arrested. Plenty of people got fired from private sector jobs. Your employer not wanting to be associated with your terrible behavior isn't the same as the government jailing people for the "wrong" opinion.
heavyset_go 17 hours ago [-]
From "Retired cop jailed for 37 days over Charlie Kirk meme sues, saying his First Amendment rights were violated"[1]:
> A retired Tennessee law enforcement officer was held in jail for more than a month this fall after police arrested him over a Facebook post of a meme related to the September assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
In those countries, you'll probably have more to fear for your physical security from non-governmental threats than the other way around.
But given the increasingly dystopian state of many countries worldwide, you may also encounter difficulties related to administrative burden and systems with not enough human oversight and override for exceptional situations.
patrickmcnamara 1 days ago [-]
What is the HN way to say "touch grass"?
pessimizer 24 hours ago [-]
Not to say it, but instead to choose to say something both interesting and directly responsive to the comment you're replying to.
Leynos 23 hours ago [-]
Okay, here goes. You can tell when someone is acting in bad faith when they talk about a law that has been in force and enforced since the 1960s is something new.
Of course, "touch grass" works just as well.
throwawaytea 22 hours ago [-]
Laws can be in existence for decades before they are weaponized against people.
It's illegal to have most eBay/Amazon bulbs on your car because they are not DOT approved.
If someday they start impounding cars crossing state borders with light bars, fog lights, and LEDs of races they don't want in that state... Someone like you will say "you're just making stuff up, that law has been on effect since 1961."
DANmode 22 hours ago [-]
Does it?
dash2 11 hours ago [-]
"help people with depression" is not quite a full description of that website, is it? I thought it had advice on how to kill yourself.
protocolture 22 hours ago [-]
>Ofcom really thinks that their laws apply globally.
Ofcom is probably full of non technical people who have been given a specific set of (stupid) instructions including that if its on the internet, its a product being sold to the UK.
raverbashing 16 hours ago [-]
I mean yeah when you're paing 20-40k£ you're not getting the best
recursive 22 hours ago [-]
"Just following orders"
protocolture 18 hours ago [-]
Pretty much. But the outcome being a bunch of emails and court action instead of like, genocide.
pcf 17 hours ago [-]
Totally unrelated to this post. Get a grip.
9dev 23 hours ago [-]
> Ofcom really thinks that their laws apply globally.
Curious time to complain about the UK doing this (*points broadly eastwards*)
miki123211 20 hours ago [-]
I think it's good that the UK is trying this right now. It's bound to set a precedent, and the UK isn't powerful enough for that precedent to be in favor of the idea that you have to follow other countries' laws if you're on the internet. Doubly so with Trump II making freedom of speech and overbearing European regulations a political issue.
If America introduced a law like this, especially the strong, late-aughts, pre-Trump America, I bet most countries would just cave in, just like most caved in when copyright and AML/KYC laws were concerned. Hell, Swicerland basically abolished anonymous bank accounts, something which the country was famous for, just because the US wanted them to. I don't think we'll see a similar resolution here.
raxxorraxor 10 hours ago [-]
Leaving the topic of freedom of speech to conservatives was one of the largest intellectual errors of modern progressive forces. Perhaps you believe Trump or his advisers are idiots, but if so, what are you then...
And no, you don't do it because of some holy quest to protect minorities. Minorities never suffered from too much of freedom of speech. The opposite however...
It may dawn some people at some point that if you demand a certain behaviour from others, you might be neither liberal nor progressive.
Trump can easily point the finger at the EU because it lets him do that. I think the EU cannot take responsibility for itself or other if it doesn't correct course.
wisty 22 hours ago [-]
“Parliamentary supremacy means that Parliament can legislate for all persons and all places. If it enacts that smoking in the streets of Paris is an offence, then it is an offence.”(Ivor Jennings)
It is also accepted that enforcement can be an issue if the law is an absurd overreach (like the UK criminalising smoking in the streets of Paris).
nobodyandproud 22 hours ago [-]
So, does a powerful foreign the UK and put the Parliament out of its misery?
Rebuff5007 12 hours ago [-]
The UK government is trying to regulate a service used by UK citizens / residents. What part of this seems unreasonable?
CodesInChaos 12 hours ago [-]
That they don't consider it sufficient for the website to block all UK IP addresses.
swarnie 1 days ago [-]
After bending over backwards for US media companies in the 2000s they thought it went both ways, turns out it doesn't.
Oh well, the uncensored web from my NL VPN still looks the same.
BobbyJo 19 hours ago [-]
I mean, IP meant a lot more in 2006 than in it does now in 2026. The IP economy has basically died, so of course IP/Data based trade deals no longer make sense.
NullPrefix 1 days ago [-]
NL VPNs will bend the knee to EU regulation
swarnie 1 days ago [-]
One click its Algeria, or Singapore, or Canada.
We can move much faster then they can legislate.
hdgvhicv 15 hours ago [-]
First they came for the websites but I used vpns
Then they came for vpn clients but I used free software
Then they came for the payment methods but I used bitcoin
Then they blocked UDP at the isp but I used satelites doe linked elsewhere
Then they just came for me but nobody cared as nobody else was affected
9 hours ago [-]
behringer 1 days ago [-]
If it's insufficient then there's no risk of removing the geoblocking then.
bilekas 16 hours ago [-]
> Ofcom really thinks that their laws apply globally.
And enforceable. Let them fail but they have money behind them,
veunes 11 hours ago [-]
The tricky part is that geoblocking is inherently porous
croes 1 days ago [-]
> Ofcom really thinks that their laws apply globally.
They learned from the US
15155 1 days ago [-]
The United Kingdom's once-relevant hegemony existed centuries before the United States.
croes 1 days ago [-]
There is the difference.
They made the whole world British so the British laws applied everywhere.
jalapenos 16 hours ago [-]
Like most matters concerning the UK: unless your feet are touching their territory, the correct response to their actions, inactions, or very existence, is: "fuck off"
alexfoo 6 hours ago [-]
I think the correct response in terms of the British legal system is to simply say:
"Dear Sirs, In regards to your recent request, can I refer you to the reply given in Arkell and Pressdram (1971). Yours etc,"
1 days ago [-]
varispeed 1 days ago [-]
These departments are full of delusional maniacs, that at home are doormats and nobodies, but once they cross the floor of the department, they think they own the world. They sit by the desk and think who's day they can ruin today.
Meanwhile the UK is gnawed by corruption, scams and whatnot, yet there is no one able to do anything about. But harassing some Canadian forum? First to serve!
Spivak 1 days ago [-]
Well they technically do, parliamentary sovereignty means that the UK can, "legislate to ban smoking on the streets of Paris." There are no limits to what laws they can write, even ones that are out of their jurisdiction, absurd, or unenforceable.
markdown 1 days ago [-]
The U.S. asserts the right to prosecute anyone, anywhere, who provides material support to any group they label as a terrorist organization.
Not only is this enforceable, it has been enforced, and people have been assassinated without charge for this crime.
15155 1 days ago [-]
It helps when you spend trillions annually on your military. Might makes right.
badc0ffee 22 hours ago [-]
The US isn't spending trillions/year on the military, at least not yet. It might crack 1 trillion in the near future.
XorNot 1 days ago [-]
Russia spends a lot less and routinely assassinates foreign critics. India has targeted overseas critics as well.
The size of ones military expenditure does not determine whether a foreign government can kill you, specifically.
chrisjj 21 hours ago [-]
> Ofcom really thinks that their laws apply globally
What, Ofcom is trying to restrict viewing outside UK?
kimixa 1 days ago [-]
People here seem to be thinking this a UK/Europe-specific phenomenon, but there's plenty of examples of the US "seizing" sites that were never hosted in the USA either, and even put pressure on countries to extradite people involved even if they never broke any laws in the country they're living in.
One I remember was a site hosting streams of the 2022 football world cup. Or a number of Iranian-affiliated news sites just last year. Or offshore gambling websites in 2021.
People going "Those Crazy Brits! Thank God That'll Never Happen Here!" seem pretty ill-informed.
epolanski 1 days ago [-]
I have worked for a company that was threatened by the US to not offer services to several countries or face criminal charges in the US. I'm talking about a saas nothing strange.
We were too small and bent, also US customers were 30% of the total which made it a non choice.
troad 22 hours ago [-]
> not offer services to several countries
The kind of vague phrasing that makes one immediately suspicious. What were these 'several countries'? Iran? Cuba? North Korea?
> also US customers were 30% of the total which made it a non choice
You're literally operating in the US then. It's obvious US laws would apply if you're serving US customers.
epolanski 22 hours ago [-]
> What were these 'several countries'? Iran? Cuba? North Korea?
It doesn't matter which those were, we were obliged to respect laws of the European country we were incorporated, not US ones.
snypher 18 hours ago [-]
It matters because it gives context to the potential reason they were behaving that way.
troad 22 hours ago [-]
You're serving US customers. You are doing business in the US, and therefore you are subject to US law. What about when a customer requests a refund, do you just pretend US consumer protection laws don't apply to that customer? Or to turn your logic around, can American corporations do business in Europe while just completely ignoring the GDPR and all other European laws?
Laws are not a buffet. You choose to do business in a market, you've opted to be regulated in that market.
You are absolutely free to sell your services to whoever you want, but the US is equally free to refuse to allow you to operate domestically if you're breaking their laws (and otherwise make your life difficult if you e.g. rely on US banking infrastructure). If you want to do business in Iran, don't expect to do business in the US.
zarzavat 16 hours ago [-]
You may be interested to learn about the EU Blocking Statute which is designed to protect EU companies from certain US sanctions:
> The European Union does not recognise the extra-territorial application of laws adopted by third countries and considers such effects to be contrary to international law.
(yes the irony is palpable)
> The blocking statute prohibits compliance by EU operators with any requirement or prohibition based on the specified foreign laws.
It is illegal to comply with certain US sanctions in the EU. This is most likely what GP
is talking about.
> You're serving US customers. You are doing business in the US, and therefore you are subject to US law
I don't think this is how the law works.
Think of it this way: any customer from Libya makes it customary for my female co-workers to wear hijab at the workplace.
Thus a customer who voluntarily purchases services from a company in a different jurisdiction does NOT automatically makes this company subject to his jurisdiction.
ytoawwhra92 17 hours ago [-]
Love contrasting this post with Americans' reactions when they're presented with a GDPR cookie banner.
what 17 hours ago [-]
Those cookie banners shouldn’t be presented to Americans.
Dansvidania 15 hours ago [-]
Why shouldn’t they? Or do you mean it is not required for US citizens?
lawn 9 hours ago [-]
They shouldn't be presented to Europeans either.
dash2 11 hours ago [-]
> Laws are not a buffet. You choose to do business in a market, you've opted to be regulated in that market.
I mean I find this quite plausible, but you should tell the guys in the thread above, who are all posting "ha, the UK thinks it can tell a non-UK website what to do, how absurd!" and metaphorically pouring their tea out in Boston Harbour.
Loughla 10 hours ago [-]
I think there's a difference between a website that citizens from country a can access but who are not necessarily the group the website is created for, for free, and a paid saas that I sell to citizens of country a.
flir 7 hours ago [-]
Maybe there's a moral difference (I doubt it personally), but there's clearly not a legal difference.
They're both examples of Country A putting a law on the books that constrains sites in Country B. "Don't sell", "don't serve", "don't stand on one leg while fulfilling orders", they're all the same class of overreach.
epolanski 22 hours ago [-]
Except that the hint was for criminal charges, not lack of business :)
troad 22 hours ago [-]
Zero difference. If someone is selling children's toys, and 30% of her customers are in the US, and then it turns out her toys are made entirely of lead and asbestos, should she not face US criminal penalties?
You choose to do business in a jurisdiction, you bind yourself to their laws. That means all laws, not just ones you like, or think that are relevant to your business. Laws are not a buffet.
Don't do business in jurisdictions where you feel like you cannot comply with domestic law. No one is requiring you to do business in the US. People choose to do business in the US so they can profit from US customers, and that's totally fine, but doesn't come with some magical immunity to US law.
epolanski 21 hours ago [-]
I agree with you, but you keep missing that:
1. This isn't about business but charges. There's no way in hell US can e.g. prosecute non us citizens from trading with Cuba e.g. the embargo applies to US individuals and companies. The rest of the world, e.g. European countries, have normal relations with Cuba and nobody gives two damns about the embargo.
2. The same thing happens in reverse and applies to US companies doing business overseas.
halapro 18 hours ago [-]
It depends, really.
Anyone who sells to my enemies is my enemy. You yourself can be subject to embargoes.
Francesca Albanese cannot do banking with banks from her own country because the US said so. Read: third parties that have relations with the US are barred from doing business with you or else risk being blacklisted too.
> This isn't about business but charges. There's no way in hell US can e.g. prosecute non us citizens from trading with Cuba
Sure it can. It can do whatever it wants in its domestic courts. Turkmenistan can prosecute you and me right now for failure to pay insufficient deference to dear leader. Whether this impacts us in any way is the actual question. We presumably do not want to do business in Turkmenistan. But the OP wants to do business in the US. Ergo, the OP is subject to US law, irrespective of what he thinks US law should look like or what its limits ought to be.
OP doesn't have to do business in the US at all and be completely and utterly untouched by US law - he won't be extradited anywhere unless the offence in question is also an offence in his own country, which as you point out, the Cuban embargo (etc) isn't. This is how you and I stay safe from the many Turkmenistani indictments hanging over us.
This is not a case of someone bravely standing up for justice and freedom, this is a case of someone wanting to profit from US customers but somehow have total immunity from US law. And I'd respectfully point out that if the countries were reversed, and we were talking about e.g. Russia, the European countries would be apoplectic about anyone doing business there. Imagine a Brazilian company selling drone motors to Russia. Can its executives expect to travel freely through the EU without fear of arrest? Do business in the EU?
epolanski 21 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
tick_tock_tick 15 hours ago [-]
> In any case, since you're unaware, Canada and EU have legislation that prohibits Canadian and European companies from obliging with US embargo of Cuba. That is, I can face criminal charges in Europe or Canada for refusing services to Cuba.
Yet almost everyone in those countries falls inline with US law because frankly the US is the exception and it's laws de facto apply in Canada and the EU.
epolanski 10 hours ago [-]
No we don't, the EU is the biggest trade partner of Cuba, Spain alone is 19% of foreign trade.
US laws do not apply beyond US borders, period. Complying with them in Europe is a felony.
troad 21 hours ago [-]
> Who's profiting from us customers?
Uhhh... the person whose company has 30% of its customers in the US. See above.
> You sound like the lunatic president you have
> You're the usual case thinking US is an exception to the rules, where it can dictate it's terms beyond its borders and get away with the opposite.
Cool. I'm not American. I'm literally just quoting International Private Law (aka Conflict of Laws) to you. And I'm doing so while being careful to give other examples from other countries.
I've literally not once said I approve of any of these laws. But this seems to be the difference between you and me - I don't bend the rules to get to outcomes I like. You sell to Cuba, or you sell to the US. Do I like that? No. Is that the law? Yes. One would not be very effective in international business if they failed to realise this kind of thing.
> You're the usual case thinking US is an exception to the rules
And, conversely, I think you're the usual case in trying to make the US a unique big bad, when they're doing absolutely nothing out of the ordinary in this area, and certainly nothing that Europe doesn't constantly do when it regulates for foreigners and foreign businesses trying to interact with or through the EU. (Something the EU does more of, proudly and loudly, than anyone else on Earth.)
Sleep well! (It's the morning here.)
bcjdjsndon 9 hours ago [-]
So you think 4chan should be paying the EU fine then?
egorfine 9 hours ago [-]
> It's obvious US laws would apply if you're serving US customers
So any customer from Libya makes it customary for my female co-workers to wear hijab at the workplace, right? Same logic.
No.
A customer who voluntarily purchases services from a company in a different jurisdiction does NOT automatically makes this company subject to his specific jurisdiction.
Spivak 9 hours ago [-]
She does if you want to keep doing business there. That's the stick that's available. Either you follow their laws despite not being in their jurisdiction or you can't sell to customers in Libya.
I don't like it same as you because it makes doing business on the internet complicated but it's how it works in practice.
egorfine 9 hours ago [-]
> you can't sell to customers in Libya
Why though? Libya has no jurisdiction over my business in the EU. I place no restrictions on who can purchase a subscription on my SaaS. I certainly can sell to customers in Libya.
All Libya can do is ban my business, but they can only implement that ban within their own sovereign borders.
Spivak 7 hours ago [-]
I suppose inability for you to sell and inability for customers to buy are technically different but the end result ends up being the same. If you need to access that market then they have leverage over you to force compliance with their laws.
egorfine 4 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure Libya has any solution to prevent their citizens from purchasing my services. Blocking access to my site, sure. But preventing citizens from using my service is going to be much, much harder.
So, no.
veunes 11 hours ago [-]
This is probably the part people underestimate
pc86 7 hours ago [-]
> People going "Those Crazy Brits! Thank God That'll Never Happen Here!" seem pretty ill-informed.
Well the second part of that is ill-informed but the first part is just... informed?
As far as the US seizing sites, does that happen when the site is hosted outside of the US and without the cooperation of authorities where ever it is actually hosted? I don't think so but I'm happy to be proven wrong there.
flir 7 hours ago [-]
DNS.
pc86 7 hours ago [-]
What about it?
catlikesshrimp 7 hours ago [-]
If they can't undo the site at the tld level, the US can still compel the DNS servers nearby to erase their record, or redirect it to a "this domain is seized" page. In extremis. they could just poison the DNS addresses of blocked websites although they dot need to.
jxdxbx 1 days ago [-]
I am hardy a fan of these processes but they are not "extraterritorial" in the same way, since the registrars were generally US-based.
petcat 1 days ago [-]
USA doesn't block websites. The FBI will seize domains after some judicial review and a court order. That's about it.
kimixa 1 days ago [-]
Yes, you've just described one method the US authorities use to block websites.
They also force ISPs to block IPs [0].
I feel trying to say that's not "blocking websites" is playing games with words, and the results are functionally the same to the "average" user.
The fact that the US effectively claim juristiction over the root DNS system is a more a geopolitical power thing rather than a legal restriction.
A court issued that ruling. Not an administrative agency. Pretty big difference.
InvertedRhodium 21 hours ago [-]
So if the UK gets a court to ratify these orders then you’re on board with them being globally enforced?
betaby 19 hours ago [-]
The article above is about US ISP ordered to block sites for US customer.
Not 'globally' enforced. Important difference.
Ofcourse, everybody ( well, outside the UK ) are OK if UK orders UK ISPs blocks sites for their customers.
themafia 19 hours ago [-]
I think one advantage is you can directly appeal a court ruling. To challenge an administrative order you need to sue the government. In some cases, you need to sue the government in a separate trial first, in order to get permission to start suing them for cause in another one.
Another advantage as the other reply has mentioned is that courts have broad authority but must narrow the effect of their rulings to the minimum necessary to address the suit. In this case it would certainly lead to 4Chan being blocked by UK ISPs by order of a UK court. I think even 4Chan would be fine with that.
ascorbic 1 days ago [-]
The US arrested and imprisoned the bosses of multiple UK-based gambling sites that were not only legal in the UK – they were listed on the London Stock Exchange.
egorfine 9 hours ago [-]
As we can clearly see from the comment section here, Americans absolutely non-ironically believe their law applies to anyone they have business with.
petcat 1 days ago [-]
"You’re taking bets from U.S. customers → you’re violating U.S. law"
This is different than 4chan allowing UK viewers to access the website at all.
egorfine 9 hours ago [-]
> You’re showing pictures to UK customers → you’re violating UK law
jen20 17 hours ago [-]
Why? It doesn't strike me as remotely different.
Country A has a law that says X is illegal, and tries to enforce it against companies in country B where X is legal.
Whether either case is reasonable is a different question, though.
aaomidi 1 days ago [-]
And you can use cctlds to bypass this too
ronsor 1 days ago [-]
Yes. Hollywood is mad, but piracy sites are still up and unblocked. Book publishers are mad, but Anna's Archive persists on CCTLDs.
The US by and large doesn't censor websites even if the content is illegal in the US. They'll get a warrant and seize servers or domains if it's in the country, or maybe poke international law enforcement for cooperation, but it doesn't really extend beyond that.
NicuCalcea 20 hours ago [-]
> It is further ordered that all ISPs (including without limitation those set forth in Exhibit B hereto) and any other ISPs providing services in the United States shall block access to the Website at any domain address known today (including but not limited to those set forth in Exhibit A hereto) or to be used in the future by the Defendants (“Newly Detected Websites”) by any technological means available on the ISPs’ systems. The domain addresses and any Newly Detected Websites shall be channeled in such a way that users will be unable to connect and/or use the Website, and will be diverted by the ISPs’ DNS servers to a landing page operated and controlled by Plaintiffs (the “Landing Page”).
Short memory then. Megaupload was censored by way of seizure. Exactly what you said doesn't happen in the us
ronsor 4 hours ago [-]
I literally said "They'll get a warrant and seize servers or domains."
veunes 11 hours ago [-]
The concern here is that regulators are starting to assume global reach by default, even when that leverage isn't obvious
gib444 18 hours ago [-]
Nah they're aware. They just think the US has the absolute right to be a hypocrite and not to be called out on it, ever
phendrenad2 1 days ago [-]
Then why doesn't the US seize the domains of the Iranian government? They should be able to just seize every .ir domain, if your accusation is correct. The fact is it isn't. It looks that way because most people blindly choose .com without thinking about what country the TLD registry is located in.
soco 1 days ago [-]
I think people here are also more fond of 4chan than the average citizen, and also in general rather fond of technological freedom of anything. Makes sense, being players basically in the team about to get a red card. Like it or not, the global internet became a convenient way to skirt local laws and I don't see any reason why exempting something in one place only because it originated in some other place. Is now enforcing a law "the CCP way"? Should internet be kept lawless only because... internet?
greycol 1 days ago [-]
Of course, because they're not proposing "apply our laws in our country" they are proposing "apply our laws in another country". If you want to enforce this law you need to do it the CCP way (punish your ISPs for alllowing it into the country and monitor your citizens for accessing it) because you don't have the jurisdiction to enforce it otherwise. Let's not forget how many UK criminals have made fun of Kim Jong Un's haircut and are getting away with it because the UK is such a lawless place that doesn't enforce DPRK law.
erentz 16 hours ago [-]
Why should it be done that way?
If a country has media or broadcast standards laws, and you distribute or broadcast content in that country that violates those laws, that’s on you. The country can just fine you if you chose not to comply. Just the same as they would if you were doing it while living in that country. You’re not obliged to care about the fine if you don’t live there and never intend to travel there. But if you do then you’re going to be subject to their laws at that point, for violating those laws when you distributed that content in that country.
imtringued 11 hours ago [-]
This is nonsense.
The hardware that propagates the data transmission is owned partly by the UK and partly by Canada. The Canadian website operator has turned off the transmission to the UK on their side and has fulfilled their obligations. The UK is complaining that they didn't turn off transmission on their side.
What you're saying is that the website operator should travel to the UK to enforce UK law from Canada. It's nonsensical.
Edit: If this wasn't clear enough here is a cartoonish version:
Ofcom: Your site violates UK law. By allowing UK citizens access, you must abide by UK law.
Website operator: I do not care about serving UK citizens and am now blocking UK IP addresses. Thank you for notifying us.
Ofcom: We have decided that we will not block access to your website from the UK. Therefore it is theoretically possible to access your website anyway, which is a violation of UK law. No matter how much effort you spend on ensuring that UK citizens do not gain access to your website, we will make sure that there will always be a non zero possibility of violating UK law. Since we are not blocking anything, the blame cannot lie in UK users circumventing a UK side block, which would force us to prosecute UK citizens rather than you as the website operator.
Please shut your website down to ensure compliance.
Website Operator: Okay so you're telling me I have to build the great firewall in the UK, make all ISPs adopt it and lobby a change in UK law to make the firewall mandatory, just so I can host my website?
Ofcom: yes
pixl97 1 days ago [-]
Yes it should, there is no global law, and hell forbid there ever should be.
It's fucking stupid that an American site that is afforded free speech protection in its own country has to deal with the UK acting like a tyrant.
egorfine 9 hours ago [-]
> there is no global law, and hell forbid there ever should be.
There are so many global laws that are actually enforced. Of course they all origin in the US. See KYC/AML laws.
testing22321 20 hours ago [-]
You know a bunch of people feel that way about the US forcing it’s copyright laws on everyone, right?
dijit 1 days ago [-]
The response from Ofcom doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
If you are to sell a toy in the UK you must be a British company. (and must pay VAT and comply with British safety standards).
If a consumer buys from overseas and imports a product then they do not have British consumer protections. Which is why so much aliexpress electrical stuff is dangerous (expecially USB chargers) yet it continues to be legally imported.
Just, no british retailer would be allowed to carry it without getting a fine.
3rodents 1 days ago [-]
That’s not really true. The Ofcom representative said “not allowed” not “unable to”. Even if cocaine is legal in my country, I’m “not allowed” to sell it to British consumers by the power of the British authorities. The British authorities may not have legal authority in my jurisdiction but they can take action in their own, including issuing penalties and stopping my deliveries at the border.
oliwarner 1 days ago [-]
But if a Brit comes to your country and buys cocaine from you, in person, you wouldn't expect to be convicted as a dealer in the UK.
Ofcom has a bad handle on web requests. Clients connect out. 4chan et al aren't pushing their services in anyone in the UK.
3rodents 1 days ago [-]
If we want to base the argument on technical nuance, 4chan are sending their packets to the U.K. just as the cocaine dealer would be sending packets (of cocaine) to their buyers in the U.K.
oliwarner 1 days ago [-]
They're replying to an externally-established connection. The packets they're sending are going to a local router.
If you posted cocaine from your cocaine-legal country to an address where it was illegal, and you followed all the regular customs labelling rules, I'm not sure you should be liable. And you shouldn't be extradited either. Even the UK demands that extradition offences would have been criminal had they been committed in the UK. Now I'm sure in practice, you'd find yourself in trouble immediately but I don't think it's fair.
The ramifications of laws like this is everyone needs to be Geo-IP check every request, adhere to every local law. It's not the Internet we signed up for.
falcor84 22 hours ago [-]
I would strongly disagree with that, in the sense of the layer of communication that 4chan operate at. I would argue that 4chan aren't sending packets to the UK any more than I'm currently sending my keystrokes to wherever you are reading this from - these actions are performed at a different layer.
If the UK wants to block packets from across the pond, they should (but I hope they don't) do it via a Great Firewall, rather than expecting random foreign websites to do it for them.
Ajedi32 1 days ago [-]
This isn't a physical product. A better analogy would be a phone call, initiated by someone in the UK to a foreign country.
strideashort 1 days ago [-]
What if I send http request over snail mail? And they send me back printed http/html response?
Is it “different” then?
Being serious here.
saaaaaam 1 days ago [-]
I think (but am not sure) that there are long established postal laws in most territories about sending “obscene” material through the mail. I think this was used to prosecute pornography publishers in earlier times. BUT you needed to (a) intercept mail and (b) have a good reason and (c) get a warrant to open (interfere with) that mail.
Possessing pornography was a separate issue which may or may not be allowed. Typically (I think) authorities went after publishers not consumers - because they were easier targets to pin down.
Which would seem to imply that if you’re sending encrypted traffic at the request of a recipient the as a publisher of “obscene” material then unless you are delivering very clearly illegal content to a user then you should not prosecuted.
I haven’t got a single source for anything I’m saying, so I might be entirely wrong - I’m simply going off half-remembered barely-facts. So please do argue with me!
imtringued 10 hours ago [-]
It's different, because you are willingly sending a reply to a known UK address.
In the website scenario, there are no physical addresses with a geographic component to them. The physical topology of the network is only known by the operators of the network. Only they know where the routers are physically located.
This means geoip blocking can only ever be done on a best effort basis. Actual blocking can only be done by the operators of the routers, which is why it is unreasonable to expect the website operator to be responsible for perfect compliance.
tyho 1 days ago [-]
4chan send their packets to their ISP, not the UK.
3rodents 1 days ago [-]
The destination of the packet where it is sent, just as a toy sent from the U.S. to a customer in the U.K. is sent to the U.K. rather than the local Fedex store.
1 days ago [-]
strideashort 1 days ago [-]
not at all, 4chan only sends packets to their isp!
2postsperday 23 hours ago [-]
[dead]
estimator7292 24 hours ago [-]
The user mails you a box with a note that says "1kg of 4chan packets pls", and a prepaid return label to an address local to you. You put the packets in the box and kick it down the street to its "destination". Job done as far as you know.
The place you sent the box then repacks it and mails it to the UK. Somehow the UK thinks that you and only you have broken the law.
IshKebab 23 hours ago [-]
Not actually how TCP/IP works though.
strken 23 hours ago [-]
Can you elaborate? The metaphor is a good description of how a VPN works, if not plain old TCP/IP.
IshKebab 9 hours ago [-]
IP packets have the source address in them so you can directly reply. It's not hierarchical.
estimator7292 8 hours ago [-]
Yes, it is. When you reply to an IP address, you don't magically punch a hole through the entire network to the user's physical location.
You send a packet to your ISP with an address on top. That packet physically travels to your nearest exchange and then the network figures out how to route it to the recipient's real location.
In addition, the recipient's IP address tells you nothing about who or where they are. It's fundamentally un-knowable from the sender's perspective, no matter what the UK wants you to think. IP addresses are not evidence of physical location.
When you receive a packet, there is no way to know where in the world it came from or where it wants to go. It's just a number. You can make guesses but it's still just reading tea leaves.
To believe that IP geolocation is in any way reliable is a gross misunderstanding of TCP/IP and networks in general.
imtringued 10 hours ago [-]
The technical argument is that the routers that are physically located in the UK are passing the packets through, not the website operator.
This is the same as letting a delivery cross your borders, except the delivery vehicle here is permanent infrastructure, similar to a pipeline and it is purposefully set to be permissive and allow anything through.
Why are you suddenly pretending that there is no equivalent to the customs office in this scenario?
It's not like the website operator is sneakily smuggling cargo on a container ship. VPN usage is done UK citizens. The operator has already denied shipments to UK addresses in this scenario.
otherme123 1 days ago [-]
It is easier than that: in Germany for example swastikas are forbidden. But they don't prosecute or fine web pages served in other countries. Or books for that matter. In some countries communist symbology is prohibited, yet they don't fine US web pages for having them. And don't forget the Great Firewall: China blocks pages, and get along with some webs to tune what they serve. But you can publish Tiananmen massacre images in your european hosted web, and they don't fine you: it is their problem to limit access, and they understand it.
echoangle 21 hours ago [-]
Just to clarify for casual readers: there’s no blanket ban on swastikas in Germany. You can use it for satire or historical reasons. You’re going to find a lot of swastikas on the German Wikipedia for example.
marcus_holmes 18 hours ago [-]
France stopped Yahoo! from selling nazi memorabilia in France (because it's illegal to do that in France). This actually went through the US courts and they agreed, mostly [0].
It's kinda voluntary, though, there's no international agreement about this.
This isn't strictly true, major magazines like Der Spiegel can use it for 'satire' or some such nonsense, it's basically at the whim of those in power as CJ Hopkins learned, his satirical use resulted in him being perversely punished, but state aligned magazines get a pass.
EU doesn't believe in human rights or freedoms.
pelorat 14 hours ago [-]
The USA doesn't have a leg to stand on when it comes to human rights.
mattmanser 1 days ago [-]
Not so clear cut though is it. For example, does 4chan use a CDN? And is that CDN on UK/EU soil, serving this content?
Therefore they're actually transacting that business on UK/EU soil.
Didn't the US use this argument to prosecute and extradite the Mega founder?
I wonder if the UK/EU will reverse uno the US's stance and start extraditions on US CEOs.
oliwarner 9 hours ago [-]
> Didn't the US use this argument to prosecute and extradite the Mega founder?
The extradition has succeeded so far because it's based on acts that would have met a criminal bar in New Zealand, and deemed to have a high likelihood of being successfully prosecuted. Fraud, copyright infringement, etc.
The US has standing because many MegaUpload servers were in the US.
ronsor 1 days ago [-]
The US would likely not process those extraditions, and it would make trade and international relations worse for no real benefit.
jimnotgym 1 days ago [-]
Whereas the US are very happy to demand extradition when the shoe is on the other foot.
mattmanser 1 days ago [-]
Like random tariffs?
Imagine this scenario, a major G7 country declares:
All bytes sent to a computer on their soil count as a transaction on their soil.
And the end client being on a VPN is not a defence UNLESS the website owner attempts to verify the user's identity.
Immediately have to pay local taxes, conform to local laws.
Unless you keep all your assets in the US and never fly abroad, our shady website operator is exposing them self to real risk of being snatched by police somewhere or having their assets seized.
The only thing stopping that from happening is the trade agreements the Americans have put in place, the very trade agreements everyone's now looking at and thinking 'what are these really worth?'.
Yeah, it's fantasy and it won't happend but it could.
The internet is not free, it runs on sufferance of a bunch of governments and some, like China, already lock it down.
The more America, who probably gains the most from it right now, plays with fire, the more risk something like this crazy scenario happens.
Another more plausible scenario is countries simply start repealing safe harbor laws. End of YouTube/Facebook/Twitter/etc. in those countries overnight.
ronsor 1 days ago [-]
This is basically a mutually assured destruction scenario.
The US is not going to let all US companies get fined out of retaliation, so there would be more retaliation from the US against the EU, and everyone else. In the end everyone loses, except for China, which as you mentioned is not stupid enough to play these games and decided to simply pick a lane.
China locks down the Internet and blocks foreign players (to varying levels of success). They don't reach overseas to prosecute foreign executives or fine Meta for not removing Party-critical content from Facebook. Of all the parties that could be involved in this censorship drama, China is somehow the most honest.
mattmanser 1 days ago [-]
Like tariffs?
The US are already playing this game. Can you not see that?
ronsor 20 hours ago [-]
I know the tariffs are the bad thing of the moment (and they certainly are capricious), but I don't think you understand how much worse things can get.
hunterpayne 20 hours ago [-]
You realize that the EU has had tariffs on US goods for a very long time right? I'm not saying tariffs are good, but its hypocritical to protest against behavior in which you are currently engaging.
buzer 23 hours ago [-]
> Another more plausible scenario is countries simply start repealing safe harbor laws.
It already happened via GDPR to some degree. CJEU ruled in December that platforms can qualify as controllers for personal data published in user-generated advertisement. The given reasoning was basically that the platform determined the means and the purposes of the processing.
Due to that they can be liable for article 82 damages.
imtringued 10 hours ago [-]
This is a fair argument since you are no longer operating exclusively in one country, but I'm pretty sure most CDNs let you block access to specific countries.
jimnotgym 24 hours ago [-]
Howard Marx was arrested in Spain and extradited to the US on RICO charges by the DEA for something like this. It seemed like extraterritorial action by the US when I read about it.
But US=Good and Europe=Bad on hn
rootusrootus 24 hours ago [-]
> But US=Good and Europe=Bad on hn
LOL, classic. Everyone thinks they are the one being picked on. Plenty of people would argue that what you say here is actually the polar opposite of what happens on HN.
YetAnotherNick 9 hours ago [-]
> But if a Brit comes to your country and buys cocaine from you, in person, you wouldn't expect to be convicted as a dealer in the UK.
No? All countries catch drug dealers from other countries all the time even for the crime that happened outside of their borders. Or do you really think El Chapo could vacation freely in Europe.
DevKoala 1 days ago [-]
That sounds so gross. Why do British people tolerate that?
It’s as if British people belong to their government.
michaelt 1 days ago [-]
The people who think incest porn should be banned are loud and proud in their beliefs. They’ll put up posters, tell their MPs, respond to surveys, and appear in political debates.
The people who support incest porn are a lot less talkative.
As such our windsock government with no strong beliefs does what the survey says is most popular.
The people who think incest porn should be banned are loud and proud in their beliefs. They’ll put up posters, tell their MPs, respond to surveys, and appear in political debates.
The people who support incest porn are a lot less talkative.
I think there is an argument to made the pornography in general is harmful.
But to single out one single type of porn strikes me as... very odd. Maybe politicians can list, explicitly, all the other porn genres they find acceptable or agreeable to them, as a kind of compare and contrast exercise.
> So-called "barely legal" pornography and content depicting sexual relationships between step-relatives are set to be banned amid efforts to regulate intimate image sharing.
> Peers agreed by a majority of one to ban videos and images depicting relationships that would not be allowed in real life.
> They also agreed by 142 votes to 140, majority two, to bring intimate pictures and videos of adults pretending to be children in line with similar images of real children.
What's especially silly is effectively deciding the legality based on the dialog.
jimnotgym 1 days ago [-]
I guess you have to draw a line somewhere, if you are going to legislate against porn you are going to have to decide what is and what is not ok
1 days ago [-]
3rodents 1 days ago [-]
The same principles apply around the world. The U.S. recently invaded a sovereign nation and abducted its democratically elected leader because that leader was ostensibly involved in shipping cocaine to the U.S.
So what? The only reason the U.S. did this is because it can. What will the UK do when 4chan tells its online regulator to go suck a d***, send in James Bond?
__d 15 hours ago [-]
> What will the UK do when 4chan tells its online regulator to go suck a d**, send in James Bond?
Let's say they did. Would you be saying "So what?" then too?
ImJamal 1 days ago [-]
Maduro was not legitimately and democratically elected.
3rodents 1 days ago [-]
Potato potato. No less legitimate than Trump.
ImJamal 1 days ago [-]
Trump was validly elected. He won the required number of electors in the electoral college in the 2016 and 2024 elections.
Maduro on the other hand...
markdown 1 days ago [-]
Didn't Trump admit that Musk fixed it for him?
rootusrootus 24 hours ago [-]
The only election for the president that matters is the electoral college. What the citizens are voting on is a referendum to choose the electors (and in some states it is not binding). You might try to argue that the referendum was rigged somehow, but rigging the electoral college voting is even less plausible.
faithless2026 16 hours ago [-]
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ImJamal 1 days ago [-]
Trump was talking about how Elon campaigned for him for a month in Pennsylvania and said he knows all about the voting counting machines in Pennsylvania.
Even if Musk did something in Pennsylvania, Trump still would have won the electoral college vote.
I think the good faith argument is that Musk confirmed they were secure so that the election wasn't stolen from Trump. But frankly Musk is too much of an idiot to steal an election or make sure it is secure so I don't know how to take it...
LAC-Tech 1 days ago [-]
This argument is tiresome.
You can be against freespeech restrictions in Britain and the 2024 Trump Administrations braindead military and foreign policy.
If I attack either, I am not taking the people in the countries whose politicians make the decisions.
anigbrowl 1 days ago [-]
It’s as if British people belong to their government.
Legally speaking, British people are subjects, not citizens.
dghf 12 hours ago [-]
This myth keeps getting repeated. It hasn't been true since 1949, when British subjects in the UK became Citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies.
In 1983, the status of CUKC was renamed to British citizen (for those CUKCs resident in or closely connected with the UK: the situation in the remaining colonies was more complicated). At the same time, the status of British subject was officially restricted to those few British subjects who didn't qualify for citizenship of the UK or of any other Commonwealth country in 1949, and who were formerly known as "British subjects without citizenship".
So we are officially and legally citizens, not subjects.
dijit 11 hours ago [-]
Ironic, because I feel like they’re the same, it’s semantic feely words that are different.
Right to vote was already established before the change of the name (subject->citizen).
So, what changed? Well subjects have “privileges” that are afforded from the monarch, and citizens have “rights” which are given from the state.
Except:
1) In olde english law, the monarch and the state are literally the same thing.
2) Rights seem to be pretty loosely followed if they’re actually, you know, RIGHTS, and not privileges afforded from the state.
I’d say that semantically the difference is how the words make you feel, not the actual applicability of the terms to anything that has been realised.
dghf 11 hours ago [-]
I think I've heard something similar -- that subjects have duties while citizens have rights.
But of course, citizens typically also have duties -- commonly, the duty to take up arms to defend the state -- and subjects can legitimately expect a reciprocity of obligations from the sovereign (e.g. the enforcement of the "King's Peace"), which sounds quite a bit like rights to me.
(All of which is a verbose and not very coherent way of saying that I agree with you.)
shellac 1 days ago [-]
Then somebody needs to let the government know, because the relevant 1981 act is "[a]n Act to make fresh provision about citizenship and nationality". In that 'British subjects' are a quite limited subset of citizens. Most British people are citizens, not subjects.
What’s the difference? I’m not knowledgeable enough about English law to parse this
shellac 13 hours ago [-]
My (really limited) understanding is that 'British subject' was the status of people in the British empire. It's now reduced to just some people born pre-1949 in Ireland and India. They have many of the rights of citizens, and can become citizens via a simpler route than other non-nationals.
NullPrefix 1 days ago [-]
The term is called "Subject of The Crown"
egorfine 9 hours ago [-]
Yes you are describing consequences that all take place in the jurisdiction where these consequences legally apply. I.e. in the UK.
What Ofcom wants is for their consequences to happen extraterritorially.
miohtama 1 days ago [-]
But are you allowed to post pictures of your cocaine on a website that is not in the UK?
3rodents 1 days ago [-]
You're even allowed to post photos of your cocaine on U.K. websites!
miohtama 1 days ago [-]
It depends. If it causes anxiety to someone, it is illegal. Pictures of drugs could fall into this category.
> Current law allows for restrictions on threatening or abusive words or behaviour intending or likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress or cause a breach of the peace, sending another any article which is indecent or grossly offensive with an intent to cause distress or anxiety,
I don't wish to fall down the rabbit hole of trying to defend U.K. laws so I'll keep this short. You're being intellectually dishonest. That page does not back up your assertion. You have said "If it causes anxiety to someone, it is illegal" but the page says "intending or likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress" which has a different meaning.
anigbrowl 1 days ago [-]
This is a meaningless standard since anyone can claim they were alarmed or distressed and there's no way to invalidate such a subjective claim. I can say I'm alarmed by your comment, does that mean it's valid for Ofcom to fine you?
3rodents 1 days ago [-]
Again, that's not what the law states. The law is not broken when someone is alarmed or distressed by a comment. The law is broken if you post something that is "likely or intending to" which is not judged by the victim. If you walk into a police station in England and tell them that this comment on Hacker News alarmed and distressed you, it doesn't matter, it is up to the legal system to judge my intent, i.e: whether my comment was "likely to" or "intending to" cause alarm and distress.
Whether you agree with the law or not, it is important to be accurate when discussing it. The U.S. vs. U.K. (not) free speech law discussion online so often seems to frame them as fundamentally different, but they are on the same spectrum. The go-to example of the limits of free speech in context of the U.S. legal system is "Shouting fire in a crowded theater". The U.K. laws are the same in principle but a little further along the spectrum.
tick_tock_tick 15 hours ago [-]
Wait so your saying he's actually correct? That's absolutely insane.
miohtama 15 hours ago [-]
That's why UK does 12,000 arrests a year for online comments
That's a horrific law. Criticizing certain religions and institutions are likely to offend many people. Criticizing a politician or criminal or bureaucrat is quite likely to cause distress to them and their supporters.
> The go-to example of the limits of free speech in context of the U.S. legal system is "Shouting fire in a crowded theater". The U.K. laws are the same in principle but a little further along the spectrum.
They are completely different in principle. The principle in the US is preventing the inciting of violence or a situation that could cause physical injury to others. In the UK it has become about protecting feelings of people who could just choose to not read, listen, or get themselves worked up about it.
3rodents 23 hours ago [-]
Like I said, it is a spectrum. You draw the line at physical violence, an entirely arbitrary line, whereas the U.K. goes further and continues to emotional violence.
And before you argue that there is no such thing as emotional violence: do you agree that some emotional harm can be worse than some physical harm? I'd much rather be punched than subjected to the worst emotional trauma I've experienced in my life.
> In the UK it has become about protecting feelings of people who could just choose to not read, listen, or get themselves worked up about it.
I'm not going to defend U.K. laws but it is patently absurd to say something like this is in the context of a conversation about U.S. vs. U.K. free speech laws when the U.S. courts allow schools to ban certain books because of "protecting feelings of people who could just choose to not read, listen, or get themselves worked up about it". Heaven forbid a Florida student learns about homosexuality, won't anyone think of the parents?
stinkbeetle 16 hours ago [-]
> Like I said, it is a spectrum.
No it really isn't.
> You draw the line at physical violence, an entirely arbitrary line, whereas the U.K. goes further and continues to emotional violence.
It must appear as a spectrum to you because you've been taken in by propaganda used by authoritarians and fundamentalists to justify using actual violence and censorship to crush dissent and criticism.
There is no such thing as emotional violence. It's hurt feelings. There is no "before" about it, and we don't need to agree on anything, you're just wrong.
> And before you argue that there is no such thing as emotional violence: do you agree that some emotional harm can be worse than some physical harm? I'd much rather be punched than subjected to the worst emotional trauma I've experienced in my life.
Non sequitur.
A society where people are reliant on the government to protect them from having their feelings hurt by hearing other people's opinions is not a good or sustainable one.
The other thing is that I guarantee you this is totally selectively enforced and prosecuted, which is a hallmark of these kinds of authoritarian laws. People whose thoughts and opinions are considered verboten or threatening to the regime I'm sure have little or no protection of their feelings and sensibilities when they are insulted by other people's opinions and comments.
> I'm not going to defend U.K. laws but it is patently absurd to say something like this is in the context of a conversation about U.S. vs. U.K. free speech laws when the U.S. courts allow schools to ban certain books because of "protecting feelings of people who could just choose to not read, listen, or get themselves worked up about it". Heaven forbid a Florida student learns about homosexuality, won't anyone think of the parents?
I don't know what point you are trying to make here or if you know what freedom of speech is. Government schools and government education bureaucrats developing policies about curriculum and teaching materials doesn't seem to offer useful commentary about freedom of speech, so I really don't know how to respond to your question.
3rodents 12 hours ago [-]
Again, you're drawing an entirely arbitrary line between physical violence and "hurt feelings". You're reducing speech to just "other people's opinions" but as the U.S. courts have held many times, speech isn't just opinions.
> The other thing is that I guarantee you this is totally selectively enforced and prosecuted
Unlike all other laws? Tell me, who is more likely to end up on death row? To be prosecuted for drug possession? How much jail time is a rich white student likely to receive for rape compared to a poor black student? All laws are selectively enforced and prosecuted.
> I don't know what point you are trying to make here or if you know what freedom of speech is. Government schools and government education bureaucrats developing policies about curriculum and teaching materials doesn't seem to offer useful commentary about freedom of speech, so I really don't know how to respond to your question.
You don't understand that Florida schools banning books because they contain references to homosexuality is a free speech issue? Judge Carlos E. Mendoza in Penguin Random House v. Gibson said "The state’s prohibition of material that ‘describes sexual conduct’ is overbroad and unconstitutional.”. Unfortunately, many other judges did not rule the same way.
The point is that the "free speech" you lord over other countries is arbitrary, those who proclaim the U.S. to have true free speech and countries like the U.K. to be oppressive anti free speech regimes are delusional and have been conned by U.S. exceptionalism.
You can disagree with another county's choice to draw the line somewhere other than where the U.S. draws it but to proclaim the U.S. has real free speech that stands alone from other countries is lying to yourself. What, exactly, is unique about the U.S. free speech laws? That it is a constitutional amendment?
We could debate where the line should be, whether the U.K. or the U.S. has it right or wrong, but to argue that the U.K.'s laws are somehow distinct from the U.S. laws is nonsensical. I do not agree with where the U.K. draws the line. I also do not agree with where the U.S. draws the line.
> It must appear as a spectrum to you because you've been taken in by propaganda used by authoritarians and fundamentalists to justify using actual violence and censorship to crush dissent and criticism.
And for one last final point: how many protestors has the U.S. government killed this year? How many protestors have been killed by the U.K. government for protesting against government policy? I'm sure Renée Good and Alex Pretti and all the other murdered U.S. protestors are comforted in their graves by the glorious anti-authoritarian pro-dissent free speech laws that protected their dissent and protest so well.
stinkbeetle 10 hours ago [-]
> Again, you're drawing an entirely arbitrary line between physical violence and "hurt feelings". You're reducing speech to just "other people's opinions" but as the U.S. courts have held many times, speech isn't just opinions.
It's not an arbitrary line. It's the definition being discussed. It's not a "spectrum", it's not a "slope". The line drawn is the line.
> > The other thing is that I guarantee you this is totally selectively enforced and prosecuted
> Unlike all other laws?
In an authoritarian regime like the UK no doubt they also selectively enforce and prosecute other crimes, you're right about that. But absolutely the threshold to meet these kind of ludicrous statues is so arbitrary it's laughable, a bureaucrat or law enforcement agent for the state can just make things up as they go really.
> I don't know what point you are trying to make here or if you know what freedom of speech is. Government schools and government education bureaucrats developing policies about curriculum and teaching materials doesn't seem to offer useful commentary about freedom of speech, so I really don't know how to respond to your question.
> You don't understand that Florida schools banning books because they contain references to homosexuality is a free speech issue? Judge Carlos E. Mendoza in Penguin Random House v. Gibson said "The state’s prohibition of material that ‘describes sexual conduct’ is overbroad and unconstitutional.”. Unfortunately, many other judges did not rule the same way.
I don't think government agents and lawmakers setting curriculum and teaching materials for government schools is a freedom of speech issue, no.
> The point is that the "free speech" you lord over other countries is arbitrary, those who proclaim the U.S. to have true free speech and countries like the U.K. to be oppressive anti free speech regimes are delusional and have been conned by U.S. exceptionalism.
Just repeating that it's arbitrary doesn't make your case, sadly.
> You can disagree with another county's choice to draw the line somewhere other than where the U.S. draws it but to proclaim the U.S. has real free speech that stands alone from other countries is lying to yourself. What, exactly, is unique about the U.S. free speech laws? That it is a constitutional amendment?
I don't know about unique, but I know the state can not easily intimidate, bully, censor, and prosecute you for posting your thoughts online under the pretense that it might hurt peoples' feelings. Unlike the UK, for example.
> We could debate where the line should be, whether the U.K. or the U.S. has it right or wrong, but to argue that the U.K.'s laws are somehow distinct from the U.S. laws is nonsensical. I do not agree with where the U.K. draws the line. I also do not agree with where the U.S. draws the line.
Why are the British so angry when confronted by the fact that they do not have freedom of speech, then in the next sentence go on to talk about how great it is their government protects their feelings from being hurt by hearing what other people in their country (and even around the world) think? It's bizarre. It's a phrase that has long been understood around the world to be American style freedom of speech, i.e., that the state should not have the power to censor or prosecute its people for speech. UK does not have it.
"You can say what you want as long as the government does not decide it might offend somebody" is not freedom of speech. If that is what you think freedom of speech is, then North Korea and Pakistan have it.
Simply bizarre.
> And for one last final point: how many protestors has the U.S. government killed this year? How many protestors have been killed by the U.K. government for protesting against government policy? I'm sure Renée Good and Alex Pretti and all the other murdered U.S. protestors are comforted in their graves by the glorious anti-authoritarian pro-dissent free speech laws that protected their dissent and protest so well.
This isn't an argument because my claim isn't that US is not authoritarian nor that it never violates the rights of its citizens.
A more relevant question would be, how many people have the countries arrested and prosecuted for what they have said or written? And the answer for USA quite well might be non-zero because all governments are by nature corrupt and power-hungry and will violate the rights of their citizens to maintain the power of their regime, as is obviously the case in the UK. The US government is not fundamentally different in that regard, but the staggering difference in the rate of such cases shows that in the US it has been much more difficult for the government to do this.
The US government is still authoritarian and thirsts to take rights from its citizens, and has -- rights to privacy/unreasonable search/seizure, rights to arms, have been flagrantly violated. So has freedom of speech for that matter as leaks like the Twitter files have exposed, but at least for now those cases are still considered wrongdoing by the government and the people often have recourse with government courts, which is why I would say it still generally has freedom of speech.
The UK simply doesn't. It doesn't even pretend it does (except to just claiming freedom of speech means something it doesn't).
1 days ago [-]
tokyobreakfast 1 days ago [-]
The US CBP routinely intercepts "dangerous" products. I assume the Brits have the same.
It's a wonder why AliExpress flies under the radar. I assume it's impossible to keep up with it all.
The UK's comically over-engineered electrics are no match for some of these plug-in-and-die sketchy USB chargers from the Far East.
DiodesGoneWild on YouTube does teardowns of many of these incredibly poorly constructed deathtraps.
strideashort 1 days ago [-]
And by extension, the UK is free to implement His Majesty’s Greatest Firewall of the UK should they wish to control what is imported.
mosura 1 days ago [-]
This whole episode is a charade to do exactly that while claiming they are morally superior to China because the UK does it “for the children” while China does it because they are just evil authoritarians.
For Tiananmen Square substitute Rape Gangs.
cs02rm0 1 days ago [-]
I don't know why this is being downvoted.
It's depressingly true; it seems the UK really heading quickly towards a Great Firewall, they've been looking to control VPN use [1] and the top most read article on BBC News right now is yet another public sector cover up of children being sexually abused. [2]
> the UK really heading quickly towards a Great Firewall
> top most read article on BBC News right now is yet another public sector cover up
Do you not see a tiny little bit of contradiction here (regardless of your mis-characterisation of the second link)
hunterpayne 19 hours ago [-]
No, I think it is you who is confused. The GP's point is that the BBC article isn't accurate or honest. You seem to have assumed the information in the link was accurate when the proof the GP implied was that the link isn't accurate.
ge96 1 days ago [-]
I remember I bought some pills online one time (neutroopics type) they came from like India and were intercepted by customs/I got a letter. It's funny my roommate at the time bought em and didn't get intercepted so was odd.
In hindsight it is dumb to buy random pills and take em.
refulgentis 1 days ago [-]
Commenting on Europe has gotten really lax the last year or so. People kinda will just say whatever pops into their head and it’s some drive-by claim that they haven’t thought about for a second past it popping into their head, presumably because it’s become normalized. (i.e. “but everyone knows Europe goes too far”)
Sometimes it self resolves - as you contributed here, yes, countries limit and interfere and fine other countries businesses, all the time!
I don’t know what yours means though. What electrics are made in the UK? How are they over engineered?
wizzwizz4 1 days ago [-]
I think they mean the fact that UK plug sockets are earthed, and contain a mechanism that prevents you from shorting live and neutral with a bent fork, even though those safety mechanisms are rarely the last line of defence (hence "over-engineered"… you can probably tell that I disagree with that assessment).
tokyobreakfast 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
refulgentis 1 days ago [-]
What do you mean?
I’m at +4, so, I’m doubting it’s unreadable…
cookiengineer 1 days ago [-]
> Are you having a mini-stroke?
This comment is comically pointless.
jimnotgym 1 days ago [-]
> yet it continues to be legally imported.
I am not sure it is legal to import dangerous electrical equipment to the UK.
It may be unenforced, that doesn't make it legal.
crtasm 1 days ago [-]
Is it correct to say the consumer is importing a product when it's aliexpress shipping it to them?
nvme0n1p1 1 days ago [-]
Of course. What situation are you imagining where a country imports a product without the seller shipping the product to that country?
helsinkiandrew 1 days ago [-]
Particularly if AliExpress is paying local VAT and import taxes (or at least dealing with the import paperwork) or even less if it’s from one of their local (UK/EU etc) warehouses
freehorse 1 days ago [-]
They have initiated the transaction. It would be "shipping to them" if somebody is sending them something by their own volition.
john_strinlai 1 days ago [-]
yes, aliexpress would not be shipping it if the consumer did not order it.
reisse 1 days ago [-]
Unless AliExpress has a local entity, like they do in some countries, yes.
1 days ago [-]
RobotToaster 1 days ago [-]
In theory you can still sue for a faulty product under UK consumer protection laws if it was sold by an international retailer, of course enforcement is "difficult".
ndsipa_pomu 12 hours ago [-]
I was surprised by Ofcom trying to use that analogy as it's not at all relevant. 4Chan isn't selling anything in the UK, so why are Ofcom harping on about consumer protection?
It's a stupid law and Ofcom are stupid. I wish that Labour hadn't continued with implementing the Tories authoritarian law, but then Labour seem to be a Tory-Lite party but with just less blatant corruption.
dijit 11 hours ago [-]
theres no mainstream anti-authoritarian party in the UK.
ndsipa_pomu 10 hours ago [-]
Possibly Greens? (That's the way I voted)
philipallstar 10 hours ago [-]
The Greens are pretty authoritarian. Just a different authority.
1 days ago [-]
gadders 1 days ago [-]
If it wasn't for 4Chan, we might never have solved the Haruhi problem
I used to go on a curated version of 4Chan via Telegram. Yes there is a lot of racism (although it flies in every direction, between every ethnicity you could imagine) but there is also (due to the anonymous nature) some genuinely interesting discussions. I remember one thread about aircraft carriers being of no use being debated by US and UK submarine officers.
There are also some genuinely funny bits. There was a guy in Greece who had found out that as long as he never graduated, he could live a basic life for free at university. His nickname was Dormogenes.
monegator 1 days ago [-]
It is the freedom that comes from being anonymous.
To mock and ridicule, yes. to speak your mind, sure, But first and foremost to discuss between true equals, because you can only be judged by what you write, because the value you are bringing to the discussion comes from your words and not from your reputation as the real-world human you are.
Being free to discuss controversial topics without having repercussion to your job or family (which is why doxxing was so frowned upon back then)
Being free to do some stupid childish fun, just for laughs.
Something we still had when it was just forums, even though we did have accounts they did not represent our whole persona, and we could be different people on different platform.
Something that was almost lost for good when normies invaded the internet due to social networks. It's not completely lost yet, and we must fight to keep it.
cindyllm 1 days ago [-]
[dead]
windowliker 22 hours ago [-]
>There was a guy in Greece who had found out that as long as he never graduated, he could live a basic life for free at university.
I remember him. Sadly he got evicted in the end. F.
krackers 15 hours ago [-]
Unless it was someone else larping as him, as recent as feb this year he posted that he's still living there (apparently got an extension or something). He was arrested, but he got released within a few days.
there is a great clickhole headline that your comment reminds me of
"Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made a Great Point"
4chan has produced some hilarious/interesting stuff, and they have also driven people to suicide. i suppose it is up to everyone individually to make the value judgement there.
pc86 7 hours ago [-]
Well, much like HN, 4chan is a couple dozen boards of different topics frequented by something like 22 million unique users every month. So of course there's going to be good things there. And of course there's going to be bad things there. You don't get to pick and choose.
Trying to make a "value judgment" and boil the whole thing down to "4chan good" or "4chan bad," seems with even the most generous interpretation... incredibly reductive and foolhardy.
john_strinlai 6 hours ago [-]
i wasnt trying to make any sort of profound point. i was reminded of an applicable quote i like, so i posted it.
and of course my comment is reductive, it is a total of 3 sentences. i dont really know what nuance you were expecting to get out a 3 sentence comment.
everything is gray, with both good and bad. 4chan included. there we go -- more true, less interesting.
SkyeCA 21 hours ago [-]
> and they have also driven people to suicide
As has Reddit, Facebook, etc.
Bad things occasionally happening on a platform doesn't make the platform/site inherently bad.
john_strinlai 8 hours ago [-]
weird combination of "what about" and misinterpreting my comment.
whywhywhywhy 7 hours ago [-]
Not really when you were holding up causing suicide as why it's bad when every high traffic social network has done that.
john_strinlai 7 hours ago [-]
yes, you are repeating the "what about" part. my comment has literally nothing to do with other social networks.
if it helps, feel free to apply the original quote to facebook or whatever when they do something good. but this article and comment chain is about 4chan. so i am talking about 4chan.
nvme0n1p1 1 days ago [-]
Replace "4chan" with "humanity in general" and your statement still holds true.
BobaFloutist 1 days ago [-]
I mean that's pretty vacuously true, since (the community of) "4chan" is a subset of (the total population of) "humanity in general," but it's a stronger and more interesting claim to make about the subculture in question.
If anything, the person you were replying to was intentionally describing how 4chan is less dissimilar to humanity in general than its typical portrayal, so responding with a dismissal that that makes them just the same as everyone else is really just affirming their point.
philipallstar 10 hours ago [-]
"4chan has done these" and "humanity has done these" are equally vacuous.
john_strinlai 1 days ago [-]
sure, yeah, the original quote was about a person instead of a website, so that makes sense.
simianparrot 11 hours ago [-]
Societies drive people to suicide in general. Families also do. I don't think the solution is to make the world a padded room.
john_strinlai 8 hours ago [-]
>I don't think the solution is to make the world a padded room.
..neither do i?
onetimeusename 5 hours ago [-]
I haven't gone on in many years, almost decades. I feel like it was both a huge waste of time but also useful. I eventually lost interest in keeping up with it all. I am surprised anyone's mind can handle being there for long. Even m00t himself left and I don't think ever came back.
pc86 7 hours ago [-]
While there's plenty of legit, true racism throughout 4chan I was always struck by how incredibly specific it could get. Like "Congolese Bantus subjugating pygmies" kind of specific.
1 days ago [-]
john_strinlai 1 days ago [-]
>However, a lawyer representing the company - which has previously said it won't pay such fines - has responded to the demand with an AI-generated cartoon image of a hamster.
>The latest image is not the first picture of a hamster lawyers for 4chan have sent in reply to Ofcom
amazing. same energy as the pirate bay telling dreamworks to sodomize themselves. i cant help but laugh at the absurdness of it.
uyzstvqs 1 days ago [-]
From last year:
> Messages sent to 4chan's press email went unreturned. One of the two dozen or so alleged moderators purportedly exposed in the hack wrote back using their 4chan email address to say that the site had released a "video statement." The user then pointed Reuters to an unrelated, explicit four-minute video montage. A request for further information was followed by a link to a different video with similar content.
I really thought it was going to say that they sent them to Never Gonna Give You Up, but a shock video is about as funny.
aydyn 1 days ago [-]
Unlike TPB founders who were convicted in 2009 because copyright infringement also violates swedish law, the 4chan lawyers are correct that they are breaking no U.S. law. 1A provides broad protections.
veunes 11 hours ago [-]
It's funny on the surface, but it also kind of highlights how broken the interaction is
OsrsNeedsf2P 1 days ago [-]
4chan's lawyer's response:
"In the only country in which 4chan operates, the United States, it is breaking no law and indeed its conduct is expressly protected by the First Amendment."[0]
As shown in that same article, they also responded:
>>>
"Companies – wherever they're based – are not allowed to sell unsafe toys to children in the UK. And society has long protected youngsters from things like alcohol, smoking and gambling. The digital world should be no different," she said.
"The UK is setting new standards for online safety. Age checks and risk assessments are cornerstones of our laws, and we'll take robust enforcement action against firms that fall short."
<<<
Quite frankly she seems completely out of touch with her own argument. The UK can certainly legislate away tobacco sales, for instance; they can't go after tobacco producers in a foreign state. 4Chan operates in the US and is a US company. They have no jurisdiction over it, even if their citizenry can access it; it's on them to block that access if they don't like it. Unless they're also implying that the US government should be allowed to go after UK companies that don't follow it's free speech regulations because American citizens can access them.
comex 1 days ago [-]
> Unless they're also implying that the US government should be allowed to go after UK companies that don't follow it's free speech regulations because American citizens can access them.
Precedent in the US is that courts do in fact have jurisdiction over a foreign website's owner if the owner "purposefully availed itself of the U.S. forum or purposefully directed its activities toward it", a test which is less demanding than it sounds. [1]
And US has taken advantage of this to go after foreign websites such as Megaupload, BTC-e, Liberty Reserve, etc.
Therefore, if there were a US law requiring companies to follow free speech rules, it could potentially be enforced against foreign website owners. But no such law currently exists. The First Amendment itself only applies to the US government (and to companies working on behalf of the US government). There is also the SPEECH Act, which, among other provisions, creates a cause of action where if someone sues a US person in a foreign court over their speech, they can sue back in US court. But only for declaratory judgement, not damages or an injunction. The goal is mainly just to prevent US courts from enforcing judgements from the foreign court in such cases.
> even if their citizenry can access it; it's on them to block that access if they don't like it
Not even China and North Korea whine about or send fake “fines” to offshore entities. They just block their sites and move on with life.
lmm 14 hours ago [-]
> Not even China and North Korea whine about or send fake “fines” to offshore entities. They just block their sites and move on with life.
On the contrary, both of those are very active in going after people who operate websites they don't like from overseas, and/or their family members (who are often easier to get at). They just don't publish legal notices around it.
spacedcowboy 1 days ago [-]
[sigh] and this is the first (mandated) step in that process. The UK don’t expect 4chan to pay the fine, which means, once the period to pay has expired, they’ll just be blocked instead.
bigfatkitten 17 hours ago [-]
They could skip that step entirely if the relevant legislation was people with even a general grasp of geography and how the Internet works.
pc86 7 hours ago [-]
Yes but this is British legislation so that Venn diagram is two non-overlapping circles.
gnfargbl 1 days ago [-]
Speaking as a UK citizen: you're exactly right. If the UK wants to prevent 4chan from being imported into the UK then it needs to block it at the border as it would for physical goods.
The fact that's technically hard to do (at least without going full-on CCP) doesn't change the situation. Attempting to fine a foreign entity for doing something that breaks no laws in the foreign entity's jurisdiction is just risible.
cm2187 1 days ago [-]
And we shall call it "the Great Firewall of the UK".
It is amazing that these guys don't see the irony of monkeying totaliterian states policies, in term of surveillance and censorship.
bigfatkitten 1 days ago [-]
The UK, like Australia and many of its other offshoots has always had a bit of a totalitarian streak.
2postsperday 23 hours ago [-]
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hunterpayne 19 hours ago [-]
Oddly that's Zuck doing that. And weirdly, the law would only apply to app stores. I think that's a separate movement from what the UK is doing though. That US law is designed to hamstring Meta's competition not restrict political speech but it can be abused the same way I think.
heavyset_go 14 hours ago [-]
There is no "US law" there are 45+ pending or passed pieces of state legislation, along with the federal Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) that's yet to be passed.
The PACs that push the one specific law you're talking about also push laws in other states, and federally, that are very, very different and draconian.
bitwize 18 hours ago [-]
The Debian apt repository is a "covered app store" under the law, as is any place that makes software available for download.
InterlooperX 13 hours ago [-]
If only it were isolated to the UK. I know a website that does not hold content itself but rather links to other sites. Basically exactly what google does.
And yet, me sitting in Germany suddenly saw a nice banned notice when trying to access the site claiming this is because of "a high court verdict yadayadaya".
Why on earth do I now find ways around a UK court order to unblock a website when I am nowhere near their country? They should at least try and keep things within their jurisdiction.
bigmealbigmeal 1 days ago [-]
They’re going to keep ignoring these issues because the wrong people are pointing them out. The enemy must always be wrong.
Tribalism is awful for societies. There’s a reason Russia put so much effort into amplifying it in the west.
tokyobreakfast 1 days ago [-]
So, the Great FUK for short?
AlgorithmicTime 1 days ago [-]
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fauigerzigerk 1 days ago [-]
UK ISPs do block some domains though.
gnfargbl 1 days ago [-]
Which does nothing to block 4chan, because everyone knows what a VPN is and how to get one.
dmix 1 days ago [-]
The same UK politicians are now pushing to block VPNs.
Hence the great firewall talk which they are trying to skirt by fining US companies.
fauigerzigerk 1 days ago [-]
Right, but it shows their mindset. They're not letting China comparisons stop them from doing anything. It's not about the technology. In their mind, it's about the purpose and the legitimacy of any censorship.
frostiness 1 days ago [-]
Unlike other websites though, VPNs are generally banned from posting on 4chan, which would definitely hurt traffic.
cocoto 23 hours ago [-]
Yes but the number of 4chan passes would skyrocket to be able to post with a VPN.
thunderfork 1 days ago [-]
It's very much a rock-and-a-hard-place situation. "It's an import", so they have to respond to it like they'd respond to imports...
But unlike physical imports, there's a sense that blocking these imports is an affront to base philosophical freedom in a way that prohibiting physical imports isn't.
akersten 1 days ago [-]
> there's a sense that blocking these imports is an affront to base philosophical freedom in a way that prohibiting physical imports isn't.
It would serve UK legislators well to explore that tingling sense some more before they consider any further efforts in this direction, but that's just my two pence.
drcongo 1 days ago [-]
I hope they do block it.
egorfine 9 hours ago [-]
> The UK is setting new standards for online safety.
Keyword: "The UK".
> cornerstones of our laws
Keyword: "our laws".
> and we'll take robust enforcement action
Enforcement action can only take place within the jurisdiction (with a notable exception of the US which doesn't give a single fuck about someone else's law).
Bender 8 hours ago [-]
I believe the onus would be on countries outside of the US to block 4chan no different than China having to block a site in their great firewall for making a picture of Xi looking like Winnie the Pooh.
umpalumpaaa 1 days ago [-]
Well the US government / prosecutors go after people who break their laws all the time… eg. Kim .Com, etc
christkv 1 days ago [-]
Their goal is to create a presedent so they can start applying it to platforms they don't like. Its happening all over Europe not just the UK and the plan is clear. They want to repress discourse that is not officially sanctioned.
deaddodo 1 days ago [-]
They can try to set whatever precedent they like. But US courts won't accept the argument, so it'll just stay a fee that accumulates on some paper ledger.
ls612 1 days ago [-]
And then the children of the admin are traveling somewhere and get yoinked as leverage by the UK/EU/Brazil/Whoever and all of the legal arguments in the world won't do you any good. There is only one law that matters in the real world as much as so many westerners want to put their head in the sand about it.
whatever1 1 days ago [-]
The real goal it to start banning US sites like fb,aws etc so that Europe starts building their own
zer00eyz 1 days ago [-]
> Europe starts building their own
They have had decades to do this. They have not.
Risk aversion and Regulation are the heart of the issue.
Same things that have flattened the American housing market for the last 30 years.
whatever1 1 days ago [-]
They did not because they were in the honeymoon with the US. They were buying weapons and expensive American services in exchange for security. This era is over.
Today building social network or a cloud provider is a trivial exercise. If the financial incentive is there (aka ban of US services), they will pop out like mushrooms.
christkv 1 days ago [-]
Nah fb, aws etc will comply. They have no spine.
chrisjj 1 days ago [-]
> 4Chan operates in the US
And the UK... each time it delivers there.
anigbrowl 1 days ago [-]
Don't give up your day job.
chrisjj 1 days ago [-]
Too late. I did that years ago!
richwater 1 days ago [-]
The UK can block whatever they want if they'd like to become an authoritarian firewall state.
But they have no legal basis to fine 4chan.
369548684892826 22 hours ago [-]
Surely they do have the legal basis, that's how the fine got issued. What they're missing is any way to enforce it.
The Online Safety Act 2023[1][2][3] (OSA) (c. 50) is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom to regulate online content. It was passed on 26 October 2023 and gives the relevant secretary of state the power to designate, suppress, and record a wide range of online content that they deem illegal or harmful to children.[4][5]
wat10000 1 days ago [-]
I disagree. It's no different from selling to a foreign buyer by sending the product in the mail. You're not doing business in their country, and it's the buyer's responsibility to adhere to their local laws about imports, not yours.
vorpalhex 1 days ago [-]
4Chan has blocked the entire UK IP range. They do not host any infrastructure there.
They are bound by UK law exactly as much as they are bound by Venutian or Mars law.
akersten 1 days ago [-]
> 4Chan has blocked the entire UK IP range.
And honestly this is more than they really should even have to do. I think it does go above their obligation. They're doing Offcom a favor here, they don't even have to figure out how to block it themselves.
1317 1 days ago [-]
> 4Chan has blocked the entire UK IP range
this isn't true
JonChesterfield 1 days ago [-]
Nope. A direct connection from residential British Telecom line is fine.
dmix 1 days ago [-]
The lawyer is great on Twitter, he's not only defending 4chan, he's on a crusade to prevent this stuff in the future and trying to get bills passed in the US.
It's unfortunate that the US lawyers did not cite the reply given in Arkell v Pressdram.
2b3a51 1 days ago [-]
Arkell v Pressdram was in response to a civil claim that never reached a court, so slightly different.
I take the wider point though.
epolanski 1 days ago [-]
But 4chan doesn't geoblock users?
So it's clearly operating globally.
Country flags are a major feature of the board.
sippeangelo 23 hours ago [-]
4chan is clearly operating in the US. The UK can easily cut the overseas cables and fix the problem!
epolanski 22 hours ago [-]
It doesn't matter where 4Chan is incorporated if it offers a service available to other countries.
If I offer a service in US I still have to respect US law, it doesn't matter that I'm based in Luxembourg or New Zealand.
The same applies in reverse.
E.g. many US news outlets never cared to implement gdpr and geoblocked European users from accessing their websites.
andersa 19 hours ago [-]
Thinking that you are operating in the UK because a UK user can theoretically send packets to you, is similar to thinking a corner store in Japan is operating in the UK because a brit can theoretically get on a plane and fly there to shop.
senordevnyc 17 hours ago [-]
I run a site in the US and have zero intention of implementing GDPR or geoblocking anyone. If the feckless EU bureaucrats don’t want me serving Europeans, they can either block me or convince their citizens to stop requesting things from my servers. Beyond that, they can fuck off.
pelorat 14 hours ago [-]
This is of course fine, if you intend to never travel internationally. Not defending any one, Ofcom is terrible just like 4chan.
senordevnyc 4 hours ago [-]
I travel internationally all the time, including to Europe. These clowns don’t even have the ability to connect me to my site. They can’t subpoena anyone, they have no control or visibility. Why does anyone outside of the EU give a shit about this? It baffles me.
epolanski 10 hours ago [-]
It doesn't work like that.
If my services are available in US, I need to comply with US laws as well.
senordevnyc 4 hours ago [-]
You can declare that “it doesn’t work like this” all you want, and I’ll just keep ignoring it. GDPR is totally irrelevant to me, and no one who disagrees has the power to actually do anything about it.
petcat 1 days ago [-]
And now we'll watch the UK take the logical next step which is for the government to mandate that all ISPs in the country block 4chan.
CCP "Great Firewall" style.
j-krieger 1 days ago [-]
You'd be amazed at the times I've argued with people on HN that free speech infringement by the UK government has grown rampant, only for them to enact the next draconian law a month later.
dmix 1 days ago [-]
UK is trying to be like Russia and China, where a minder will show up at your door if you post something the government doesn't like. Then people online will defend it because the investigation didn't turn into a full criminal charge or they say the people simply deserved it.
The reality is this will seriously chill speech broadly across the country regardless of either of those outcomes, and the technical costs of enforcement will be steep.
hunterpayne 18 hours ago [-]
"UK is trying to be like Russia and China, where a minder will show up at your door if you post something the government doesn't like."
The UK government has been openly doing this for a couple of years by now.
4ndrewl 1 days ago [-]
We don't have any pro-free-speech political parties, nor a written constitution unfortunately.
I mean there are parties that say they like free speech, but it never extends to the sort of speech they disagree with, or by people of the wrong colour/religion/gender etc.
vdqtp3 1 days ago [-]
Same. The responses are consistently "but they only restrict bad speech"
RobotToaster 1 days ago [-]
We've had Hadrian's firewall blocking certain piracy sites for years.
tokyobreakfast 1 days ago [-]
Most Brits already have a VPN to beat off so the effect will be negligible.
jjice 1 days ago [-]
"Most" is probably not accurate. I can't imagine the average middle aged individual in the UK has a VPN they use regularly. I'd be pleasantly surprised if that was the case.
TheOtherHobbes 1 days ago [-]
The average middle aged individual probably doesn't read 4chan.
VPN take up in the UK is around 20-25%
1 days ago [-]
petcat 1 days ago [-]
And then they'll make VPNs illegal
itintheory 1 days ago [-]
I suspect they'll be harder (impossible?) to block, but that will probably deter the casual user.
Melonai 24 hours ago [-]
Russia is leading the pack in banning VPNs, and they're, surprisingly, getting pretty good at it. They caught my naive attempts at trying to use Tailscale, WireGuard and OpenVPN immediately. People in government are laughing at the populace struggling to bypass their whitelists, blocks and slowdowns, directly saying that "you can have your VPN, it just won't work, and you will never access anything beyond our Russian sites again. Have fun.". Currently trying to find a way around it using some of the new VPN protocols that popped up trying to bypass the Roskomnadzor DPI, and maybe, I certainly hope, that I will even succeed, but either way they're showing that it's technically feasible.
I really hope for all the people in the UK that your country doesn't go down this route.
konart 14 hours ago [-]
Just install 3x-ui or Remnawave and spend some time configuring them for security.
It's not often that I'll use this phrase, but that is absolutely based. 4chan chose the perfect lawyer to represent them.
cashbreaker 6 hours ago [-]
that is some true masterpiece of a letter
rconti 1 days ago [-]
> "Companies – wherever they're based – are not allowed to sell unsafe toys to children in the UK. And society has long protected youngsters from things like alcohol, smoking and gambling. The digital world should be no different," she said.
So the UK plans to fine Parisian bars that serve alcohol to British under-18s in France on holiday?
Aloisius 1 days ago [-]
I'm not sure one needs to stretch the analogy this far.
If someone from the UK calls me on the phone and I start reading them posts on 4chan, is the UK going to fine me too?
pwillia7 1 days ago [-]
you got yer loiscence?
ceejayoz 1 days ago [-]
This is more like the UK fining Parisian bars that courier alcohol to under-18s in the UK.
strideashort 1 days ago [-]
Not exactly.
It’s like fining Parisian bars to hand over alcohol to couriers without checking to whom couriers will deliver it.
Couriers = all involved network providers.
erentz 16 hours ago [-]
The Parisian bars are the ones writing the address on the package not the courier.
strideashort 15 hours ago [-]
When DoorDash or whatever courier comes to a restaurant, they pick up “order number”. That order number is in essence just private IP. Courier translates it to address=public ip.
It follows that the restaurant writes the address on every delivery. Do they ID each recipient?
erentz 14 hours ago [-]
In the original example the Parisian bars sells and sends the alcohol.
You’ve modified that to introduce a proxy, DoorDash, that now sells and sends the alcohol. If DoorDash sells it they’re the ones in trouble in your example.
tsukikage 1 days ago [-]
More like the UK fining US porn publishers for not stopping British kids searching through the hedges in their street
jjgreen 1 days ago [-]
Hedge-porn, I remember hedge-porn ...
shrubble 1 days ago [-]
It’s a lot more like banning the importation of books and newspapers that the government doesn’t agree with…
shaky-carrousel 1 days ago [-]
Which is equally absurd.
OJFord 1 days ago [-]
No it isn't? Real example is Amazon, a US company that sells alcohol in the UK, and is required to check age on order & delivery.
qup 1 days ago [-]
Amazon is an international corporation with UK-incorporated entities.
OJFord 1 days ago [-]
That's true but not relevant to the spirit of the point.
ronsor 1 days ago [-]
It is relevant. There's a material difference between shipping material overseas and shipping it (and handling it) within the destination country.
If someone mails $ProhibitedItem at a USPS to the UK, then it's the job of local UK police and/or customs to reject the parcel if it is prohibited. It's the UK's problem, de facto if not de jure, because the sender is out of reach.
If someone with a UK subsidiary and local processing center mails $ProhibitedItem to their center and delivers it to someone in the UK, then that's more than the UK's problem.
jimnotgym 1 days ago [-]
And on an electronic delivery, is a great firewall the equivalent of customs? And therfore the only way to enforce sovereignty?
testing22321 19 hours ago [-]
Absolutely yes. If a government thinks there is stuff for sale its citizens should not be allowed to buy, they don’t stop county x making it or selling it. They block the thing from entering their country.
If the government thinks there are ones and zeros on the internet it’s citizens should not be allowed to see, they should block them from entering the country.
echoangle 21 hours ago [-]
Practically, yes.
erentz 16 hours ago [-]
If that were true why is everyone so irritated by this? Just ignore it in that case. But for those people that may want to become subject to British jurisdiction in future or do other business there in future, they will take requests from Ofcom seriously.
shaky-carrousel 7 hours ago [-]
No, real example is a British citizen picking up an American AM radio station that happens to broadcast things forbidden by the UK law, and the UK fining such radio station.
OJFord 1 days ago [-]
In theory the children are committing a crime yes, but obviously enforcement is extremely low; left mainly to their teachers.
I don't think UK law governs foreign companies' overseas operations based on the nationality of the customer though, no.
1 days ago [-]
dijit 1 days ago [-]
They’re not breaking any law.
Laws apply to actions in the country, they’re not based on citizenship.
If you go to Amsterdam and sleep with a hooker, you didn’t break a law by doing that: despite prostitution (specifically purchasing sex) being illegal in many western countries.
jltsiren 1 days ago [-]
Laws apply to whatever they say they apply to. Limiting their scope to actions in the country, or at least giving precedence to similar foreign laws, is at least as much about the practicalities of enforcement as a matter of principle.
For example, Finland claims jurisdiction over crimes where the action itself or its relevant consequences happen in Finland or the victim is a Finnish citizen, permanent resident, or legal entity. Then there are plenty of rules and exceptions detailing what those principles mean in practice.
cjbgkagh 1 days ago [-]
That’s not always true, and increasingly less so, particularly the Australians and the crime of child sex tourism. I am sure it’ll be expanded to hate crimes and disturbing the peace laws as well and from there used as a political cudgel to suppress opposition to government policies. At least for now you have to be a citizen of the country but the UK has stated an intention to extradite US citizens for online hate crimes.
Manuel Noriega and “el Chapo” Guzman were both convicted of crimes they committed outside the US but that caused other people to commit crimes inside the US.
Traveling to countries for child sex abuse is illegal and severely punished, although it appears that the law is about the traveling with intent, and not (officially) about the actions that take place overseas: https://www.justice.gov/criminal/criminal-ceos/extraterritor... .
dijit 1 days ago [-]
Extraterritorial taxation is extremely rare; and its less of a law and more of a “cost of citizenship” since you’re allowed to get rid of it.
OJFord 1 days ago [-]
Commonwealth countries have extraterritorial jurisdiction. I don't know that it's ever been enforced for something so relatively petty as intoxication or prostitution, but it is nevertheless the law. (Obligatory IANAL though.)
quesera 22 hours ago [-]
> Commonwealth countries have extraterritorial jurisdiction
No countries have extraterritorial jurisdiction.
Some countries have a lot of influence over the local jurisdiction outside of their own territory.
The UK doesn't have much influence like that.
But if the UK has any minesweepers, I bet this could all be sorted out with a few phone calls.
tacticalturtle 23 hours ago [-]
> Laws apply to actions in the country, they’re not based on citizenship.
According to what? Laws can be whatever a country says, so long as they have the mechanism to enforce it.
See: the US using special forces to kidnap Maduro
pelorat 14 hours ago [-]
The US special forces also committed several acts of murder on Venezuelan soil
testing22321 19 hours ago [-]
> See: the US using special forces to kidnap Maduro
That was very clearly illegal and has nothing to do with laws.
pearlsontheroad 1 days ago [-]
afaik, prostitution is either legal or partially legal on the majority of Western countries.
Normally its considered legal to sell but not legal to buy.
Prostitution is primarily conducted by women, and this is a way for them to still seek protection and healthcare while still technically criminalising the practice.
24 hours ago [-]
throw74947399 7 hours ago [-]
In most European countries it is legal to both sell and to buy. What is illegal almost everywhere is being a pimp.
testing22321 19 hours ago [-]
Interestingly if you go to Canada and legally smoke weed then try to go to the US a month later, you can get denied because you did something that is perfectly legal in Canada, but not the US
rjsw 1 days ago [-]
France can fine Parisian bars that serve alcohol to under-18s itself.
themafia 1 days ago [-]
They should arrange a book burning too. Since they seem to believe that foreign words are inherently dangerous.
ecshafer 1 days ago [-]
UK fining an American company for this is absurd. 4Chan isn't breaking any laws. You can make it illegal for your own citizens but you can't regulate a foreign business. UK citizens should fight for the right to free speech though.
giobox 1 days ago [-]
While I agree it seems absurd, this is how the UK's unwritten constitution works - the UK Parliament is not restricted to legislating just for the territory of the UK. Of course it can only realistically enforce within UK borders, but it can pass whatever legislation it wishes.
There is a famous quote regarding this nature of British parliamentary sovereignty that is taught to every law student in the UK: "If Parliament enacts that smoking in the streets of Paris is an offence, then it is an offence" - Ivor Jennings.
fluoridation 24 hours ago [-]
Doesn't it ridicule its own agencies to allow them to go after entities that they have no hope of policing? It's such an impotent gesture to do this.
ilovecake1984 9 hours ago [-]
No, because it’s a step in a process.
Next steps would be blocking the site uk wide.
We will likely see a future where uk puts out interpol notices on the individuals involved.
If they enter a country with extradition agreements they will get extradited.
fluoridation 8 hours ago [-]
"Likely" based on nothing at all.
yesco 20 hours ago [-]
This dynamic could also be argued as a cause of the War of 1812.
okanat 1 days ago [-]
This is false. You of course can regulate and fine a foreign business. That's how trade regulations work.
The UK isn't going to get a cent from that but the leadership is banned from entering the UK for the foreseeable future.
Doing this a lot as a country is how you achieve pariah status and losing a bunch of trade, though.
chrisjj 1 days ago [-]
> the leadership is banned from entering the UK for the foreseeable future
Not at all. But if they do enter, they might find difficulty leaving.
poizan42 6 hours ago [-]
They haven't pierced the corporate veil as far as I can tell - it's not moot or any other executives that have been personally fined. Also as far as I'm aware the UK doesn't have debtors jail.
chrisjj 5 hours ago [-]
On the contrary. Online Safety Act breaches can carry personal liability and up to 2yrs jail.
wat10000 1 days ago [-]
Trade regulations apply to the importer, which might also be the exporter if they have a local presence, but also may not be.
If I buy something illegal off of AliExpress, the US government won't and can't do squat to the seller. If they decide to enforce the law, they'll go after me.
ilovecake1984 9 hours ago [-]
Not really. Nowhere else in the world is free speech absolutist.
US is extremist and out of step with the civilised world.
I mean, first and foremost, Tiktok has offices in the US and employees thousands of people here.
dmitrygr 1 days ago [-]
Simply put: The US has the ability to enforce or to cause enough pain to cause self-enforcement </realpolitik>
epolanski 1 days ago [-]
Which will ultimately push alienation towards US for good.
Trump is merely a huge accelerator of an existing trend.
dmitrygr 23 hours ago [-]
People keep saying this and it a profound misunderstanding of how the world works.
Nobody likes USA. Nor is that required. It is irrelevant. International politics do not run on emotions. As long as USA is capable of enforcing its will, USA's view will be the one that matters. You may dislike it, but that is what it is.
epolanski 22 hours ago [-]
Or one can say enough and decide to cut off doing business in or with US.
dmitrygr 22 hours ago [-]
Not a realistic option in today's world, sorry. I can suggest some literature
epolanski 22 hours ago [-]
You don't need to, I have worked with multiple clients that faced this very option.
And yes, the choice was still to do business with US in every case, but I can tell you 100% it was far from a crystal clear easy decision and that the camel is breaking.
You can only push so much.
testing22321 5 hours ago [-]
I’m not sure you’ve been reading the news lately. Hundreds of billions of trade dollars are being routed around the US.
It’s extremely realistic to cut them out.
Genuinely what does the US sell that a country like Brazil or Canada or Australia can’t get elsewhere or live without?
epolanski 1 days ago [-]
> You can make it illegal for your own citizens but you can't regulate a foreign business
The us does that regularly. There's thousands of companies that cannot do business with entities from countries like China or they can face criminal charges in US.
A former company I had as a client, EU based SaaS faced this.
hunterpayne 18 hours ago [-]
But to be clear, those businesses wanted to make money from the US market. In the case of 4chan, they don't make money from the UK. Somehow, this important distinction keeps getting ignored. You want to sell in the UK market, you have to follow their rules. Same with the US. Somehow the British government doesn't seem to understand this.
ilovecake1984 9 hours ago [-]
Money has nothing to do with it, other than practicalities.
nkrisc 1 days ago [-]
> but you can't regulate a foreign business.
Sure they can. It’s unlikely they can do anything about it though.
ilovecake1984 9 hours ago [-]
It’s breaking uk law.
We have other crimes like this, like child sexual abuse committed in a foreign country.
cyberclimb 1 days ago [-]
How about the EU imposing GDPR restrictions on non-eu companies?
Valodim 1 days ago [-]
Depends on whether those businesses want to do business with the EU
ecshafer 1 days ago [-]
It should only affect companies that have a presence in Europe, as in an office or some entity.
RadiozRadioz 1 days ago [-]
I think that's different because I have a positive personal opinion of the GDPR and a negative personal opinion about what the UK is doing. Therefore the GDPR is good and this is bad. It's really quite objective.
icehawk 19 hours ago [-]
I may have a positive personal opinion of the GDPR, but I ignore all GDPR requests for the website I have that you can just visit, because I don't want to be seen as doing business that makes me subject to GDPR
Radle 22 hours ago [-]
Or these are oranges and apples, and your perspective is simply blurred because you are starting a fight whenever someone wants you to put up your glasses.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
phendrenad2 1 days ago [-]
You can hold a mirror up to HN, but you can't make them look.
epolanski 1 days ago [-]
They only apply to your business in Europe.
You don't need to apply gdpr when serving non European users.
ceayo 1 days ago [-]
The GDPR is about your data being handled overseas.
OFCOM&co is about overseas data going to you.
patates 1 days ago [-]
It would be marvelous if they used a drawing of a spider.
Let kids go to 4chan. I frequented it and turned out fine.
patates 1 days ago [-]
I used to hang out there too. However, describing me as 'fine' would require a lengthy debate over definitions.
Bender 8 hours ago [-]
Adding, there are far worse sites than 4chan. 4chan just happens to be the most popular or at least made to look that way. 4chan has it's own AI that drive engagement creating a massive set of threads in many boards daily and weekly. It also responds to people.
Tor .onion chans have much more taboo content to put it mildly.
halapro 15 hours ago [-]
I did too and have seen unspeakable things. 4chan is much better these days but it's still where neurons go die.
abcde666777 1 days ago [-]
Still do to be honest. Always a good place for a little catharsis.
fghj888999 19 hours ago [-]
I honestly only go there for the same reason and directly after big news. DLSS5's announcement was the first time I went in nearly a year. I wanted to find trolls and I did, and the whole flamewar was the best digital popcorn I had in months.
t0lo 16 hours ago [-]
/wsg/ still has some of the best videos on the internet
throwpoaster 1 days ago [-]
The problem is you're getting downvoted by the people who didn't.
akramachamarei 1 days ago [-]
Bold to assume downvoters vote on first-hand knowledge.
sayYayToLife 1 days ago [-]
[dead]
jmkni 1 days ago [-]
Getting flashbacks to the letters the Pirate Bay used to send lawyers
I'm pretty sure in one they responded saying their lawyer was alseep in a ditch and would reply when he woke up lol
gorgoiler 1 days ago [-]
Meanwhile Google.com shows all manner of depravity if you click “safe search: off”.
I realize there’s a carve out in the legislation for search engines but if the goal is to stop little Timmy finding pictures of an X being Yd up the Z then it is a resolute failure.
The only thing that works with children is transparency and accountability, be that the school firewall or a ban on screen use in secret.
”screens where I can see ‘em!”
miohtama 1 days ago [-]
Germany tried earlier to fine American companies for online posts using a law called "NetzDG".
Gab refused to pay the fine, and it was over.
> The enforcement notice itself highlights the structural tension. Despite acknowledging Gab’s US address, the German government asserts authority to pursue collection, including formal enforcement proceedings, without identifying any German subsidiary or office.
> The payment instructions route funds directly to the German federal treasury, showing that the action is punitive rather than remedial.
> Germany’s approach also reveals the paper trail behind modern censorship enforcement. The fine stems not from a specific post or statement, but from alleged failure to comply with aspects of NetzDG. That procedural hook enables broader regulatory reach, transforming administrative requirements into a mechanism for speech governance.
4chan is already on most of the adult content filters used in the UK at ISP level (along with other such egregious offenders against childhood purity as archive.org) meaning that an explicit request to remove the filter is often required to access it... That it has taken this long to implement a universal block at the ISP level shows that the motive is something other than 'protecting the innocent'.
i love the cognitive dissonance of some USians in this comment section who believe in both of these statements:
"4chan is a US company operating in the US, sure it serves content to global users but the jurisdiction is the US, we have free speech, ..."
"Sure, Company X is operating in Europe, but it also serves US users so it has to respect our laws and it's warranted for the US to apply pressure and fines."
at least decide for one side of the argument instead of just going the blind patriot way.
egorfine 9 hours ago [-]
Yes, I was reading these comments today and I have seen this argument coming from different people multiple times. It's incredible, right?
brightball 7 hours ago [-]
Never thought I'd find myself cheering for 4Chan, but here we are.
sackfield 23 hours ago [-]
It feels more and more embarrassing as time goes by to tell people I am British.
sedatk 22 hours ago [-]
Is 4Chan still accessible from the US states with age verification laws?
I am in a state with age verification nonsense and I can access if I process Cloudflares javascript.
ProllyInfamous 19 hours ago [-]
In Tennessee, 4chan is accessible without verification (but does block many porn aggregators, e.g. pornhub, redgifs).
betaby 19 hours ago [-]
Yes. Opens just fine from in NYC and SF.
randyrand 14 hours ago [-]
Whether the data is arriving on a wire, a physical hard drive, DVD, or book, doesn’t really change anything.
It is the role of customs to inspect the physical goods (i.e. physical light) that crosses the border. These are fiber connections the UK themselves chose to install. No one forced these data imports on them.
North korea and China for example have extensive infrastructure to inspect and reject imported data.
p0w3n3d 1 days ago [-]
UK is recently going more and more towards censorship and thought control, but this is only my private but honest opinion
ilovecake1984 9 hours ago [-]
Not really. Actual debate is not censored. Have some class.
AJRF 1 days ago [-]
This is all just theatre to justify a ban right?
doublerabbit 1 days ago [-]
Yep. Just like most of my tax money, it's going to some clown-show just so they can get permission to ban a website where 69% of internet users how to skate through with use of a VPN.
4chan creates another TLD on another IP, just like TPB and the whole show starts again.
Instead of, why don't we. The UK government.
DroneBetter 1 days ago [-]
> Last month Pornhub restricted access to its website in the UK, blaming the introduction of stricter age checks, and said its traffic had fallen by 77%.
assumedly the rate of consumption hasn't dramatically changed, so the OSA's immediate result has been either the decentralisation of porn providers (towards those small enough to dodge the law for now and be less exacting) or the mass adoption of proxies; I assume the former is the path of least resistance
this is notably the opposite of the feared outcome (which I suspect may be closer to the long-term effect) that the bar to meet the requirements would be so high (possibly involving hiring a lawyer) that smaller social/porn sites get regulated out of existence (see ie. https://lobste.rs/s/ukosa1/uk_users_lobsters_needs_your_help...)
windowliker 22 hours ago [-]
Sadly what has actually happened is that many niche interest discussion forums have shut their doors due to fears of regulatory repercussion and fines.
aincodle 23 hours ago [-]
Probably a significant part of this is people experiencing friction in trying to access this, realising that they don't actually need to consume pornography, and having this break the cycle of compulsion. Which is the most positive outcome really.
epolanski 1 days ago [-]
I'm Italian and can confirm that half of the major porn websites require age checks.
Hasz 7 hours ago [-]
good. There are plenty of laws, especially around technology, that deserve a good public mocking.
At least in the US, you have 70+ year old lawmakers proposing (not even writing) laws they do not understand, passed to them by opaque groups with a obscured, albeit clear, interest.
See the latest age verification bills passed by Meta through a convoluted web of influence. Bring back the technocrats.
JamesTRexx 1 days ago [-]
4chan doesn't need age checks, everyone knows there are only five year olds on it. :-p
bauruine 1 days ago [-]
The Internet: Where the men are men, the women are men and the children are FBI agents.
kps 1 days ago [-]
Those were FBI agents. Expect a knock on your door any time now.
subscribed 1 days ago [-]
Twenty five years old :-p
chuckadams 1 days ago [-]
Amateurs. Russia has fined Google more than the GDP of the entire planet. Odds of collecting are about the same.
chrisjj 1 days ago [-]
Odds of collecting some 4chan execs travelling abroad are a lot higher, though
vorpalhex 1 days ago [-]
4chan's lawyer, who has been engaging with this well since the beginning, has clearly advised his clients, who have no intent of ever going to the UK, to not go there. In addition, Ofcom does not have the ability to collect them through the EU itself. They must go to the UK.
It already sounds like Ofcom is likely to lose lawsuits about this, as they do not have jurisdiction in the U.S., where 4chan is hosted.
petcat 1 days ago [-]
> Ofcom is likely to lose lawsuits about this, as they do not have jurisdiction in the U.S.
How would Ofcom even have a lawsuit to lose? Are they going to file it in the US? Of course not, USA courts will tell them to pound sand.
They'll just advise the UK government to block 4chan nationwide. Which is really what they want to do anyway.
freddydumont 1 days ago [-]
Ofcom doesn’t really wanna block websites though, they want websites to either comply or block themselves, both of which legitimizing Ofcom’s extraterritorial enforcement.
LAC-Tech 1 days ago [-]
I do not think 4chan has executives.
chrisjj 1 days ago [-]
I think the fact 4chan instructed a lawyer shows it does.
LAC-Tech 12 hours ago [-]
The lawyer is taking the case pro-bono.
I am not sure why you think running a website where people are free to say awful things about powerful people would be profitable.
chrisjj 12 hours ago [-]
> The lawyer is taking the case pro-bono.
What difference does that make?
> I am not sure why you think running a website where people are free to say awful things about powerful people would be profitable.
I didn't say anything about them being profitable. And again, what different would that make?
Bender 8 hours ago [-]
CIA absolutely have executive equivalents.
flenserboy 1 days ago [-]
"safety breaches" is a deeply Orwellian term.
ilovecake1984 9 hours ago [-]
In what way?
ionwake 11 hours ago [-]
how come noone has bothered to tell ofcom that 4chan has been clearly a honeypot for nearly a quarter of a century
bpodgursky 1 days ago [-]
It does seem like if the UK wants to do content filtration (blocking noncompliant websites) they will need to own up to it and set up a China-style firewall, rather than hoping they can badger the service providers into doing it for them.
Retr0id 1 days ago [-]
Yes, this is part of the consent manufacturing process.
kleene_op 1 days ago [-]
That's the plan. But if they do it right away people will revolt.
Getting more convinced day by day that bureaucrats of all countries are all pretty dense.
mgaunard 21 hours ago [-]
The age check laws is just funneling money directly to VPN companies.
There's no way anyone sensible would give over their identity to dodgy websites. It's easier to just pretend to be in a different country.
azangru 21 hours ago [-]
If they blocked RT, they can block 4chan if they so choose. Why would they expect a company that does not target the British audience to have any concern for British laws?
hunterpayne 18 hours ago [-]
Because the British government thinks its 1813 still.
bilekas 16 hours ago [-]
Let my gremlin brain make number go up. At the very least just to highlight how silly the precedent set is.
bkirkby 9 hours ago [-]
this is a poignant example of rent seeking
vasco 1 days ago [-]
People used to tell kids to not go to a shady part of town while they spent their afternoons outside unsupervised. Can parents not tell kids to not go to certain websites? We still went to the shady part of town and the kids will still go to 4chan but at least we don't need to give away freedoms. Such erosion of freedom for the common person because parents can't have an awkward conversation is irritating.
epolanski 1 days ago [-]
I don't remember who said it, but protecting children isn't the end goal, it's tracking adults.
FridayoLeary 1 days ago [-]
I'm moving away from that line of thinking. We can discuss how poorly formulated this law is, and the implications for privacy of internet control bills, and the resulting eroding of our freedom of speech. It's correct to be suspicous of attempts to regulate the internet. But I'm becoming increasingly convinced that "for the sake of the children" such measures are necessary. The reality is that most kids these days have basically zero restrictions on internet exposure, and it's frying their brains[1]. Casual warnings from parents won't cut it. Not that they don't have the ultimate responsibility, but as in every other area of child rearing, they need help from the wider society they live in.
[1] I'm not going to quote studies, but plenty exist. I think it's pretty self evident to everyone here how bad internet can be for the mental health even of adults, let alone children with developing minds.
wao0uuno 1 days ago [-]
4chan is probably one of the least brain damaging sites kids can go to these days. It has porn and stupid memes, true. But so does google if you turn the safe search off. It's the corporate run sites and services with ai powered recommendation engines that are the most problematic. Infinite scroll sites like reddit or tiktok are what really fucks up your brain. I used to frequent 4chan as a kid back in the day when it was truly a wild corner of the internet and I turned out just fine.
Bender 8 hours ago [-]
Low quality porn at that. Their size limits and board post limits keep it that way. Only /gif/ and one other board even permit sound. That is hateful against the visually impaired.
FridayoLeary 24 hours ago [-]
I agree with you about infinite scroll. I don't know you so i couldn't possibly comment on your other claim...
vasco 15 hours ago [-]
And all we know about is you believe the truth is a misspelled cake, so there we go.
2postsperday 22 hours ago [-]
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rocqua 1 days ago [-]
So the solution is effective parental controls. Government mandated age verification isn't parental control, and is unlikely to be very effective.
That means making it possible for parents to actively block bad websites, and making that hard to circumvent.
FridayoLeary 7 hours ago [-]
Internet filters exist. I think we should legislate them, making it mandatory for children, or a similar solution.
RiverCrochet 1 days ago [-]
Recently in the U.S. news a parent was convicted of murder because they facilitated making weapons to their child who then committed a school shooting. They didn't give their child weapons and tell them to go do it, they just didn't keep them away. This is a good trend that I hope continues and will actually help prevent school shootings. Parents are responsible for their children. If children are frying their brains due to Internet exposure, similarly it's the parents fault, and they should be held liable for child abuse in the same manner as if they committed other negligence.
Someone at school has parents who aren't watching their children and allowing them unrestricted Internet access? This is where the bounty-hunter private-right-of-action morality-police laws that seem to be gaining traction can be put to some actual good use instead of, for example, hunting down trans people in Kansas. If someone's child is showing other children inappropriate material because their parents are negligent, the other parents should be able to take those parents to court and recover damages if they can collect evidence. Once parents are fined for letting their children roam with an unrestricted Internet connection it'll stop pretty quick.
> they need help from the wider society they live in.
Help that is not material support (e.g. paying hospital bills, babysitting, etc.) is usually interference.
> I think it's pretty self evident to everyone here how bad internet can be for the mental health even of adults
Agreed, but I can handle myself on the internet (my parents did their job and I am also not a dog and know the difference between a screen and a real object), and shouldn't be tracked with verification nonsense because someone else can't.
ranger_danger 1 days ago [-]
Hard disagree. I think the control should stay with the parents where it already is. They can decide whether or not to put protections in place or whether or not to hand them a device at all.
We don't put protections on kids walking out the front door, and there's plenty of theoretical dangers there too. Let the parents educate their children.
FridayoLeary 24 hours ago [-]
The evidence shows they don't have sufficient control. Parents these days clearly are unequal to the task, i'm passing no judgement just observing.
>We don't put protections on kids walking out the front door
My view is that we most certainly ban and/or heavily discourage children from entering certain places and talking to random strangers. There are many safeguards in the real world, there is simply not enough in the internet.
I don't say this lightly. I am very firmly against the nanny state, and i feel equally strongly in parental rights. I've made comments in the past against these laws but i feel it's the only way forward. The only question that remains is how to best implement such policies to minimize the inevitable erosion of our privacy.
I don't like it, but that's how it is.
Bender 8 hours ago [-]
This may be true but the laws already exist for parents and legal guardians. To me this reeks of focusing on the wrong aspects to obtain tracking of adults. If parents are not doing their job then prosecute them for it. Or fine them if money is the goal.
"~You are a bad parent. Insert $500. Brought to you by Carls Jr."
vasco 15 hours ago [-]
You seem to be under the impression that having held an opinion and changing it means the new opinion is better by default, but that's not true.
FridayoLeary 7 hours ago [-]
In my mind it is. I understand both sides of the debate. I'm not switching one set of beliefs for something i believe is inferior, but i'm still open to hearing arguments why i'm wrong. Nobody has responded with anything more persuasive then "it's not my problem, why are you bothering me".
ranger_danger 24 hours ago [-]
> The evidence shows they don't have sufficient control.
What evidence is that? Who gets to say what's sufficient?
Unless there is a high probability that an alleged lack of control will negatively other people than the family in question, I don't think it should be the government's business to police.
2OEH8eoCRo0 1 days ago [-]
Do you have children?
mapotofu 1 days ago [-]
I do. I also grew up on 4chan because I didn’t have an involved parent, and I lived in the suburbs where finding friends to just “go outside and play” wasn’t an option. Consuming that content was genuinely hurtful and probably forever altered my psyche. I have the means and knowledge, in technical skill and life experience, to know how these things work, and protect my kids from that. Most people don’t.
Bender 8 hours ago [-]
Which threads affected you the most? rekt? or perhaps all threads in /pol/? What changed you and how are you different?
I admit watching and hearing the videos of children being live organ harvested was a bit rough on me. Most try to say those are fake as a coping mechanism but sadly they are very real and it occurs in every state/province of every country 24/7. It's a massive business. There are rescue orgs that try to intervene but they are almost always too late.
vasco 15 hours ago [-]
4chan was pretty cool, one of the best sites there ever was. It has had the most impact on the internet. Reddit is basically few guys wanting to make money off of a PC 4chan, and we know the impact Reddit has. The content Reddit had for YEARS was basically recycled 4chan, the topics of certain subreddits were totally inherited from 4chan boards, while losing the main cool thing about 4chan, anonymity.
huflungdung 1 days ago [-]
Haven’t you considered that the fact you were exposed to these things made you who you are today am able to say that with conviction. If you had been shielded from the reality on human extremism you would not.
financltravsty 1 days ago [-]
Vouched, because this was going to be my counterpoint as someone who had the same circumstances as the grandparent.
Despite the enormously heinous stuff I've seen on that site, it has made me a better writer, developed my critical thinking skills, and given me a perspective on the world and its people that wouldn't have existed without.
It also introduced me to many different things and developed my taste beyond measure.
The massive downside, that I suspect the grandparent still wrestles with, is integrating all of depravity of humankind into a coherent world view without falling into cognitive dissonance between the idealized and constructed world with an onslaught of information on the actual reality of it.
It's sort of like looking into the Epstein files and having to decide one's reaction to them:
- crushed by despair at the state of things leading to nihilism and depression
- deciding to ignore it all, and continuing to go on about one's life without integrating it
- acceptance, normalization, and corruption
- a secret fourth option that reaffirms you, using that news as fuel for whatever ends in the hope you can improve the world even if just a little bit, despite how ugly it is
And so on.
doright 18 hours ago [-]
Should 4chan or something similarly extreme be recommended reading for children/adolescents to understand the horrors of the world then?
I would bet that some young people will be as reflective and independently minded as you were to integrate the material into their experience and be better off for it. Some (like me, because I was thin-skinned) won't and it will stress them out or traumatize them instead. Does that make them lesser human beings for not being capable of bettering themselves from seeing the unfiltered truth on their own?
For all the benefit of 4chan, and I do say there is some benefit only after having grown into an adult with better critical thinking skills and years of therapy, it self-selects for a certain type of poster capable of lurking enough, following the norms and having a thick skin. Not everyone will clear that bar and it's unreasonable to think that all young people will turn out like yourself having immersed themselves in it. Some could end up wasting a lot of time baited into petty arguments, or worse.
huflungdung 11 hours ago [-]
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gleenn 1 days ago [-]
Raising children is hard but assuming everyone has to sacrifice their rights so your job is easier means everyone means everyone loses long term.
oarsinsync 1 days ago [-]
Or this should be done at point of sale, like we do with all controlled substances.
We don't sell bottles containing alcohol and then expect to filter the alcohol out if the child wants to drink from it. We have two different bottles: alcoholic bottles and non-alcoholic bottles. If you are a child, you cannot purchase the former.
Stop selling unrestricted computing devices to children. Require a person to be 18+ to purchase an unrestricted internet device. Make it clear that unrestricted internet access, like alcohol and nicotine (and the list goes on) is harmful to children. That resolves 90% of the problem.
And lets be fair, the problem isn't the children. Children want what all their peers have. The problem isn't their peers. The problem is the parents. Give the spineless parents a simpler way to say no to their children, and the overall problem goes away.
demorro 24 hours ago [-]
As a Brit this is so embarrassing I wish they would stop.
Doesn't really seem like there's an anti-authoritarian party available to us either.
bspammer 12 hours ago [-]
The most embarrassing part of that article is the comment section. Not a single dissenting voice.
zerotolerance 23 hours ago [-]
The best way to protect citizens of the UK from material online might be to sever their international network connections.
gverrilla 21 hours ago [-]
4chan is the one that should be mocked. One of the biggest assortment of losers on earth.
heliumtera 10 hours ago [-]
10/10 law in bongland
stodor89 17 hours ago [-]
"Okay grandma, let's get you to bed" moment.
RobRivera 1 days ago [-]
Hiroshimoot must be sweating bullets
Bender 8 hours ago [-]
If it comes to it, the CIA will burn projec Hiroshimoot like they have done with many projects once they gain too much negative attention. 4chan has not been run by individuals since moot testified before congress and turned over control to the government to monitor and manipulate the youth.
avadodin 1 days ago [-]
You have been convicted in absentia of double plus ungood crime think
Please report to the closest police station
Miniluv
1 days ago [-]
chocoboaus3 23 hours ago [-]
its amazing how little governments understand sovreignty and borders these days
they have literally no power over things outside their own land borders and people are right to tell them to piss off.
fredsted 11 hours ago [-]
We simply can't have an Internet where you'll need to comply with 100% of legalisation of all 193+ countries at all times; it's untenable.
For ofcom, 4chan is just a sticking their toes in the pool. If they fall, ofcom will have complete freedom to censor the entire Internet as they wish. It's madness.
chrisjj 1 days ago [-]
a lawyer representing the company - which has previously said it won't pay such fines - has responded to the demand with an AI-generated cartoon image of a hamster.
epolanski 1 days ago [-]
Can't UK simply blacklist 4chan?
themafia 1 days ago [-]
No this is about using children as pawns, not actually, like, protecting them or anything.
nvarsj 23 hours ago [-]
I don't really understand what is going on with Ofcom.
This nonsense, and yet they allow GBNews to keep spewing propaganda and violate almost all broadcast standards that Ofcom is supposed to enforce.
frugalmail 17 hours ago [-]
Don't use 4chan, but great job standing up to the continued attack on Free Speech. I hope more people contact their representatives/senators and get them to stop the non-stop attack happening here in the states too.
phendrenad2 1 days ago [-]
We really need a Statesternet. People will be able to verify their identity to buy a special device which will encrypt/decrypt their traffic, and people in the UK will not be able to purchase one. The device will use GPS to confirm that it's only operating in the US.
LAC-Tech 1 days ago [-]
Good. These ridiculous extraterritorial laws should be broken and mocked at every opportunity.
ChrisArchitect 1 days ago [-]
Related:
Ofcom has today fined 4chan £450k for not having age checks in place
Low-functioning politicians and bureaucrats keep their jobs by doing things that sound good.
Do they understand the futility? I suspect most do. But trying to be high-functioning, in a low-functioning system, is also a good way to lose your job.
cubefox 1 days ago [-]
This part is somewhat surprising to me:
> Data shows that nearly 80% of the top 100 pornography sites in the UK now have age checks in place. This means that on average, every day, over 7 million visitors from the UK are accessing pornography services that have deployed age assurance.
I would have expected that most people would switch to other pornography sites that don't have age checks rather than doing an age check. But apparently that isn't the case. (Or their data is misleading. People in the UK who are using VPNs presumably can't be easily identified as British.)
Scaled 1 days ago [-]
Yeah, that is ABSOLUTELY a lie.
I'm not sure if I'm allowed to include links as a new user but Pornbiz posted an article showing AV lost them 90% of traffic. There's a BBC article where researchers found AV compliant sites were decimated on their top traffic ranking on Similarweb. And I working in the industry saw our traffic drop by 99.9% during our AV test.
Users don't use VPN, they certainly don't upload ID... they just go to noncompliant sites. Don't believe UK government's gaslighting.
rjh29 1 days ago [-]
The first part is true but the second sentence seems dubious to me. Did they compute that from the previous visitor numbers or something?
epolanski 1 days ago [-]
In Italy porn websites also require age verification now, lately everybody is complying.
erelong 1 days ago [-]
"As they should"
jongjong 24 hours ago [-]
I mean the 4chan lawyer makes a good point.
If you think about it, it's the Internet Service Providers in the UK who choose choose to allow this US content into the UK. Why go after 4chan?
The ISPs could just shut down the BGP protocol and set up their own ICANN alternative with their own DNS system which is completely separate from the US one. So it's the UK government's choice to allow this content to the UK, not 4chan's. Or they could just put up a China-style great firewall.
I haven't thought about it at all since the last time I looked there maybe about 2 years ago.
Still looks shit.
What's the enduring appeal?
whywhywhywhy 7 hours ago [-]
The creator of the 2channel and current owner of 4chan Hiroyuki Nishimura explains it:
>people can only truly discuss something when they don’t know each other.
>If there is a user ID attached to a user, a discussion tends to become a criticizing game. On the other hand, under the anonymous system, even though your opinion/information is criticized, you don’t know with whom to be upset. Also with a user ID, those who participate in the site for a long time tend to have authority, and it becomes difficult for a user to disagree with them.
>Under a perfectly anonymous system, you can say, “it’s boring,” if it is actually boring. All information is treated equally; only an accurate argument will work
Blahagun 12 hours ago [-]
Why do you have the opinion that it's shit? What have you seen there and what were you expecting? Are you aware that there are many different boards on 4chan, covering pretty much whatever you can think of? The reason for 4chan being a somewhat odd and interesting place is because the people who frequent it are immune to slander. It takes a different type of a person to be immune to it. This creates especially interesting and honest discussions.
wao0uuno 1 days ago [-]
Modern 4chan is just a shadow of its former self. Back in the day it was a popular place on the internet where anyone could just go to and post. No verification, no captchas, minimal moderation and rules. This led mostly to chaos and illegal content being posted but sometimes that true freedom of speech and forced equality bred original, interesting discussion and hilarious memes. It was a place without points, nicknames, profiles where people could share their honest thoughts on any topic. Truly beautiful corner of the internet that I'll always remember fondly.
These days everything on the internet is controlled and monitored. Modern 4chan is hosted on cloudflare and is without any doubt "pozzed". Any illusion of real anonymity has dissolved a long time ago. Lots of bots there too. You missed it by at least 15 years.
stackedinserter 18 hours ago [-]
It's insane how many people here on HN defend these bs fines. Prepare to follow Russia's laws if you normalize this.
ilovecake1984 9 hours ago [-]
Yeah because you can’t pick a moral middle found between two vile extremist states like the Us and Russia.
Clowns
doublerabbit 1 days ago [-]
£450k? - Quick, we must show we've done something.
> or requiring Internet Service Providers to block a site in the UK.
Ah, that's what they want.
ceayo 1 days ago [-]
They probably don't even expect 4chan to pay up - they just want them gone.
rjh29 1 days ago [-]
Yeah. Nobody thinks they will pay the fine, it just shows non compliance.
sayYayToLife 1 days ago [-]
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yuvmal1k31 1 days ago [-]
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TheDeFiAngel63 21 hours ago [-]
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AiStockAgent62 21 hours ago [-]
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doublediamond21 1 days ago [-]
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wnevets 1 days ago [-]
You mean the message board that collab-ed with Epstein? Delete them from the internet.
hunterpayne 17 hours ago [-]
You realize that the Epsteins used Reddit way more than 4chan right? Maxwell was one of the first users to 1m karma.
wnevets 7 hours ago [-]
and then he worked with reddit to create a special subreddit with content like you would find in /pol/?
9864247888754 20 hours ago [-]
You mean the Starmer regime that collab-ed with Epstein? Delete them from existence.
wnevets 19 hours ago [-]
K
guelo 1 days ago [-]
There's always people that say it's the parents responsibility to monitor their kids. But as a parent, you either give your kids full access to the internet or nothing. The fault lies with the OS companies Google, Microsoft, Apple. They do a terrible job with parental controls. They make it very hard to setup, they're confusing and hard to use plus they barely work. I think they just do it as a checkbox for marketing or regulatory purposes. That's where I'd like to see regulation.
rstat1 1 days ago [-]
OS makers should not be in the business of enforcing censorship. If you want to shield your children from the "horrors" of the internet either use proper parental control software, or don't allow access at all like you said until your kids are mature to understand what's going on
The onus is on the parent to the be parent. Not the tech industry, and especially not the government.
rocqua 1 days ago [-]
If the solution is parental control software, that also puts onus on operating systems to present the means for such software to work properly.
This does not mean the OS should censor, it might mean the OS offers a censorship interface.
At least we seem to agree the solution lies with better tools for parents.
guelo 1 days ago [-]
Who are you to decide what should or should not be?
"proper parental control software" doesn't exist for a lot of the platforms.
windowliker 22 hours ago [-]
Ironically, the UK already has ISP level implementations to filter adult/illegal content that seem to work in most cases as intended. The lobby for this legislation came from groups concerned about matters more prevalent on large social media platforms who will barely be touched by the new regulations.
epolanski 1 days ago [-]
Why is giving kids access to the whole internet a problem?
I'm a millennial, I had access to porn as a kid, that's 25 years ago.
What's the deal with it?
The biggest issues are social media related, not by seeing how people exchange body fluids.
Am4TIfIsER0ppos 1 days ago [-]
The answer is a computer the child must sit down and use in front of the family. Steve Jobs ruined the world with the invention of the iPhone, and whoever else is responsible for the more generic smartphone. Now parents use one to quieten their children and governments use it to surveil us all.
2postsperday 22 hours ago [-]
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19 hours ago [-]
dmitrygr 1 days ago [-]
4chan fighting for us all! Bravo.
9864247888754 20 hours ago [-]
When will the British rise up against Starmer's corrupt, Epsteinian regime
jaimex2 16 hours ago [-]
United States remains the only place with real freedom of speech.
Other places have 'hate speech' laws that severely erode it. Genuine criticism or discussion of certain topics is forbidden.
enrightened 3 hours ago [-]
Absolutely true. The entirety of Western Europe including UK actively dissuade people from holding a certain set of opinions. Even the media simply doesn’t report on inconvenient events.
robthebrew 1 days ago [-]
4chan is still a thing? I thought it died long ago. Perhaps I grew up.
Bender 8 hours ago [-]
4chan is still a thing? I thought it died long ago. Perhaps I grew up.
It is still there. There is a GPT that keeps it looking active and people that reply to it daily. For about 9 days after their most recent big hack it was nice and quiet. It would be a ghost town if not for the GPT using a 4chan pass and seychelles proxies. The /pol/ board is probably the most active with real humans trying to shock and awe people with fake racism and other edge-lord behavior. The real racist are on other sites. I would invite them here to prove what that really looks like but they would be ultra-shadow-banned instantly.
nslsm 1 days ago [-]
It is, it didn’t, and you didn’t.
1 days ago [-]
miladyincontrol 1 days ago [-]
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mrtksn 1 days ago [-]
Europeans are following the wrong path on regulating the internet. Instead of calling it internet safety and annoy people, they should just make those services and the people running them liable for the damages.
The same goes for the freedom of speech. Europeans should make it legal guarantee instead of trying to build walls around speech. So when X or 4Chan etc deletes a post, it may lead to freedom of speech fines if deletion wasn't justified. Tha same for the algorithm, if a post that doesn't break the rules is discriminated by the algorithm, a hefty fine should apply.
Suddenly we will have companies that keep their business clean and no claim for moral high ground.
LaurensBER 1 days ago [-]
I agree but you have to understand that a lot of European (leaders) still have WW2 in the back of their head.
For them there're far worse things than giving up some freedoms.
One can agree or disagree with this but Europe's actions are far more understandable if you see where they're coming from.
From what it's worth, the younger generation doesn't seem to see this the same way so whatever censure Europe introduces today will most likely be temporary.
abletonlive 1 days ago [-]
> One can agree or disagree with this but Europe's actions are far more understandable if you see where they're coming from.
I think you're falsely attributing this to WW2. Free speech is simply just not part of European culture in the way that it is a part of american culture. The ideal of "free speech" regardless of how well that ideal is implemented in practice is something that is much more instilled in US culture than European culture.
They simply do not give a shit the same way that the US claims it gives a shit about free speech. To them its an afterthought. Nothing to do with WW2 and the trauma of it.
dukeyukey 20 hours ago [-]
Worth pointing out the modern American conception of freedom of speech is super recent. It only really became a thing in the 1970s. Before then, restrictions on porn, film, even written materials on controversial subjects like abortion could and were regulated.
userbinator 18 hours ago [-]
The 1st Amendment was over 200 years ago, basically a few decades after the US was founded. There was always a rather large libertarian faction.
dukeyukey 7 hours ago [-]
The 1st Amendment is old, but the way it's applied today is quite radical compared to how it was applied for most of American history. The US being so free speech isn't much older than the median American is.
ilovecake1984 9 hours ago [-]
Totally. We don’t believe in free speech in the way the us does.
We believe in the freedom of genuine political discussion.
Nobody believes in free speech.
mrtksn 1 days ago [-]
It's very weird, all these online laws and regulations seems like its an attempt to reduce the cost of policing by making the platforms a police force and I don't like that. If nazis gather on a platform, go get them or keep eye on them. It's even better than pretending that there are no nazis because you were able to silence them. Known cunts are much easier to deal with than cunts undercover, seriously why push people undercover? Let them speak, if that speech increases their numbers then you must work on your speech.
LAC-Tech 1 days ago [-]
I agree but you have to understand that a lot of European (leaders) still have WW2 in the back of their head.
Then they do not understand how or why WWII started. Few people are really interested or care about this - it's treated more as a kind of Aesopian Fable than a historical event.
I am more cynical than you however, I suspect the Eurocrats who use WWII as a censorship justification know full well it has nothing to do with WWII.
userbinator 20 hours ago [-]
The UK is no longer part of Europe.
gib444 18 hours ago [-]
Oh sorry did it shift into the mid Atlantic or something?
You need to learn the difference between Europe the continent and the EU the political union. The two are not interchangeable.
The British continued to be European post 2020
oytis 13 hours ago [-]
Reminds me of some British MP who said around Brexit time Britain is not leaving Europe geographically. Anyway, Russia or Turkey are geographically in Europe too, but when we are talking about "European regulation", it's pretty obvious that these are excluded, and so is Britain after 2020.
gib444 12 hours ago [-]
I understand there is context in this thread. I also understand that statements like "The UK is no longer part of Europe" are frequently used with political motivations, to sow division.
Also, being geographically close, and only recently an ex-EU member, and with strong alignment on defence/Ukraine, it is not like we are wholly separate and unaligned. We retained some EU law, such as GDPR and EU261 (copy-pasted into a law referred to as 'UK261'). Yes, I understand the UK not being a member state means that EU laws wouldn't automatically apply – but the world is more complex than that.
The Labour party shares a lot in common with many parts of the EU and EU governments when it comes to control, privacy etc.
The UK has been re-aligning with the EU and the rest of Europe for a little while now, repairing relationships, for obvious reasons.
userbinator 18 hours ago [-]
On an article talking about regulations, assume the context is the latter.
mrtksn 16 hours ago [-]
Do you think that regulations is something that only EU does? I have a news for you: https://xkcd.com/1053/
gib444 13 hours ago [-]
No. The words are not interchangeable. Also, knowingly conflating them is politically charged.
Learn the difference and use them correctly and respectfully.
> I've also gone back to Ofcom explicitly telling them the UK was now geoblocked (twice now) and I received a response that this was insufficient.
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/1rk690v/i_ru...
Ofcom really thinks that their laws apply globally.
How silly of them. Obviously, only the US jurisdiction can do that.
https://www.irishtimes.com/world/middle-east/2026/03/18/bloc...
Being jailed with some books and lots of time to work out sounds nice sometime, especially during times when home life is toddlers or baby screaming at you and waking you 24/7 and all your time is spent tending to others' needs so you have no personal agency anyway, the rest does not.
Even debanking only happens because the banks themselves face fines from the state, which if unpaid leads to loss of licensure, after which continued operation leads to... jail. You only need a passport because if you try to push through security without one, you're going to jail. I'm sure if I wanted to waste my time I could follow the thread on all the other ones too.
Social ostracism is a good point. Perhaps the exception that proves the rule?
Of course it needn't be a centralized state per se. Somalis for example use 'xeer' law which is a scalable legal system that starts peer to peer and appealable upwards, mostly based on restitution/fines and ostracizing those who do not pay (eventually to the point, they could become 'outlaws' that have no protection from crime themselves).
I think restitution based legal system is ideal, but of course that would flip on its head the current system where the state ousts the victim and becomes the victim themselves and deprives the victim of restitution instead turning it into a big cronyism money making machine for themselves at the expense of everyone else. It would also mean the end of most 'victimless' crime, and god knows the wailing and nashing of teeth that would come when you couldn't prosecute someone for smoking a left handed cigarette because there is no victim to prosecute the case [or on behalf of].
Not a big loss, but something to keep in mind. There is a risk the UK has long memory.
The US right now cannot keep its bridges from collapsing. It cannot keep its children safe from men with guns. It cannot keep its citizens fed or housed. It is failing to provide adequate healthcare for a majority of its population, it cannot even keep its children vaccinated against measles. Our science agencies are being run by crackpots. Our mass media is being combined under one single owner.
This doesn't even consider the impending existential challenges of climate change.
And this nation, instead of fixing its crumbling domestic infrastructure - educational systems, health care systems, or anything that would benefit the citizens of the US - has chosen to launch an attack against a foreign nation that has already cost 10s of billions of dollars and will likely cost vastly more.
All the political and economic capitol that is required to maintain and improve stable conditions is instead being poured into murder in a desert thousands of miles from home.
I sure hope I'll see you back here on 1/20/29 saying over and over again how wrong you were and how stupid this comment was but I'm sure you'll have some excuse, or pretend you never said it.
The cries of a long-since-dead empire slowly fading into geopolitical irrelevance.
So it really wouldn't be hard for the same legal framework that restricts age to happen in the US. It just takes compliance on our part. The UK is just one tentacle of the legal bureaucracy. It wouldn't surprise me if a bill appears called the Online Child Safey Act or something like that soon and it happens to coincide with a bunch of issues Ofcom raises in this lawsuit.
we’re seeing some good evidence the most recent pushes were secretly funded and directly written by meta, the corporation. [0][1]
according to the link in there,
> Rep. Kim Carver (R-Bossier City), the sponsor of Louisiana's HB-570, publicly confirmed that a Meta lobbyist brought the legislative language directly to her.
and they’ve put as much as 2 billion dollars into it. and yes, that’s billion, with a B.
corporations openai, meta, and google were absolutely backing the push for the age verification bill in california and ohio. [2][3][4]
[0] https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/reddit-user-uncovers-beh...
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47361235
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45244049
[3] https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/13/california-advances...
[4] https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/meta-google-back-differe...
The original research is riddled with baked in conclusions, and has not been verified independently. Its also mostly LLM generated.
The original report that cited the $2 billion number was AI generated slop. The $2 billion number wasn't from Meta, it was from Arabella Advisors.
The AI-generated report showed only about $20-30 million in lobbying efforts per year across all lobbying.
Even the Show HN post was full of AI slop, claiming things like "months of research" when the Claude-generated report showed it began a couple days prior.
So please stop repeating this AI generated junk. It dilutes any real story and the obvious falsehoods make it easy for critics to dismiss.
That is still an absurd amount of money
There’s a motte-and-bailey fallacy happening with that “Meta spent $2 billion” report where the $2 billion number is used as a hook but then replaced with a different argument if the other parties are observant enough to see that it’s BS
I work in safety, and you are right in that this comes up every year. The pressures have been building up and it’s coming to a head. However:
0) Techlash is a thing, and HN regularly underestimates the vehemence and anger behind it.
1) There IS an organic component, driven by voters globally.
2) It is also meta and governments, taking advantage of a crisis to further their ends.
Governments globally are tending towards authoritarianism. Tech firms impact most of the world, but are barely responsive to even the American government.
Voters around the world are increasingly terrified of what tech is doing, while tech is entirely unresponsive to their concerns. Tech is very firmly the bad guy today, when it used to be the “good guy” in the 90s.
So governments are more than happy to be seen as putting tech in its place, while gaining more power for themselves.
A few anecdotes about how bad the safety side is: NDAs are so prevalent and tech is so averse to customer support, that safety teams have no formal signal sharing methods.
The number of requests to recover accounts, point out fraud, or even to address CSAM, that go through WhatsApp, slack, discord, etc. is heart breaking.
To be blunt, it’s a Kafkaesque fuck up that the whole world is stuck in, and people are pissed.
It's 90% corporate lobbying with a "do gooder" varnish
"but whom's English"
In the second, a cult grabs hold of the person and isolates them from their families and loved ones so they can brainfuck them. And, I suspect this has happened to the UK. England doesn't want to be a land for the English, because to do so would make them racist. They have strength in their diversity. Blah blah blah. And the English can't be allowed to talk with anyone else or they might realize how fucked-in-the-head all that nonsense is. They are under the spell of a cult, not as individuals, but collectively. And that cult won't be done with them until it's taken everything from them and coerced them to sign a "billion year contract". And to top it off, you're blaming it on them.
So that we don't talk past each other, here is a summary of my perspective of the discussion so far:
NoMoreNicksLeft dropped an unhinged rant about "England for the English", including a clearly sarcastic and mocking reference to "They have strength in their diversity".
joe_mamba chimed in with "diversity is bad", and added that Germany has the same "issue".
DeathArrow expressed incredulity at witnessing open racial segregationism on HN.
You replied to DeathArrow with "diversity of opinions is good". It was unclear whether you were defending the expression of segregationism on HN, or disagreeing with the premise of it. In any case you didn't signal that you recognized the extreme irony.
I attempted to point out the irony with as few words as possible, and apparently failed to communicate well enough.
No one in most countries would argue that their native population doesn't exist as a category. In fact while in the US the native Americans have been treated very badly in the past, that hopefully doesn't happen too much today, and they are quite honoured in some ways.
Germany?
No matter how many accounts you create to amplify the Epstein-associate media message that only other ethnicities participate in the systematic sexual abuse of children and get away with it, you're still not getting an invite to the island...
You are misinterpreting something. "Diversity" is not exclusively about race.
> England doesn't want to be a land for the English, because to do so would make them racist. They have strength in their diversity. Blah blah blah.
joe_mamba's use of "diversity" reads as being about diversity of opinion; it only appears to be about race given the context you pointed out.
Seriously, what part of "United people are dangerous for the elites" suggests that the people should segregate themselves and each other?
You're suggesting that joe_mamba simply used a paragraph of barely-veiled racist drivel as a jumping off point to make a completely unrelated and totally-not-racist point about how diversity of opinion is harmful and "leads to weakness"? And agreed with the "cult" rhetoric for good measure?
Why exactly should we ignore the context? An excess of charity, perhaps? How are we supposed to interpret "similar issue in Germany" without the context?
Then they built the future and earned a lot of money and status, and now Silicon Valley is a hotbed of neofascist thought.
Turns out that if you give enough power to people who wrangle machines, they start thinking about wrangling people the same way.
Nerds are extremely dangerous. Through their work they quickly absorb the axiom of "predictability is good, unpredictability is bad" and from there to conclusions like "heterogeneity is dangerous and unpredictable" and "behavior of actors in a distributed system must be constrained". Put DevOps in charge of society and expect to get humans treated like cattle, not pets.
I don't know of any "big tech" going out of its way to enforce left wing values. Bandwagoning on large scale social movements, sure, in a "play it safe" kind of way, the same way literally every company gets all rainbow-y during Pride month - it's profitable, or they wouldn't do it. If you resented that, what you resented was having a minority opinion.
The relatively recent shift towards right wing values is also rooted in self interest. It doesn't indicate some kind of change of heart, it simply signals recognition of a power shift - the opinions of people / users / customers now matter less than the opinions of certain authoritarian right wing governments.
> I don't know of any "big tech" going out of its way to enforce left wing values.
I believe you, and I think that is exactly the problem.
> The relatively recent shift towards right wing values is also rooted in self interest
I agree, but this is why neither left nor right should be cheering for corporations enforcing hate speech rules (set by whomever is in power), shadow bans for the right wing voices, bans for people questioning the efficacy of the covid vaccine, or for questioning vaccine mandates, etc etc. The opinions of authoritarian left wing people for 10 years are now being ignored (well, not in HR departments and all the other places left wing authoritarianism exists) and the left seems to view that change as a rise in authoritarianism.
Venezuela showed everyone what happens when you're a toothless country. USA shows up at your door uninvited, fucks your shit up, takes your oil and kidnaps your president for good measure, just to tack on some extra humiliation.
Don't get me wrong, Maduro deserved an even worse fate than what he got. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. It's still a cautionary tale for nations worldwide. It can happen to you. China continues to erode the economic power of the USA. They could very well discover one day that their military might is all they have left. Who's to say they won't suddenly decide to capitalize on their advantage before it evaporates?
What the west wishes the world to be and how they think everyone does see the world, does simply not apply. No matter how Nash pure. The All defector defects in all games..
The us is the most harmless empire that ever was. The most extreme case in the us evangelical bullshit is a daily buisness case.
Joking aside, that was one of the worst own goals in history.
The UK has the 6th highest GDP in the world. Pretty high bar if that make you economically irrelevant.
A quick comparison with [1] (using 1 GBP ~ 1.30 USD) shows that London would rank #8 in Europe (between Denmark and Norway), while the rest of the UK would come in somewhere around #25, between Spain and Italy.
[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1168072/uk-gdp-per-head-...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_in_Eu...
Is there a nuke authority that I did not know about who decides who should and should not have nukes?
Which country do you believe could possibly qualify for such an impossible task?
You could've said that exact same thing about the US just 10 years ago when Obama was president.
Trump isnt all that different in character to previous administrations he just takes bigger risks and doesnt bother with the mask.
China has been preparing for a global energy crisis for years. It is paying off now
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/20/china-oil-rese...It hasn't happened yet. Is there something you perceive as especially problematic now, as opposed to the last 30 years?
I've never once heard it from somebody who correctly anticipated China's rise though. The imminent collapse story just quietly changes every 5 years or so.
If the US has an imperial rival one thing you can almost guarantee is that the predictions of economic collapse will be as frequent as they are absurdly overblown and as always, This Time It's Different.
A society that is unwilling to replace itself will inevitably decline.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy
A policy that ended a decade ago, and was only ever marginally successful (even at the height of the restrictions their birth rate was nearer 1.4 than 1.0)
That’s a pretty big aside.
An example in microcosm: a local village suffered road flooding due to failed maintenance of water pipes. Our rent-seeking privatized water company effected the minimum repair required by regulation.
The next section of old pipe burst almost immediately, flooding the road further for most of January, utterly destroying the surface, through the road base in many places. Even at a crawl it's difficult to avoid tyre damage.
Over a month later the water repairs were effected. Then shortly after some local roadwork notification signs were put up.
Those expecting repairs to the moonscaped road were disappointed: instead the relentless bureaucracy of British local government installed traffic calming measures on top of the broken road, as the work had already been booked and could not be stopped by any means as even basic roadworks lack any degree of dynamism in their execution.
All this still needs to be made right. These small scale failures will compound and compound until the entire state is drowned in the consequence of its incompetence.
Your example only compares against the UK past.
It has zero relevancy because it says nothing about relative change against other countries.
Anecdotally for the USA, I went to New Orleans last year, and I was stunned at the rotting infrastructure. Coming from New Zealand, the USA seems to be trying to copy the trajectory of Argentina.
Then again, I see serious problems in my hometown (e.g. sewage treatment plant) and country (e.g. big problems with rail, ferry, air, electricity, 3 waters). Apart from the societal issues that it seems all countries are facing.
I also live within a floodzone. There is a high probability I will learn how we deal with flooding in the future (different flooding - shallower and lacking the winds and hopefully better pre-planning for avoiding harm).
> everything looked brand new
Absolutely not, to me.
And the conversation is regarding infrastructure. A bunch of Christchurch infrastructure is brand new.
But the rant is entirely counterfactual. Britain is a very rich country with beautiful and recovering nature, a healthy and educated population, one of the more capable armies in Europe, a functioning deterrent, and a relatively healthy political system. We just got two new parties becoming credible threats to the "main" two (regardless of the parties' views, the political competition itself is a much healthier situation than the American duopoly)! We just abolished hereditary peers, which is a constitutional change (and it can just be done)! Below the everyday media noise, we're doing alright as a democracy.
Texas, California (the richest state lmao), Puerto Rico, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi etc
Allow them to have nukes, who are you lol
[0] Yes, the UK can fire them without US approval, but the actual hardware is maintained and supported by the USA, and they have to be shipped to the USA regularly for maintenance. If the USA decided that the UK should not have nukes, there's not a lot the UK could do about it, the Trident system would have to be scrapped entirely and replaced with some completely different system. Which the UK doesn't really have the capability to do and it would cost a fortune to acquire that capability.
The UK and France have long had a project 'on the shelf' to substitute the missiles with the French M51 ballistic missiles.
They don't want to do it, they'll do it if they have to.
So yes, if the US withdrew support then the existing nuclear program would be pretty fucked for a while, but the US couldn't unilaterally de-nuclearise the UK.
The US.
Who else on the planet would have the effective power to possibly even think about who should and shouldn't have them, while plausibly being able to do anything about it?
We can't give Ukraine their nukes back because they were decommissioned (and they were rotting at the time), but there'd be no nation more deserving.
Corollary: no individual nation is able to shoulder such responsibilities.
So the Straights of Hormuz are totally reopened, right? Any day now?
That’s a pretty specific high bar when we’ve destroyed most of their navy, Air Force, etc, all within a couple of weeks.
Man, maybe the US should have had a contingency plan to address the drone issue before launching an unprovoked attack.
> That’s a pretty specific high bar
It's the bar that matters.
Right. So maybe get a good plan before showing up and bombing all the things? We are not setting the bar, Trump told us why he expected to do in Iran. It was about as realistic as Putin’s fantasies about Ukraine surrendering on day 3.
Sure, everything is fine. I am sure Iran will be a peaceful democracy any day now.
In reality, none of Trump’s stated goals are likely to happen any time soon.
Surrendered.
NATO is bad for the world so any one fighting it are pretty cool. Which seems to be Russia and Korea.
Despite its problems, the UK is still a sixth largest economy, a cultural powerhouse (how many Hollywood actors are British?), with a lot of soft power, a capable and currently renewed nuclear arsenal (Astraea and Dreadnought are on track), a globe-spanning network of alliances (from AUKUS to Japan deploying to the UK first time in their history to being one of the closest and most unwavering allies for Ukraine), and a constitutionally healthy and adaptive system of government (we just passed another constitutional change and it's not a big deal, we can just do that).
Frankly, this meme stinks of projection. Going from a shining city on a hill to a place where public executions by state backed paramilitaries are just another partisan talking point, that starts Special Military Operations with no plan or goal, that threatens to annex territory of its allies in about a year is an achievement. I guess projecting this free fall on the UK makes living through it more bearable.
[0] https://www.madisontrust.com/information-center/visualizatio...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
They're still in the same cluster of countries by GDP as the #3 country so falling from #4 to #6 doesn't look so drastic.
If you compare per capita, it's a very different story. USA is around $93k, UK $61k and China $15k. So about 2/3 of the USA's and more than 4x China's. This was using my figures calculated from your table and the population figures I found elsewhere.
An actual source of GDP per capita [0] puts the USA at 9th globally, UK at 20th globally and China at 74th.
When you factor in that the US's GDP figures are quite skewed because there are lots of multinationals headquartered in the US. If you ignored just the Mag7, who all derive the majority of their income outside the USA, the USA would be significantly further down that GDP list.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
Why would you use the economy to defend the UK's status and then point to a bunch of non economy stuff to try to knock the US? The US is the largest and has been for awhile. Isn't that what mattered to you? Plus, pointing out that a bunch of prominent UK residents leave to participate in US industry hardly seems a point in favor of how well the UK is doing.
The "prominent UK residents" don't "leave" the UK. Benedict Cumberbatch lives in London, despite constantly starring in Hollywood films. It's an example of the UK culturally punching way above its weight in proportion to its population.
Again, you just used the present size of a nation's economy to argue that a nation isn't in decline when someone was talking about the ongoing decline of a nations politics, economy, and culture. It seems odd to me you're able to, for other countries, understand that the present moment can be viewed with both historical and likely future context.
>The "prominent UK residents" don't "leave" the UK. Benedict Cumberbatch lives...
Plenty move, but that wasn't the point I think anyone was making. If I wanted to say they were moving to the US, I would have said that instead of "leave to participate in US industry". And all of that ignores that the original commenter was talking about the decline of British media rather than saying that they're aren't talented Brits. It's not like they they're saying the UK had a bunch of great actors ten years ago and they suddenly died. Them working in American industry rather than the UK producing it own is, I'm pretty sure, the sort of point the commenter you replied to was making.
I feel like we're reading different posts.
They're just lashing out, emperor has no clothes, their empire is collapsing, and those who are paying any attention at all, are fully aware of it. All they have left is to go on the internet and shit on Europe for daring to regulate their precious social media companies (that elsewhere they generally admit we would be better off without). They are desperately clutching onto this tech-company-based nationalism. It's absolutely pathetic.
I really hope this wasn't posted by an American....
Britain does not have colonies. You might be thinking of the British overseas territory but the total population of those islands is less than 400,000
A reasonable case can be made that it should be Irish territory, not British, but that is a territorial dispute.
But not all of Britain's colonies are far away.
Not just them, but I'll leave it at that.
Some years ago when the United Nations started critiquing colonies, the British overseas ones were rebranded as "territories" and "dependencies." (The French still have overseas colonies, the so called DOM-TOMs, and also some nearer to home.)
Some of these overseas ones like Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands have overwhelming support for British rule thanks to an aggressive neighbour. Some of these remaining colonies have active independence movements with varying support.
Fun fact: they've not been called that in 23y, they're DROM-COM
Okay then if you're just going to be cute and nonspecific there's no point in continuing this discussion. I'm not interested in trying to decipher vague insinuations.
That's the only method that will scale, can be done "swiftly" and won't have the government kicking down your door if someone posts something illegal on your platform while you're sleeping or on vacation.
You need to buy it from compliance companies which lobbied for the law in the UK, run by ex regulators.
https://x.com/moo9000/status/1950866445186818209?s=20
As far as regulation goes this is pretty light and allowing. It’s more annoying than not having any laws at all sure, but zero regulation regime failed (from the point of view of powers that be).
Next on the escalation ladder is govt writing the rules for you that you either take or leave
If the UK is not happy about how the site deals with such matters, the UK can block the site.
>Next on the escalation ladder is govt writing the rules for you that you either take or leave
No. This is not "next". This is "now" but the UK doesn't want to actually look to be doing what they are actively doing, and now we've got this mess.
This stuff is not magic, you can just do it yourself.
Just 2 months ago Italy tried to ban domains globally too https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46555760
Otherwise each company, everywhere in the world, no matter how small, has to follow the arbitrary demands of every nation state? How does that make any sense?
I don’t recall the outcome exact outcome or what has happened since, but I think Gab basically told them off in a similar way, i.e., “ummmm, this is America, silly Europeans” and may have even submitted the foreign demand letters to Congress and for whatever reason may have still geo-blocked the UK and at the same time has blocked VPN IPs because they found it effective at blocking pornography and the bad actors who emanated from a certain country. The effect though is that they’ve effectively barred the UK from participating in free speech in America if that’s still the current state of things. I suspect that is exactly what the tyrannical forces have worked out too, and which is why they’re demanding something other than just geo-blocking.
If you agree to VPN blocking, you effectively enforce the geo-block as well as unmasking users for five-eye de facto domestic surveillance. But they only came after those horrible horrible “Nazis” that insist on their rights to free speech, “…and I did not speak out.”
The point is, regardless of what one thinks of Gab, the powerful and tyrannical elements clearly go after those the mainstream population hates due to the two minutes of hate, so to say, which people have been conditioned to loathe; where the tyrants refine their tactics and the strategy, and practice and normalize the process for when they are ready to go after the mainstream populace… which seems to be approaching. And then the mainstream people are shocked and surprised because they believe it all came out of nowhere, when they just ignored it all along.
This of course is not just limited to the digital realm, the tyrannical forces will always come after scapegoats, and the exposed and low hanging fruit, or and even deliberately cause the “troublemakers” to identify themselves so they can be tracked, monitored, and picked off if need be.
This is not new, and people seem to fall for the same tricks over and over and over.
Even if you agree that this should be done for the currently stated reasons, the precedent is horrifying.
To quote Snowden, we're building the infrastructure of mass surveillance. (And then hoping nobody's going to come along and use it.)
We grant fully that it’s a slippery slope, ofc. But is the end of the slope in mind at the outset? Maybe, but not certainly.
It really paints this authority in a special light if they believe they can force their rules on everyone on the planet. To be honest, I think this needs immediate psychological evaluation because you have to have a very distorted view on reality. Even if you give a lot of leverage to authorities being detached. But certainly the authority is very overwhelmed with itself and the world.
But while we are at it I demand that Ofcom removes it presence from my internet too. Perhaps flood some DNS server, so ofcom.uk to point to 4chan...
People really should turn to medical professionals and not internet strangers for help.
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-c...
https://youtu.be/lUsO8ny_Dhg?si=FOPqCS2NKOZBQKg8
Its like telling people don't talk to friends and family only go to a professional. This is how we end up in a worse mental crisis.
For your own safety, you are to only discuss your health with NHS certified healthcare providers and no one else. Doing so with others can lead to unprovoked, unsanctioned and dangerous anecdotes, advice and memes. Worse, you might find community and make friends with people who have similar life experiences, which can distract from your state sanctioned treatment plan. This extends to your friends and spouse, they might mean well, but they are not medical professionals.
Your health is your private matter, let's keep it that way!
From my experience, the best one can do is to get a good and affordable therapist by a word of mouth.. and sometimes one can get lucky as such person is doing also service for a state, for free. Main point is to actively start searching
So yes, you are right in that activly start searching is the better way. But that insight is often lost on the target audience.
When OSA was announced I really expected the US to state clearly that they wouldn't let UK to threaten US citizens with millions of fines if they practice their rights to Free Speech.
Because this is what's happening, the UK is making open threats against US citizens when they practice their rights to Free Speech. See e.g. Lobsters' take on it: they just wanted to have a webforum in the US but they couldn't because a foreign country threatened them with huge fines. No protection from the US.
"Just geoblock UK" seemed like a good enough in practice solution, although it is more action needed than I'd prefer.
Well I guess sudden cardiac arrest is even worse than silly internet rules.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveforbes/2025/09/09/people-a...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tB3WVygAM8I
Looking through that article, one of the examples is "The wife of a conservative politician was sentenced to 31 months in prison for what police said was an unacceptable post."
But if you dig into what happened - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp3wkzgpjxvo
"The wife of a Conservative councillor has been jailed for 31 months after calling for hotels housing asylum seekers to be set on fire."
This is pretty clear incitement to violence.
The UK has problems, but it's not very useful to throw all of these cases together to make a big number, it really rather undermines the point.
(edit - looking at the video posted in a sibling comment is enlightening. The number actually convicted of anything is around ~400 and this includes a lot of direct incitement to violence, stalking and all sorts. Which are similarly illegal in the US. The US right-wing talking points are as usual a load of crap.
None of which is to say I think the UK has things right, and that number of arrests is clearly a problem in itself, but as usual the "OH MY GOD look at what's happening over there! Muh free speech!" from the US commenters is hypocritical and myopic)
Are you talking about the same UK where people get harassed by the police for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-crime_hate_incident ?
This is a mis-truth which has been spread by Joe Rogan and his ilk. Political speech is very much protected in UK law. You won't get in "trouble" if you make posts against immigration or trans people. J.K. Rowling and Ricky Gervais certainly haven't been locked up.
Yes, there have been cases, such as the infamous Cowley Hill School case where Hertfordshire police arrested a couple over their posts in a school WhatsApp group. However, such arrests are illegal and in that case the police had to apologise and pay compensation.
What will get you in trouble in the UK is threatening violence against people or posting hate speech that encourages others to do so. But this is also true in the USA and in most countries.
With "protected political speech" being defined as which flavour of the established, incompetent elite you prefer this year.
People have been arrested in the UK for holding blank signs within vicinity of Palestine marches. People have been arrested over protesting Charles' coronation. To say nothing of thousands of people arrested every year over tweets.
Political speech is basically criminalised in the UK at this point. This is not an establishment worth any of our respect.
Ref: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn5lxg2l0lqo
97% of trials in the UK don't have juries anyway.
The changes would mean instead of 3% having juries it would be down to 2.25%.
This would also be reviewed once the existing backlog has been seen to. "This means that currently a suspect being charged with an offence today may not reach trial until 2030."
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/no-freedom-of-s...
Got a source on this one?
Supporting Palestine in the UK has never been illegal. Supporting the specific group "Palestine Action" has been as they were for a while a proscribed terrorist organisation due to what was (IMHO) some property crimes committed against defense contractors by some of their members. Totally wrong, and has now been struck down in the courts, but saying "you can't support palestine" is also wrong.
> Thousands of people arrested every year over tweets.
The source I saw on this one had clear examples of violent threats and calls to set buildings full of people on fire, so I'm not sure this is clear either.
The group itself offered training courses on Ho to sabotage the U.K. military
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/palestine-ac...
I wonder what would happen in the US with such a group
More concerningly, prescribing Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation had a suppressive effect on lawful protest against the Israel-Gaza war, since any supporter of Palestine might be considered a member of Palestine Action and therefore, legally, a terrorist suspect.
> Got a source on this one?
Not quite arrested but the closest I can find is someone threatened with arrest if they wrote certain things on the blank sign:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/anti-monarch...
The UK Police seem to have switched to a policy of knowingly arresting people erroneously and then releasing them and apologising afterwards.
(At least it is just arresting people and releasing them rather than shooting them and then apologising afterwards whilst also exonerating the officers involved.)
The article does link to an incident in Russia where a protester was dragged away for holding up a blank sign.
Not to say anyone would actually get in trouble for just some opinion posts, but I don't know why you went with "against" here, I think "for" is the more likely one to make the current UK (or US) government upset.
The line is quite thin and ambiguous though. If they want to get someone they will and find that various remarks “encourage violence”.
Almost any opinion that isn't nice can be argued to encourage violence.
Not sure how often that happens coming to the UK, yet.
Of course AFAIK this can happen pretty much everywhere at this point so your only hope is being a citizen of a country that doesn't allow it for locals (such as the US) and then not traveling. Or wipe your devices prior to traveling.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/maga-traveler-dragged-o...
> A retired Tennessee law enforcement officer was held in jail for more than a month this fall after police arrested him over a Facebook post of a meme related to the September assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2025/12/17/politics/retired-cop-jail...
You are entirely incorrect.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/17/politics/retired-cop-jailed-o...
But given the increasingly dystopian state of many countries worldwide, you may also encounter difficulties related to administrative burden and systems with not enough human oversight and override for exceptional situations.
Of course, "touch grass" works just as well.
Ofcom is probably full of non technical people who have been given a specific set of (stupid) instructions including that if its on the internet, its a product being sold to the UK.
Curious time to complain about the UK doing this (*points broadly eastwards*)
If America introduced a law like this, especially the strong, late-aughts, pre-Trump America, I bet most countries would just cave in, just like most caved in when copyright and AML/KYC laws were concerned. Hell, Swicerland basically abolished anonymous bank accounts, something which the country was famous for, just because the US wanted them to. I don't think we'll see a similar resolution here.
And no, you don't do it because of some holy quest to protect minorities. Minorities never suffered from too much of freedom of speech. The opposite however...
It may dawn some people at some point that if you demand a certain behaviour from others, you might be neither liberal nor progressive.
Trump can easily point the finger at the EU because it lets him do that. I think the EU cannot take responsibility for itself or other if it doesn't correct course.
It is also accepted that enforcement can be an issue if the law is an absurd overreach (like the UK criminalising smoking in the streets of Paris).
Oh well, the uncensored web from my NL VPN still looks the same.
We can move much faster then they can legislate.
Then they came for vpn clients but I used free software
Then they came for the payment methods but I used bitcoin
Then they blocked UDP at the isp but I used satelites doe linked elsewhere
Then they just came for me but nobody cared as nobody else was affected
And enforceable. Let them fail but they have money behind them,
They learned from the US
They made the whole world British so the British laws applied everywhere.
"Dear Sirs, In regards to your recent request, can I refer you to the reply given in Arkell and Pressdram (1971). Yours etc,"
Meanwhile the UK is gnawed by corruption, scams and whatnot, yet there is no one able to do anything about. But harassing some Canadian forum? First to serve!
Not only is this enforceable, it has been enforced, and people have been assassinated without charge for this crime.
The size of ones military expenditure does not determine whether a foreign government can kill you, specifically.
What, Ofcom is trying to restrict viewing outside UK?
One I remember was a site hosting streams of the 2022 football world cup. Or a number of Iranian-affiliated news sites just last year. Or offshore gambling websites in 2021.
People going "Those Crazy Brits! Thank God That'll Never Happen Here!" seem pretty ill-informed.
We were too small and bent, also US customers were 30% of the total which made it a non choice.
The kind of vague phrasing that makes one immediately suspicious. What were these 'several countries'? Iran? Cuba? North Korea?
> also US customers were 30% of the total which made it a non choice
You're literally operating in the US then. It's obvious US laws would apply if you're serving US customers.
It doesn't matter which those were, we were obliged to respect laws of the European country we were incorporated, not US ones.
Laws are not a buffet. You choose to do business in a market, you've opted to be regulated in that market.
You are absolutely free to sell your services to whoever you want, but the US is equally free to refuse to allow you to operate domestically if you're breaking their laws (and otherwise make your life difficult if you e.g. rely on US banking infrastructure). If you want to do business in Iran, don't expect to do business in the US.
> The European Union does not recognise the extra-territorial application of laws adopted by third countries and considers such effects to be contrary to international law.
(yes the irony is palpable)
> The blocking statute prohibits compliance by EU operators with any requirement or prohibition based on the specified foreign laws.
It is illegal to comply with certain US sanctions in the EU. This is most likely what GP is talking about.
https://finance.ec.europa.eu/eu-and-world/open-strategic-aut...
I don't think this is how the law works.
Think of it this way: any customer from Libya makes it customary for my female co-workers to wear hijab at the workplace.
Thus a customer who voluntarily purchases services from a company in a different jurisdiction does NOT automatically makes this company subject to his jurisdiction.
I mean I find this quite plausible, but you should tell the guys in the thread above, who are all posting "ha, the UK thinks it can tell a non-UK website what to do, how absurd!" and metaphorically pouring their tea out in Boston Harbour.
They're both examples of Country A putting a law on the books that constrains sites in Country B. "Don't sell", "don't serve", "don't stand on one leg while fulfilling orders", they're all the same class of overreach.
You choose to do business in a jurisdiction, you bind yourself to their laws. That means all laws, not just ones you like, or think that are relevant to your business. Laws are not a buffet.
Don't do business in jurisdictions where you feel like you cannot comply with domestic law. No one is requiring you to do business in the US. People choose to do business in the US so they can profit from US customers, and that's totally fine, but doesn't come with some magical immunity to US law.
1. This isn't about business but charges. There's no way in hell US can e.g. prosecute non us citizens from trading with Cuba e.g. the embargo applies to US individuals and companies. The rest of the world, e.g. European countries, have normal relations with Cuba and nobody gives two damns about the embargo.
2. The same thing happens in reverse and applies to US companies doing business overseas.
Anyone who sells to my enemies is my enemy. You yourself can be subject to embargoes.
Francesca Albanese cannot do banking with banks from her own country because the US said so. Read: third parties that have relations with the US are barred from doing business with you or else risk being blacklisted too.
https://english.elpais.com/international/2025-12-28/the-comp...
Sure it can. It can do whatever it wants in its domestic courts. Turkmenistan can prosecute you and me right now for failure to pay insufficient deference to dear leader. Whether this impacts us in any way is the actual question. We presumably do not want to do business in Turkmenistan. But the OP wants to do business in the US. Ergo, the OP is subject to US law, irrespective of what he thinks US law should look like or what its limits ought to be.
OP doesn't have to do business in the US at all and be completely and utterly untouched by US law - he won't be extradited anywhere unless the offence in question is also an offence in his own country, which as you point out, the Cuban embargo (etc) isn't. This is how you and I stay safe from the many Turkmenistani indictments hanging over us.
This is not a case of someone bravely standing up for justice and freedom, this is a case of someone wanting to profit from US customers but somehow have total immunity from US law. And I'd respectfully point out that if the countries were reversed, and we were talking about e.g. Russia, the European countries would be apoplectic about anyone doing business there. Imagine a Brazilian company selling drone motors to Russia. Can its executives expect to travel freely through the EU without fear of arrest? Do business in the EU?
Yet almost everyone in those countries falls inline with US law because frankly the US is the exception and it's laws de facto apply in Canada and the EU.
US laws do not apply beyond US borders, period. Complying with them in Europe is a felony.
Uhhh... the person whose company has 30% of its customers in the US. See above.
> You sound like the lunatic president you have
> You're the usual case thinking US is an exception to the rules, where it can dictate it's terms beyond its borders and get away with the opposite.
Cool. I'm not American. I'm literally just quoting International Private Law (aka Conflict of Laws) to you. And I'm doing so while being careful to give other examples from other countries.
I've literally not once said I approve of any of these laws. But this seems to be the difference between you and me - I don't bend the rules to get to outcomes I like. You sell to Cuba, or you sell to the US. Do I like that? No. Is that the law? Yes. One would not be very effective in international business if they failed to realise this kind of thing.
> You're the usual case thinking US is an exception to the rules
And, conversely, I think you're the usual case in trying to make the US a unique big bad, when they're doing absolutely nothing out of the ordinary in this area, and certainly nothing that Europe doesn't constantly do when it regulates for foreigners and foreign businesses trying to interact with or through the EU. (Something the EU does more of, proudly and loudly, than anyone else on Earth.)
Sleep well! (It's the morning here.)
So any customer from Libya makes it customary for my female co-workers to wear hijab at the workplace, right? Same logic.
No.
A customer who voluntarily purchases services from a company in a different jurisdiction does NOT automatically makes this company subject to his specific jurisdiction.
I don't like it same as you because it makes doing business on the internet complicated but it's how it works in practice.
Why though? Libya has no jurisdiction over my business in the EU. I place no restrictions on who can purchase a subscription on my SaaS. I certainly can sell to customers in Libya.
All Libya can do is ban my business, but they can only implement that ban within their own sovereign borders.
So, no.
Well the second part of that is ill-informed but the first part is just... informed?
As far as the US seizing sites, does that happen when the site is hosted outside of the US and without the cooperation of authorities where ever it is actually hosted? I don't think so but I'm happy to be proven wrong there.
They also force ISPs to block IPs [0].
I feel trying to say that's not "blocking websites" is playing games with words, and the results are functionally the same to the "average" user.
The fact that the US effectively claim juristiction over the root DNS system is a more a geopolitical power thing rather than a legal restriction.
[0] https://torrentfreak.com/us-court-orders-every-isp-in-the-un...
Ofcourse, everybody ( well, outside the UK ) are OK if UK orders UK ISPs blocks sites for their customers.
Another advantage as the other reply has mentioned is that courts have broad authority but must narrow the effect of their rulings to the minimum necessary to address the suit. In this case it would certainly lead to 4Chan being blocked by UK ISPs by order of a UK court. I think even 4Chan would be fine with that.
This is different than 4chan allowing UK viewers to access the website at all.
Country A has a law that says X is illegal, and tries to enforce it against companies in country B where X is legal.
Whether either case is reasonable is a different question, though.
The US by and large doesn't censor websites even if the content is illegal in the US. They'll get a warrant and seize servers or domains if it's in the country, or maybe poke international law enforcement for cooperation, but it doesn't really extend beyond that.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/05/judge-rules-ever...
If a country has media or broadcast standards laws, and you distribute or broadcast content in that country that violates those laws, that’s on you. The country can just fine you if you chose not to comply. Just the same as they would if you were doing it while living in that country. You’re not obliged to care about the fine if you don’t live there and never intend to travel there. But if you do then you’re going to be subject to their laws at that point, for violating those laws when you distributed that content in that country.
The hardware that propagates the data transmission is owned partly by the UK and partly by Canada. The Canadian website operator has turned off the transmission to the UK on their side and has fulfilled their obligations. The UK is complaining that they didn't turn off transmission on their side.
What you're saying is that the website operator should travel to the UK to enforce UK law from Canada. It's nonsensical.
Edit: If this wasn't clear enough here is a cartoonish version:
Ofcom: Your site violates UK law. By allowing UK citizens access, you must abide by UK law.
Website operator: I do not care about serving UK citizens and am now blocking UK IP addresses. Thank you for notifying us.
Ofcom: We have decided that we will not block access to your website from the UK. Therefore it is theoretically possible to access your website anyway, which is a violation of UK law. No matter how much effort you spend on ensuring that UK citizens do not gain access to your website, we will make sure that there will always be a non zero possibility of violating UK law. Since we are not blocking anything, the blame cannot lie in UK users circumventing a UK side block, which would force us to prosecute UK citizens rather than you as the website operator.
Please shut your website down to ensure compliance.
Website Operator: Okay so you're telling me I have to build the great firewall in the UK, make all ISPs adopt it and lobby a change in UK law to make the firewall mandatory, just so I can host my website?
Ofcom: yes
It's fucking stupid that an American site that is afforded free speech protection in its own country has to deal with the UK acting like a tyrant.
There are so many global laws that are actually enforced. Of course they all origin in the US. See KYC/AML laws.
If you are to sell a toy in the UK you must be a British company. (and must pay VAT and comply with British safety standards).
If a consumer buys from overseas and imports a product then they do not have British consumer protections. Which is why so much aliexpress electrical stuff is dangerous (expecially USB chargers) yet it continues to be legally imported.
Just, no british retailer would be allowed to carry it without getting a fine.
Ofcom has a bad handle on web requests. Clients connect out. 4chan et al aren't pushing their services in anyone in the UK.
If you posted cocaine from your cocaine-legal country to an address where it was illegal, and you followed all the regular customs labelling rules, I'm not sure you should be liable. And you shouldn't be extradited either. Even the UK demands that extradition offences would have been criminal had they been committed in the UK. Now I'm sure in practice, you'd find yourself in trouble immediately but I don't think it's fair.
The ramifications of laws like this is everyone needs to be Geo-IP check every request, adhere to every local law. It's not the Internet we signed up for.
If the UK wants to block packets from across the pond, they should (but I hope they don't) do it via a Great Firewall, rather than expecting random foreign websites to do it for them.
Is it “different” then?
Being serious here.
Possessing pornography was a separate issue which may or may not be allowed. Typically (I think) authorities went after publishers not consumers - because they were easier targets to pin down.
Which would seem to imply that if you’re sending encrypted traffic at the request of a recipient the as a publisher of “obscene” material then unless you are delivering very clearly illegal content to a user then you should not prosecuted.
I haven’t got a single source for anything I’m saying, so I might be entirely wrong - I’m simply going off half-remembered barely-facts. So please do argue with me!
In the website scenario, there are no physical addresses with a geographic component to them. The physical topology of the network is only known by the operators of the network. Only they know where the routers are physically located.
This means geoip blocking can only ever be done on a best effort basis. Actual blocking can only be done by the operators of the routers, which is why it is unreasonable to expect the website operator to be responsible for perfect compliance.
The place you sent the box then repacks it and mails it to the UK. Somehow the UK thinks that you and only you have broken the law.
You send a packet to your ISP with an address on top. That packet physically travels to your nearest exchange and then the network figures out how to route it to the recipient's real location.
In addition, the recipient's IP address tells you nothing about who or where they are. It's fundamentally un-knowable from the sender's perspective, no matter what the UK wants you to think. IP addresses are not evidence of physical location.
When you receive a packet, there is no way to know where in the world it came from or where it wants to go. It's just a number. You can make guesses but it's still just reading tea leaves.
To believe that IP geolocation is in any way reliable is a gross misunderstanding of TCP/IP and networks in general.
This is the same as letting a delivery cross your borders, except the delivery vehicle here is permanent infrastructure, similar to a pipeline and it is purposefully set to be permissive and allow anything through.
Why are you suddenly pretending that there is no equivalent to the customs office in this scenario?
It's not like the website operator is sneakily smuggling cargo on a container ship. VPN usage is done UK citizens. The operator has already denied shipments to UK addresses in this scenario.
It's kinda voluntary, though, there's no international agreement about this.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LICRA_v._Yahoo!
EU doesn't believe in human rights or freedoms.
Therefore they're actually transacting that business on UK/EU soil.
Didn't the US use this argument to prosecute and extradite the Mega founder?
I wonder if the UK/EU will reverse uno the US's stance and start extraditions on US CEOs.
The extradition has succeeded so far because it's based on acts that would have met a criminal bar in New Zealand, and deemed to have a high likelihood of being successfully prosecuted. Fraud, copyright infringement, etc.
The US has standing because many MegaUpload servers were in the US.
Imagine this scenario, a major G7 country declares:
All bytes sent to a computer on their soil count as a transaction on their soil.
And the end client being on a VPN is not a defence UNLESS the website owner attempts to verify the user's identity.
Immediately have to pay local taxes, conform to local laws.
Unless you keep all your assets in the US and never fly abroad, our shady website operator is exposing them self to real risk of being snatched by police somewhere or having their assets seized.
The only thing stopping that from happening is the trade agreements the Americans have put in place, the very trade agreements everyone's now looking at and thinking 'what are these really worth?'.
Yeah, it's fantasy and it won't happend but it could.
The internet is not free, it runs on sufferance of a bunch of governments and some, like China, already lock it down.
The more America, who probably gains the most from it right now, plays with fire, the more risk something like this crazy scenario happens.
Another more plausible scenario is countries simply start repealing safe harbor laws. End of YouTube/Facebook/Twitter/etc. in those countries overnight.
The US is not going to let all US companies get fined out of retaliation, so there would be more retaliation from the US against the EU, and everyone else. In the end everyone loses, except for China, which as you mentioned is not stupid enough to play these games and decided to simply pick a lane.
China locks down the Internet and blocks foreign players (to varying levels of success). They don't reach overseas to prosecute foreign executives or fine Meta for not removing Party-critical content from Facebook. Of all the parties that could be involved in this censorship drama, China is somehow the most honest.
The US are already playing this game. Can you not see that?
It already happened via GDPR to some degree. CJEU ruled in December that platforms can qualify as controllers for personal data published in user-generated advertisement. The given reasoning was basically that the platform determined the means and the purposes of the processing.
Due to that they can be liable for article 82 damages.
But US=Good and Europe=Bad on hn
LOL, classic. Everyone thinks they are the one being picked on. Plenty of people would argue that what you say here is actually the polar opposite of what happens on HN.
No? All countries catch drug dealers from other countries all the time even for the crime that happened outside of their borders. Or do you really think El Chapo could vacation freely in Europe.
The people who support incest porn are a lot less talkative.
As such our windsock government with no strong beliefs does what the survey says is most popular.
The people who support incest porn are a lot less talkative.
I think there is an argument to made the pornography in general is harmful.
But to single out one single type of porn strikes me as... very odd. Maybe politicians can list, explicitly, all the other porn genres they find acceptable or agreeable to them, as a kind of compare and contrast exercise.
> So-called "barely legal" pornography and content depicting sexual relationships between step-relatives are set to be banned amid efforts to regulate intimate image sharing.
> Peers agreed by a majority of one to ban videos and images depicting relationships that would not be allowed in real life.
> They also agreed by 142 votes to 140, majority two, to bring intimate pictures and videos of adults pretending to be children in line with similar images of real children.
There's actually a 200+ page government review of pornography https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/creating-a-safer-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_United_States_interventio...
https://www.salon.com/2026/01/06/department-of-justice-quiet...
Let's say they did. Would you be saying "So what?" then too?
Maduro on the other hand...
Even if Musk did something in Pennsylvania, Trump still would have won the electoral college vote.
I think the good faith argument is that Musk confirmed they were secure so that the election wasn't stolen from Trump. But frankly Musk is too much of an idiot to steal an election or make sure it is secure so I don't know how to take it...
You can be against freespeech restrictions in Britain and the 2024 Trump Administrations braindead military and foreign policy.
If I attack either, I am not taking the people in the countries whose politicians make the decisions.
Legally speaking, British people are subjects, not citizens.
In 1983, the status of CUKC was renamed to British citizen (for those CUKCs resident in or closely connected with the UK: the situation in the remaining colonies was more complicated). At the same time, the status of British subject was officially restricted to those few British subjects who didn't qualify for citizenship of the UK or of any other Commonwealth country in 1949, and who were formerly known as "British subjects without citizenship".
So we are officially and legally citizens, not subjects.
Right to vote was already established before the change of the name (subject->citizen).
So, what changed? Well subjects have “privileges” that are afforded from the monarch, and citizens have “rights” which are given from the state.
Except:
1) In olde english law, the monarch and the state are literally the same thing.
2) Rights seem to be pretty loosely followed if they’re actually, you know, RIGHTS, and not privileges afforded from the state.
I’d say that semantically the difference is how the words make you feel, not the actual applicability of the terms to anything that has been realised.
But of course, citizens typically also have duties -- commonly, the duty to take up arms to defend the state -- and subjects can legitimately expect a reciprocity of obligations from the sovereign (e.g. the enforcement of the "King's Peace"), which sounds quite a bit like rights to me.
(All of which is a verbose and not very coherent way of saying that I agree with you.)
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1981/61/contents
What Ofcom wants is for their consequences to happen extraterritorially.
> Current law allows for restrictions on threatening or abusive words or behaviour intending or likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress or cause a breach of the peace, sending another any article which is indecent or grossly offensive with an intent to cause distress or anxiety,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_United_Kingd...
Whether you agree with the law or not, it is important to be accurate when discussing it. The U.S. vs. U.K. (not) free speech law discussion online so often seems to frame them as fundamentally different, but they are on the same spectrum. The go-to example of the limits of free speech in context of the U.S. legal system is "Shouting fire in a crowded theater". The U.K. laws are the same in principle but a little further along the spectrum.
https://hansard.parliament.uk/lords/2025-07-17/debates/F807C...
> The go-to example of the limits of free speech in context of the U.S. legal system is "Shouting fire in a crowded theater". The U.K. laws are the same in principle but a little further along the spectrum.
They are completely different in principle. The principle in the US is preventing the inciting of violence or a situation that could cause physical injury to others. In the UK it has become about protecting feelings of people who could just choose to not read, listen, or get themselves worked up about it.
And before you argue that there is no such thing as emotional violence: do you agree that some emotional harm can be worse than some physical harm? I'd much rather be punched than subjected to the worst emotional trauma I've experienced in my life.
> In the UK it has become about protecting feelings of people who could just choose to not read, listen, or get themselves worked up about it.
I'm not going to defend U.K. laws but it is patently absurd to say something like this is in the context of a conversation about U.S. vs. U.K. free speech laws when the U.S. courts allow schools to ban certain books because of "protecting feelings of people who could just choose to not read, listen, or get themselves worked up about it". Heaven forbid a Florida student learns about homosexuality, won't anyone think of the parents?
No it really isn't.
> You draw the line at physical violence, an entirely arbitrary line, whereas the U.K. goes further and continues to emotional violence.
It must appear as a spectrum to you because you've been taken in by propaganda used by authoritarians and fundamentalists to justify using actual violence and censorship to crush dissent and criticism.
There is no such thing as emotional violence. It's hurt feelings. There is no "before" about it, and we don't need to agree on anything, you're just wrong.
> And before you argue that there is no such thing as emotional violence: do you agree that some emotional harm can be worse than some physical harm? I'd much rather be punched than subjected to the worst emotional trauma I've experienced in my life.
Non sequitur.
A society where people are reliant on the government to protect them from having their feelings hurt by hearing other people's opinions is not a good or sustainable one.
The other thing is that I guarantee you this is totally selectively enforced and prosecuted, which is a hallmark of these kinds of authoritarian laws. People whose thoughts and opinions are considered verboten or threatening to the regime I'm sure have little or no protection of their feelings and sensibilities when they are insulted by other people's opinions and comments.
> I'm not going to defend U.K. laws but it is patently absurd to say something like this is in the context of a conversation about U.S. vs. U.K. free speech laws when the U.S. courts allow schools to ban certain books because of "protecting feelings of people who could just choose to not read, listen, or get themselves worked up about it". Heaven forbid a Florida student learns about homosexuality, won't anyone think of the parents?
I don't know what point you are trying to make here or if you know what freedom of speech is. Government schools and government education bureaucrats developing policies about curriculum and teaching materials doesn't seem to offer useful commentary about freedom of speech, so I really don't know how to respond to your question.
> The other thing is that I guarantee you this is totally selectively enforced and prosecuted
Unlike all other laws? Tell me, who is more likely to end up on death row? To be prosecuted for drug possession? How much jail time is a rich white student likely to receive for rape compared to a poor black student? All laws are selectively enforced and prosecuted.
> I don't know what point you are trying to make here or if you know what freedom of speech is. Government schools and government education bureaucrats developing policies about curriculum and teaching materials doesn't seem to offer useful commentary about freedom of speech, so I really don't know how to respond to your question.
You don't understand that Florida schools banning books because they contain references to homosexuality is a free speech issue? Judge Carlos E. Mendoza in Penguin Random House v. Gibson said "The state’s prohibition of material that ‘describes sexual conduct’ is overbroad and unconstitutional.”. Unfortunately, many other judges did not rule the same way.
The point is that the "free speech" you lord over other countries is arbitrary, those who proclaim the U.S. to have true free speech and countries like the U.K. to be oppressive anti free speech regimes are delusional and have been conned by U.S. exceptionalism.
You can disagree with another county's choice to draw the line somewhere other than where the U.S. draws it but to proclaim the U.S. has real free speech that stands alone from other countries is lying to yourself. What, exactly, is unique about the U.S. free speech laws? That it is a constitutional amendment?
We could debate where the line should be, whether the U.K. or the U.S. has it right or wrong, but to argue that the U.K.'s laws are somehow distinct from the U.S. laws is nonsensical. I do not agree with where the U.K. draws the line. I also do not agree with where the U.S. draws the line.
> It must appear as a spectrum to you because you've been taken in by propaganda used by authoritarians and fundamentalists to justify using actual violence and censorship to crush dissent and criticism.
And for one last final point: how many protestors has the U.S. government killed this year? How many protestors have been killed by the U.K. government for protesting against government policy? I'm sure Renée Good and Alex Pretti and all the other murdered U.S. protestors are comforted in their graves by the glorious anti-authoritarian pro-dissent free speech laws that protected their dissent and protest so well.
It's not an arbitrary line. It's the definition being discussed. It's not a "spectrum", it's not a "slope". The line drawn is the line.
> > The other thing is that I guarantee you this is totally selectively enforced and prosecuted
> Unlike all other laws?
In an authoritarian regime like the UK no doubt they also selectively enforce and prosecute other crimes, you're right about that. But absolutely the threshold to meet these kind of ludicrous statues is so arbitrary it's laughable, a bureaucrat or law enforcement agent for the state can just make things up as they go really.
> I don't know what point you are trying to make here or if you know what freedom of speech is. Government schools and government education bureaucrats developing policies about curriculum and teaching materials doesn't seem to offer useful commentary about freedom of speech, so I really don't know how to respond to your question.
> You don't understand that Florida schools banning books because they contain references to homosexuality is a free speech issue? Judge Carlos E. Mendoza in Penguin Random House v. Gibson said "The state’s prohibition of material that ‘describes sexual conduct’ is overbroad and unconstitutional.”. Unfortunately, many other judges did not rule the same way.
I don't think government agents and lawmakers setting curriculum and teaching materials for government schools is a freedom of speech issue, no.
> The point is that the "free speech" you lord over other countries is arbitrary, those who proclaim the U.S. to have true free speech and countries like the U.K. to be oppressive anti free speech regimes are delusional and have been conned by U.S. exceptionalism.
Just repeating that it's arbitrary doesn't make your case, sadly.
> You can disagree with another county's choice to draw the line somewhere other than where the U.S. draws it but to proclaim the U.S. has real free speech that stands alone from other countries is lying to yourself. What, exactly, is unique about the U.S. free speech laws? That it is a constitutional amendment?
I don't know about unique, but I know the state can not easily intimidate, bully, censor, and prosecute you for posting your thoughts online under the pretense that it might hurt peoples' feelings. Unlike the UK, for example.
> We could debate where the line should be, whether the U.K. or the U.S. has it right or wrong, but to argue that the U.K.'s laws are somehow distinct from the U.S. laws is nonsensical. I do not agree with where the U.K. draws the line. I also do not agree with where the U.S. draws the line.
Why are the British so angry when confronted by the fact that they do not have freedom of speech, then in the next sentence go on to talk about how great it is their government protects their feelings from being hurt by hearing what other people in their country (and even around the world) think? It's bizarre. It's a phrase that has long been understood around the world to be American style freedom of speech, i.e., that the state should not have the power to censor or prosecute its people for speech. UK does not have it.
"You can say what you want as long as the government does not decide it might offend somebody" is not freedom of speech. If that is what you think freedom of speech is, then North Korea and Pakistan have it.
Simply bizarre.
> And for one last final point: how many protestors has the U.S. government killed this year? How many protestors have been killed by the U.K. government for protesting against government policy? I'm sure Renée Good and Alex Pretti and all the other murdered U.S. protestors are comforted in their graves by the glorious anti-authoritarian pro-dissent free speech laws that protected their dissent and protest so well.
This isn't an argument because my claim isn't that US is not authoritarian nor that it never violates the rights of its citizens.
A more relevant question would be, how many people have the countries arrested and prosecuted for what they have said or written? And the answer for USA quite well might be non-zero because all governments are by nature corrupt and power-hungry and will violate the rights of their citizens to maintain the power of their regime, as is obviously the case in the UK. The US government is not fundamentally different in that regard, but the staggering difference in the rate of such cases shows that in the US it has been much more difficult for the government to do this.
The US government is still authoritarian and thirsts to take rights from its citizens, and has -- rights to privacy/unreasonable search/seizure, rights to arms, have been flagrantly violated. So has freedom of speech for that matter as leaks like the Twitter files have exposed, but at least for now those cases are still considered wrongdoing by the government and the people often have recourse with government courts, which is why I would say it still generally has freedom of speech.
The UK simply doesn't. It doesn't even pretend it does (except to just claiming freedom of speech means something it doesn't).
It's a wonder why AliExpress flies under the radar. I assume it's impossible to keep up with it all.
The UK's comically over-engineered electrics are no match for some of these plug-in-and-die sketchy USB chargers from the Far East.
DiodesGoneWild on YouTube does teardowns of many of these incredibly poorly constructed deathtraps.
For Tiananmen Square substitute Rape Gangs.
It's depressingly true; it seems the UK really heading quickly towards a Great Firewall, they've been looking to control VPN use [1] and the top most read article on BBC News right now is yet another public sector cover up of children being sexually abused. [2]
[1] https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/uk-govern...
[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyzy0y20qlo
> top most read article on BBC News right now is yet another public sector cover up
Do you not see a tiny little bit of contradiction here (regardless of your mis-characterisation of the second link)
In hindsight it is dumb to buy random pills and take em.
Sometimes it self resolves - as you contributed here, yes, countries limit and interfere and fine other countries businesses, all the time!
I don’t know what yours means though. What electrics are made in the UK? How are they over engineered?
I’m at +4, so, I’m doubting it’s unreadable…
This comment is comically pointless.
I am not sure it is legal to import dangerous electrical equipment to the UK.
It may be unenforced, that doesn't make it legal.
It's a stupid law and Ofcom are stupid. I wish that Labour hadn't continued with implementing the Tories authoritarian law, but then Labour seem to be a Tory-Lite party but with just less blatant corruption.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superpermutation#Lower_bounds,...
I used to go on a curated version of 4Chan via Telegram. Yes there is a lot of racism (although it flies in every direction, between every ethnicity you could imagine) but there is also (due to the anonymous nature) some genuinely interesting discussions. I remember one thread about aircraft carriers being of no use being debated by US and UK submarine officers.
There are also some genuinely funny bits. There was a guy in Greece who had found out that as long as he never graduated, he could live a basic life for free at university. His nickname was Dormogenes.
To mock and ridicule, yes. to speak your mind, sure, But first and foremost to discuss between true equals, because you can only be judged by what you write, because the value you are bringing to the discussion comes from your words and not from your reputation as the real-world human you are.
Being free to discuss controversial topics without having repercussion to your job or family (which is why doxxing was so frowned upon back then)
Being free to do some stupid childish fun, just for laughs.
Something we still had when it was just forums, even though we did have accounts they did not represent our whole persona, and we could be different people on different platform.
Something that was almost lost for good when normies invaded the internet due to social networks. It's not completely lost yet, and we must fight to keep it.
I remember him. Sadly he got evicted in the end. F.
https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/462625379/
"Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made a Great Point"
4chan has produced some hilarious/interesting stuff, and they have also driven people to suicide. i suppose it is up to everyone individually to make the value judgement there.
Trying to make a "value judgment" and boil the whole thing down to "4chan good" or "4chan bad," seems with even the most generous interpretation... incredibly reductive and foolhardy.
and of course my comment is reductive, it is a total of 3 sentences. i dont really know what nuance you were expecting to get out a 3 sentence comment.
everything is gray, with both good and bad. 4chan included. there we go -- more true, less interesting.
As has Reddit, Facebook, etc.
Bad things occasionally happening on a platform doesn't make the platform/site inherently bad.
if it helps, feel free to apply the original quote to facebook or whatever when they do something good. but this article and comment chain is about 4chan. so i am talking about 4chan.
If anything, the person you were replying to was intentionally describing how 4chan is less dissimilar to humanity in general than its typical portrayal, so responding with a dismissal that that makes them just the same as everyone else is really just affirming their point.
..neither do i?
>The latest image is not the first picture of a hamster lawyers for 4chan have sent in reply to Ofcom
amazing. same energy as the pirate bay telling dreamworks to sodomize themselves. i cant help but laugh at the absurdness of it.
> Messages sent to 4chan's press email went unreturned. One of the two dozen or so alleged moderators purportedly exposed in the hack wrote back using their 4chan email address to say that the site had released a "video statement." The user then pointed Reuters to an unrelated, explicit four-minute video montage. A request for further information was followed by a link to a different video with similar content.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/cybersecurity/notorious-i...
"In the only country in which 4chan operates, the United States, it is breaking no law and indeed its conduct is expressly protected by the First Amendment."[0]
[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c624330lg1ko
>>>
"Companies – wherever they're based – are not allowed to sell unsafe toys to children in the UK. And society has long protected youngsters from things like alcohol, smoking and gambling. The digital world should be no different," she said.
"The UK is setting new standards for online safety. Age checks and risk assessments are cornerstones of our laws, and we'll take robust enforcement action against firms that fall short."
<<<
Quite frankly she seems completely out of touch with her own argument. The UK can certainly legislate away tobacco sales, for instance; they can't go after tobacco producers in a foreign state. 4Chan operates in the US and is a US company. They have no jurisdiction over it, even if their citizenry can access it; it's on them to block that access if they don't like it. Unless they're also implying that the US government should be allowed to go after UK companies that don't follow it's free speech regulations because American citizens can access them.
Precedent in the US is that courts do in fact have jurisdiction over a foreign website's owner if the owner "purposefully availed itself of the U.S. forum or purposefully directed its activities toward it", a test which is less demanding than it sounds. [1]
And US has taken advantage of this to go after foreign websites such as Megaupload, BTC-e, Liberty Reserve, etc.
Therefore, if there were a US law requiring companies to follow free speech rules, it could potentially be enforced against foreign website owners. But no such law currently exists. The First Amendment itself only applies to the US government (and to companies working on behalf of the US government). There is also the SPEECH Act, which, among other provisions, creates a cause of action where if someone sues a US person in a foreign court over their speech, they can sue back in US court. But only for declaratory judgement, not damages or an injunction. The goal is mainly just to prevent US courts from enforcing judgements from the foreign court in such cases.
[1] https://tlblog.org/how-to-find-personal-jurisdiction-over-fo...
Not even China and North Korea whine about or send fake “fines” to offshore entities. They just block their sites and move on with life.
On the contrary, both of those are very active in going after people who operate websites they don't like from overseas, and/or their family members (who are often easier to get at). They just don't publish legal notices around it.
The fact that's technically hard to do (at least without going full-on CCP) doesn't change the situation. Attempting to fine a foreign entity for doing something that breaks no laws in the foreign entity's jurisdiction is just risible.
It is amazing that these guys don't see the irony of monkeying totaliterian states policies, in term of surveillance and censorship.
The PACs that push the one specific law you're talking about also push laws in other states, and federally, that are very, very different and draconian.
And yet, me sitting in Germany suddenly saw a nice banned notice when trying to access the site claiming this is because of "a high court verdict yadayadaya".
Why on earth do I now find ways around a UK court order to unblock a website when I am nowhere near their country? They should at least try and keep things within their jurisdiction.
Tribalism is awful for societies. There’s a reason Russia put so much effort into amplifying it in the west.
But unlike physical imports, there's a sense that blocking these imports is an affront to base philosophical freedom in a way that prohibiting physical imports isn't.
It would serve UK legislators well to explore that tingling sense some more before they consider any further efforts in this direction, but that's just my two pence.
Keyword: "The UK".
> cornerstones of our laws
Keyword: "our laws".
> and we'll take robust enforcement action
Enforcement action can only take place within the jurisdiction (with a notable exception of the US which doesn't give a single fuck about someone else's law).
They have had decades to do this. They have not.
Risk aversion and Regulation are the heart of the issue.
Same things that have flattened the American housing market for the last 30 years.
Today building social network or a cloud provider is a trivial exercise. If the financial incentive is there (aka ban of US services), they will pop out like mushrooms.
And the UK... each time it delivers there.
But they have no legal basis to fine 4chan.
The Online Safety Act 2023[1][2][3] (OSA) (c. 50) is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom to regulate online content. It was passed on 26 October 2023 and gives the relevant secretary of state the power to designate, suppress, and record a wide range of online content that they deem illegal or harmful to children.[4][5]
They are bound by UK law exactly as much as they are bound by Venutian or Mars law.
And honestly this is more than they really should even have to do. I think it does go above their obligation. They're doing Offcom a favor here, they don't even have to figure out how to block it themselves.
this isn't true
https://x.com/prestonjbyrne
So it's clearly operating globally.
Country flags are a major feature of the board.
If I offer a service in US I still have to respect US law, it doesn't matter that I'm based in Luxembourg or New Zealand.
The same applies in reverse.
E.g. many US news outlets never cared to implement gdpr and geoblocked European users from accessing their websites.
If my services are available in US, I need to comply with US laws as well.
CCP "Great Firewall" style.
The reality is this will seriously chill speech broadly across the country regardless of either of those outcomes, and the technical costs of enforcement will be steep.
The UK government has been openly doing this for a couple of years by now.
I mean there are parties that say they like free speech, but it never extends to the sort of speech they disagree with, or by people of the wrong colour/religion/gender etc.
VPN take up in the UK is around 20-25%
I really hope for all the people in the UK that your country doesn't go down this route.
Mother Britain will be happy to make an example out of them if Uncle Sam doesn't intervene.
So the UK plans to fine Parisian bars that serve alcohol to British under-18s in France on holiday?
If someone from the UK calls me on the phone and I start reading them posts on 4chan, is the UK going to fine me too?
It’s like fining Parisian bars to hand over alcohol to couriers without checking to whom couriers will deliver it.
Couriers = all involved network providers.
It follows that the restaurant writes the address on every delivery. Do they ID each recipient?
You’ve modified that to introduce a proxy, DoorDash, that now sells and sends the alcohol. If DoorDash sells it they’re the ones in trouble in your example.
If someone mails $ProhibitedItem at a USPS to the UK, then it's the job of local UK police and/or customs to reject the parcel if it is prohibited. It's the UK's problem, de facto if not de jure, because the sender is out of reach.
If someone with a UK subsidiary and local processing center mails $ProhibitedItem to their center and delivers it to someone in the UK, then that's more than the UK's problem.
If the government thinks there are ones and zeros on the internet it’s citizens should not be allowed to see, they should block them from entering the country.
I don't think UK law governs foreign companies' overseas operations based on the nationality of the customer though, no.
Laws apply to actions in the country, they’re not based on citizenship.
If you go to Amsterdam and sleep with a hooker, you didn’t break a law by doing that: despite prostitution (specifically purchasing sex) being illegal in many western countries.
For example, Finland claims jurisdiction over crimes where the action itself or its relevant consequences happen in Finland or the victim is a Finnish citizen, permanent resident, or legal entity. Then there are plenty of rules and exceptions detailing what those principles mean in practice.
Manuel Noriega and “el Chapo” Guzman were both convicted of crimes they committed outside the US but that caused other people to commit crimes inside the US.
Traveling to countries for child sex abuse is illegal and severely punished, although it appears that the law is about the traveling with intent, and not (officially) about the actions that take place overseas: https://www.justice.gov/criminal/criminal-ceos/extraterritor... .
No countries have extraterritorial jurisdiction.
Some countries have a lot of influence over the local jurisdiction outside of their own territory.
The UK doesn't have much influence like that.
But if the UK has any minesweepers, I bet this could all be sorted out with a few phone calls.
According to what? Laws can be whatever a country says, so long as they have the mechanism to enforce it.
See: the US using special forces to kidnap Maduro
That was very clearly illegal and has nothing to do with laws.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries...
Prostitution is primarily conducted by women, and this is a way for them to still seek protection and healthcare while still technically criminalising the practice.
There is a famous quote regarding this nature of British parliamentary sovereignty that is taught to every law student in the UK: "If Parliament enacts that smoking in the streets of Paris is an offence, then it is an offence" - Ivor Jennings.
Next steps would be blocking the site uk wide.
We will likely see a future where uk puts out interpol notices on the individuals involved.
If they enter a country with extradition agreements they will get extradited.
The UK isn't going to get a cent from that but the leadership is banned from entering the UK for the foreseeable future.
Doing this a lot as a country is how you achieve pariah status and losing a bunch of trade, though.
Not at all. But if they do enter, they might find difficulty leaving.
If I buy something illegal off of AliExpress, the US government won't and can't do squat to the seller. If they decide to enforce the law, they'll go after me.
US is extremist and out of step with the civilised world.
Trump is merely a huge accelerator of an existing trend.
Nobody likes USA. Nor is that required. It is irrelevant. International politics do not run on emotions. As long as USA is capable of enforcing its will, USA's view will be the one that matters. You may dislike it, but that is what it is.
And yes, the choice was still to do business with US in every case, but I can tell you 100% it was far from a crystal clear easy decision and that the camel is breaking.
You can only push so much.
It’s extremely realistic to cut them out.
Genuinely what does the US sell that a country like Brazil or Canada or Australia can’t get elsewhere or live without?
The us does that regularly. There's thousands of companies that cannot do business with entities from countries like China or they can face criminal charges in US.
A former company I had as a client, EU based SaaS faced this.
Sure they can. It’s unlikely they can do anything about it though.
We have other crimes like this, like child sexual abuse committed in a foreign country.
You don't need to apply gdpr when serving non European users.
OFCOM&co is about overseas data going to you.
https://27bslash6.com/overdue.html
Tor .onion chans have much more taboo content to put it mildly.
https://www.scribd.com/document/117922444/the-pirate-bay-res...
I'm pretty sure in one they responded saying their lawyer was alseep in a ditch and would reply when he woke up lol
I realize there’s a carve out in the legislation for search engines but if the goal is to stop little Timmy finding pictures of an X being Yd up the Z then it is a resolute failure.
The only thing that works with children is transparency and accountability, be that the school firewall or a ban on screen use in secret.
”screens where I can see ‘em!”
Gab refused to pay the fine, and it was over.
> The enforcement notice itself highlights the structural tension. Despite acknowledging Gab’s US address, the German government asserts authority to pursue collection, including formal enforcement proceedings, without identifying any German subsidiary or office.
> The payment instructions route funds directly to the German federal treasury, showing that the action is punitive rather than remedial.
> Germany’s approach also reveals the paper trail behind modern censorship enforcement. The fine stems not from a specific post or statement, but from alleged failure to comply with aspects of NetzDG. That procedural hook enables broader regulatory reach, transforming administrative requirements into a mechanism for speech governance.
https://reclaimthenet.org/gab-refuses-to-pay-germanys-fine-c...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_blocking_in_the_United_Kin...
"4chan is a US company operating in the US, sure it serves content to global users but the jurisdiction is the US, we have free speech, ..."
"Sure, Company X is operating in Europe, but it also serves US users so it has to respect our laws and it's warranted for the US to apply pressure and fines."
at least decide for one side of the argument instead of just going the blind patriot way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_age_verification_...
It is the role of customs to inspect the physical goods (i.e. physical light) that crosses the border. These are fiber connections the UK themselves chose to install. No one forced these data imports on them.
North korea and China for example have extensive infrastructure to inspect and reject imported data.
4chan creates another TLD on another IP, just like TPB and the whole show starts again.
Instead of, why don't we. The UK government.
assumedly the rate of consumption hasn't dramatically changed, so the OSA's immediate result has been either the decentralisation of porn providers (towards those small enough to dodge the law for now and be less exacting) or the mass adoption of proxies; I assume the former is the path of least resistance
this is notably the opposite of the feared outcome (which I suspect may be closer to the long-term effect) that the bar to meet the requirements would be so high (possibly involving hiring a lawyer) that smaller social/porn sites get regulated out of existence (see ie. https://lobste.rs/s/ukosa1/uk_users_lobsters_needs_your_help...)
At least in the US, you have 70+ year old lawmakers proposing (not even writing) laws they do not understand, passed to them by opaque groups with a obscured, albeit clear, interest.
See the latest age verification bills passed by Meta through a convoluted web of influence. Bring back the technocrats.
It already sounds like Ofcom is likely to lose lawsuits about this, as they do not have jurisdiction in the U.S., where 4chan is hosted.
How would Ofcom even have a lawsuit to lose? Are they going to file it in the US? Of course not, USA courts will tell them to pound sand.
They'll just advise the UK government to block 4chan nationwide. Which is really what they want to do anyway.
I am not sure why you think running a website where people are free to say awful things about powerful people would be profitable.
What difference does that make?
> I am not sure why you think running a website where people are free to say awful things about powerful people would be profitable.
I didn't say anything about them being profitable. And again, what different would that make?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_blocking_in_the_United_Kin...
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/71209929/4chan-communit...
There's no way anyone sensible would give over their identity to dodgy websites. It's easier to just pretend to be in a different country.
[1] I'm not going to quote studies, but plenty exist. I think it's pretty self evident to everyone here how bad internet can be for the mental health even of adults, let alone children with developing minds.
That means making it possible for parents to actively block bad websites, and making that hard to circumvent.
Someone at school has parents who aren't watching their children and allowing them unrestricted Internet access? This is where the bounty-hunter private-right-of-action morality-police laws that seem to be gaining traction can be put to some actual good use instead of, for example, hunting down trans people in Kansas. If someone's child is showing other children inappropriate material because their parents are negligent, the other parents should be able to take those parents to court and recover damages if they can collect evidence. Once parents are fined for letting their children roam with an unrestricted Internet connection it'll stop pretty quick.
> they need help from the wider society they live in.
Help that is not material support (e.g. paying hospital bills, babysitting, etc.) is usually interference.
> I think it's pretty self evident to everyone here how bad internet can be for the mental health even of adults
Agreed, but I can handle myself on the internet (my parents did their job and I am also not a dog and know the difference between a screen and a real object), and shouldn't be tracked with verification nonsense because someone else can't.
We don't put protections on kids walking out the front door, and there's plenty of theoretical dangers there too. Let the parents educate their children.
>We don't put protections on kids walking out the front door
My view is that we most certainly ban and/or heavily discourage children from entering certain places and talking to random strangers. There are many safeguards in the real world, there is simply not enough in the internet.
I don't say this lightly. I am very firmly against the nanny state, and i feel equally strongly in parental rights. I've made comments in the past against these laws but i feel it's the only way forward. The only question that remains is how to best implement such policies to minimize the inevitable erosion of our privacy.
I don't like it, but that's how it is.
"~You are a bad parent. Insert $500. Brought to you by Carls Jr."
What evidence is that? Who gets to say what's sufficient?
Unless there is a high probability that an alleged lack of control will negatively other people than the family in question, I don't think it should be the government's business to police.
I admit watching and hearing the videos of children being live organ harvested was a bit rough on me. Most try to say those are fake as a coping mechanism but sadly they are very real and it occurs in every state/province of every country 24/7. It's a massive business. There are rescue orgs that try to intervene but they are almost always too late.
Despite the enormously heinous stuff I've seen on that site, it has made me a better writer, developed my critical thinking skills, and given me a perspective on the world and its people that wouldn't have existed without.
It also introduced me to many different things and developed my taste beyond measure.
The massive downside, that I suspect the grandparent still wrestles with, is integrating all of depravity of humankind into a coherent world view without falling into cognitive dissonance between the idealized and constructed world with an onslaught of information on the actual reality of it.
It's sort of like looking into the Epstein files and having to decide one's reaction to them:
- crushed by despair at the state of things leading to nihilism and depression
- deciding to ignore it all, and continuing to go on about one's life without integrating it
- acceptance, normalization, and corruption
- a secret fourth option that reaffirms you, using that news as fuel for whatever ends in the hope you can improve the world even if just a little bit, despite how ugly it is
And so on.
I would bet that some young people will be as reflective and independently minded as you were to integrate the material into their experience and be better off for it. Some (like me, because I was thin-skinned) won't and it will stress them out or traumatize them instead. Does that make them lesser human beings for not being capable of bettering themselves from seeing the unfiltered truth on their own?
For all the benefit of 4chan, and I do say there is some benefit only after having grown into an adult with better critical thinking skills and years of therapy, it self-selects for a certain type of poster capable of lurking enough, following the norms and having a thick skin. Not everyone will clear that bar and it's unreasonable to think that all young people will turn out like yourself having immersed themselves in it. Some could end up wasting a lot of time baited into petty arguments, or worse.
We don't sell bottles containing alcohol and then expect to filter the alcohol out if the child wants to drink from it. We have two different bottles: alcoholic bottles and non-alcoholic bottles. If you are a child, you cannot purchase the former.
Stop selling unrestricted computing devices to children. Require a person to be 18+ to purchase an unrestricted internet device. Make it clear that unrestricted internet access, like alcohol and nicotine (and the list goes on) is harmful to children. That resolves 90% of the problem.
And lets be fair, the problem isn't the children. Children want what all their peers have. The problem isn't their peers. The problem is the parents. Give the spineless parents a simpler way to say no to their children, and the overall problem goes away.
Doesn't really seem like there's an anti-authoritarian party available to us either.
Please report to the closest police station
Miniluv
they have literally no power over things outside their own land borders and people are right to tell them to piss off.
For ofcom, 4chan is just a sticking their toes in the pool. If they fall, ofcom will have complete freedom to censor the entire Internet as they wish. It's madness.
This nonsense, and yet they allow GBNews to keep spewing propaganda and violate almost all broadcast standards that Ofcom is supposed to enforce.
Ofcom has today fined 4chan £450k for not having age checks in place
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47442838
Do they understand the futility? I suspect most do. But trying to be high-functioning, in a low-functioning system, is also a good way to lose your job.
> Data shows that nearly 80% of the top 100 pornography sites in the UK now have age checks in place. This means that on average, every day, over 7 million visitors from the UK are accessing pornography services that have deployed age assurance.
I would have expected that most people would switch to other pornography sites that don't have age checks rather than doing an age check. But apparently that isn't the case. (Or their data is misleading. People in the UK who are using VPNs presumably can't be easily identified as British.)
I'm not sure if I'm allowed to include links as a new user but Pornbiz posted an article showing AV lost them 90% of traffic. There's a BBC article where researchers found AV compliant sites were decimated on their top traffic ranking on Similarweb. And I working in the industry saw our traffic drop by 99.9% during our AV test.
Users don't use VPN, they certainly don't upload ID... they just go to noncompliant sites. Don't believe UK government's gaslighting.
If you think about it, it's the Internet Service Providers in the UK who choose choose to allow this US content into the UK. Why go after 4chan?
The ISPs could just shut down the BGP protocol and set up their own ICANN alternative with their own DNS system which is completely separate from the US one. So it's the UK government's choice to allow this content to the UK, not 4chan's. Or they could just put up a China-style great firewall.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_blocking_in_the_United_Kin...
I haven't thought about it at all since the last time I looked there maybe about 2 years ago.
Still looks shit.
What's the enduring appeal?
>people can only truly discuss something when they don’t know each other.
>If there is a user ID attached to a user, a discussion tends to become a criticizing game. On the other hand, under the anonymous system, even though your opinion/information is criticized, you don’t know with whom to be upset. Also with a user ID, those who participate in the site for a long time tend to have authority, and it becomes difficult for a user to disagree with them.
>Under a perfectly anonymous system, you can say, “it’s boring,” if it is actually boring. All information is treated equally; only an accurate argument will work
These days everything on the internet is controlled and monitored. Modern 4chan is hosted on cloudflare and is without any doubt "pozzed". Any illusion of real anonymity has dissolved a long time ago. Lots of bots there too. You missed it by at least 15 years.
Clowns
> or requiring Internet Service Providers to block a site in the UK.
Ah, that's what they want.
The onus is on the parent to the be parent. Not the tech industry, and especially not the government.
At least we seem to agree the solution lies with better tools for parents.
"proper parental control software" doesn't exist for a lot of the platforms.
I'm a millennial, I had access to porn as a kid, that's 25 years ago.
What's the deal with it?
The biggest issues are social media related, not by seeing how people exchange body fluids.
Other places have 'hate speech' laws that severely erode it. Genuine criticism or discussion of certain topics is forbidden.
It is still there. There is a GPT that keeps it looking active and people that reply to it daily. For about 9 days after their most recent big hack it was nice and quiet. It would be a ghost town if not for the GPT using a 4chan pass and seychelles proxies. The /pol/ board is probably the most active with real humans trying to shock and awe people with fake racism and other edge-lord behavior. The real racist are on other sites. I would invite them here to prove what that really looks like but they would be ultra-shadow-banned instantly.
The same goes for the freedom of speech. Europeans should make it legal guarantee instead of trying to build walls around speech. So when X or 4Chan etc deletes a post, it may lead to freedom of speech fines if deletion wasn't justified. Tha same for the algorithm, if a post that doesn't break the rules is discriminated by the algorithm, a hefty fine should apply.
Suddenly we will have companies that keep their business clean and no claim for moral high ground.
For them there're far worse things than giving up some freedoms.
One can agree or disagree with this but Europe's actions are far more understandable if you see where they're coming from.
From what it's worth, the younger generation doesn't seem to see this the same way so whatever censure Europe introduces today will most likely be temporary.
I think you're falsely attributing this to WW2. Free speech is simply just not part of European culture in the way that it is a part of american culture. The ideal of "free speech" regardless of how well that ideal is implemented in practice is something that is much more instilled in US culture than European culture.
They simply do not give a shit the same way that the US claims it gives a shit about free speech. To them its an afterthought. Nothing to do with WW2 and the trauma of it.
We believe in the freedom of genuine political discussion.
Nobody believes in free speech.
Then they do not understand how or why WWII started. Few people are really interested or care about this - it's treated more as a kind of Aesopian Fable than a historical event.
I am more cynical than you however, I suspect the Eurocrats who use WWII as a censorship justification know full well it has nothing to do with WWII.
You need to learn the difference between Europe the continent and the EU the political union. The two are not interchangeable.
The British continued to be European post 2020
Also, being geographically close, and only recently an ex-EU member, and with strong alignment on defence/Ukraine, it is not like we are wholly separate and unaligned. We retained some EU law, such as GDPR and EU261 (copy-pasted into a law referred to as 'UK261'). Yes, I understand the UK not being a member state means that EU laws wouldn't automatically apply – but the world is more complex than that.
The Labour party shares a lot in common with many parts of the EU and EU governments when it comes to control, privacy etc.
The UK has been re-aligning with the EU and the rest of Europe for a little while now, repairing relationships, for obvious reasons.
Learn the difference and use them correctly and respectfully.