2003: If our privacy and freedoms on the internet are ever in peril, don’t worry, there will be an uprising and our governments and tech corporations will come to our defense.
2025: i did NOT have 4chan will come to our aide on my bingo card…
I don’t really get this.
Whether I like the UK’s act, they are free to set the laws of their land. So if foreign websites don’t want to comply, the UK is also free to order its ISPs to block the site.
Which kids will then circumvent with VPN.
And so on …
They don’t just block it, they try to fine the companies first, legal smothering.
Passing laws like this disproportionately affects smaller websites that are independent from big tech. A law like this HAD to come from big tech, where tech bros are exchanging money with the government for total wrangling and control of every step of their users / citizens.
As an analogy, currently in some countries tobacco and vape products can only be sold in certain stores in a certain way, hidden behind a counter, think tobacco stores, corner stores, gas stations or mom&pop depanneurs. Suddenly some government official receives bribes (through lobbying or otherwise) from a cartel of big-box stores and security-service providers that prompts them to propose a bill to mandate a security guard at every small store to act as a bouncer against letting children into the store. As a small business owner not only does this require you to hire a security guard and pay their salary + the overhead going towards big-sec, you are also losing revenue from potential customers (children) that would come into your store to buy chips, pop, ice cream or bag of milk (yes, bag). And I didn’t even get to the analogy of control aspect yet, just that of the smb.
It’s a stupid law and for a stupid reason (FOR THE CHILDREN!!) and I hope more, serious businesses pile on such a lawsuit and hopefully kneecaps anyone ever thinking about implementing such an idiocy. I’m looking at you Steam, GOG, Epic, etc.
Edit: to go further on the control side of the analogy, the security guard has to ask for the ID of every person wishing to enter the store, jot it down in their logbook and submit the logbook to their parent company hourly. The big-sec parent company now has this data for sale to anyone willing to offer. Including the government, who can then enact further control on their citizens based on the data obtained on their habits.
Heartbreaking: the worst person you know just made a great point
if kiwi farms was a person I would bully the crap out of it until it shit it’s pants and then I’d lock it in a closet with its shitpants
If kiwi farms was a person, I’d throw them off a bridge and shit on their broken corpse
Wow.
You must be a fan, to be so light and kind about it.
Hey 4Chan was a big reason behind no one taking Scientology seriously anymore
Project 2025 and Curtis Yarvin have direct ties to 4chan as well. Maybe not the horse you wanna hitch to.
Direct ties? They’ve trip-fagged once on it or something?
Who the fuck is Curtis Yarvin? And what the shit does P25 have to do with 4Chan?
He’s the philosopher of choice for people like Peter Thiel and JD Vance. He advocates for moving to a neofeudalist system, arguing that democracy is a failed project. Beyond this, he holds some truly repugnant views that are woven throughout his ideology
JD Vance unironically believes in a Neo Feudalist?!
Who’s Peter Thiel
US representative democracy may be a failed system, but it was designed in the 18th century when travel and long range communications was time consuming. Needs a major revamp for the digital world, and we are getting to the point where that could be possible (technology, at least).
As an ancap whose views have been called repugnant too, I say you could be more specific and say he’s racist, misogynist and mixes up social prowess, intelligence and wisdom, while these are three different things.
Those are great questions to start with on your search engine of choice! If you’re more of an audio person, I find this podcast to be a great overview.
The polite version of lmgtfy
No thank you, I don’t do podcasts
lucky for you, most information on the internet is in the form of text.
Well, then my favorite search engines are Kagi and DuckDuckGo.
Kiwi farms? You mean the website that harrasses people online, Swats people, and basically does shit that is illegal in the UK anyway?
Next you’ll tell me child porn sites are suing the UK. Fuck the Online Safety Act, but yeah, they’re not the people who should be suing the UK over this.
I have no idea how precedence works in the UK. If they lose, is that a huge issue, or could a more legitimate service sue oater and realistically win if the verdict hinges on Kiwifarms being Kiwifarms?
OK so basically if they lose, the law will just stay in place. There is an example of a (less controversial and) more major site going to court against the OSA and losing.
The Wikimedia Foundation recently lost a case against Ofcom placing them in the highest level of regulation based on how many people from the UK visit Wikipedia. Basically Wikipedia tried to argue that the following:
- They cannot divulge the identities of it’s contributors because some of them come from regimes where if the authorities knew who they were, they’d get killed.
- They do not have the money and resources.
- Considering they are an encyclopedia, maybe they shouldn’t be subject to this because they aren’t a porn or social site (although their search feature means they are subject to the OSA).
The court basically ruled on the side of Ofcom (the UK’s version of the FCC who were arguing against Wikipedia) but said to Ofcom that they should consider exceptions for Wikipedia considering their position as the Prime Encyclopedia on the internet. Whether OfCom will take that on board is a whole other thing.
I also don’t see how they could win because what they could say “If you cannot comply, Geoblock”, and on top of that I think Kiwifarms or 4chan, the former hosting members who tried to commit offenses under the terrorist act against a Northern Irish Streamer, or 4chan, a site that is the source for a lot of far right ideologies that lead to terror attacks, would get a fair hearing over this. Like this is a bit like if a far left group tried to fight KOSA in the US. If Kiwifarms and 4chan win this it would be both a major shock to the system and basically the government pinning their colours to the post in favour of the far right while stopping things like tweets about palestine or access to educational resources on sensitive subjects.
Also, the main argument put forward to pass the OSA was basically target sites like 4chan and Kiwifarms (even though we know now it doesn’t just target those sites, but also all social media, blogs, search engines…). The bill does cover…
- Content which encourages, promotes or provides instructions for suicide.
- Content which encourages, promotes or provides instructions for an act of deliberate self-injury.
- Content which encourages, promotes or provides instructions for an eating disorder or behaviours associated with an eating disorder.
- Abusive content against the characteristics of Race, Religion, Sex, Sexual orentation, disability, or Gender Reassignment.
- Content that incites hate for the above
- Content that encourages, promotes, or provides instructions for acts against a person.
- Bullying content.
- Content encouraging stunts.
All of which are things 4chan and Kiwifarms are notorious for. So basically it’s like if the KKK challenges the UK government against the Terrorist act because it covers them.
However the question they are putting forward is that “Since we’re not in the UK, we should not be beholden to UK laws”, which is a little bit of a problem because, say, if someone from the Netherlands accesses a childporn site hosted in Canada, it doesn’t matter if someone in the Netherlands is not beholden to the laws of Canada, they can still be arrested for kiddyporn. Just because you are in one country and you are using a service in another doesn’t mean you can’t be arrested.
The OSA puts all the onus on instituting the law on the service provider, which I’m not sure if that is due to absolute arrogance of how the internet works (people in the Lords didn’t even know what a VPN was) or something more Machiavellian (forcing medium to small sites to give money to companies MPs and Lords and their allies have invested in).
I think the ruling would be something like “no, it still applies, we wrote it specifially for sites like you, you can either age-gate or Geoblock the UK, your move.”
But yeah, the OSA is a stupid fucking law that doesn’t work in any sense and is being used to censor everything from Wikipedia to fucking shitposters in the name of the children. Any law that requires fining people in other jurisdictions isn’t going to fucking work.
I have no idea how precedence works in the UK.
So what you need to understand about the UK is that Parliament is Sovereign. We don’t have a balance of power like with the US with the President, Courts and Congress.
Our version of 1776 was 1649, when England beheaded Charles the First. After the restoration and the Glorious Revolution, the line was that Parliament called all the shots, not the Monarch, Prime Minister or the Courts. It’s why the 13 colonies were all “no taxation without representation”, because they knew this.
Anyway, The Supreme Court of the UK can strike down a law if it goes against another law. For example, during Brexit, Brexiteers argued that the Referendum alone meant that the UK can just leave the UK, but because the UK joined the EU through an act of parliament, they had to go through parliament. This led to a major newspaper calling judges “Enemies of the People” for (checks notes) following the law, but my point still stands.
Do I think KiwiChan/4Farms can overturn or make an exception to the law? No, especially since they are literally the boogiemen the government hold up as the reason for the law. What I do think will happen is that they will be told “comply, geoblock the UK or we’ll block you”. Ofcom blocking a site that isn’t a CSAM would defo be a step in the wrong direction and a dangerous president, but I also suspect 4chan and Kiwifarms would do something like promote VPNs or something, but they don’t need to do that because VPN use is sky high right now.
tl;dr: The OSA doesn’t break any other law afaik, and this law was basically designed to target places like 4chan and KiwiFarms. They’re not going to win this, Even Wikipedia didn’t win their case, and the courts are just going to say something like “Age-gate, Geoblock, or GTFO”.
Thank you for such a detailed and helpful reply!
My assumption is if they win it would be a snowball effect of other such non-uk based sites suing for non compliance to UK regulation. This wouldn’t be of great use for sites that operate in the UK as well as other countries and target UK demographic in a commercial manner.
They don’t swat people. Mass swatter Torswats (which turned out to be a team of a few people) tried to blame it on them for a little bit, but was ultimately caught.
This person also denies that Musk did a Nazi salute. They argue in bad faith and are not worth listening to.
Been on kiwi farms. There is no “we’re swatting these guys” thread. And there is a very detailed and well-cited thread doxxing torswats and documenting and archiving the attempt to tie their actions to KF. You literally can just go read it. Please do. The Torswats/Alan Winston thread.
No amount of “uhhhhh they’re untrustworthy and not all of them are left wing” is sufficient to beat the clear documentation. Because of his arrest, trial, and conviction, much of what is in the thread can also be verified by law enforcement sources. If you believe otherwise, you are a victim of internet misinformation.
And yes, I still call bullshit on the made-up musk Nazi salute from the same political machine that brought us “everyone making Nazi salutes at the Palestine protests is fine, actually” as well as “if you sit at a table with a Nazi, then you’re a Nazi”.
So 4chan that said they wouldn’t pay the UK fine as the UK doesn’t have jurisdiction over companies based in the USA is going to sue UK over stuff that 4chan can’t be responsible for?
4chan will sue the UK trying to hold them responsible for UK law, in US court. Foreign judgement limiting freedom of speech. Seems to be in line with their strategy of not being an UK company so not paying fines: “Your laws don’t apply to us. Hell, they aren’t even constitutional!”.
Do you think the UK government even considered that? Do you think the Tories, who passed this law, or labour, who are full-throatedly supporting this law, even considered this?
They didn’t even consider vpns. We literally have a member of the House of lords talking about VPNs as if they were some obscure technology. She literally said “Have your heard of VPN”, one referring to it as if it was some sort of singular service.
It’s more than that. They argue that the whole network that we call the Internet was invented and is currently maintained by America (and they are not wrong), that other nations failed to invent and deploy competitive solutions and UK trying to enforce some rulings on an American network is absurd.
the Internet was invented and is currently maintained by America
why do I expect anything from 4chan?
Literally the worst possible champions of this cause.
slightly better champions of the cause are stuck in electoralism.
They come for the things nobody would be caught dead defending (often even people who privately engage in it) first. Look at how during the thing with payment processors and porn games, some people were saying they didn’t mind if it were just the rape games being banned. Those are used as justification for speech restrictions to the public.
(I don’t even think KiwiFarms should be legal personally, Chris Chan’s story should be considered evidence enough that they’re a harassment forum)
One of the games that was removed was a horror game about a stalker, which was made to raise awareness of sexual violence. Is that a rape game?
I’m just saying like I oppose the death penalty, but there are certain cases where I’m not going to die on that particular hill. I don’t believe they should be killed, but the context of the moment is going to alienate more people than it convinces.
Same thing here. I oppose identification laws but making that argument in defense of those two is going to make folks think it’s a fanatical position rather than a reasonable one.
It’s far better to argue from a reasonable position and then extend that to other cases than just argue these places should be allowed to continue to weaponize anonymity.
One I heard recently is a murder case. I’d say it sounds like murder but fuck it he deserved to die
First they came for my tendies…
Who cares? Nobody else is fighting this crap.
Wikipedia also sued but lost
Now 4chan becomes the face of resistance to this shit, and people will think it is only being opposed by a bunch of deplorable incels. It delegitimizes the entire opposition - you can’t speak out against it any more without being associated with 4chan and whatever the fuck kiwi farm is.
At least that’s the risk, and that’s why I wish these sites would go die in a hole rather than involve themselves with things I care about.
Tbh, I don’t know why a push by more left leaning sites hasn’t happened? This would at the very least show the broader unpopularity of the age verification law among pretty much both sides.
Because they have too much shame.
It takes the shameless to stand for freedom most of the time.
Which means frequently it’s the worse kinds of people, the loudest and the most shameless. Who start. Others then follow once the ice is broken.
What’s a left leaning site that has lots of ‘adult’ or ‘harmful’ content?
I guess the parts of the fediverse that allows adult content. There’s a lot of people on the fediverse dedicated to supporting sex workers and stuff like that. None of these sites or users are in a position to sue the UK though, I’m just giving a pedantic answer to your question.
Yeah, everyone and their dog should jump on this.
whatever the fuck kiwi farm is.
Nazis.
Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.
Where’s that worst person you know makes a good point headline when you need it
Thanks for pointing this out. Where IS the ‘Worst person you know makes a good point’-reference? Well, more like ‘The scum of the scum of the scum scum has a good point’…
nazi porn-enjoyers vs nazi government ultimate showdown
Is there some way they could both lose?
Uk loses the case, both Kiwi and 4chan go into debt from legal fees? (They’re definitely not making bank)
Everyone should sue those fuckers. Taking away the last pieces of our freedom.
Oh no, they might dox the PM, call him a lolcow, and SWAT 10 Downing.
Who is even running 4chan nowadays?
Hiroyuki Nishimura, founder of 2channel and current owner of 2ch.sc
I assume the FBI or CIA
Its a recruitment portal, basically.
I heard it was a hacker named 4chan.
did hacker go by this name prior to successfully taking over 4chan? that’s the question
Last I heard 4chan-ers were referring to the owner as “Jap-moot”
The complaint is hilarious. So on brand.
I guess they’ll win. It’s going to be interesting to see what happens then.
