this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2025
94 points (95.2% liked)
Technology
76460 readers
3813 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Read again than.
The fucking US idiot writing this blog is surprised that 4chan must follow UK law while having customers/users in the UK.
Which part is not applicable?
The part where they have any infrastructure, operations, revenue, or presence at all in the UK. They don’t, so the UK doesn’t have jurisdiction. This isn’t like the Apple stuff, where physical Apple products are being sold at retail in the EU/UK. UK residents are intentionally navigating to a website outside UK jurisdiction. If a UK resident goes to Mallorca on holiday, Spanish laws, not UK laws, apply because they’re in fucking Spain.
Also you should probably click that About page on the linked blog dude. Unless some American just randomly wound up at UCL in 1988 then graduated, stayed in the UK, and got a job at UCW Aberystwyth, you might want to rethink the random bullshit you’re spouting off as fact lol. By all means keep going off about how British ppl are “USians” and “US idiots” though.
Do you understand how the Internet works? You don't have to have an infrastructure in a country to be present there.
USians need to get used to following the law. Shocking, I know.
Yeah, I don't think you really understand how the internet works. Their presence is in the country where their servers are. People from the UK essentially go to another country to visit 4chan. If the UK doesn't like that the onus should be on them to block that access, but that is also a stupid idea thanks to VPNs.
Their income is derived from the UK users. They can either block the UK traffic (which they don't want as it would mean less money) or engage with the regulator regarding risk of illegal content they have been fined for:
Does the UK think they have jurisdiction over my server just because some twat from the UK visits my site? If so, there's a reason why we fought a war nearly 250 years ago that said that a stupid fucking idea. Colonialism is a dead ideology
Yes. You are providing services to the UK users and deriving income from these services.
Get used to it. Apple get fined by the EU multiple times, Microsoft and Google also, from memory, lost some cases in the EU despite lack of physical presence.
Apple also sells a physical product in the UK. Microsoft and Apple both sell a virtual service/product in the UK. 4chan only gets revenue from you looking at posters and clicking those posters on their website.
UK can get fucking bent. Come and take it.
I assure you this is what will happen. If 4chan won't pay the fine, they will be blocked in the UK by the Internet service providers (as this is the next step in the process). They will then see that non compliance with Ofcom decision is significantly more expensive than compliance.
How are they going to collect? Extradite to pay a fine? No theyre just going to block it and be done. The UK will never see one penny from 4chan imo, no mayter how much they beg
This is the only real solution, and it's a inconvenient one at best to surfers thanks to solutions like VPN.
Can't stop the signal
It’s not ‘inconvenience at best’. The vast majority of people won’t use a VPN, so it will be a loss of revenue. Even if you are willing to pay for a VPN (or daft enough to use a free one), it’s an inconvenience as using a VPN can have side effects, such as other things getting blocked unexpectedly, or cause websites to redirect you to the local version in the country of your VPN server.
C'mon, it's 4chan we're talking about here. The gambit runs from "yes, that daft" to "good luck, I'm behind 7 proxies".
You’re deluded if you think the UK is going to get a cent from 4chan. The most they can do is direc their ISPs to block 4chan IPs but that wont stop people from tunneling to the site. Thats all they have the legal jurisdiction to do like it or not
4chan will probably end up paying the fine and engaging immediately when it is blocked in the UK as it will result in their top line getting hit. There is also an option of seizing the assets belonging to the company (not necessarily just in the the UK although probably not in the USA). You are deluded if you think otherwise.
It will end up the same as tech giants fines. They will shout, moan and pay.
I especially like this hysterical statement:
😂😂😂
How much money do you think 4chan gets from the UK? I promise it's not much.
Why would 4chan pay the fine? Its not like 4chan will take all that much of a hit because people can tunnel out and still participate in however 4chan monetizes if they really wanted to. Also lmao seize assets. 4chan has no assets in the UK to seize afaik.