Grab lots of popcorn: What’s just happened in Ofcom-vs-4Chan will be fun to watch…

Various UK pro-censorship interests of the past 10+ years have painted the Web as a “Wild West” that must be tamed for civility’s sake… and arguably “4Chan” is and always has been top of their hitlist for sanitisation.

But it doesn’t look like it’s going to work out that way, and attempts to do so may critically damage the Online Safety Act project.

Let’s recap:

4Chan is a huge cesspit, but like many (most?) cesspits it teems with interesting life, albeit much of it toxic. It has been perhaps the internet’s primary source of memes for 20+ years, along with any amount of japes, crass humour, shitposting, political manipulation, trolling and self-aggrandising misinformation. It exists, and if it didn’t exist then someone would probably invent it — but this is the one that we have.

And then the UK passed the Online Safety Act and regulators decided to come for 4Chan on the grounds that it obviously, like everything else, will be a company like Meta or Google with offices everywhere, so Ofcom will be able to summons them, set lawyers up against them.

Um…

Very Briefly, What Happened Next?

• 10 June: Ofcom announces investigation into whether 4Chan is toeing the line of the Online Safety Act, see also BBC
• 13 August: Ofcom announces provisional fine for 4Chan for failing to toe the line of the Online Safety Act
• 22 August: 4Chan’s legal team observe that 4Chan is an American company operating in America, and (aside from anything else) that the 1st Amendment exists for them so that the US Government cannot silence them, let alone the UK Government
• 27 August: 4Chan (and others) proactively sue Ofcom in US Courts, seeking “a legal ban on the UK communications regulator enforcing or attempting to enforce the Online Safety Act against them in the US”, see also docket
• 13 October: Ofcom confirms £20,000 + daily increment fine against 4Chan
• Also 13 October: Apparently Ofcom has invoked sovereign immunity to get themselves out of the lawsuit

Wait, What…?

Yeah, that’s right, Ofcom have apparently said something to the effect that “We’re The British Government, We Can’t Be Sued By Puny Humans”, but there’s a slight issue with them doing so:

https://twitter.com/prestonjbyrne/status/1977737741317108099

…because if Ofcom is acting as an agent of the British Government in order to claim sovereign immunity, then the British Government cannot really avoid the charge that it’s attempting to apply British law to censor Americans who are resident in America using American computers to do things which — whatever you think of Pepe the Frog — are nonetheless legal in America.

That’s not going to play well.

That’s not going to play well at all, especially in the current political climate.

American self-image is literally clothed in images of throwing boxes of tea into Boston harbour as protest against British legal over-reach, and it’s drilled into schoolchildren. Even if it was ever likely, it’s doubly hard to conceive of any judge or legislator saying “…yes, America should forego the First Amendment on this occasion to Save the Children because the British Government say we should do this.”

It won’t happen, and the resultant stink will likely undermine, if not terminate, the pipeline of British activism that has pushed “age appropriate design codes” and similar British thinking into the USA, bolstering lawsuits which prick the bubble of “you may say that you’re keeping people safe but if the impact is censorial then it’s unconstitutional.”

The entire house of cards could fall down go boom.

#4chan #ageAppropriateDesignCode #ageVerification #censorship #ofcom #onlineSafety #onlineSafetyAct #surveillance #vpns

California’s Age-Appropriate Design Code (AADC) Is Completely Unconstitutional (Multiple Ways) | NetChoice v. Bonta |  Technology & Marketing Law Blog

Quote:

“Taking these provisions directly from a law enacted in the United Kingdom, the California Legislature left it to the courts to pass the CAADCA through the filter of our First Amendment.”

The AADC won’t pass through that filter unscathed.

https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2025/03/californias-age-appropriate-design-code-aadc-is-completely-unconstitutional-multiple-ways-netchoice-v-bonta.htm

#ageAppropriateDesignCode #onlineSafetyAct

Almost two weeks in Pacific time, starting with Black Hat and ending with some family time in the Bay Area, should have ended at around 9 p.m. Sunday. But the line of thunderstorms that swept through the D.C. area and shut down ramp operations at Dulles for a chunk of the evening had other ideas, which is why we got a free tour of IAD during a two-hour wait for a gate and why I’m now typing this sentence from baggage claim after midnight Monday.

8/13/2024: How Hughes Network Systems could bring satellite terminal manufacturing down to Earth, Light Reading

I visited Hughes’ new factory the day before I flew out to Vegas for Black Hat two weeks ago, then wrote this piece on Monday to include some news about Hughes’ contract to manufacture terminals for the low-Earth-orbit satellite-broadband firm OneWeb that Hughes PR gave me in advance.

8/13/2024: Patreon to Creators: Sorry, We Have to Let Apple Take a Cut of In-App Support, PCMag

I could not have written this story the way I did had I not set up shop on Patreon over five years ago and supported other creators on that platform. Some definitions of journalistic ethics would call that being too close to the story, but sometimes there’s no replacement for lived experience in a subject.

Later that day, I followed up by writing a post for Patreon readers explaining that I was not going to eat Apple’s cut, which meant that they could choose between paying about 43 percent extra (an increase Patreon calculated to ensure that creators would earn the same from a patron regardless of where they signed up) or following my advice to sign up on the Web.

8/15/2024: Come Out and Play: An Oral History of the HFStival, Washingtonian

I enjoyed the hell out of revisiting some of my favorite RFK memories with Washingtonian’s Andrew Beaujon over a long phone interview in May. I also enjoyed seeing my one quote from that conversation follow extended testimony from musicians in some of my favorite D.C. indie-rock bands of that era: the Dismemberment Plan, Jawbox, Tuscadero and Velocity Girl.

8/15/2024: Ep 104 SmartTechCheck Podcast — HEB and Apple Pay, Google news, desktop PC thoughts, BlackHat, Mark Vena

I joined my industry-analyst friend’s podcast to share my thoughts on Black Hat and to compare notes with fellow tech scribes John Quain and Dwight Silverman.

8/16/2024: Court: Calif. Child-Safety Bill Turns Businesses Into ‘Censors for the State’, PCMag

One state’s law about online child safety getting blocked by a federal appeals court might not seem like national news, but California is a very large state and the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act has already inspired similar laws in other states and a bill that passed the Senate last month.

8/17/2024: Court Stops Disney-Fox-WBD ‘Venu’ Live Sports Service on Antitrust Grounds, PCMag

Friday gave me a second opportunity to digest a fairly lengthy court ruling and explain it to readers, this time one that halted the rollout of a sports streaming service on antitrust grounds.

https://robpegoraro.com/2024/08/19/weekly-output-hughes-network-systems-manufactures-in-maryland-apples-app-store-tax-hits-patreon-creators-hfstival-mark-vena-podcast-calfornia-online-child-safety-law-stayed-venu-sports-streami/

#AgeAppropriateDesignCode #AppStore #AppStore30_ #BlackHat #Fubo #FuboTV #HughesNetworkSystems #MarkVena #NetChoice #OneWeb #Patreon #sportsStreaming #Venu