4chan lawsuit says OSA doesn’t apply to it because US invented the internet

Online forum 4chan is famous for the belligerence of its users, so it’s not surprising that it has bristled at the UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA) and its age assurance requirements. Having already refused to pay fines, the company has filed a complaint with the United States District Court of Columbia, asserting that Americans invented the internet, so foreign governments dang well can’t tell them how to behave on there.

“Despite the internet’s global reach, it is more or less universally acknowledged that the internet is, predominantly, an American innovation, built by American citizens, residents, and companies, and that the United States has the largest and most thriving technology sector of any G7 member state,” says the complaint.

This is a highly dubious assertion to begin with. For one, the development of the Internet was led by Americans, but supported by contributions from French and UK scientists; and Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web that makes the internet easily accessible to all, is English.

Nonetheless, 4chan is nothing if not in tune with the current U.S. president’s assertion that America can do whatever it wants. According to 4chan and its lawyers, U.S. federal courts have “personal jurisdiction over Ofcom pursuant to the District of Columbia’s long-arm statute, as Ofcom has committed unlawful acts within the District of Columbia by sending threatening communications to U.S.-based internet companies that interfere with their constitutional rights and business operations.” Those who would pledge allegiance to Pepe the Frog argue that the UK has no right to boss around American companies.

Ofcom disagrees. A statement from the regulator, quoted in the BBC, asserts that “under the Online Safety Act, any service that has links with the UK now has duties to protect UK users, no matter where in the world it is based.”

Now that the internet is regulated, where do jurisdictional borders go?

The lawsuit may be in keeping with 4chan’s taste for edgelord hostility, but its implications are broad. For one, there has never been U.S. leadership so openly sympathetic to the sort of chronically online male that 4chan courts as its base. 4chan knows that the Trump administration has already used tariffs and the threat of sanctions as a way to push back against the EU’s Digital Services Act, which also imposes restrictions on U.S. tech firms. A piece in the Guardian quotes his stance: “Digital taxes, legislation, rules or regulations are all designed to harm, or discriminate against, American technology.”

“As the president of the United States, I will stand up to countries that attack our incredible American tech companies.”

4chan surely believes Trump includes it in that category, and is banking on his support in its legal action, as evidenced by the “America First” tone of its complaint.

But the issue is bigger than Trump. The complaint asserts that “4chan’s website and its editorial decisions regarding what content its website hosts are protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.” The First Amendment is lionized like few other American laws (the Second Amendment being another notable example), and it figures heavily into how the U.S. sees itself with regard to the rest of the world. The right to free speech is a major part of the secret sauce that has, for decades, allowed America to paint itself as a beacon of freedom – in a digital context, the symbolic counterpoint to China’s Great Firewall.

However, once the treasured Amendment is reimagined as an export, it becomes precisely the opposite of what it claims to be: an imposition of U.S. law on the freedoms of sovereign nations.

The big question it raises is, as the internet enters its regulated phase, who is in charge of it? Having created a borderless virtual world, the introduction of jurisdictional laws will be a stress test for governments around the globe. Is Ofcom, as the 4chan complaint alleges, “the UK’s industry-funded global censorship bureau?” Or does the UK regulator have every right to legislate what’s allowed on certain people’s internet feeds?

It is worth noting that the complaint comes not just from 4chan, but also Lolcow, LLC, which owns the site Kiwi Farms – per Wikipedia, “a web forum that facilitates the discussion and harassment of online figures and communities.” Its harassment campaigns are known to have contributed to the suicides of at least three individuals. Gizmodo calls it “one of the worst cesspits the internet has to offer.”

Both 4chan and Kiwi Farms say they operate “fully in compliance with the laws of the United States.”

Musk keeps punching at Australian eSafety Commissioner

In a parallel cross-border spat, Elon Musk, the billionaire who bought Twitter and renamed it X, is weighing whether or not to challenge the Federal Court of Australia ruling that his company is liable for decisions made before he purchased it in 2023.

According to MLex, Musk may bring the matter to Australia’s High Court, in a last effort to avoid a fine of 610,000 Australian dollars (about 395,000 U.S. dollars) for failing to comply with a transparency notice issued by eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant.

Musk has several lawsuits on the go against the eSafety Commissioner, with whom he almost always seems to have beef. As the world’s richest man, Musk deals out lawsuits like playing cards: he recently sued the State of New York over a law targeting hate speech on social media, and is suing Apple for not putting X or its occasionally Nazi AI, Grok, in its list of top apps.

Regulatory conflict not likely to be easily settled

The EU has pushed back against Trump’s threats. An article in Le Monde has European Commission chief spokesperson Paula Pinho claiming the “sovereign right of the EU and its member states to regulate economic activities on our territory which are consistent with our democratic values.”

Meanwhile, X has already lost twice in Australia’s Federal Court in its efforts to absolve itself of any violations committed when it was still Twitter.

With major economic impacts at stake – and potentially even bigger implications about legal sovereignty in the digital world – no side, be it a huge private company or national regulator, is likely to cave easily. As soldiers walk the streets of U.S. cities and Trump throws his weight around over Russia’s war in Ukraine, another, more ephemeral war may be brewing in the conference halls and backrooms of digital regulatory policy.

Article Topics

age verification  |  digital identity  |  Digital Services Act  |  Online Safety Act  |  Online Safety Act (Australia)  |  regulation  |  social media  |  United States