4chan won’t play by UK age check rules, raising question about enforcement potency

If the UK doesn’t like how 4chan operates, it can shut the site down. That’s the gist of the message from the online message board best known for being an incubator for misogyny, in response to demands from UK regulator Ofcom that the site fall in line with the UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA), and pay for violations.

In keeping with its generally adversarial stance, 4chan says it won’t follow Ofcom’s rules because “the United Kingdom lost the American Revolutionary War,” and as such UK speech law doesn’t apply to companies based in the U.S. In a letter from its lawyer, Preston Byrne, the firm says it “reserves all rights and waives none,” and punctuates the statement with an image of giant cartoon hamster Nigel J. Whiskerford dressed as Godzilla – per Byrne’s explanation on X, “a private international law service of process joke.”

“I told Ofcom in Oct that their letters, which were not properly served, would be shredded for my pet hamster’s enclosure,” Byrne writes.

From the beginning, 4chan has treated Ofcom’s demands as a joke. Ofcom has continued to prosecute 4chan, issuing a fine of £450,000 (about $596,000) to the site for “not having age checks in place to prevent children from seeing pornography on its site,” and an extra £70,000 (about $92,000) for not doing a risk assessment and not being complete enough in its terms of service.

More fines are coming. But 4chan’s response raises the question: what good is enforcement if foreign companies simply ignore it?

Debate over where responsibility for online content lives

The question is primarily one of jurisdiction. In the U.S., the First Amendment reigns as holy writ, and American companies are happy to leverage it for their business interests. 4chan says that because it’s based in the U.S., it doesn’t matter what the UK’s regulatory goons say.

Ofcom’s position is that, because 4chan is available to users in the UK, it is subject to UK law. Director of Enforcement Suzanne Cater says “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.”

The debate is located at a psychological juncture unique to our time. With some 33 years of the World Wide Web behind us – and roughly two decades of that dominated by social media – the world is being forced to decide where to assign responsibility for online content. Do a platform’s legal rights live in the country where their parent company is incorporated, or where their users interact with it?

Those on the side of Preston Byrne say since 4chan is based in the U.S., its “only content regulator is the First Amendment.” It is worth noting that Byrne also represents Kiwi Farms, which Wikipedia calls “a web forum that facilitates the discussion and harassment of online figures and communities.” Gab.com, another client, is an alt-tech microblogging service “widely described as a haven for far-right and alt-right users” who have been banned from mainstream platforms. And Personal Autonomy LLC is the firm Ofcom penalized, in one of its first enforcement actions, for running a suicide forum.

Is UK imposing censorship on US – or US imposing harm on UK users?

Byrne and 4chan, then, believe not just that they should be able to say anything (or enable others to say anything) because they live in the land of the First Amendment. They also explicitly believe it is their legal right to actively enable online harm.

It has become clear that laws around cigarettes are a useful reference for what is now happening with social media. But in this case, which involves particularly American ideals, a better analogy is guns. According to 4chan’s logic, a pistol made by Smith & Wesson in Maryville, Tennessee would carry U.S. gun laws with it overseas; Tennessee allows most people to carry a loaded handgun without a permit, so a holder in, say, London would theoretically be allowed the same right.

By that same logic, any company that offers products or services to people in the U.S., but does not have a physical presence on American soil, could argue that their national laws overrule U.S. regulations on things like food products.

Ofcom set to receive risk assessments from large SM platforms

Given the framing – a private firm’s right to leverage U.S. law internationally against the right of sovereign authorities to make and enforce laws aimed at protecting their citizens – it’s no surprise Ofcom is pushing ahead with its enforcement efforts.

The regulator has announced a fresh round of warnings, issuing legally binding notices to “more than 40 of the largest and riskiest sites and apps in the world” and “requesting more than 70 risk assessments from them.”

“Failure to provide a sufficient response, on time, could result in enforcement action,” says a release.

The regulator emphasizes the importance of risk assessments in enabling platforms to “understand how harm could take place on their platforms, and how their features and functionalities could increase those risks of harm.” It requires providers to review risk assessments at least once a year, and update them “before making any significant change to their service’s design or operation, or if Ofcom makes any significant change to its assessment of risks.”

This summer, risk assessments from so-called categorized services are coming due. This classification is expected to include large social media and search services.

“We have issued formal information requests to 30 providers, covering 43 services, which have until 31 July to submit their Year 2 illegal harms risk assessments and children’s risk assessments to us,” Ofcom says. “We will use the responses we receive to identify gaps in risk assessments and drive improvements.”

“Firms are required, by law, to respond to all such requests from Ofcom in an accurate, complete and timely way. We have issued several fines for failures to do this, and taken action regarding the suitability of platforms’ risk assessments.”

Article Topics

age verification  |  Ofcom  |  Online Safety Act  |  regulation  |  social media  |  United Kingdom  |  United States