Step 3, upon not hearing of compliance, levy fines.
Step 4, upon non payment of fines, declare in breach of (2).
Step 5, block site from UK using DNS, in the same manner as torrent sites etc.
5 was always the goal, 2 to 4 are largely just performative.
sunshine-o · 33m ago
This is the only power they have left.
The UK government has lost control of what happen in the physical world on their own island so now the bureaucrats play a fantasy game where they are gonna enforce their rules and dominion in their former colonies or the digital world.
fruitworks · 1h ago
Step 6: Someome buys (or steals) a new domain to mirror the site. Or piggybacks a subdomain.
Step 7: Rinse and repeat, fueling the domain-bureaucracy complex. Oceania has always been at war with the pirate bay!
username332211 · 1h ago
How does step 5 work? Switching DNS servers is trivial.
The iOS instructions are the most onerous (IMO) but still easy enough to follow. It's 15 minutes of fumbling around for the non-technical person, then they're protected.
(Though, as others have pointed out, this is probably moot. The blocking is more effectively done by ISPs.)
username332211 · 49m ago
Ehh, if a youth of digital piracy has taught me anything, it's that people will develop the necessary computer literacy to get the entertainment they want. Even if they've completely failed to develop that same skill in the pursuit of self improvement.
I feel that says something about human psychology. Probably something very unpleasant.
okasaki · 51m ago
UK site blocking isn't done with DNS. I think they mess with routes at the ISP level. There's not much you can do except use a VPN.
rich_sasha · 23m ago
I mean, downstream from 1 it's all as it should be. 100% of the issue is #1, no?
fruitworks · 50m ago
I wouldn't be so sure it's an ideological stand.
4chan got hacked a while back because they were running a totally outdated software stack. It's been pretty much abandoned by its owner hiromoot.
If they aren't going to update the site for basic maintainance, they definitely aren't going to implement all this chat control/ age verification bullcrap.
I suppose a resistance to change is good when your competitors are burying their own graves.
OgsyedIE · 12m ago
If the owner doesn't care about it and it's got such a strong network effect, what's stopping somebody from buying it and implementing the SomethingAwful monetization model, where it's free until you get banned and then $10 for every unbanning?
net01 · 3h ago
Ofcom can fine 4chan all it wants, but without UK assets those penalties are unenforceable, they have no power here.
This is why the US dropped tea into Boston to have it's own Freedom.
blibble · 2h ago
> This is why the US dropped tea into Boston to have it's own Freedom.
the 3% tariff on Chinese tea was seen as oppressive
don't look at what has been imposed this year (without congressional approval)
zdragnar · 1h ago
The tariff was oppressive in large part because the colonies didn't have representation in Parliament and were allowed limited (and decreasing) local governance. The Stamp, Townshend and Intolerable Acts were a whole lot more than just "we don't wanna pay taxes".
I don't feel represented on the national or international stage AT ALL. Maybe I'll stop paying mine.
aleph_minus_one · 1h ago
> I don't feel represented on the national or international stage AT ALL. Maybe I'll stop paying mine.
Now gather a huge group of friends who are willing to fight for this cause (and for whose this cause is so important that they can accept ending in jail or even worse).
_heimdall · 1h ago
A similar argument can be made against the tariffs though.
US consumers will be paying the bulk of the tariffs through price increases. We do have representatives in Congress, they just weren't the ones imposing tariffs.
edit: as fun as silent down votes are, it would be interesting to hear where you might disagree
FergusArgyll · 1h ago
The target of the Boston Tea Party was the British implementation of the Tea Act of May 10, 1773, which allowed the East India Company to sell tea from China in the colonies without paying taxes apart from those imposed by the Townshend Acts.
The precipitating event behind the Boston Tea Party was actually a reduction in taxation that made it possible for the East India Company to undercut both official colonial tea importers and also American tea smugglers.
nickslaughter02 · 3h ago
> Two days later, US Federal Trade Commission chairman Andrew Ferguson warned big tech firms they could be violating US law if they weakened privacy and data security requirements by complying with international laws such as the Online Safety Act.
How will this work with chat control?
> "If Ofcom doesn't think this will be enough to prevent significant harm, it can even ask that ISPs be ordered to block UK access."
If you want to enforce stupid laws the burden should be upon you.
speedylight · 54m ago
I think eventually we will reach a point where laws like the Online Safety Act become so prevalent that it is basically impossible to comply with all of them simultaneously and still have a unified internet across the globe. I wouldn’t be surprised if in 10 years or so every country has its own version of the internet only intended for their own people.
firesteelrain · 51m ago
We do still have limited entry and exit points to other Countries internets. You could end up with Great Firewalls across the globe if it got bad enough. It doesn’t deter VPNs though
astura · 37m ago
I think this was 100% the intention.
net01 · 2h ago
> How will this work with chat control?
There is no POC for a chat control E2E-compliant chat app and there will never be. this will just kill EU made software because they will be forced to comply, while US software will use real E2E as marketing.
pitched · 1h ago
The UK isn’t part of the EU anymore. As I understand it, this doesn’t apply to the broader group.
sunshine-o · 3h ago
I assumed 4chan didn't exist anymore and it was renamed/replaced by another board... Great advertisement.
The UK acts like a madman on fire trying to attack everybody.
bentlegen · 1h ago
It stopped being relevant because its content became acceptable on major social networks, beginning in late 2022.
firesteelrain · 50m ago
What content in particular?
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF · 26m ago
The stuff that Free Speech Absolutists like to say on twitter, judging by the date they included.
Ofcom will probably end up requiring UK ISPs to block the site. Which is a fair outcome, given that the site administrators have willingly chosen to not follow UK law while still allowing UK residents to access the site.
kayxspre · 50m ago
This is similar to how Wikipedia reacts to Internet Watch Foundation (a UK CSAM Watchdog) when it decided to block the page "Virgin Killer" (a 1976 album by German band Scorpions) and the album cover image page. FBI found no issue with it, but the UK did. The result means ISP using the IWF blocklist are getting their traffic routed to proxy server, and Wikipedia usually blocks open proxies. Eventually, news outlet reproduced the artwork in question, rendering the block moot, and IWF rescinded the block a few days later [1]
I wonder if 4chan will simply decide to ban visitors from UK from visiting based on regulatory compliance. Sometimes when I accidentally clicked on a streaming sites that were not available in my country, their error page will be simply "This content isn't available in your country", but the URL contains GDPR, even though the site is not EU-based at all, and that I'm not visiting it from EU country either.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
macinjosh · 1h ago
Ofcom's only card now is to have UK ISPs block 4chan. When that happens will Starlink comply? maybe. what if they block X? could get messy fast.
crtasm · 41m ago
Not the only card according to the article
>"Ofcom can instead ask a court to order other services to disrupt a provider's UK business, such as requiring a service's removal from search results or blocking of UK payments.
perihelions · 1h ago
I'd be totally un-shocked if the UK criminalized Starlink (over OSA or otherwise), in part because they've already criminalized it before, in some of their territories[0,1].
Imagine if some tech like DNS over UHF radio
What could the UK do?
justlikereddit · 57m ago
They'll just maintain course on their mission to make everything illegal no matter the technical details.
Starting with whatever allows criticism of their parody of a farce of so called leadership.
aleph_minus_one · 1h ago
> Imagine if some tech like DNS over UHF radio What could the UK do?
Criminalize this usage of UHF radio.
jmclnx · 2h ago
>If Ofcom doesn't think this will be enough to prevent significant harm, it can even ask that ISPs be ordered to block UK access.
Well again I guess the UK never heard of VPNs, but they are trying to ban them still, it is like these pols have no clue how the internet works. They never learn these actions are like playing wack-a-mole.
Hah, yes 'children' stealing a 'credit card' to get a VPN to watch porn. Well stop that!
Joker_vD · 1h ago
So they're lagging about 3-4 years behind the Russian practices, but steadily catching up. Quite impressive!
sunrunner · 49m ago
I’m curious about what the plan is to differentiate between legitimate business use and personal use of any kind. Age verification obviously won’t work for self-hosted, so does age verification then get pushed to VPS providers? And at that point, so what? I’m already paying with legitimate bank details for legitimate personal use.
GeoAtreides · 18m ago
do you think the public at large knows what VPS are? How to set up a VPN? the public at large barely understands the concept of files nowadays, if it's not app they're lost
banning selling VPN and VPN apps will solve 90% of the problem and that's enough
morkalork · 43m ago
A VPN license of course! Just need a corporation number, a list of registered employees, and mandatory logging to get one! /s
Klaster_1 · 1h ago
It doesn't matter if naive blocking means can be trivially circumvented. This creates a chilling effect, less technically proficient people will just move to other sites. When circumvention becomes an offence, now government has one more point of leverage over you - they manufacture law under which almost everyone is guilty.
pitched · 1h ago
It feels more like a modern version of Luddites where they probably do understand very well how it works and they fear what that means for their own success.
Joker_vD · 1h ago
> I guess the UK never heard of VPNs
Wanna bet that when they finally hear of them, they'll try to ban them (and mentions of VPNs, too)?
firesteelrain · 50m ago
What about Onion networks?
fruitworks · 45m ago
They need bridges.
I think the question we should be asking is "What about SSHing into a VPS?" and "What about seedboxes".
You can disguise a VPS as any server outside of your country, it could serve up an HTTPS page and no one snooping the connection would be any wiser.
idiomat9000 · 1h ago
Desperate politicians ,steering desperately against the right wing tide they created by showing everyone the reality of mass immigration to keep their business models and world afloat .
Finnucane · 1h ago
so I guess the UK will have to build Hadrian’s Firewall to keep everybody out.
Step 2, demand compliance.
Step 3, upon not hearing of compliance, levy fines.
Step 4, upon non payment of fines, declare in breach of (2).
Step 5, block site from UK using DNS, in the same manner as torrent sites etc.
5 was always the goal, 2 to 4 are largely just performative.
The UK government has lost control of what happen in the physical world on their own island so now the bureaucrats play a fantasy game where they are gonna enforce their rules and dominion in their former colonies or the digital world.
Step 7: Rinse and repeat, fueling the domain-bureaucracy complex. Oceania has always been at war with the pirate bay!
The iOS instructions are the most onerous (IMO) but still easy enough to follow. It's 15 minutes of fumbling around for the non-technical person, then they're protected.
(Though, as others have pointed out, this is probably moot. The blocking is more effectively done by ISPs.)
I feel that says something about human psychology. Probably something very unpleasant.
4chan got hacked a while back because they were running a totally outdated software stack. It's been pretty much abandoned by its owner hiromoot.
If they aren't going to update the site for basic maintainance, they definitely aren't going to implement all this chat control/ age verification bullcrap.
I suppose a resistance to change is good when your competitors are burying their own graves.
This is why the US dropped tea into Boston to have it's own Freedom.
the 3% tariff on Chinese tea was seen as oppressive
don't look at what has been imposed this year (without congressional approval)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_representation
Now gather a huge group of friends who are willing to fight for this cause (and for whose this cause is so important that they can accept ending in jail or even worse).
US consumers will be paying the bulk of the tariffs through price increases. We do have representatives in Congress, they just weren't the ones imposing tariffs.
edit: as fun as silent down votes are, it would be interesting to hear where you might disagree
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Tea_Party
How will this work with chat control?
> "If Ofcom doesn't think this will be enough to prevent significant harm, it can even ask that ISPs be ordered to block UK access."
If you want to enforce stupid laws the burden should be upon you.
The UK acts like a madman on fire trying to attack everybody.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquisition_of_Twitter_by_Elon...
I wonder if 4chan will simply decide to ban visitors from UK from visiting based on regulatory compliance. Sometimes when I accidentally clicked on a streaming sites that were not available in my country, their error page will be simply "This content isn't available in your country", but the URL contains GDPR, even though the site is not EU-based at all, and that I'm not visiting it from EU country either.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Watch_Foundation_and_...
>"Ofcom can instead ask a court to order other services to disrupt a provider's UK business, such as requiring a service's removal from search results or blocking of UK payments.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42979869 ("Starlink in the Falkland Islands – A national emergency situation? (openfalklands.com)"—225 comments)
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37645945 ("Saint Helena Island Communications (sainthelenaisland.info)"—145 comments)
Starting with whatever allows criticism of their parody of a farce of so called leadership.
Criminalize this usage of UHF radio.
Well again I guess the UK never heard of VPNs, but they are trying to ban them still, it is like these pols have no clue how the internet works. They never learn these actions are like playing wack-a-mole.
banning selling VPN and VPN apps will solve 90% of the problem and that's enough
Wanna bet that when they finally hear of them, they'll try to ban them (and mentions of VPNs, too)?
I think the question we should be asking is "What about SSHing into a VPS?" and "What about seedboxes".
You can disguise a VPS as any server outside of your country, it could serve up an HTTPS page and no one snooping the connection would be any wiser.