Online Safety Act

I've been reading up on the 4Chan situation and their smartass 1st amendment/don't have to abide by UK law stance that's making all the headlines.

I suspect it's going to end very very badly for them.

Almost their entire revenue is generated through advertising, but as they are not compliant with UK law, then injunctions can be taken out against any payment processors and ISPs that operate in the UK who generate revenue for them. If 4Chan refuses to comply at that stage it will force those providers to completely cut ties with them and hit their global revenue not just UK revenue.

 

I would suspect that any company willing to advertise on 4chan is going to be dodgy anyway. It’s not going to be reputable businesses based in the UK that can be actually penalised by the UK. Wouldn’t be surprised if it’s all paid in dodgy crypto or something even.

 

The payment providers and ISPs. Not the companies advertising. The revenue generation absolutely can be regulated by the government of the country where the advertising takes place.

 

Not sure what payment providers and ISPs have to do with a company (as an example, not saying that this is exactly what they’re doing) sending crypto to 4chan in exchange for putting an ad to their dodgy casino on their website, which is what i expect 99% of ads on 4chan will be (but honestly i’m not willing to go on 4chan to check)

 

They are not sending crypto to mainsteam gaming companies who are their biggest advertisers. Welcome to the alt right.

The government is currently following the path of trying to enforce the online safety act law and 4 Chan is making the clear public statement they are not bound by UK law.

The next step if 4Chan succeeds will be disrupting their ability to generate revenue from marketing to UK users.

If they weasel out of that then they will simply be blacklisted from UK ISPs which might not hurt them but will send a clear message to anyone smaller or more orthodox who is considering defying the law.

Its an all ego no brains move, typical of the alt right. If they had more about them they would be embracing the idea of a huge public legal case in the UK that they could use for self promotion and free speech rhetoric.

 

Online advertising has nothing to do with ISPs though, i’m not sure where you think they come into it.

The government could ask ISPs to block access to 4chan but it would be trivial for 4chan to get around by just changing their IP addresses. It’s a game of cat and mouse that ISPs wouldn’t be able to win, if 4chan actually wanted to play those games (which they may or may not)

Could the government sanction any websites advertising on 4chan? Sure i suppose so, but again most of them won’t be based in the UK I would expect. It’ll be online crypto casinos and dodgy porn sites i would expect that are the biggest advertisers on 4chan. It won’t be any mainstream or reputable companies.

 

Its revenue generated through use of their service in the UK from a site that is breaching UK law. The can absolutely be reprimanded for it. Whether they are willing to fight it on behalf of a company like 4Chan will be interesting.

Its a step often talked about but never taken. I think with 4Chan this will change.

In the end we'll just have to wait and see but for me.this is the online equivalent of TACO. Big bold response followed by quietly chickening out

 

I’m not sure what good sanctioning the ISPs will do though. Again there’s no physical way for them to block access to a site other than by IP address which is extremely easy for the site to undo and can easily be bypassed with proxies etc.

So you’re sanctioning ISPs for what exactly?

 

But the onus is on them to police it or face further sanctions.

Allowing illegal content in the country of delivery. Plus the advertising agencies for generating revenue from said content. Even if the government loses these battles have to be fought regardless.

But 4Chan f**ked it and it will likely blow up in their face. Why not just abide by the act and let users use VPNs which I strongly suspect most do already.

Why would a site that has countless issues with child sexual content being posted, and links to online grooming, think resisting age verification is a sane move?!?

 

Probably because of that very reason. They know that a lot of their user base don't want to be identified so age verification would kill their site

 

The point is though, the UK has no jurisdiction over what a US company puts on their website. We just don’t.

Again, ISPs can be asked to block it but it could well start a game of cat and mouse that’s impossible for ISPs to win.

 

Imagine trying to force isps to block billions of foreign websites too. Reminds me of a certain country who's food I'm eating right now

 

They promote geographic targeted advertising. That's not just what they put on their website and is what makes it genuinely interesting and not as clear cut as people think

 

Convinced the people that support this law just don’t use the internet for anything important.

Was searching google for a guide for something for work this morning (on my logged in google account which i’ve had for over 18 years and has my age set on it etc) and it wasn’t showing up. Now i know for a fact this guide exists as i’ve used it before.

Turn my VPN on, set it to Canada, immediately shows up.

Companies with a presence in the UK aren’t going to take risks and will block anything that could be interpreted as “adult”. So much information is cut off from UK users as a result of this and it will continue to get worse. Great idea that for a country with such a heavy service economy.

 

What's the guide?

Not being confrontational. Just curious if I can get to it

 

I know what this is going to sound like, but it’s extremely specific to the industry i’m doing the work for which is in itself extremely small so I’d rather not share it. Funny i know that i’m complaining about companies not taking any risk while im unwilling to take such a small risk.

I can actually get to the guide by the link, the issue is google doesn’t return the results in the UK.

I’ve had a few things like this though, next time i run into one that wouldn’t dox me in some way or potentially break an NDA i’ll send it.


I actually have no problem with websites being blocked and saying that they’re blocked or need age verification when you go to them. The thing i have a problem with is blocking content without saying that there’s something there which is blocked.

 

No worries. Definitely don't dox yourself!

Was just a curiosity