The UK online safety regulator Ofcom has fined the US messaging platform 4Chan a total of £520,000 for failing to comply with various aspects of the Online Safety Act.
It includes £450,000 for failing to put in age checks to prevent children from seeing pornography on the platform.
However, a lawyer representing the company - which has previously said it won’t pay such fines - has responded to the demand with an AI-generated cartoon image of a hamster.
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The funny thing is that 4Chan has been “banned” in the UK for several years already. All ISPs (home and mobile) need to have adult filters on by default - which block 4chan for having NSFW boards, but somehow not Reddit or X - too big to be blocked? - and you can only disable the filters by going into the ISP account holder’s settings panel.
But of course that wasn’t enough, so now they want websites to block UK IPs instead and threaten fines pursuant to the Online “Safety” Act.
And once everyone blocks the UK, it also won’t be enough, and they’ll ask for age verification for using a VPN or ban VPNs altogether.
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ISPs don´t block Reddit and X in the UK because they have implemented age verification for UK users. There is currently a three-month government consultation about VPNs in the UK, they can´t ban them before the consultation is over. That should happen around Summer.
The prime minister’s office is considering formal ways to block children from using VPNs, sparking concerns about an age-verification requirement that could defeat the purpose of using one.
