Various UK pro-censorship interests of the past 10+ years have painted the Web as a “Wild West” that must be tamed for civility’s sake… and arguably “4Chan” is and always has been top of their hitlist for sanitisation.
But it doesn’t look like it’s going to work out that way, and attempts to do so may critically damage the Online Safety Act project.
Let’s recap:
4Chan is a huge cesspit, but like many (most?) cesspits it teems with interesting life, albeit much of it toxic. It has been perhaps the internet’s primary source of memes for 20+ years, along with any amount of japes, crass humour, shitposting, political manipulation, trolling and self-aggrandising misinformation. It exists, and if it didn’t exist then someone would probably invent it — but this is the one that we have.
And then the UK passed the Online Safety Act and regulators decided to come for 4Chan on the grounds that it obviously, like everything else, will be a company like Meta or Google with offices everywhere, so Ofcom will be able to summons them, set lawyers up against them.
Um…
Very Briefly, What Happened Next?
- 10 June: Ofcom announces investigation into whether 4Chan is toeing the line of the Online Safety Act, see also BBC
- 13 August: Ofcom announces provisional fine for 4Chan for failing to toe the line of the Online Safety Act
- 22 August: 4Chan’s legal team observe that 4Chan is an American company operating in America, and (aside from anything else) that the 1st Amendment exists for them so that the US Government cannot silence them, let alone the UK Government
- 27 August: 4Chan (and others) proactively sue Ofcom in US Courts, seeking “a legal ban on the UK communications regulator enforcing or attempting to enforce the Online Safety Act against them in the US”, see also docket
- 13 October: Ofcom confirms £20,000 + daily increment fine against 4Chan
- Also 13 October: Apparently Ofcom has invoked sovereign immunity to get themselves out of the lawsuit
Wait, What…?
Yeah, that’s right, Ofcom have apparently said something to the effect that “We’re The British Government, We Can’t Be Sued By Puny Humans”, but there’s a slight issue with them doing so:
…because if Ofcom is acting as an agent of the British Government in order to claim sovereign immunity, then the British Government cannot really avoid the charge that it’s attempting to apply British law to censor Americans who are resident in America using American computers to do things which — whatever you think of Pepe the Frog — are nonetheless legal in America.
That’s not going to play well.
That’s not going to play well at all, especially in the current political climate.
American self-image is literally clothed in images of throwing boxes of tea into Boston harbour as protest against British legal over-reach, and it’s drilled into schoolchildren. Even if it was ever likely, it’s doubly hard to conceive of any judge or legislator saying “…yes, America should forego the First Amendment on this occasion to Save the Children because the British Government say we should do this.”
It won’t happen, and the resultant stink will likely undermine, if not terminate, the pipeline of British activism that has pushed “age appropriate design codes” and similar British thinking into the USA, bolstering lawsuits which prick the bubble of “you may say that you’re keeping people safe but if the impact is censorial then it’s unconstitutional.”
The entire house of cards could fall down go boom.
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