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4chan will refuse to pay daily online safety fines, lawyer tells BBC

(www.bbc.co.uk)
411 points donpott | 1 comments | 22 Aug 25 10:02 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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nickdothutton ◴[22 Aug 25 12:15 UTC] No.44983582[source]▶
Step 1, pass law.

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.

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okasaki ◴[22 Aug 25 12:44 UTC] No.44983897[source]▶
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.
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Bender ◴[22 Aug 25 14:14 UTC] No.44984952[source]▶
4chan uses Cloudflare. Blocking routes to Cloudflare may have an interesting impact unless CF are cooperating with the UK.

4chan could stop using CF but their moderators will have to step up their game as CF is being used to detect and block CSAM.

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ovi256 ◴[22 Aug 25 15:14 UTC] No.44985634[source]▶
CF will cooperate with UK authorities because they're not in 4chan's business.
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const_cast ◴[22 Aug 25 17:58 UTC] No.44987589[source]▶
I doubt it heavily. CF has control over a large chunk of the global internet - they're not going to go thru their clients one by one and make sure they're doing age verification. That's absurd and far too expensive.

The alternative to that is either:

1. UK blocks cloudflare (unlikely, come on now)

2. UK gives cloudflare a pass (fairly common)

3. Somewhere in-between. Maybe UK cares about highly visible people behind cloudflare like 4Chan but not others.

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AuryGlenz ◴[22 Aug 25 18:10 UTC] No.44987727{4}[source]▶
Won’t it just be the UK telling Cloudflare to block 4chan specifically for the UK (or we’ll fine you too)?
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1. const_cast ◴[22 Aug 25 18:11 UTC] No.44987741[source]▶
Yeah that's option 3, for now. But they won't go after cloudflare in the general case because it's too risky IMO. And cloudflare will only comply to the absolute minimum they can get away with, because they can't burn money auditing every single customer behind cloudflare.