Internet News

It seems that Ofcom has reached an initial decision to fine the US forum and image sharing website £20,000 + a recurring daily fine for not complying with the UK's unilateral censorship laws.

It seems that Ofcom is attempting to fine the US based website, with no connection whatsoever to the UK beyond that it has readers there, for not submitting to Ofcom's onerous and burdonsome red tape requirements.

4chan has responded in a letter from its lawyers, Byrne and Storm:

4chan is incorporated in Delaware, has no assets or operations in the UK, and that any attempt to impose or enforce penalties will be resisted in U.S. federal court.

American businesses do not surrender their First Amendment rights because a foreign bureaucrat sends them an email. Under settled principles of U.S. law, American courts will not enforce foreign penal fines or censorship codes. If necessary, we will seek appropriate relief in U.S. federal court to confirm these principles. United States federal authorities have been briefed on this matter.

The Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer was reportedly warned by the White House to cease targeting American firms with UK censorship code.

Despite these warnings, Ofcom continues its illegal campaign of harassment against American technology firms. A political solution to this matter is urgently required and must come from the highest levels of American government. We call on the Trump Administration to invoke all diplomatic and legal levers available to protect American companies from extraterritorial censorship mandates.

Surely Ofcom's arrogant censorship overreach will surely unravel if 4chan win their case in the US courts. If UK censorship law ends up being restricted to companies with UK connections, then the red tape nightmare will be a massive competitive disadvantage to UK based firms forced to submit to the UK censorship nightmare.

 

Update: It seems Ofcom have announced intentions to fine Gab and Kiwi Farms too

24th August 2025. See article from theverge.com

It has been reported that Ofcom are minded to try and fine 4chan for crimes against UK morality, but it has now been reported that Ofcom also have gab and Kiwi Farms in their sights.

All of the sites are a bit toxic to UK woke sensibilities and maybe are pretty unpopular with US bigwigs too. So presumably it is Ofcom's strategy to target the most toxic of US sites perhaps in order to win their case with a few US judges that may feel that these three websites deserve a little censorship.

Surely this first battle with US courts will set massive precedents, whichever way the decision goes, so maybe it is a pretty shrewd tactic by the internet censors at Ofcom.

Reporter Ash Parrish writes on the Verge website:

In the aftermath of itch.io pulling the sale of over 20,000 pages of adult content , the creators of that work are left feeling betrayed, exhausted, and fearful. The number of platforms that permit the sale of adult material is shrinking, and theres no guarantee the ones that remain will still permit it in the future.

To some creators, the most disheartening thing about itch.io removing thousands of pages of adult content is that its relatively unsurprising. The storefront is one of several in recent years that have embraced adult content only to shun it later when payment processors start asking questions. They've now found themselves booted from platform to platform, moving from Tumblr to Patreon to Gumroad, only to have the rug pulled out from under them each time.

But now, with their livelihoods at stake, many creators and their communities have begun to push back and search for new ways to thrive.

PixelJail, a creator who makes BDSM and other kink-related comics and illustration, has now opted to set up their own websites. But even without the burden of conforming to a platforms rules, having ones own website isnt a guarantee of absolute safety. In the UK, where PixelJail lives, the recently implemented Online Safety Act requires that online platforms have strong age checks in place to prevent children from accessing pornographic or harmful content.

When adult creators are regularly forced to find new places for their work, their business overall suffers. I can never get ahead, said PixelJail, a creator who makes BDSM and other kink-related comics and illustrations. I have to stop doing paid work to set up new accounts, backlog posting, pay for new subscriptions or services and other administrative tasks. I had to geoblock my websites in the UK, including my webstore, PixelJail said, meaning they no longer sell their work in their own country

See the full article from theverge.com

In an ideal world inhabited by politicians and children's campaigners, social media companies would work though all postings and treat each on its merits as to whether it requires age gating or not.

In the real world where commercial reality make this approach too expensive, coupled with a safety first approach mandated by ludicrously massive fines for transgression, the social media play safe and implement age gating around entire forums or even whole websites. For smaller companies it is often make sense just to self block the whole website to UK users.

Of course this reality leads to many more posts being blocked or age gated than maybe simple minded politicians envisaged. Now there seems to be a widespread disquiet about how the Online Safety Act is panning out.

Apart from just the 498,000 people that have signed the petition to repeal the Online Saety Act,  LibDems MP Victoria Collins and peer Lord Clement-Jones wrote a letter to the censorship minister Peter Kyle saying:

There remain significant concerns about how the legislation is currently being implemented, including concerns that:

• age-assurance measures may prove ineffective, as children and young people may use VPNs to sidestep the systems,

• political content is being age-gated on social media

• educational sites like Wikipedia will be designated as Category 1 services, requiring them to age verify moderators

• important forums dealing with LGBTQ+ rights, sexual health or other potentially sensitive topics have been age gated, and that

• age assurance systems may pose a data protection or privacy threat to users.

The implementation of the Act must be flexible, and respond to those emerging concerns. The intention behind this legislation was never to limit access to political or educational content, or to important support relied on by young people.

It was intended to keep children safe, and we must ensure that it is implemented in a way that does that as effectively as possible.

They then go on to talk about how parliament needs the chance to review it and make legislative changes where necessary.
 

Ofcom on over blocking

Online security expert Alec Muffet has tweeted that he has spotted a few hints that Ofcom has recognised that over blocking will be an inevitable characteristic of  Soi cla media's attempts to live whith the censorship rules:

Ofcom *may* be starting to understand that platforms are free to label entire forums as 18+ but that this conflicts with the OSA leading to overblocking pic.twitter.com/znbcfHhg4B

— Alec Muffett (@AlecMuffett) August 5, 2025

 

Of course MPs use VPNs themselves, its basic internet security

See article from reclaimthenet.org

Meanwhile it is interesting to see that when Peter Kyle has called for people not to use VPNs for the sake of the children, then it is intereting to see that MPs themselves are using VPNs as a matter of course. After all it would be stupid not to, for people in public life.

Speaking on BBC Breakfast, Peter Kyle warned:

For everybody out there whos thinking about using VPNs, let me say this to you directly: verifying your age keeps a child safe. Keeps children safe in our country, so lets just not try to find a way around.

Politico reported that official spending records show parliamentarians across party lines have been billing the public for commercial VPN services. Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds charged taxpayers for a two-year NordVPN subscription in April 2024. Labour MP Sarah Champion, who in 2022 pressed the government to investigate whether teenage VPN use could undermine online safety rules, also has a subscription on record.

The government says it has no intention of outlawing VPNs but admits it is monitoring how young people use them. This comes after a sharp increase in downloads following the rollout of mandatory digital ID checks under the new censorship law, the Online Safety Act.

So I wonder how many porn using MPs prefer to dangerously hand over their ID data for age verification, and how many play it safe and use a VPN.

Young people should be able to access information, speak to each other and to the world, play games, and express themselves online without the government making decisions about what speech is permissible. But in one of the latest misguided attempts to protect children online, internet users of all ages in the UK are being forced to prove their age before they can access millions of websites under the countrys Online Safety Act (OSA).

The legislation attempts to make the UK the 'the safest place' in the world to be online by placing a duty of care on online platforms to protect their users from harmful content. It mandates that any site accessible in the UK--including social media , search engines , music sites , and adult content providers --enforce age checks to prevent children from seeing harmful content . This is defined in three categories, and failure to comply could result in fines of up to 10% of global revenue or courts blocking services:

• Primary priority content that is harmful to children:

  • Pornographic content.

  • Content which encourages, promotes or provides instructions for:

    • suicide;

    • self-harm; or

    • an eating disorder or behaviours associated with an eating disorder.

• Priority content that is harmful to children:

  • Content that is abusive on the basis of race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, disability or gender reassignment;

  • Content that incites hatred against people on the basis of race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, disability or gender reassignment;

  • Content that encourages, promotes or provides instructions for serious violence against a person;

  • Bullying content;

  • Content which depicts serious violence against or graphicly depicts serious injury to a person or animal (whether real or fictional);

  • Content that encourages, promotes or provides instructions for stunts and challenges that are highly likely to result in serious injury; and

  • Content that encourages the self-administration of harmful substances.

• Non-designated content that is harmful to children (NDC):

  • Content is NDC if it presents a material risk of significant harm to an appreciable number of children in the UK, provided that the risk of harm does not flow from any of the following:

    • the contents potential financial impact;

    • the safety or quality of goods featured in the content; or

    • the way in which a service featured in the content may be performed.

Online service providers must make a judgement about whether the content they host is harmful to children, and if so, address the risk by implementing a number of measures, which includes, but is not limited to:

• Robust age checks: Services must use 'highly effective age assurance to protect children from this content. If services have minimum age requirements and are not using highly effective age assurance to prevent children under that age using the service, they should assume that younger children are on their service and take appropriate steps to protect them from harm.'

  To do this, all users on sites that host this content must verify their age, for example by uploading a form of ID like a passport, taking a face selfie or video to facilitate age assurance through third-party services, or giving permission for the age-check service to access information from your bank about whether you are over 18.

• Safer algorithms: Services 'will be expected to configure their algorithms to ensure children are not presented with the most harmful content and take appropriate action to protect them from other harmful content.'

• Effective moderation: All services 'must have content moderation systems in place to take swift action against content harmful to children when they become aware of it.'

Since these measures took effect in late July, social media platforms Reddit , Bluesky , Discord , and X all introduced age checks to block children from seeing harmful content on their sites. Porn websites like Pornhub and YouPorn implemented age assurance checks on their sites, now asking users to either upload government-issued ID, provide an email address for technology to analyze other online services where it has been used, or submit their information to a third-party vendor for age verification. Sites like Spotify are also requiring users to submit face scans to third-party digital identity company Yoti to access content labelled 18+. Ofcom, which oversees implementation of the OSA, went further by sending letters to try to enforce the UK legislation on U.S.-based companies such as the right-wing platform Gab .

The UK Must Do Better

The UK is not alone in pursuing such a misguided approach to protect children online: the U.S. Supreme Court recently paved the way for states to require websites to check the ages of users before allowing them access to graphic sexual materials; courts in France last week ruled that porn websites can check users ages; the European Commission is pushing forward with plans to test its age-verification app; and Australias ban on youth under the age of 16 accessing social media is likely to be implemented in December.

But the UKs scramble to find an effective age verification method shows us that there isn't one, and its high time for politicians to take that seriously. The Online Safety Act is a threat to the privacy of users, restricts free expression by arbitrating speech online, exposes users to algorithmic discrimination through face checks, and leaves millions of people without a personal device or form of ID excluded from accessing the internet.

And, to top it all off, UK internet users are sending a very clear message that they do not want anything to do with this censorship regime. Just days after age checks came into effect, VPN apps became the most downloaded on Apple's App Store in the UK, and a petition calling for the repeal of the Online Safety Act recently hit more than 400,000 signatures.

The internet must remain a place where all voices can be heard, free from discrimination or censorship by government agencies. If the UK really wants to achieve its goal of being the safest place in the world to go online, it must lead the way in introducing policies that actually protect all users--including children--rather than pushing the enforcement of legislation that harms the very people it was meant to protect.

Ofcom has launched censorship investigations into the compliance of four companies -- which collectively run 34 pornography sites -- on grounds of lack of ID/age verification being implemented. Ofcom writes:

We have opened formal investigations into whether the following providers have highly effective age checks in place across 34 websites: 8579 LLC, AVS Group Ltd, Kick Online Entertainment S.A. and Trendio Ltd.

These companies have been prioritised based on the risk of harm posed by the services they operate and their user numbers. Collectively, these websites have over 9 million unique monthly UK visitors.

These new cases add to Ofcom's 11 investigations already in progress into 4chan, an online suicide forum, seven file-sharing services, First Time Videos LLC and Itai Tech Ltd. We expect to make further enforcement announcements in the coming weeks and months.

We will now gather and analyse evidence to determine whether any contraventions have occurred. If our assessment indicates compliance failures, we will issue provisional notices of contravention to providers, who can then make representations on our findings, before we make our final decisions.

The 8579 LLC adult sites are:

• 4kporn.xxx
• crazyporn.xxx
• love4porn.com
• hoes.tube.

The websites are still available in the UK without ID/age verification

The AVS Group Ltd sites are:

• pornzog.com
• txxx.com, txxx.tube
• upornia.com
• hdzog.com, hdzog.tube
• thegay.com, thegay.tube
• ooxxx.com
• hotmovs.com
• hclips.com
• vjav.com
• pornl.com
• voyeurhit.com
• manysex.com
• tubepornclassic.com
• shemalez.com, shemalez.tube.

These sites now require ID/age verification in the UK but are available using a VPN.

The Kick Online Entertainment S.A site is

• motherless.com

The website is still available in the UK without ID/age verification

The Trendio Ltd sites are:

• theyarehuge.com
• tranny.one
• ah-me.com
• ashemale.one
• bdsm.one
• bemyhole.com
• gaygo.tv, gayxo.com
• shemale.pub,
• sunporno.com
• yesvids.com

These site now require ID/age verification in the UK via a hasslesome multi selfie approach from agerify. However the sites are still available using a VPN.

On July 25, 2025, the UK's Video-Sharing Platforms (VSP) regime was repealed, and all notified services are now regulated under the Online Safety regime.

The  VSP regime ran in the UK for four years and was the UKs flagship online censorship regulation. Following its repeal, Ofcom took a look back at its journey to highlight what was achieved, as well as 5 things industry can learn from online safety regulation in practice. See article from ofcom.org.uk

What Ofcom doesn't comment on in these wishy washy achievements is to note how few video sharing platforms have stupidly decided to be based in Britain.