Free Speech & Cancel Culture

A string of bands have pulled out of a music festival hours before they were due to perform after Irish folk band The Mary Wallopers said that their mics were cut off for displaying a Palestinian flag.

The Last Dinner Party, Cliffords and The Academic announced on Saturday that they would no longer be performing at Portsmouth's Victorious festival.

The organisers, who initially claimed The Mary Wallopers had their set cut on Friday for using a discriminatory chant, have since issued an apology to the band. They also pledged to make a substantial donation to humanitarian relief efforts for the Palestinian people.

Rock band The Last Dinner Party said they were boycotting the festival saying that they were outraged by the decision made to silence The Mary Wallopers and accused the organisers of political censorship.

Following The Mary Wallopers' set, a spokesperson for Victorious said: We spoke to the artist before the performance regarding the festival's long-standing policy of not allowing flags of any kind at the event, but that we respect their right to express their views during the show.

The festival initially issued a misleading reason as to their actions but a video clearly showed a Victorious crew member coming on stage, removing the flag from the stage and then the sound being cut following a chant of 'Free Palestine.

As bands announced they would no longer perform at the festival, the organisers issued another statement describing The Mary Wallopers as a fantastic band, they said:

We didn't handle the explanation of our policies sensitively or far enough in advance to allow a sensible conclusion to be reached.

This put the band and our own team in a difficult situation which never should have arisen. We would like to sincerely apologise to all concerned.

We absolutely support the right of artists to freely express their views from the stage, within the law and the inclusive nature of the event. Our policy of not allowing flags of any kind, which has been in place for many years for wider event management and safety reasons, is not meant to compromise that right.

We accept that, although mics remained live for longer, sound for The Mary Wallopers' audience was cut as described in the band's video and that comments after that were not audible to the public.

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.

The US State Department regularly asses human right in countries around the world. The latest report about the UK is particularly scathing. The US State Department Summary reads:

The human rights situation worsened in the United Kingdom during the year.

Significant human rights issues included credible reports of serious restrictions on freedom of expression, including enforcement of or threat of criminal or civil laws in order to limit expression; and crimes, violence, or threats of violence motivated by antisemitism.

The government sometimes took credible steps to identify and punish officials who committed human rights abuses, but prosecution and punishment for such abuses was inconsistent.

The US report is critical of the UK's censorship law, particularly The Online Safety Act:

There were laws in the United Kingdom (UK) that restricted freedom of speech in certain areas or allowed local councils to establish areas with restrictions on freedom of speech.

The law authorized UK authorities, including the Office of Communications (Ofcom), to monitor all forms of communication for speech they deemed illegal.

The Online Safety Act of 2023, which came into force in 2024, defined the category of online harm and expressly expanded Ofcom's authority to include American media and technology firms with a substantial number of British users, regardless of whether they had a corporate presence in the UK. Under the law, companies were required to engage in proactive illegal content risk assessment to mitigate the risk of users encountering speech deemed illegal by Ofcom. Experts warned that one effect of the bill could be government regulation to reduce or eliminate effective encryption (and therefore user privacy) on platforms.

On April 1, the Scottish government implemented the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act, including the introduction of offenses stirring up hatred through threatening or abusive behavior and the communication of threatening or abusive material.

Ofcom has originally opened an investigation into the US image hosting site in June 2025. It has now added and extra clause an investigation into Non-compliance with the safety duties about illegal content.

The investigation now reads:

We are initiating an investigation to determine whether the online discussion board 4chan has failed204or is currently failing204to comply with its obligations under the Online Safety Act 2023. Our investigation will focus on potential breaches in the following areas:

• Failure to respond to a statutory information request;

• Failure to complete and keep a record of a suitable and sufficient illegal content risk assessment; and

• Non-compliance with the safety duties about illegal content.

See article from en.wikipedia.org

4chan.org is an anonymous English-language imageboard website. The site hosts boards dedicated to a wide variety of topics, from video games and television to literature, cooking, weapons, music, history, technology, anime, physical fitness, politics, and sports, porn, among others. Registration is not available, except for staff, and users typically post anonymously. 4chan receives more than 22 million unique monthly visitors, of whom approximately half are from the United States.

The website achieved a little notoriety in Donald Trump's first presidential term. The wesbite was identified for providing a voice to 'alt-right' (right leaning) Trump supporters who were otherwise silenced by an alliance of liberal internet companies and mainstream media outlets..

Offsite Comment: Allowing British authorities to demand compliance from virtually any website.

11th June 2025. See article from reclaimthenet.org

Ofcom has set its sights on 4chan, a US-hosted imageboard owned by a Japanese national. The site operates under US law and has no physical infrastructure, employees, or legal registration in Britain. Nonetheless, UK regulators have declared it fair game.

Wherever in the world a service is based if it has 'links to the UK', it now has duties to protect UK users, Ofcom insists.

That phrase, links to the UK, is intentionally vague and extraordinarily expensive, allowing British authorities to demand compliance from virtually any website.

This kind of extraterritorial overreach marks a direct threat to the principle of national sovereignty in internet governance. The UK is attempting to dictate the rules of online speech to foreign companies, hosted on foreign servers, and serving users in other countries, all because someone in Britain might visit their site.

 

So what will Donald Trump's government make of Ofcom's attempt to censor US free speech? Surely it will be an important step for Ofcom, it could easily be blocked by the US, or simply ignored. Surely this will set a precedent for thousands of other foreign websites that could end up simply ignoring Britain's arrogant censorship law.

Oner 450 people have been arrested in central London at the largest demonstration relating to Palestine Action since the group was proscribed as a terrorist organisation.

On Saturday night, the Metropolitan police said:

Parliament Square and Whitehall are clear. As of 9pm, 466 people had been arrested for showing support for Palestine Action.

By Saturday afternoon, hundreds of people had gathered in Parliament Square for a demonstration organised by the campaign group Defend Our Juries, who said approximately 1,000 sign-holders had turned up.

The Met said it estimated 500-600 people were in Parliament Square when the demonstration began, but many were not partaking.

A spokesperson for Defend Our Juries said earlier:

The fact that unprecedented numbers came out today risking arrest and possible imprisonment shows how repulsed and ashamed people are about our governments ongoing complicity in a livestreamed genocide, and the lengths people are prepared to go to defend this countrys ancient liberties.

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.

Social media companies are blocking wide-ranging content - including posts about the wars in Ukraine and Gaza - in an attempt to comply with the UK's new Online Safety Act, BBC Verify has found.

BBC Verify found a range of public interest content, including parliamentary debates on grooming gangs, has been restricted on X and Reddit for those who have not completed ID/age verification checks.

Experts warn companies are risking stifling legitimate public debate by overapplying the law. Sandra Wachter, a professor of technology and regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute, expressed alarm at the restrictions and told BBC Verify that the new bill was not supposed to be used to suppress facts of public interest, even if uncomfortable.

Among the restricted content identified by BBC Verify was a video post on X which showed a man in Gaza looking for the dead bodies of his family buried among the rubble of destroyed buildings. The post was restricted despite not showing any graphic imagery or bodies at any point in the clip. X subsequently removed the warning after being approached by BBC Verify.

Reader who attempted to view a video of a Shahed drone destroyed mid-flight in Ukraine were required to provide ID/age verfication even though nobody was injured or killed in the clip.

Among the Reddit communities which have been restricted is one called R/UkraineConflict, a message board with 48,000 members that frequently posts footage of the war. Similar restrictions, which urge users to log in to confirm your age, have been imposed on several pages which discuss the Israel-Gaza war and communities which focus on healthcare.

Meanwhile, clips of parliamentary debates have also been swept up in the restrictions. A speech by Conservative MP Katie Lam, containing a graphic description of the rape of a minor by a grooming gang, is available to view without restriction on Parliament's official streaming website, ParliamentLive, but is restricted on X.

 

Meanwhile Spiked reports on other examples of social media censorship
 

Five things we can't post about thanks to the Online Safety Act

See article from spiked-online.com

From grooming gangs to men's fashion, literally any topic of discussion can now be censored.

Here are five things Britons can no longer post or read about under the new internet censorship rules.

1) Francisco Goya's 19th-century masterpiece, Saturn Devouring His Son, was automatically hidden from British users of X. A thread on X detailing the life of Richard the Lionheart and the Crusades has also been suppressed, presumably it's been deemed Islamophobic.

2) A tweet calling for single-sex toilets was branded too sensitive by the censors for her to read.

3) A Guido Fawkes article headlined Keir Suffers Extinction Event, featuring a baby with Starmer's head superimposed on it, has been put behind the age wall on X.

4) Testimony from survivor and campaigner Sammy Woodhouse, detailing the brutal grooming gang rapes and abuses she suffered as a young girl, was censored on X as graphic content.

5) When compiling a list of posts that have been censored on X, Benjamin Jones of the Free Speech Union found himself censored for bringing the absurdities of the Online Safety Act to the public's attention.

Read the full article from spiked-online.com

The terrorism arrest of a man for holding up a Private Eye cartoon during a protest at the weekend was mind-boggling, the magazines editor, Ian Hislop , has said, as the retired teacher called for an apology from police.

The man was picked up by police at a silent demonstration in Leeds on Saturday, which he described as a pretty terrifying and upsetting experience, for holding a sign that made a joke about the governments proscription of the group Palestine Action from the last issue of the fortnightly satirical magazine.

He was arrested under section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000, which prohibits support for a proscribed organisation.

Six hours later, after being questioned by counter-terrorism police, he was allowed to leave, under bail conditions that he attended no Palestine Action rallies, which, as he pointed out, he had never done and would be illegal under terrorism laws anyway. On Monday morning, a counter-terrorism officer called to tell him he would face no further action.

I found out later somebody said to one of the police: You know you can buy Private Eye in the newsagent just next to the van youre putting him in, are you going to arrest Ian Hislop ?

To Kill a War Machine is a 2025 UK documentary by Hannan Majid, Richard York
Starring Huda Ammori, Richard Barnard and Shezana Hafiz

Originally uncut and BBFC 15 rated for a 2025 cinema release, but was banned a month later following the UK government ban of the campaign group Palestine Action.

Summary Notes

A documentary about the activist group Palestine Action.

Versions

banned run: 78:17s pal: 75:09s		UK: Banned by BBFC 2025 Rainbow Collective cinema release (rated 04/07/2025) The BBFC commented: To Kill a War Machine is a British documentary about the group Palestine Action, who were proscribed under the Terrorism Act 2000 with effect from 5 July 2025. The film was originally classified 15 uncut for cinema release on 5 June 2025, before the group was proscribed. Given the proscription of the organisation, and in accordance with legal advice, further distribution or exhibition of To Kill a War Machine is likely to constitute an offence under the Terrorism Act 2000. As such, the classification for this film was revoked on 4 July 2025. BBFC Guidelines and policy state that we will not classify material which is in breach of the criminal law. The film makers, Rainbow Collective, also took down an online release, saying in a statement: Following the vote in the House of Commons on 2nd July 2025 to proscribe Palestine Action, Rainbow Collective have taken the difficult decision to temporarily take down the online version of our film, To Kill a War Machine and authorise no further screenings of the film until further notice. As filmmakers with 20 years of experience documenting movements for social justice around the world, we produced To Kill a War Machine independently, within the law and had it certified for cinema release by the BBFC. The film itself does not become illegal, as it was produced and edited prior to proscription. However, future distribution of anything which could be interpreted as showing sympathy for or inviting support for a proscribed organisation will become illegal. It has always been Rainbow Collective's intention to tell critical and truthful stories with integrity. We never want our documentaries to expose our audiences or communities to danger from the state and, as such, the film will remain unavailable until we have absolute legal assurance that it can be distributed within the law.
uncut run: 78:17s pal: 75:09s		UK: Uncut and BBFC 15 rated for images of real dead bodies and injury, criminal behaviour: 2025 Rainbow Collective cinema release (rated 05/06/2025 but banned from 04/07/2025)