Free Speech & Cancel Culture

See article from en.wikipedia.org

4chan 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..

In June 2025 Ofcom announced that it was looking into censoring 4chn. Ofcom wrote:

Ofcom has launched investigations into whether seven file-sharing services, 4chan and porn provider First Time Videos have failed to comply with their duties under the UK's Online Safety Act. Duties under the Act

The Online Safety Act has introduced new rules to ensure online services take action to protect their UK users, especially children.

Sites that publish their own pornography must already have highly effective age checks in place to stop children accessing this material. Search and user-to-user services -- where people can see content shared by others, including social media -- should have assessed the risk of their UK users encountering illegal content and activity on their platforms, and must now be taking appropriate steps to protect them from it.

As well as engaging with large platforms about their new duties, our dedicated taskforce has been attempting to engage with a number of smaller sites that may present particular risks to users. Today we have opened investigations into a number of these services.

Specifically, we are investigating whether the providers of these services have failed to:

put appropriate safety measures in place to protect UK users from illegal content and activity; complete -- and keep a record of -- a suitable and sufficient illegal harms risk assessment; and respond to a statutory information request.

4chan hasn't made a statement about Ofcom's censorship. The website is still generally available in the UKbut is partially self censored. Attempting to reach the site via the home page results in a 403 error message (meaning that the user is unauthorised). However jumping into any other page (eg https://boards.4chan.org/news/) works without error.

 

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

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.

According to Ofcom, 4chan failed to respond to its statutory information requests, making it one of nine services now under formal investigation.

What this law actually does is push platforms, especially smaller or independent ones, out of the UK entirely.

Rather than making the internet safer, the law is creating a digital iron curtain around the UK, where only government-approved content and services remain accessible.

A paid-for ad on the Guardian news website for Diesel clothing, seen on 26 March 2025, featured an image of the model, Katie Price, wearing a bikini and holding a handbag in front of her chest. Text underneath the image stated, Diesel Spring Summer 2025.

The ASA received 13 complaints.

1. Some complainants, who believed the ad objectified and sexualised women, challenged whether it was offensive, harmful and irresponsible.

2. Some complainants, who believed the model appeared to be unhealthily thin, challenged whether the ad was irresponsible.

Diesel said the ad was part of a brand campaign called The Houseguests, which was designed to challenge stereotypes and support diversity and inclusion in the fashion industry, by reflecting a wide range of body types. They regretted that this context was not clear to the complainants. They believed the ad was compliant with the CAP Code, but nevertheless they had removed the ad from the Guardian website. They said the ad had been published in over 100 countries worldwide and they had not been notified of any other complaints.

2. Diesel said although Ms Price was slender, she had excellent muscle tone and was not unhealthily underweight. They said, in the ad Ms Price's head was in proportion with her body, her collar bones were not overly pronounced and her limbs, although slender, were clearly covered with healthy muscle and were proportional to her size. They believed the image was not therefore irresponsible.

ASA Assessment 1. Upheld

The ASA acknowledged Diesel's comments regarding the wider advertising campaign, but considered the ad in isolation, as it was likely that at least some people seeing the ad would not have seen any of the other ads or videos that were part of the campaign.

The model featured in the ad was Katie Price, a well-known public figure. She was shown holding a Diesel handbag in front of her chest, prominently in the foreground of the image, and was wearing one of Diesel's bikinis. We understood that the products featured were part of Diesel's Spring Summer 2025 collection. She appeared to be standing in front of a portable sunbed, which would have been apparent to some people seeing the ad. However, the background of the image showed Ms Price was inside a house, rather than a location which would be more immediately associated with wearing a bikini, such as a beach or poolside.

The bikini only partially covered Ms Price's breasts and we considered the positioning of the handbag, in front of her stomach with the handle framing her chest, drew viewers' attention to, and emphasised, that part of her body. While we acknowledged that Ms Price was shown in a confident and self-assured pose and in control, we considered that because of the positioning of the handbag, which had the effect of emphasising and drawing attention to her breasts, the ad sexualised her in a way that objectified her. We therefore considered the ad was likely to cause serious offence, was irresponsible and breached the Code.

ASA Assessment 2. Not upheld

We acknowledged that Ms Price was slim and considered whether the ad depicted her in such a way as to make her appear unhealthily thin.

We considered that her arms, whilst slender, did have some muscle tone and were in proportion to the rest of her body. Her hair had been styled away from her face in a beehive style, in such a way as to elongate her face and her head was slightly tilted downwards which added to that effect, but we did not consider she appeared gaunt. None of her bones were obviously protruding. There was a gap between her thighs but that appeared, at least in part, due to her pose with one leg stepped forward. Only the tops of her thighs were visible in the ad, and we considered they did not appear to be unduly slender and appeared to be in proportion to the rest of her body. We therefore considered that the ad did not depict Ms Price in such a way as to make her appear unhealthily thin and concluded that it was not irresponsible on that basis.

The ad must not appear again in the form complained of. We told Diesel SpA t/a Diesel to ensure their future ads were socially responsible and did not cause serious or widespread offence.

  The US right leaning forum website GAB has blocked internet users located in Britain. UK users can now only see a landing page explaining that UK internet censorship laws are unacceptable to the free speech loving forum. The website explains its actions as follows:

ATTENTION: UK Visitor Detected

The following notice applies specifically to users accessing from the United Kingdom.

Access Restricted by Provider

After receiving yet another demand from the UK's speech police, Ofcom, Gab has made the decision to block the entire United Kingdom from accessing our website.

This latest email from Ofcom ordered us to disclose information about our users and operations. We know where this leads: compelled censorship and British citizens thrown in jail for hate speech. We refuse to comply with this tyranny.

Gab is an American company with zero presence in the UK. Ofcom's demands have no legal force here. To enforce anything in the United States, they'd need to go through a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty request or letters rogatory. No U.S. court is going to enforce a foreign censorship regime. The First Amendment forbids it.

Ofcom will likely try to make an example of us anyway. That's because the UK's Online Safety Act isn't about protecting children. It's about suppressing dissent.

They're welcome to try. The idea that a British regulator can pressure a U.S. company that's IP-blocking the entire UK is as farcical as it is futile. If anything, it proves our point: censorship doesn't work. It only reveals the truth about the censors.

We proudly join platforms like Bitchute in boycotting the United Kingdom. American companies should follow suit. The power of the UK's parliament ends where the First Amendment begins.

The only way to vote against the tyranny of the UK's present regime is to walk away from it, refuse to comply, and take refuge under the impervious shelter of the First Amendment.

The UK's rulers want their people kept in the dark. Let them see how long the public tolerates it as their Internet vanishes, one website at a time.

 

Update: Ofcom responds

23rd April 2025. See article from ofcom.org.uk

The Online Safety Act introduces new rules for providers of online user-to-user, search and pornography services, to help keep people in the UK safe from content which is illegal in the UK, and to protect children from the most harmful content such as pornography, suicide and self-harm material.

Wherever in the world a service is based, if it has links to the UK, it now has duties to protect UK users. This includes having a significant number of UK users, or that the UK is a target market. These rules will also apply to services that are capable of being used by individuals in the UK and which pose a material risk of significant harm to them.

The Act only requires that services take action to protect users based in the UK -- it does not require them to take action in relation to users based anywhere else in the world.

Ofcom believes its flexible approach to risk assessment and mitigation allows all services to take appropriate and proportionate steps to protect UK users from illegal content. Some services might seek to prevent users in the UK from accessing their sites or parts of their sites, instead of complying with the Act's requirements to protect UK users. That is their choice.

If a service restricts UK users' access, that action would need to be effective in order for the service to fall out of scope of the Act. The key test remains whether the service has links to the UK. This will depend on the specific circumstances (including whether it is still targeting UK users, for example, by promoting ways of evading access restrictions). Ofcom would assess whether a service is in scope on a case-by-case basis and, where the Act applies, would consider the service's compliance with the law and, where necessary, use our investigation and enforcement powers.

We recognise the breadth and complexity of the online safety rules and that there is a diverse range of services in scope.

New regulation can create uncertainty and navigating the requirements can be challenging. Ofcom is committed to working with providers to help them comply with the Online Safety Act and protect their users. We have therefore developed a range of tools and resources to make it easier for them to understand -- and comply with -- their obligations. We also recently published a guide to help small services navigate the Online Safety Act.

The Government's controversial 'disinformation' team is developing a secretive AI programme to trawl through social media looking for concerning posts it deems problematic.

Records show the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) recently awarded a £2.3 million contract to Faculty AI to build monitoring software which can search for foreign interference, detect deepfakes and analyse social media narratives.

DSIT claimed the new AI tool, called the Counter 'Disinformation' Data Platform (CDDP), is for the moment looking solely for posts which pose a threat to national security and public safety risk.

Heavily redacted documents obtained by Big Brother Watch through Freedom of Information requests show that the Government is reserving the right to also use the platform for other issues. An executive summary for the project states: While the CDDP has a current national security focus the tool has the ability to be pivoted to focus on any priority area.