Are you saying it is sad that American courts do not enforce foreign laws if they violate the US constitution? If so, then are you in favor of Russian, Chinese, various Muslim countries' laws being enforced in the US?
This is just laying down the ground work for Russia-style deep packet inspection. “We don’t have a capability to censor the foreign internet, so we need measures to cut off the violating sites from our side”
deep packet inspection is not really necessary, headers contain information about the destination, as long as you don’t encrypt those, there is no need to do any decryption.
You just need to follow this to the logical conclusion. They’ll ban using your proposed method, people will switch to VPN and other modern methods and to combat people still accessing the forbidden internet they will need DPI and TSPU-like devices
I think the conclusion is more like mandating home and business web access is proxied at a national level and most other protocols disallowed. Use of VPNs without a VPN tax stamp and key escrow is prima facie evidence of violation of the Counter-Terrorism and Security act. Use of non-standard protocols is assumed to be criminal intent. Check with your approved internet provider for how to access the Internet safely.
What proposed method? I'm explaining how things work. In order to send a packet, the destination address needs to be known to the delivering entities. Encryption occurs by using enveloping, the envelope is unencrypted, but the content is encrpyted.
This is how it works, if you want I can explain to you why it works like this, or you can work it out from first principles. But this is not a proposal.
VPNs are an asterisk and they work not by avoiding this natural unavoidable principle, but by tunneling, the VPN or proxy vendor is putting themselves on the headers, and on the backend they still route the packets to the destination by putting the intended destination on the headers.
If these VPNs don't comply with local regulations and are used to evade national restrictions they can and are often themselves subject to bans. But even if not, it acts as a sort of waiver and compromising element for all illicit activity.
Sometimes it's not necessary to completely outlaw something, it is sufficient to make it so that engaging in the outlawed activity is sufficiently uncomfortable and clear that it is illegal, forcing users to undeniably acknowledge they are avoiding the law. An example of this is trying to watch pirated movies without paying for them, yeah you can do it, but you gotta do some shady shit and dodge a lot of malware, and eat shady gambling ads and etcetera.
In addition to making you feel like an asshole, it removes any recourse you may have, it's very hard to make any claim later, you cannot really complain later if you were accessing it illegally to begin with. Nobody is going to pursue you to the end of the world not to access a pirated movie or an illegal website, but they pursue the distributor and make things very uncomfortable enough so that you are effectively hiding like a fiending outlaw.
I think it’s an open question whether the British state has the technical chops, money and willingness to implement a Great Firewall type solution.
The state isn’t totally incompetent but doing it properly would be a serious undertaking, the kind of thing where the recent track record of big government tech projects isn’t great
Getting the raw data is relatively straightforward, but my understanding is doing real time DPI at country scale without being easily circumvented (and without breaking the rest of the internet you want to work) isn't so easy.
If you want to really make sure nobody in the uk can easily access 4chan (PRC style) it needs some effort, and you're in an arms race with attempts to mask/tunnel traffic so it gets through
Why are you assuming that they aren't totally incompetent?
They look pretty incompetent from my perspective.
Or they just want to present the appearance of incompetence for an ulterior motive? That seems needlessly complex when they are already admitting their malevolence daily.
There are examples of the apparently ineffective British state suddenly gaining some teeth and some competence when they actually care.
One example is after the Southport riots, miraculously the justice system became hyperefficient and the perpetrators were found, arrested, charged and jailed within a week.
That suggests a lot of what looks like incompetence (potholes, petty crime, maybe also this) is actually just the state not really caring about a lot of issues.
If they decide they really care about internet censorship, I wouldn't rule out them suddenly becoming a lot more competent in that specific area
I heard the same argument for several years in Russia while government was building competences. They have money, so could just hire top tier commercial companies who are the best it their field.
That's not based on deep packet inspection; it's just low tech stuff like IP blocks. ISPs don't have the resources or expertise to DPI encrypted traffic (which is the majority of network traffic now).
Sorry for copypaste, but I still hope people will see true intentions of govt.
Just a recap how it happened in Russia:
1. First, year ~2015 legal framework was created under disguise of banning pirated media(specifically torrents.ru)(legislative push). State-wide DNS ban introduced. Very easy to circumvent via quering 8.8.8.8
2. Then, having legal basis, govt included extra stuff in banned list(casinos, terrorist orgs, etc)(executive push). IP bans introduced, applied very carefully.
3. Legal expanded allowing govt to ban specific media on very vague criterias(legislative push). IP blocks tried on some large websites. DPI hardware mandated to be installed by ISPs to filter by HTTPS SNI(executive push).
4. At ~2019 Roskomnadzor(RKN) created, special govt entity which enforces bans without court orders(legislative push).
5. ~2021 sites become banned if they are not filtering content by Russian laws by request of RKN(executive push). VPN services were obligated to also DPI-filter traffic(legislative push).
6. ~2023 Crackdown on VPN started(executive push). Popular commercial services were IP-banned, OpenVPN and IPSec connections selectively degraded by DPI.
7. ~2025 Heavy VPN filtering(vless, wireguard, etc) introduced(executive push). Performance of certain sites were degraded(youtube, twitter, etc ).
I don't see the need for extra tooling like DPI when the willingness and methodology to outright block sites at a higher level is already in place. Also bear in mind that the groups who have compiled the most widely implemented block lists are also major sponsors of the bill which this 4chan story refers to, so they have largely gotten what they wanted.
This was such a weird case. Usually when a country goes after a foreign business they enforce it by imposing restrictions within their own borders and threatening the operators with legal action if they ever enter the country. If the operators don’t visit the country and their banking doesn’t cross a business that must follow those laws (which is hard), it’s otherwise symbolic.
I may be reading too much into the editorialized writeups about Ofcom but even their statements imply they thought they were just going to impose their laws globally and that other countries would line up to help them do it?
This quote from the court is amazing:
> American courts generally decline to enforce foreign judgments that violate the United States Constitution
Indeed. Who could have predicted this?
Which raises the scarier question of why they tried this at all? Was the defeat a planned showing to justify future action to justify more control of the internet, as Preston Byrne speculates? Are they using this as a demonstration of why internet censorship is the only solution? It’s hard to imagine why they thought they were going to get anywhere with this case, unless failing was the goal
While Ofcom were barmy to even try this there is a level of understandable annoyance outside the US that the US does get to project what it wants and other countries don't, and somewhere that will have contributed to supporting the effort to do this.
While the US isn't perfect it is also far from the worst conceivable entity to be in that position (and current UK and Australian governments provide easy examples). If they want to use their influence to promote free speech then good, because we need it. Just less of the mass surveillance of absolutely everyone at the same time, then we'd be good.
> A 98% success rate is not going to be particularly discouraging to them.
The thing is, you can afford sticking the finger to the UK if you do not have any business interests there. A platform like 4chan won't be bothered even if the UK government says "all payments to be made towards 4chan for advertising are hereby seized until the fine is paid off". But places like Twitter or Meta, that derive millions if not billions of euros a year from the UK and European advertisers? Now that's a lot of money to lose, money that even American shareholders will complain about it being missing from the revenue sheet.
Did any of them move to a .onion? I would expect commercial sites to cave and some small sites to just move to Tor which probably accomplishes the same thing as far fewer people use the Tor Browser or Brave. I could also be delusional.
Ofcom knows it's barmy. They are pursuing foreign sites because a) they are required to by law, and b) they are under political pressure to do so. But I suspect they are quite happy that it has backfired, to help relieve some of that pressure and bring into the open the barminess of the OSA enterprise.
The US in particular had to proactively not enforce British Libel judgements against US citizens. Because the vast majority violate free speech rights.
I would expect that they expected to not be able to enforce it. It's a play to get the british public on board with even more draconian surveillance state laws and technologies which will be needed to protect their children from evil american companies.
The judge dismissed its lawsuit against Ofcom for lack of jurisdiction, because Ofcom was protected by foreign sovereign immunity.
2. The judge's comments were obiter dicta observations that were not necessary to decide the case, rather than a binding ruling that Ofcom's actions were unconstitutional, making the headline somewhat selective, it's hardly the defeat of a giant regulatory system. Still, I suppose he needs to show he did something to earn his fees.
We could go on and on and fucking on about American double standards here:
Cuba. ABC being hassled over Jimmy Kimmel making gags about Kirk. The White House restricting reporting. Ending support for public broadcasting. Book bans, the CLOUD act, the TIKTOK DIVESTITURE fercrissakes. Sanctions on the ICC.
You're aware of the difference between interpersonal relations and international relations aren't you? They aren't the same, they don't follow the same rules, they don't engender the same expectations.
Now you can try to apply the standards of one to the other, but that only makes you look confused.
> Cuba. ABC being hassled over Jimmy Kimmel making gags about Kirk. The White House restricting reporting. Ending support for public broadcasting. Book bans, the CLOUD act, the TIKTOK DIVESTITURE fercrissakes. Sanctions on the ICC.
You guys are basically Russia in denial at this point. Carried on by the momentum of your products that is heading straight for a massive disruption by AI.
I don't want to waste my red pen marking this comment but thinking the UK is anything like the US or slightly similar in these regards is like using song lyrics as a source in your essay.
No, America is utterly different than in Russia. In America people can freely and openly criticise the government under their own name. When I talk to someone who is in Russia they're very careful to use a communications medium not tied to their identity and where what they say will expire.
Likewise the talk of book bans is just silly. What books are banned in America?
No, the UK regulator was asking a service provider owned by a Japanese guy to comply with UK laws in order to do business in the UK, and the service provider sued the regulator in a US court. 196 other service providers agreed to comply
1. It's a Pyrrhic victory at best, read it. In reality, 4chan won even though they technically "lost" their argument. They aren't enforced up. That's the win.
2. It's not really obiter dicta because it's a district court order it's not something you cite, really as binding precedent. But if you read between the lines, the court is only dismissing Ofcom because it is part of a sovereign, which means it cannot maintain it's other position. The judge was making it clear he thought Ofcom needed to stop. The ruling is addressed to the parties not really to a future court. If I were Ofcom's lawyer, I wouldn't be celebrating this.
American double standards have nothing to do with this case and it's just a sort of throw in everyone seems to need to mention here. So what? Are they good or bad? If you think they're bad to extend jurisdiction, then take the win.
Long arm jurisdiction is the opposite of what happened here. That's where you pull people into US courts that might not be US citizens for things that happened not in the US. Somehow that implies that foreign companies should be able to reach into the US and bug people in the US not doing anything in their own country? Oh, but USA bad so you scored that point.
I think you're just seeing Lincoln's hat in the clouds.
Everyone on HN apparently thinks they have a law degree.
> Somehow that implies that foreign companies should be able to reach into the US and bug people in the US not doing anything in their own country?
well yeah. whats good for the goose is good for the gander. if the US wants to go bug people in their own countries, even going so far as to murder a bunch of people to kidnap a sitting president of a country, youre gonna get others looking to do it in response, and as the US loses its privileged position on the world stage, its gonna have to start complying
I'm pretty sure misleading speech is still protected by the first amendment. The president is trying to throw his weight around because he thinks his fans will like it. He's an idiot.
> I'm pretty sure misleading speech is still protected by the first amendment.
It is, the government can not prevent or punish people speaking on the basis that the government decides it was misleading.
A civil dispute between private parties is entirely different though. One can be found liable for misleading speech that causes damage to another party.
> The president is trying to throw his weight around because he thinks his fans will like it. He's an idiot.
I'm not aware of what damages Trump alleges in the suit or if it has any merit at all. Being rich does not mean there is no damage or disqualify a person from restitution though. And holding public office or a government job doesn't disqualify a person from protecting their private interests, although I imagine it could make the case a lot more complicated.
Aside, using civil courts to attack opponents is certainly a problem, but in USA it favors the speaker a compared to a lot of other countries. In US the plaintiff has to prove the speech is false and for public figures that there was malice. Which in my opinion goes a bit too far and gives media corporations more power over politicians and other public matters. I think the public figure stipulation is reasonable and important to allow private citizens to discuss politicians and public matters so that's good, but I think there should be a counter to that which requires organizations reporting the news to have more duty to report truth and not mislead.
My point is "He's rich as fuck, and President of the United States!" doesn't mean people can do things to him. The utter foolishness of putting people in a box so you don't have to treat them like a human any more is evil no matter what label is on the box.
You didn't address what I wrote though, you just changed the subject and stated something incorrect. That's why it's a non sequitur. And a pretty rude way to interact with people having a discussion really. What do you gain out of behaving this way toward people?
"Thank you for correcting my misconceptions about the first amendment and civil disputes." Would have been sufficient.
> I'm saying it's going to be really hard to prove damages.
No you weren't saying that, we can see exactly what you said and it was just garbage. If you have some substantive contribution and opinion about the damages claims in the lawsuit and what it would take to prove them that would be great. The low effort worthless rhetorical questions didn't add anything though, other than to make you sound more clueless.
You're not "laying anything out", you have been wrong from start to finish about this.
1. You were wrong about the first amendment providing protection from libel / defamation action.
2. You were wrong about damage not existing or not applying because the person has a certain amount of wealth or holds public office.
3. What you have written above is regurgitating what I already explained to you in other posts. As you can see, it is I who have laid it out for you. That you couldn't bring yourself to reply to my other post that educated you is telling.
Again, if you want to make a useful point or observation about the case, the idiotic internet gotchas and stupid rhetorical questions do not do that. You really can't fathom what possible damages a person whose success relies on public perception and who spends money to improve their public image could possibly suffer by being defamed? Please.
The BBC admitted a mistake. The error was reported by an internal BBC investigation, not because Trump's team complained (it is highly unlikely they saw it originally, because it was an UK broadcast).
The BBC makes thousands of hours of video annually. You can't expect perfection, or to sue them for billions of $CURRENCY for every mistake.
The mistake in this case was to make their quite reasonable case (that Trump encouraged the violence of January 2021) very slightly more emphatically than was perhaps justified.
Trump of course showed his disapproval of the violence by pardoning all the rioters, including those convicted of injuring police with weapons.
They are notorious for their left wing bias by right-wing commentators and for their right-wing bias by left-wing commentators. By law they are neutral.
> Their mistake was to twist Trump's speech to make it say the actual opposite of what he did say.
I don't see how you can argue that. His speech involved 70 minutes of falsely claiming that the election was stolen (how's that for twisting the truth?) and encouraging his supporters to march on the Capitol. He wasn't stupid enough to explicitly call for violence, but the implication was there.
The circumstantial evidence supports this: the actual ensuing riots and violence, Trump refusing to condemn it, and then pardoning the rioters.
>> They are notorious for their left wing bias by right-wing commentators and for their right-wing bias by left-wing commentators. By law they are neutral.
No-one except the most nutty of leftists claims they are right wing. What they might say is that they don't ally with hard left positions on Israel, Jeremy Corbyn etc.
>>I don't see how you can argue that. His speech involved 70 minutes of falsely claiming that the election was stolen
Yes, there were no postal vote irregularities anywhere. Everything was 1,000% above board. Would you like buy a bridge?
>>the actual ensuing riots and violence, Trump refusing to condemn it, and then pardoning the rioters.
Political prisoners, ushered in by the docents. I don't think putting your feet on Pelosi's desk is worth 4 years in jail.
> Yes, there were no postal vote irregularities anywhere. Everything was 1,000% above board. Would you like buy a bridge?
There is no credible argument that the election was stolen. This has been repeatedly challenged in court, and each attempt has failed.
> Political prisoners, ushered in by the docents. I don't think putting your feet on Pelosi's desk is worth 4 years in jail.
David Dempsey attacked officers with flagpoles, crutches, pepper spray and broken furniture after standing at a gallows talking about hanging Democrats
Daniel Rodriguez repeatedly drove a stun gun into officer Michael Fanone’s neck, causing him to lose consciousness and suffer a heart attack
Patrick McCaughey crushed officer Daniel Hodges in a doorframe with a stolen riot shield for over two minutes
Julian Khater pepper sprayed Police Officer Brian Sicknick in the face, causing him to collapse, and he died the next day
Do you really want to pursue this line of argument?
The judge and jury were in the courtroom and heard the evidence. You are just repeating political talking points to take the blame off the guilty. None of which has anything to do with the lawsuit.
Is it legal free speech or is it not? Who cares otherwise legally speaking. If you are so worried about defamation theres thousands of cases from maga, why aren't you fighting those?
I'm not fighting any of them. If someone has a defamation case against Fox News then I bet everyone here doesn't go and defend Fox News, because they're not principled and are just emotionally activated by Donald Trump and the BBC being involved in this one.
Yes? What kind of absurd question is this? Do you think all videos you see are legally required to be 24x7 streams? I mean its beyond absurd, I cannot even begin to think why you'd think editing videos is not speech? I seriously cannot even make up even a remotely imaginary explanation for the utterly confused state of your thinking.
1A protection is entirely irrelevant, first off because freedom of speech is not a defense against defamation of character and second because the BBC is not American.
I think you misunderstand how the law works. It doesn't matter if the BBC is American, if the lawsuit is in an American court. It's going to be run under American law.
If he sues in Britain, then it will be run under British law.
Sanctions on the ICC are not censorship. The ICC has never had and will never have jurisdiction to threaten or pass judgement on Americans. Sanctions are an entirely justified response to their recent attempts to overstep their authority.
There are no book bans in the US. Individual libraries can be and are selective about what books they stock, and libraries for children justifiably avoid specific topics. The government has not actually banned any books lately.
The White House has not restricted reporting, it has merely denied entry to it’s press releases to specific parties. Those parties can still report on the facts (or make them up, as they are wont to do), they just cannot attend the White House’s press releases. Since attendance at press releases is by invitation in any case, this is definitely not censorship.
Supporting public broadcasting is not an antidote to censorship, and ending that support is not a form of censorship either. PBS was notorious for supporting only one political viewpoint, and there was just no need to waste taxpayer money on it. You would cry foul if taxpayer money were spent to advocate for political viewpoints that you don’t agree with.
Jimmy Kimmel’s “gags” were praising a murderer for the murder he committed. That’s incitement to violence, which is not protected speech.
The US’s sanctions of Cuba are not related to speech in any way.
Not true here in Florida. The governor banned and burned books that taught slavery was bad, revoked tenure and fired all teachers who were reported teaching that slavery was bad. The new state-approved textbooks teach that slavery taught blacks useful skills and that there was violence on both sides.
> Not true here in Florida. The governor banned and burned books
The books are not banned.
The public schools don't allow them, which is the case for many things.
Whether you agree with it or not, calling this "banning books" is dumb. There are a lot of things that are not allowed in schools, but we don't go around saying "Florida banned alcohol" or "Florida banned smoking" or "Florida banned pornography" because they're not allowed in schools.
What's a word that means "forbidden from being included" or "disallowed"? I suspect most people believe the word "banned" is such a synonym, as does practically every dictionary out there.
> Calling this "banning books" is dumb. There are a lot of things that are not allowed in schools, but we don't go around saying "Florida banned alcohol" or "Florida banned smoking"
No, it's not dumb. Children don't go to school for the purpose of getting drunk or smoking. They do go to school to learn things, including things that might be politically controversial or divisive.
You know what is dumb? Gatekeeping truthful information from being accessible to kids.
So you can't just go to a local book store and buy a copy or order it on Amazon? Oh wait you can? Crazy damn I really thought a banned book would mean I couldn't buy it at literally any book store.
While actual incitement to violence isn't protected speech, that wasn't even close to incitement to violence, which requires meeting three prongs clearly defined by SCOTUS.
I encourage you to review actual statements which SCOTUS has previously ruled are NOT incitement to violence. It's so incredibly narrow and particular, I was left wondering if anything can meet the definition. Jimmy Kimmel is so far from it your assertion is ludicrous.
True, but irrelevant given that ABC is not in any way part of government. It was justified that the general public deemed those comments unacceptable, specifically because they were an attack on the very principles that made them legally permissible; and ABC was capable of, and morally justified in, punishing them (and also legally permitted to punish them).
The prohibition against inciting violence has nothing to do with whether or not the speaker is a government entity.
Indeed, I think you should look at the speech that SCOTUS ruled is protected in the landmark Brandenburg v Ohio[0] case to see how extremely narrow the "imminent lawless action" standard is. It's ridiculously hateful and inflammatory, and filled with several non-specific threats of violence against minority groups. This was labelled protected speech. Brandenburg was a private citizen here, and he prevailed over the state of Ohio.
You miss the point completely. 1A is irrelevant because ABC is not a government entity. In the phrase "Congress shall make no law", "Congress" is not decoration, and "law" is interpreted literally.
The statements were frankly defamatory, and only not actionable because they didn't define a clear target nor cause demonstrable "actual damages".
Kimmel's statement defamed right wingers. It's very obvious what statement, and how. This is not a question of ABC's free speech rights, nor of Kimmel's. The point is that ABC is permitted to discipline Kimmel for his speech, because neither of them is the government. I find your entire line of questioning clearly disingenuous.
How does it defame right wingers? You must be really insane to think Kimmel rightfully presenting the possibility the shooter could have been right winger is defamation. Is all political analysis defamation? You sound really confused. ABC's actions are quite distinct from the american governments illegal threatening of regulatory action against it, which is very much looking like a legal violation.
What statement again? Be clear, show us what you think is such an evil statement.
Why aren't you making a similar level of vitriol against the "they are eating cats and dogs" or so many other lies and nastiness maga makes?
> It was justified that the general public deemed those comments unacceptable
Is this the same general public whose backlash over the suspension got it reversed a few days later by the network, and by Nextstar and Sinclair a few days after that?
Of course "the general public" is not a homogeneous group by definition.
Those who objected to the speech were morally in the right, because the speech clearly crossed a line. It baselessly accused others of trying to cover up a truth which would have been damaging to them, except that it turned out to be the exact falsehood that Occam's Razor would have predicted. And it did so with the force of broadcast media behind it.
Kimmel's comments supported a narrative that justified the murder of a US citizen for his opinions (not even that, but third parties' understanding of those opinions). Kirk himself never proposed anything violent; the narrative was promoted based on wild misrepresentations to that effect.
But all of your objections here (or rather, more specifically, the choice to present them all together as a list of grievances, given that they are connected by a theme but not otherwise related or coordinated) are 1) blatant whataboutism and 2) an attempt to wage "ideological or political battle" in violation of HN commenting guidelines.
By pinning the blame on the wrong ideology (with full confidence, apparently based on nothing but his own world view, and implying that others were dishonest in coming to a different (ultimately shown to be correct, and strongly evidenced at the time) conclusion, he ran cover for the ideological group responsible, and their narrative.
> Are you suggesting that it's not OK to take a side in a debate, or that by doing so, you are sympathizing with a murderer?
No, that is not even remotely what I said, and not even a plausible reading of what I said. It is a blatant mischaracterization of very simple logic that I laid out explicitly.
Again: Kimmel made factually incorrect statements that he reasonably should have known were incorrect, which tended to demean the character of his political opponents, by ascribing to them a false cover-up while falsely assigning a murderer to their side.
That is not "taking a side in a debate", because the ideology of Tyler Robinson was not a matter of debate.
1. Can you point to the relevant transcript in which he does this?
2. "tended to demean the character of his political opponents" - this is the world in which we live, and quite frankly, much of it is well deserved.
3. Whether something is a matter of debate is often time- and circumstance-dependent. When news breaks out, it's usually accompanied by a great deal of speculation, and people make mistakes. Only in the fullness of time do the facts come out. I'm not saying it's necessarily right if Kimmel (like others) came to a conclusion before the facts were settled, but it's also not unusual, and people can and should issue corrections if they are wrong.
> Can you point to the relevant transcript in which he does this?
Yes. Someone already linked it upthread.
> Unlike the Government, he doesn't owe his audience even the slightest semblance of impartiality.
He does owe them honesty.
> When news breaks out, it's usually accompanied by a great deal of speculation, and people make mistakes. Only in the fullness of time do the facts come out.
It was immediately obvious that the facts did not support his narrative to anyone who was actually attempting to gather the facts. Furthermore, that narrative should have been heavily discounted a priori on the basis of Occam's razor: obviously it is far more likely that a politically controversial figure gets targeted by opponents than by people on the same side.
It's at the top of the second block quote in your source. It's extremely obvious, and frankly I'm extremely irritated that multiple people are disingenously asking me to demonstrate an extremely obvious thing based on their own citations while I get downvoted.
> KIMMEL: We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.
That's not assigning blame for Kirk's murder. There is no way to interpret that as saying "Charlie Kirk's murderer was MAGA." It's saying that MAGA representatives were jumping to conclusions, prematurely focusing on blame assignment. To steel man your argument, you could say that it is saying the likelihood that the murderer was MAGA is greater than what the MAGA crowd is reporting. But since they were saying the exact opposite, that reduces to "there is a non-zero probability the murderer is MAGA" -- that's not an extreme position five days after the event.
Neither Kimmel or Kirk ever said anything that wasn't fully protected under the 1st Amendment, and anyone claiming otherwise is either ignorant of the law, a blind political partisan, or (more likely), both.
You miss the point completely. ABC is not a government agency.
You will note that at no point did absolutely anyone whatsoever propose prison time for Kimmel. Kirk, on the other hand, lost his life in an act of what the evidence strongly suggests was vigilantism.
You miss the point completely. The issue here isn't that ABC fired Kimmel because he isn't funny and his show was losing money. The issue here is that government regulators threatened and pressured ABC over Kimmel's Constitutionally protected speech.
You miss the point completely. ABC is not a government agency. You will note that at no point did absolutely anyone whatsoever propose prison time for Kimmel.
Then why do you give a shit. Anyone, government or private, can go and say they want to kill all Republicans, which Kimmel didn't say either, so I am not sure what exactly it is you are whining about. If you are so triggered about people spreading false narratives or downright fake news, you should be complaining about MAGA and Trump.
Why is it not? You still haven't explained why you are whining about innocuous statements and free speech. If you will keep whining for no clearly explainable reason, people will rightfully ask why you are whining.
Kimmel landed on a completely erroneous conclusion based on an insane false flag conspiracy theory – and voiced that live on air:
"the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it"
If you think that is not worth attempting to get a host taken off the air for (at least for a while), I don't think you understand how dangerous amplified disinformation can be.
Well, people are not trying to take Fox News off the air for their many incidents of amplified disinformation, so maybe people think freedom of speech should be protected, even if people disagree with said speech?
Now consider that one is a comedian and the other is a news outlet, what does that tell you about your argument.
Did CNN or MSNBC lose a billion dollar lawsuit for knowingly promoting false stories while, and I quote from the Fox case, calling their own viewers “stupid, stupid, stupid” for believing their content? Did CNN or MSNBC shareholders sue them due to the damage caused by promoting false stories on purpose?
Maybe there is some demonstrable difference to size and scale of willful dishonestly among outlets.
Comparing either CNN or even MSNBC to Fox like this is a clear indication that you have never critically viewed these three channels in comparison.
The ridiculousness Fox gets away with and have gotten away with for decades is mountainous compared to anything else that boomers watch. Ailes and Murdoch wrote the playbook on modern disinformation and it is laughable to compare Fox to any other news channel.
Unfortunately, Fox has been so successful as an entertainment “news” organization that the other competing ones, praise be capitalist ingenuity, have adopted much of their scumbag playbook.
This isn't misinformation. The MAGA gang were trying to do that. They were trying to score political points from it. They still are.
Of course, they were also correct. But these quoted statements are primarily about intention and motive, not really arguing (or even speculating particularly strongly) that the shooter actually was MAGA.
Incidentally, this does not seem like particularly dangerous misinformation at all. MAGA supporters are probably the safest group in America (it is, after all, not a safe country for anyone).
- they blame the left/some minority group for literally just about every violent act ever
- they say it in most instances, including this one, with zero evidence
- they say it, as in this instance, not to get to the truth, but to score political points
Remember, this was in response to your listing the CLOUD Act as a US double standard.
Yes, the MLAT stuff is terrible, but it does not involve any double standard.
The non-MLAT stuff does not involve a double standard because pretty much every country has something equivalent.
The US version (and the foreign versions) are not extraterritorial because they are all compelling someone in their territory to turn over something that person controls.
If my government asks me for two files, one of which I happen to have stored on file storage service in my country, and one I've stored on a file storage service in another country, the fact that I scp from an in-country server for one an an out-of-country server for the other doesn't make it an exercise of extraterritorial power.
>4chan actually lost its case in the US District Court on 15 September 2026
Correct, but this update is in regards to Ofcom's evidence of 20th October in front of the parliamentary select committee to which they have to report, and at which they conceded that their ability to make legally binding cross-jurisdictional enforcement actions is limited when faced with the laws of another country. The wording she used is in fact very interesting: "If foreign courts decide to try and get in our way, there will be a point at which we have to accept that we won’t be able to recover that money."
>Still, I suppose he needs to show he did something to earn his fees.
> We could go on and on and fucking on about American double standards here
And then you didn't. Don't throw 'obiter dicta' to the rubes and then completely fumble your distraction with the incoherent legerdemain of 'double standards.' Show some art, at least.
The other option (and this is I admit charitable) is that this was always obviously never going to work and this was all a performative political thing in the first place.
By deliberately going after unwinnable cases, there is perhaps here a deliberate attempt to project a "voice of common sense" - effectively demonstrating that this is uneforceable nonsense, regardless of what the then-current government and media insisted. So they make a big show of it being defeated in the hope that the powers that be seen sense and quietly drop it.
It's not just that courts generally decline. It's now also against US law for them to enforce the judgment without assessing the Constitutional issues. And the burden of proof is on those trying to enforce the judgment.
Well, my reading of this is Ofcom did not lose overall and 4chan technically lost the lawsuit despite Ofcom having no way to enforce fines. I don't think Ofcom's purpose was ever to collect the fines either. Now keep in mind, 4chan is the first website that had ever been issued a fine by Ofcom under the UK's Online Safety Act. I think that is interesting because it's a noteworthy site which suggests the selection of it was more targeted. Note that is my speculation.
4chan sued Ofcom over the fines. Ofcom has been perhaps waiting for the outcome of this suit and is announcing they can't collect fines but I don't think that was the purpose. They have the power to instruct ISPs to block domains and to me it seems more likely that is what they will do and that was perhaps what they wanted from the beginning.
I guess you don't know what actually happened. All but four of the 200 companies Ofcom asked for compliance, complied. The point is about any business that operates in the UK, and especially if it generates income from the UK, should be subject to certain laws in the UK. Not because they're accessible from the UK.
>4chan was already blocked by ISPs and you need to call them to unblock it on your connection.
Correct. UK ISPs already implement a fairly wide-ranging block list (which even includes archive.org) for any subscribers who do not explicitly opt-in to 'adult' content access privileges.
>I may be reading too much into the editorialized writeups about Ofcom but even their statements imply they thought they were just going to impose their laws globally and that other countries would line up to help them do it?
Yes this is exactly what they thought, and no it is not surprising. Section 204 of the Online Safety Act of 2023 specifically says the Act covers internet services provided from outside the UK as well.
Of course the rest of us think its stupid. But the UK government doesnt.
You see, in the EU international treaties supersede individual countries' constitutions in theory. This is the other way the EU is moving power to executive governments away from parliament and judicial branches.
Of course, in practice, you have at least a good chance that courts just ignore it (of course the laws of many European countries are a good match, the big thing you get many conflicts about is if 2 governments act on the same company/crime/...). Then the EU court makes a counter judgement ... and is ignored, despite the law. Which is one of the reasons you keep reading the EU is about to fall apart.
They're trying to punish someone purely for exercising freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
We all know the USA punishes its own people for that all the time, of course, but only when the current administration agrees with the ruling, which this one doesn't. It's not that the constitution can't be violated - it's that violating the constitution can be used as an excuse in cases like this one.
US courts consider enforcement of the Online Safety Act to be incompatible with the right of Americans to have free speech.
It's like the British government trying to enforce tea confiscations on US residents in a way that violates the fifth amendment protections against unreasonable confiscation of private property.
Byrne reasonably knew that FSIA applies; the point was to get the words on record that allow him to claim a victory in the court of public opinion. Filing the suit was irrelevant, that was the point: it highlights how Ofcom's attempts at enforcement were equally irrelevant and lacking in jurisdiction. Hence:
> All Plaintiffs seek in this action is a declaration that [Ofcom’s] Section 100 Orders, transmitted by e-mail, did not effect valid service in the United States.
No actual damages for the putative violation of rights; just an affirmation that Ofcom was FOS in trying anything in the first place.
And, per Byrne, the court gladly delivered:
> American courts generally decline to enforce foreign judgments that violate the United States Constitution, if indeed Plaintiffs are correct in their constitutional claims.
Byrne and 4chan clearly are correct in the original constitutional claim, and Ofcom has received and will continue to receive $0 of the fines they purport to assess.
In the US, with a US court. Suppose I went to a court in your country and tried to punish you for insulting the king of Thailand. I'd be laughed out of the courtroom, right? Even though that's a serious felony in Thailand.
> Usually when a country goes after a foreign business they enforce it by imposing restrictions within their own borders and threatening the operators with legal action if they ever enter the country.
Yeah, unfortunately the UK isn't a country, it is actually a circus, so you can't apply any regular logic, you must apply circus logic.
Notably, the two countries involved literally fought a war about one's wish to enforce laws in the other, with the latter declaring that no, it'd prefer to operate independently of those laws.
Look, that was 250 years ago, and we've buried the hatchet. We've had our spats, but it's more like siblings arguing. Let someone else attack one of them and they get reminded that only these 2 are allowed to pick on each other. That said, our entire country was literally built on a legal system that says Americans aren't subject to British law. It's kinda part of our national character.
> Which raises the scarier question of why they tried this at all?
State censors in western countries are becoming increasingly brazen and desperate. Despite the Orwellian slogans about "safety" they all constantly recite, their objectives are securing the supremacy of the regime not the interests of the people.
GDPR set a pretty bad precedent (unless they were following another) of having a law that magically applies to their citizens everywhere in the entire world. And all of big tech followed it because of corporate greed I guess? Seems like it'd be pretty easy to just ignore it and then just not pay whatever fines. See how random countries like not having Google.
>Which raises the scarier question of why they tried this at all?
Well, to quote the post:
>Ofcom has targeted 200-ish American platforms with censorship orders; only four of those sites, all of which are my clients, refused, and only one is 4chan.
This fits quite neatly with Dominic Cummings' comments to the House of Lords Constitutional Committee[0] about how the British Civil Service can't do anything because no one with any talent wants to work there.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBBYvj4YQLE (full video is an hour and a half, but you can skip to any bit because he just makes the same handful of points over and over again)
I'm somewhat dubious of a Youtube channel called "Western Liberty" that was created the day of Cummings's testimony, which contains nothing but the session and short clips of it. Using the link above avoids any potential ad revenue going to that clearly political pointed channel.
For anyone that's interested, here are the links to the other sessions of this committee:
Dammit, my edit window ran out of time. Alas. While the 22nd April, 3rd June, and 10th June sessions are from that committee, they are unrelated to the inquiry of constitutional safeguards. Skip to the 15th July session. Here's a link to the inquiry: https://committees.parliament.uk/work/9861/the-uks-constitut...
Anyway, after watching the session with Cummings, I have to say I'm deeply unimpressed with his contribution. While I found his bluntness somewhat refreshing, he was clearly irritated at being (repeatedly) asked to suggest actual solutions instead of just using the session as a pulpit for his grievances.
Except that his grievances are extremely surface level.
For example, he claims that legal experts, regardless of their political leanings, agree that the small-boat crisis cannot be solved without primary-legislative changes to the Human Rights Act. Does he mention how the HRA is obstructive? No. Does he mention even one change to the HRA that would help? No. Does he mention the scale of changes required? No.
What's funny is that I'd actually use his HRA example as an example of our constitutional safeguards working exactly as intended: it's for Parliament to decide what our human rights are and their extent, not the whims of ministers. That the Prime Minister and Parliament are refusing to make those changes because they find them to be politically untenable is actually how a democratic system ought to work.
In fact, I'd summarise his testimony as him being irritated at constitutional safeguards working as intended. For example, he claimed that the biggest enemy to British Special Forces is not Russia, China, or Iran but the Cabinet Office and Ministry of Defence lawyers. Oh no, our ministries are operating within the law! How terrible! He seems to advocate for ministers and ministries to adopt a "ask for forgiveness, not permission" mindset with regards to the law, instead.
I suspect Cummings and people like him tend to think of officialdom as being something like a non-Newtonian fluid.
Trouble is, he thinks they're thixotropic - give 'em a big whack to get them moving faster - when they're actually by design closer to being rheopectic, absorbing sudden stresses to protect the nation.
So when faced with the multiple sudden gyrations in policy that we saw under the final five years of the last government, they of course acted as a dampener. That's what they're there for, that's why they're so valuable. But if you don't shock them, and instead apply constant pressure in a consistent direction, they'll move smoothly, efficiently, and effectively.
For a good example of that, see Francis Maude's term in the Cabinet Office in the first half of the 2010s which changed the civil service very much for the better and was responsible for, amongst others, GDS, the Government Security Group, and a lot of open government initiatives.
"I'm smart but my colleagues are all useless idiots" is an insight now? That's pretty much everyone's complaint about their colleagues in all of human history.
Failing to do anything constructive about the problems he’s identified is Cummings’ whole thing though.
He’s like an incompetent Cassandra: people keep on agreeing with his diagnoses, giving him power in the hope that he’ll fix things at which point he makes a complete hash of everything and leaves in a huff having made things worse than they were before.
If the right ever takes power in the UK in the near-ish future I expect us to go through exactly this cycle again. Cummings seems to be very bad at the politics of driving organisational change & making it stick, which is ironic given that criticising public bodies is what he spends so much of his time doing.
Utter rubbish. Civil servants can't get anything done because they are chronically underfunded, and yanked around by the whims of the government of the day. Dominic Cummings' is not a reliable source either - he's ideologically at odds with the idea of government _doing_ anything, and because of that has caused a great deal of harm to the UK.
He's not stupid tho, I've read some of his stuff and while I never agreed with Brexit I think he always proposed that there should be 2 referendums to validate the actual method of Brexit. He has a very fair point about the civil service.
His problem is he doesn't understand politics, and like Musk he's wasted his time getting involved with the worst people instead of focusing on what he's good at.
It’s funny because "no one with talent wants to work there" would explain an organization failure only if there were a competitive job market, one where talented people can freely choose their employer. There isn't, so the actual description is that the British Civil Service, due to having crappy managers and policies, can't do anything useful.
I'm pretty sure that if we ask the operative layer what should the policies be, they wouldn't even pursue this goal
There is a competitive job market: working in the private sector. I think Cummings's claim is that talented UK citizens who would be very effective in the civil service are working elsewhere instead? I'm sure this isn't the whole of the explanation but it feels plausible to me
That's not... competitive market. A competitive market in this case would mean that no matter what, the pay is equivalent on both sectors. It's not. Public service pays less and has the same politics annoyances of the private one. If it was competitive it would pay equivalently
does this mean the UK will block 4chan in the UK? if the defense is jurisdictional then 4chan can continue to serve US users, but there would be no recourse if the UK blocks it in their jurisdiction
This is my experience too, I don't know why they don't do IP level blocks. It's pretty trivial to evade a lot of bans.
I think the Spain-Cloudflare case does IP level blocks and it has a lot of side effect damage, but if I recall they do IP-block level blocking because the vendor, cloudflare, provides header/envelope encryption and pooling, so the Spanish courts considers it legal to block the whole service even, alleging that they are not collaborating with court orders, they just choose not to block the whole provider to reduce the collateral damage, even if they consider they have jurisdiction to block all of CF
Pirate streams have better access to public IP addresses than legitimate services, so blocking Cloudflare does nothing but destroy legitimate businesses.
Using a nationwide default blocklist to address 4chan would be appropriate behaviour for Ofcom, given its duty to protect kids.
Beyond that, it is just madness to try to control the US company or fine it. Going beyond this duty shows that not all biscuits are present at the afternoon tea.
It's not like Facebook, or anyone's personal life or business, depends on 4chan.
4chan and Kiwi Farms, which is something the article intentionally glosses over. Honestly, KF is a far more “dangerous” place in the eyes of the UK government, as 4chan hasn’t been relevant for around a decade, and the combined efforts to deplatform KF traditionally has been fruitless.
I think OFCOM themselves recognize the problem with trying to ban VPNs, but extremely dim MPs and extremely angry newspapers (who are the underlying enemies of free speech here) don't.
Think of the kids the world we failed to protect by not having passport checks and government snitch at the 4chan login.
But don’t worry! We will check your passport when you open your phone (already live in the UK, efforts supported by the GBP 2M secret donation of Meta to NGOs).
And what’s the worst thing that could happen? No one would for sure arrest you for being critical of a foreign government.
For some reason we keep forgetting to make it illegal school kids to have sex with adults too.
I thought the Russel Brand case might cause someone to ask why it's even legal for a grown man to pick a kid up from the school gates to have sex with them, but apparently not.
Would be nice if foreigners who raped 30+ kids could get more than 14 years in prison before we release them too.
I get the concern about kids on 4chan, but it just feels like such low priority that I'm surprised the government keep forgetting to tackle the more important stuff that's happening in real life.
> No one would for sure arrest you for being critical of a foreign government.
Does _not_ need to be foreign.
People in Western Democracies assume we are immune to dictatorships.
Plenty of dictatorships in our modern history were regressions from at least some form of functional democracy, many even regressed from long lasting robust democracies.
So much of the UK, EU comission, Palantir moves is straight up Stasi playbook.
It is almost disrespectful of German History and collective suffering for VDL to stand on the wrong side of history with this corporate puppetering.
Yes. Ofcom sent multiple extortion letters to 4chan and Kiwi Farms, demanding they pay up and/or submit to British rule. Saying it was for “PR purposes” is equivalent to saying that reporting blackmail is for PR. GP also fails to understand that specifically US courts have no jurisdiction to stop international extortion, which is a loophole through the FSIA. For now, this creates a gridlock: the UK has no ability to seize assets from non-UK entities, but are free to fine and declare non-UK entities as in violation, which aids internal and even international pressure to censoring speech critical of the UK government. In response, US legislation is being proposed (GRANITE Act) that aims to close this loophole.
Cool. So 4chan is going to get DNS blocked in the UK and I can finally stop hearing about this and all the Americans takes on what my country's enforcement mechanisms should be.
In an ideal world, exclusively-US-based companies that host message boards, chat rooms, instant messaging services, and the like would look at this saga and
1) Notice that the odds that a foreign power is going to be able to harm them in any meaningful way for violating their "child 'safety'" laws that curtail freedom of speech and association are very low
2) Notice that 4chan is fighting harder to resist these attacks on free speech and association than many of big names in the sector and reflect on what it might mean when _4chan_ is the hero of the story
Notice that 4chan is fighting harder to resist these attacks on free speech and association than many of big names in the sector...
Isn't the issue that the "big names" in the sector are not exclusively US based? The big American tech companies have employees, assets, or at least a business presence of some sort in countries outside the US, which means that they are exposed to legal systems in those other countries.
> Isn't the issue that the "big names" in the sector are not exclusively US based?
That is an issue, but it's explicitly not what I was talking about. To pick one example, Discord is -AFAIK- US-based. They decided to knuckle under rather than tell the UK, Australia, and others to fuck right off with their free-speech-and-association-limiting horseshit.
Multinationals have their own problems, but they're -when we measure by number of businesses- a tiny minority of businesses. My commentary was exclusively about US-based companies.
And even if a US-based company happens to have employees in a country that's pushing this shit, well, they can shrimply close that office and explain to local politicians exactly why. It's regrettable to lose good employees, but it's way worse to be far less of a hero in the fight for fundamental rights than 4chan and Kiwi Farms is just to keep a few good employees.
Discord could keep all of its employees, infrastructure, and business within the United States, but like other big names it has not. It would rather pursue more business opportunities.
Ah, I stand corrected. Discord has a branch office in the Netherlands. Thanks for the correction.
> Discord could keep all of its employees, infrastructure, and business within the United States, but like other big names it has not. It would rather pursue more business opportunities.
As I said:
And even if a US-based company happens to have employees in a country that's pushing this shit, well, they can shrimply close that office and explain to local politicians exactly why. It's regrettable to lose good employees, but it's way worse to be *far* less of a hero in the fight for fundamental rights than 4chan and Kiwi Farms are just to keep a few good employees.
Trampling on fundamental rights in order to chase marginally more money is neither admirable nor prosocial behavior.
"Fundamental" gets very relative when a concern is international.
This reminds me of the time you could use Twitter as a sort of an oracle to tell whether Twitter thought an account was probably pro-fascist. This wasn't something they'd necessarily surface in the US, but for compliance reasons in Germany they had to suppress fascist propaganda so the backend was aware of flags on individual posts and entire accounts.
At some point, at least, the API did expose that state; after the API got yanked, you could still hypothetically find it by accessing Twitter from Germany via VPN and comparing visibility of posts and accounts in and out of that environment.
Which was very funny to me, because it meant that institutionally, Twitter had an opinion on these accounts but they made it increasingly difficult for US users to know that opinion.
>It would rather pursue more business opportunities.
You're agreeing with parent poster that they don't care to fight on principle (in the unlikely chance they hold any principle in the first place). You're just using avoidant terminology that skips the criticism inherent in parent's framing.
I'm commenting on how non-US laws may affect businesses, descriptively speaking, without prescriptively stating what I think that the law ought to be.
I am a US citizen and I approve of US-style free speech protection. If anything, I think that the US still has too much restriction on speech (e.g. DMCA limits on "anti-circumvention" software.)
However, I also approve of democratic government. If people in other countries vote to treat speech differently than the US, I wouldn't want to live under those laws, but I also wouldn't say that they are incorrect. I think that democratic principles mean implementing the will of the majority, even if I think that the majority is foolish. There are some things that I would fight against (not just lament) even if approved by the will of the majority; I can't fully reconcile my conflicting impulses, but I acknowledge them. All of this would have been a long and distracting aside to my original point, which was that most American businesses of note operate under multiple countries' jurisdictions.
> And even if a US-based company happens to have employees in a country that's pushing this shit, well, they can shrimply close that office and explain to local politicians exactly why. It's regrettable to lose good employees, but it's way worse to be far less of a hero in the fight for fundamental rights than 4chan and Kiwi Farms are just to keep a few good employees.
I mean even if all of these companies closed up shop and fortified themselves inside the US, the countries wanting to enforce their rulings would simply block the IPs of the offending sites or their providers. This is what happened with CF and spanish football broadcasting rights.
> You'll note the "First they came for" poem has a beginning and doesn't extend to all subcultures.
Just as saints and captains of industry deserve no less scrutiny and liability under the law than the rest of us, scoundrels and horrible people deserve no less protection under the law than the rest of us.
If your disgust for an entity prevents you from being able to recognize when they're doing something that's an unalloyed good, then you still have quite a bit of emotional maturity to develop.
To put the previous paragraph another way: It's entirely consistent to decry an someone as a loathsome scumbag that all upstanding people should shun and refuse to associate with while also remarking that that one time they dove into a freezing river to save a child being swept away was a good and noble thing to do, and behavior that we should all aspire to mirror.
> scoundrels and horrible people deserve no less protection under the law than the rest of us.
And they got it. "I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake." But that doesn't mean anyone needs feel sympathy for the devil. We're not obligated to cheer when the wretched hive of scum and villainy keeps its liquor license another year. The law was followed and we can move on.
> If your disgust for an entity prevents you from being able to recognize when they're doing something that's an unalloyed good
... It is usually the case when we're talking about 4chan (and always when talking about Kiwi Farms) that "unalloyed" is doing a lot of the kind of load-bearing one probably wants an alloy for. 4chan's most positive benefit to society is as a litmus test for precisely how far the [xkcd-1357](https://xkcd.com/1357/) principle goes. They are 100% welcome, per their freedom of the press (and the freedom of speech of their users), to host their website. On their infrastructure. With their own DOS protection. In a country that recognizes those rights and protects them. That's the system working as intended.
Your twist on the argument is a fair one since the commenter you're responding to is equating fishing a drowning child out of a river with fighting formal scrutiny regarding their lax approach to policing CSAM on /b/ and /hc/.
Emotional maturity is important. So is platform maturity. We are long past the point where "reader beware" and "it's just a hobby site" are good enough in an era where under-policed fora result in actual harm. I appreciate 4chan's strong stance on the topic of it not being their job to police their house... But I do often find myself cheering when someone compels them, as a site that receives 22 million unique monthly visitors, to act like they have any host responsibility.
It's hard for me to be deeply supportive, beyond my legal requirements to be so, of a site that hosts /b/, /pol/, /hc/, and /gif/ because it chooses to host them too.
I think 4chan needs to exist. If it didn't, everyone who currently spends their time there would have to find somewhere else. Microsoft recently poked a bear when it blacklisted the 6b6t Minecraft server, and that wasn't even a particularly big server. 4chan is effectively performing a public good by giving some very particular types of people a space to be themselves, away from the general public. They could do more to police it, but how many would leave and start causing a nuisance somewhere else over it? That's the dilemma.
Plus it feels "more humane" for the people of 4chan too, to have a place where they can freely be that toxic with others, get it all out, etc. I don't have evidence of this, but I feel like it would help them function better outside of the site, too.
The original German of the poem does say, at the final line, "Als sie mich holten, gab es keinen mehr, der protestieren konnte." That is, "When they came for me, there was no one left who could protest."
So, yes, the poem does extend to all subcultures because it reaches out to include every voice of opposition to totalitarianism, until no one is left but the speaker.
It's also meant to be understood in the first four lines: The people mentioned — communists, trade unionists, social democrats, and Jews — were meant to be emblematic of people who are seen as enemies or outsiders to the author's cause. These are people whose values are seen to be radically different than our own.
Remember the context: the author of the speech, which was re-rendered as a poem, was a real person, Martin Niemöller, who was a pastor in the Confessing Church, which was an underground church movement organized in resistance to the Nazis.
However his speech, given in January of 1946, was an indictment of the Confessing Church. The movement was initially organized primarily as a form of resistance to governmental interference in religion, rather than to speak out for all people. Niemöller was, in fact, explicit that this was about people who were his "opponents" and his "enemies":
> "... The people who were put in the camps then were Communists. Who cared about them? We knew it, it was printed in the newspapers. Who raised their voice, maybe the Confessing Church? We thought: Communists, those opponents of religion, those enemies of Christians—"should I be my brother's keeper?"
Instead, Niemöller points out, in a theologically poignant allusion to the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4, that we have a responsibility to our fellow humans to look out for their wellbeing and their interests as our own. (Note that Niemöller was not the only person in the Confessing Church to draw this
So yes, that poem calls for you to look out for the wellbeing and interests — including freedom from oppression and censorship — for those folks who you might now perceive to be your enemies.
It should be noted that Niemöller was not the only one to draw on this story as an indictment of the church's inaction. Margarete “Marga” Meusel, a contemporary and correspondent of Niemöller wrote this in 1935 which was antecedent in the body of thought informing the 1946 speech:
> Why does the church do nothing? Why does it allow unspeakable injustice to occur? ... What shall we one day answer to the question, where is thy brother Abel? The only answer that will be left to us, as well as to the Confessing Church, is the answer of Cain. ("Am I my brother's keeper?" Genesis 4:9)
>What of the wellbeing and interests of the vulnerable who stumble onto /b/ ill-equipped for the firehose? Are we their keepers also?
No, in a free society the government doesn't decide, via its monopoly on violence, what it's okay for consenting adults to say or hear. And in a sane society, parents are responsible for policing what their children see and hear, and not the government.
What happens when policing that is a practical impossibility because children can dive into a sea of information from thousands of unsecured nodes, utterly disintermediating their parents from that process?
(To be clear, there are definitely tradeoffs, and I see them. But I think it's important to steel-man the counter-position because the counter-position doesn't just go away. Especially since there's a non-ignorably-trivial number of citizens, in both the US and the UK, who feel the trade-offs are acceptable because they really do not like what they perceive open and unfettered Internet access to have done to one or two generations of humanity exposed to it in childhood at this point.
To argue against it, we have to face it, not dismiss it).
>What happens when policing that is a practical impossibility because children can dive into a sea of information from thousands of unsecured nodes, utterly disintermediating their parents from that process?
I reject the assertion that it is a "practical impossibility" for a parent to properly raise their child. The fact that it is common practice for a parent to outsource the raising of their child to strangers ("day care") and the government ("public schools") doesn't mean that is is smart, desirable, beneficial or conducive to raising a smart, moral and intelligent child. If your answer is, "I have to outsource the rearing of my child to others/the government because of XYZ", then my answer to you is don't have a child! The "trade-offs" that the non-trivial number of citizens in the US and the UK are choosing to make is to trade the freedom of other people so that they don't have to worry about properly supervising or raising their children. Sorry, you don't get to trade my freedoms for your convenience, especially when trading away my freedoms ultimately does nothing to solve the problem your tradeoff purportedly solves, as children will always find a way to access the internet anyway.
>Network television could control what showed up in your living room without you expecting it. Verizon and Comcast can't (nor should they, but the "can't" matters quite a bit here).
No parent was forced to buy a TV and no parent is forced to by their child a device with unfettered access to the internet. Suggesting that we should strip away the rights and freedoms of every adult and entirely abandon the right to privacy and anonymity in a fruitless attempt to bulletproof society for children is a non-starter for me and many others.
I don't think "if you're raising a child the way most Americans do, you shouldn't have a child" is going to be a productive argument against a more authoritarian internet experience that requires stronger IRL identity authentication of most users. I don't think it'll carry on most countries, including the US.
> You don't get to trade my freedoms for your convenience
Precisely that trade is most of politics and regulation, be it "You have to drive on the right side of the road" or "You can't swear on FCC-licensed airwave broadcast." We took a very liberal stance to the Internet, and much of Western society seems to be reevaluating that stance in this era.
The challenge with the Internet is that accessing it is so ubiquitous that even if a parent wants to keep a child off it, it's pretty impossible. You can get on it at any public library. Certainly we're not banning children from libraries to keep them safe? That's unworkable.
You yourself assert that children will always find a way to access the Internet. The unfortunate conclusion drawn from the strongest firm of that assertion is that we must therefore make the Internet they can access child-safe.
(I recognize how this is a non-starter for many. My concern is that failure to engage the argument may leave those for whom it's a non-starter at a severe disadvantage as the opposing view consolidates political power to effect change. I think the result of saying l assuming the status-quo holds is we're going to wake up one day to find half the Internet ID-walled and the other half behind Tor).
>I don't think "if you're raising a child the way most Americans do, you shouldn't have a child" is going to be a productive argument
I didn't say it is a productive argument, I said, "I reject the assertion that it is a "practical impossibility" for a parent to properly raise their child." I don't believe it is possible to make a productive argument in the United States because the overwhelming majority of Americans lack the capacity to think critically and make good decisions. The authoritarians who run our country will eliminate anonymity and privacy and there isn't a damn thing anyone can do about it. It doesn't matter what argument you make.
And in my parent comment above that, I further qualified that by saying, "No, in a free society the government doesn't decide, via its monopoly on violence, what it's okay for consenting adults to say or hear. And in a sane society, parents are responsible for policing what their children see and hear, and not the government. Our society is neither free or sane, but the point stands. Freedom is anathema to the authoritarians who are in the process of stripping us of our few remaining freedoms and what remains of our anonymity and our privacy.
That doesn't mean that we can't jawbone about how a free society should operate, and what people who give lip service to the concept of freedom should support. We can also point out that the authoritarians in charge could care less about the welfare or safety of your children, and must laugh to themselves about how stupid the masses are to trade what few freedoms they have left for the illusion of safety for their children. At least for now. Until posting unregulated messages is outlawed for the safety of the children, with all the usual suspects cheering it on.
I think you're more blackpilled than I am on this topic. I actually still think that there is probably constructive middle ground. I'm just haven't quite seen it yet.
I strongly suspect it doesn't include 4chan of the future operating like 4chan in the early 2000s. Things do change sometimes. But hey, in the short run? They certainly can in the US. They will probably be banned in the UK very soon for anyone who doesn't know how to set up a VPN or access Tor, but across that bridge when we come to it right?
>This may be one of those "not everyone gets to win everywhere" situations. And if I have to choose protecting 4chan vs. protecting children...
Which to be clear, is nothing but a fiction you built yourself in order to insist on your failed arguments, 4chan is a 18+ site and it enforces the rule. It's literally the second rule of the site just below not posting illegal content.
Unless your definition of "opposition to totalitarianism" is very different from mine, I would hope it is transparent that the examples given in the comment you replied to are not such voices.
The main difference is that most of the big players have physical presence in the UK. You can't argue British law does not apply to you when you have a campus in Kings Cross.
Just bear in mind that many US states are implementing the so-called age verification laws, which will soon turn into identity verification laws. So simply being in the US doesn't protect them against having to comply with these things. Someone is going to have to fight the laws.
It was clear to me from the moment this began that this case would end in humiliation for the British government/regulator. A good reminder that Britain is a declining nation that still likes to pretend it is an empire.
This isnt unique to the UK. China does the same thing. The UK will have its own firewall in time. They cant actually force foreign companies to comply with these laws so they'll have to blacklist them. It's exactly the same as China.
Note this nonsense headline and article is just more puffery from the theatrical 4chan side and doesn't represent any official legal position.
Of course ofcom knows its power is limited, that shouldn't stop it attempting to do it's job, however much that job might irk foreign operators publishing to ofcoms jurisdiction.
The fact is the US has different standards to the UK. It doesn't mean one is right and one is wrong but it does mean that those differences will cause cultural and legal friction that responsible operators will attempt to diminish within reason, while others will attempt to capitalize for publicity.
> I wish them luck in that important work. In the meantime, we Americans have plenty more work to do on this side of the pond to protect our border and prevent the British, Australian, Russian, and other foreign censorship regimes from crossing it.
We got our own problems with Authoritarianism. There is no need to protect our borders from something our own government and corporations are practicing day in and day out on our own people, in our own country. You might want to acknowledge that first, before assuming we got problems across the pond.
And BTW the real answer is to enforce antitrust and put an end to Citizens United to prevent money from flowing into our political institutions and reign in these corrupt business. You might want to add that as well to your point about the GRANITE Act
Your quote references censorship specifically and while there are some creaks in the first amendment here and there, it is nothing compared to the censorship machine running in the UK and Europe.
What the hell are you talking about? We have the same problems as the UK and they are just as bad. We are at the cusp, while the UK is further in, but we still have the same problems..
We have ICE agents rounding up people of color and disappearing them, so I'm not saying our problems are worse than yours I'm just saying we have common ground.
I think it would be more accurate to say that the UK and US have different problems when it comes to freedom of expression, and each country tends to notice the problems in the other one more readily than its own problems (especially because the US right likes to use the UK as a whipping boy). From a UK point of view, what stands out currently is the cowed state of the US media. There is very little sense of a free press effectively holding the administration of the day to account.
Number of US media organisations that have reached a financial settlement with Donald Trump: 6 (totalling about $91.5 million).
Number of UK media organisations that have reached a financial settlement with a UK Prime Minister: 0
Well for me, I'm looking at the U.S problems first and foremost. And I see the UK is having problems under the authoritarianism banner same as us. But I don't judge UK's problems with the U.S. I see the UK as having big problems with freedom and corruption of the political system but I'm not a UK citizen so I have no idea. I always start with my own country and feel sad about what's happening across the world. The topics that are important to me are surveillance and censorship, and those issues are happening across different countries. The point I was trying to make originally was that we the U.S. need to focus on our own problems and stop worrying about other countries problems until we fix our own. And here in the US we have problems with corruption that needs to be fixed. We need to stop allowing money to affect our political system first and foremost and secondly, we need to stop corporations from making the world worse by enforcing antitrust.
I’d don’t disagree with any of that except lumping the current UK and US governments under the same “authoritarian” categorization. Trump is a classic authoritarian strong man pushing the limits of his constitutional authority. Nothing comparable is currently happening in the UK.
You'll have to be more specific, sorry. Which political party, and what damage? I am not saying that everything is perfect in the UK. I'm just saying that the UK does not currently have an authoritarian leader making an executive power grab.
The age verification laws using third parties to store digital id data that can be accessed and misused by 3rd parties is one example to me across the board that is part of an authoritarian agenda happening in many countries including the UK. We have a poster boy Trump that is being propped up as a dictator in the U.S by special interests (Instutionalists) that only have an interest in making money off the backs of the people by using our political offices for these corrupt practices. I read about the postal scandal in the uk and that seems remarkably similar to how our government and corporations work togeather to disenfranchise its people. I guess I'm saying we have more in common around these topics than we do differences. And trust me I'm not trying to lesson our role in what the U.S. is doing to the whole world. I'm doing my part to stand against what our government is doing. You can see what I'm doing on my website https://scottrlarson.com. It's not much but it's the best I can do right now.
Well I thought these things were torries related but I'm less sure about that. Not that it matters either way. Authiratianism seems like an epidemic that's affecting everyone with strong egos.
I think this is just one more case of “we thought we lived in Western Civilisation and all agreed on how to handle the problems of the world”. And we are discovering that we actually live in American Civilisation, and the differences are becoming insurmountable.
The problem is America cannot stand alone - everyone needs friends
Calling it "American civilization" seems wrong too when the president and his bootlickers frequently attempt to supress negative coverage and call for things that are very blatantly against the first amendment, let alone against the spirit of free speech.
There is no "problem" with 4chan, it has existed for years, it is free speech, and no US administration should be expected to bow to anyone on it.
The problem is platforms that millions do use and have no ability to counter Russian, Mossad and other foreign influence. The problem is that we are all complete cucks to Israel and they've done everything in their power to ensure the likes of Tik Tok will never be able to teach children about their genocide or dragging us into their forever wars. The problem is private equity and corporate dystopia and our cretinous politicians.
I'm not sure who the other three clients are,
But in the case of 4chan, people are also forgetting that it is well known to be an intel gathering and propaganda disseminating platform closely aligned if not run indirectly by the US government.
It's not blocked anywhere that much more tame sites are usually blocked, perhaps china is the only one I know of and even google is blocked there, and that makes me suspicious.
Yes there are organic users on there outside of the political places,
But many, especially those that are disgusted by the site, forget the very real impact that 4chan has had on current events, I just don't see any of this situation as organic.
4 chan is the most bent place on the internet that is just wide open, and in my short forrey I did see and read a bunch of horrible stuff, but there are other areas in there where certain counter culture groups with no violence or ranting seem to be hiding out for the privacy, and there are also people who go in to challenge some of the worst obscenities, and as it turned out I have a friend who does just that, even going so far as to learn the intricasies of these groups and chase them around the net to pick there horrible theories and causes apart, driving some of them completly insane in the process.
it's not like there are not worse places, and 4 chan realy is sort of cartoonish and juvenile, so the best thing is to openly acknowledge it and like all the bad stuff label it and remind people of the risks of getting caught up in this, or any, cult.
4chan is ironically one of the few social platforms with no algorithm and where people can actually genuinely debate.
Reddit is complete trash, nobody can say anything that goes against the authoritarian mods on any subreddit, regardless of if those are good or bad rules, it's just an echo chamber. Twitter is hyperreal at this point, it's impossible to spend more than 3 minutes without being angry at the world.
4chan is so full of fake news, CIA/FSB/Mossad shills and doctored screenshots that it forces you to be skeptical, its not for the masses but I've seen genuine nuggets of gold on there. It's one of the few actual communities, where people actually "get" each other, which is ironic I suppose.
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[ 0.27 ms ] story [ 25.0 ms ] threadThis is how it works, if you want I can explain to you why it works like this, or you can work it out from first principles. But this is not a proposal.
VPNs are an asterisk and they work not by avoiding this natural unavoidable principle, but by tunneling, the VPN or proxy vendor is putting themselves on the headers, and on the backend they still route the packets to the destination by putting the intended destination on the headers.
If these VPNs don't comply with local regulations and are used to evade national restrictions they can and are often themselves subject to bans. But even if not, it acts as a sort of waiver and compromising element for all illicit activity.
Sometimes it's not necessary to completely outlaw something, it is sufficient to make it so that engaging in the outlawed activity is sufficiently uncomfortable and clear that it is illegal, forcing users to undeniably acknowledge they are avoiding the law. An example of this is trying to watch pirated movies without paying for them, yeah you can do it, but you gotta do some shady shit and dodge a lot of malware, and eat shady gambling ads and etcetera.
In addition to making you feel like an asshole, it removes any recourse you may have, it's very hard to make any claim later, you cannot really complain later if you were accessing it illegally to begin with. Nobody is going to pursue you to the end of the world not to access a pirated movie or an illegal website, but they pursue the distributor and make things very uncomfortable enough so that you are effectively hiding like a fiending outlaw.
The state isn’t totally incompetent but doing it properly would be a serious undertaking, the kind of thing where the recent track record of big government tech projects isn’t great
If you want to really make sure nobody in the uk can easily access 4chan (PRC style) it needs some effort, and you're in an arms race with attempts to mask/tunnel traffic so it gets through
One example is after the Southport riots, miraculously the justice system became hyperefficient and the perpetrators were found, arrested, charged and jailed within a week.
That suggests a lot of what looks like incompetence (potholes, petty crime, maybe also this) is actually just the state not really caring about a lot of issues.
If they decide they really care about internet censorship, I wouldn't rule out them suddenly becoming a lot more competent in that specific area
Just a recap how it happened in Russia:
1. First, year ~2015 legal framework was created under disguise of banning pirated media(specifically torrents.ru)(legislative push). State-wide DNS ban introduced. Very easy to circumvent via quering 8.8.8.8
2. Then, having legal basis, govt included extra stuff in banned list(casinos, terrorist orgs, etc)(executive push). IP bans introduced, applied very carefully.
3. Legal expanded allowing govt to ban specific media on very vague criterias(legislative push). IP blocks tried on some large websites. DPI hardware mandated to be installed by ISPs to filter by HTTPS SNI(executive push).
4. At ~2019 Roskomnadzor(RKN) created, special govt entity which enforces bans without court orders(legislative push).
5. ~2021 sites become banned if they are not filtering content by Russian laws by request of RKN(executive push). VPN services were obligated to also DPI-filter traffic(legislative push).
6. ~2023 Crackdown on VPN started(executive push). Popular commercial services were IP-banned, OpenVPN and IPSec connections selectively degraded by DPI.
7. ~2025 Heavy VPN filtering(vless, wireguard, etc) introduced(executive push). Performance of certain sites were degraded(youtube, twitter, etc ).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_blocking_in_the_United_Kin...
I don't see the need for extra tooling like DPI when the willingness and methodology to outright block sites at a higher level is already in place. Also bear in mind that the groups who have compiled the most widely implemented block lists are also major sponsors of the bill which this 4chan story refers to, so they have largely gotten what they wanted.
I may be reading too much into the editorialized writeups about Ofcom but even their statements imply they thought they were just going to impose their laws globally and that other countries would line up to help them do it?
This quote from the court is amazing:
> American courts generally decline to enforce foreign judgments that violate the United States Constitution
Indeed. Who could have predicted this?
Which raises the scarier question of why they tried this at all? Was the defeat a planned showing to justify future action to justify more control of the internet, as Preston Byrne speculates? Are they using this as a demonstration of why internet censorship is the only solution? It’s hard to imagine why they thought they were going to get anywhere with this case, unless failing was the goal
While the US isn't perfect it is also far from the worst conceivable entity to be in that position (and current UK and Australian governments provide easy examples). If they want to use their influence to promote free speech then good, because we need it. Just less of the mass surveillance of absolutely everyone at the same time, then we'd be good.
4chan is suing Ofcom, not the other way round.
Quote from the article:
> Ofcom has targeted 200-ish American platforms with censorship orders; only four of those sites, all of which are my clients, refused
Seems like Ofcom broadly got the result they wanted. A 98% success rate is not going to be particularly discouraging to them.
The thing is, you can afford sticking the finger to the UK if you do not have any business interests there. A platform like 4chan won't be bothered even if the UK government says "all payments to be made towards 4chan for advertising are hereby seized until the fine is paid off". But places like Twitter or Meta, that derive millions if not billions of euros a year from the UK and European advertisers? Now that's a lot of money to lose, money that even American shareholders will complain about it being missing from the revenue sheet.
When something can be explained by both incompetence and conspiracy, the correct explanation is usually incompetence.
1. 4chan actually lost its case in the US District Court on 15 September 2026. (sauce: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-court-dismisses-...
The judge dismissed its lawsuit against Ofcom for lack of jurisdiction, because Ofcom was protected by foreign sovereign immunity.
2. The judge's comments were obiter dicta observations that were not necessary to decide the case, rather than a binding ruling that Ofcom's actions were unconstitutional, making the headline somewhat selective, it's hardly the defeat of a giant regulatory system. Still, I suppose he needs to show he did something to earn his fees.
We could go on and on and fucking on about American double standards here:
Cuba. ABC being hassled over Jimmy Kimmel making gags about Kirk. The White House restricting reporting. Ending support for public broadcasting. Book bans, the CLOUD act, the TIKTOK DIVESTITURE fercrissakes. Sanctions on the ICC.
They have tariffs on foreign double standards because it's a key export business.
You're aware of the difference between interpersonal relations and international relations aren't you? They aren't the same, they don't follow the same rules, they don't engender the same expectations.
Now you can try to apply the standards of one to the other, but that only makes you look confused.
You guys are basically Russia in denial at this point. Carried on by the momentum of your products that is heading straight for a massive disruption by AI.
Is that also the case with the common Brit or American?
Likewise the talk of book bans is just silly. What books are banned in America?
Here is a list of banned books in the USA:
https://pen.org/banned-books-list-2025/
Here is also a huge Wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_banning_in_the_United_Sta...
Oh well, same thing. At this point the UK is basically the mutant kid sprouting from the body of that guy in Total Recall :)
The same shitty some of the worst authoritarianism among the Western world etc.
2. It's not really obiter dicta because it's a district court order it's not something you cite, really as binding precedent. But if you read between the lines, the court is only dismissing Ofcom because it is part of a sovereign, which means it cannot maintain it's other position. The judge was making it clear he thought Ofcom needed to stop. The ruling is addressed to the parties not really to a future court. If I were Ofcom's lawyer, I wouldn't be celebrating this.
American double standards have nothing to do with this case and it's just a sort of throw in everyone seems to need to mention here. So what? Are they good or bad? If you think they're bad to extend jurisdiction, then take the win.
Long arm jurisdiction is the opposite of what happened here. That's where you pull people into US courts that might not be US citizens for things that happened not in the US. Somehow that implies that foreign companies should be able to reach into the US and bug people in the US not doing anything in their own country? Oh, but USA bad so you scored that point.
I think you're just seeing Lincoln's hat in the clouds.
Everyone on HN apparently thinks they have a law degree.
well yeah. whats good for the goose is good for the gander. if the US wants to go bug people in their own countries, even going so far as to murder a bunch of people to kidnap a sitting president of a country, youre gonna get others looking to do it in response, and as the US loses its privileged position on the world stage, its gonna have to start complying
This is only true if, to quote the article being responded to:
>Unless Ofcom is prepared to sail a British invasion fleet here and land ground troops
In a UK court, of course.
Is it protected if you are challenging a UK company in the UK?
It is, the government can not prevent or punish people speaking on the basis that the government decides it was misleading.
A civil dispute between private parties is entirely different though. One can be found liable for misleading speech that causes damage to another party.
> The president is trying to throw his weight around because he thinks his fans will like it. He's an idiot.
Aside, using civil courts to attack opponents is certainly a problem, but in USA it favors the speaker a compared to a lot of other countries. In US the plaintiff has to prove the speech is false and for public figures that there was malice. Which in my opinion goes a bit too far and gives media corporations more power over politicians and other public matters. I think the public figure stipulation is reasonable and important to allow private citizens to discuss politicians and public matters so that's good, but I think there should be a counter to that which requires organizations reporting the news to have more duty to report truth and not mislead.
"Thank you for correcting my misconceptions about the first amendment and civil disputes." Would have been sufficient.
> I'm saying it's going to be really hard to prove damages.
No you weren't saying that, we can see exactly what you said and it was just garbage. If you have some substantive contribution and opinion about the damages claims in the lawsuit and what it would take to prove them that would be great. The low effort worthless rhetorical questions didn't add anything though, other than to make you sound more clueless.
Sound clueless? It was trumpeted from the rooftops when they made the utterly deranged claim that "rich" -> "no damages".
Is it possible it's a troll account?
This is in a US court, not a British one. It will take place under US law.
He has to prove damages. What might those possibly be?
It's extremely difficult to win since he is a public figure. He would have to show actual malice, which is not easy.
He actually has to sit for a deposition, which he seems unwilling to do.
Likely the case will just be dismissed.
1. You were wrong about the first amendment providing protection from libel / defamation action.
2. You were wrong about damage not existing or not applying because the person has a certain amount of wealth or holds public office.
3. What you have written above is regurgitating what I already explained to you in other posts. As you can see, it is I who have laid it out for you. That you couldn't bring yourself to reply to my other post that educated you is telling.
Again, if you want to make a useful point or observation about the case, the idiotic internet gotchas and stupid rhetorical questions do not do that. You really can't fathom what possible damages a person whose success relies on public perception and who spends money to improve their public image could possibly suffer by being defamed? Please.
Is clipping a video together to create a lie "speech"?
The BBC admitted a mistake. The error was reported by an internal BBC investigation, not because Trump's team complained (it is highly unlikely they saw it originally, because it was an UK broadcast).
The BBC makes thousands of hours of video annually. You can't expect perfection, or to sue them for billions of $CURRENCY for every mistake.
The mistake in this case was to make their quite reasonable case (that Trump encouraged the violence of January 2021) very slightly more emphatically than was perhaps justified.
Trump of course showed his disapproval of the violence by pardoning all the rioters, including those convicted of injuring police with weapons.
Their mistake was to twist Trump's speech to make it say the actual opposite of what he did say.
They are notorious for their left wing bias by right-wing commentators and for their right-wing bias by left-wing commentators. By law they are neutral.
> Their mistake was to twist Trump's speech to make it say the actual opposite of what he did say.
I don't see how you can argue that. His speech involved 70 minutes of falsely claiming that the election was stolen (how's that for twisting the truth?) and encouraging his supporters to march on the Capitol. He wasn't stupid enough to explicitly call for violence, but the implication was there.
The circumstantial evidence supports this: the actual ensuing riots and violence, Trump refusing to condemn it, and then pardoning the rioters.
No-one except the most nutty of leftists claims they are right wing. What they might say is that they don't ally with hard left positions on Israel, Jeremy Corbyn etc.
>>I don't see how you can argue that. His speech involved 70 minutes of falsely claiming that the election was stolen
Yes, there were no postal vote irregularities anywhere. Everything was 1,000% above board. Would you like buy a bridge?
>>the actual ensuing riots and violence, Trump refusing to condemn it, and then pardoning the rioters.
Political prisoners, ushered in by the docents. I don't think putting your feet on Pelosi's desk is worth 4 years in jail.
There is no credible argument that the election was stolen. This has been repeatedly challenged in court, and each attempt has failed.
> Political prisoners, ushered in by the docents. I don't think putting your feet on Pelosi's desk is worth 4 years in jail.
David Dempsey attacked officers with flagpoles, crutches, pepper spray and broken furniture after standing at a gallows talking about hanging Democrats Daniel Rodriguez repeatedly drove a stun gun into officer Michael Fanone’s neck, causing him to lose consciousness and suffer a heart attack Patrick McCaughey crushed officer Daniel Hodges in a doorframe with a stolen riot shield for over two minutes Julian Khater pepper sprayed Police Officer Brian Sicknick in the face, causing him to collapse, and he died the next day
Do you really want to pursue this line of argument?
But yeah, a right winger with a Washington DC jury stands a great chance. It would be like putting Biden on trial in Florida.
If he sues in Britain, then it will be run under British law.
There are no book bans in the US. Individual libraries can be and are selective about what books they stock, and libraries for children justifiably avoid specific topics. The government has not actually banned any books lately.
The White House has not restricted reporting, it has merely denied entry to it’s press releases to specific parties. Those parties can still report on the facts (or make them up, as they are wont to do), they just cannot attend the White House’s press releases. Since attendance at press releases is by invitation in any case, this is definitely not censorship.
Supporting public broadcasting is not an antidote to censorship, and ending that support is not a form of censorship either. PBS was notorious for supporting only one political viewpoint, and there was just no need to waste taxpayer money on it. You would cry foul if taxpayer money were spent to advocate for political viewpoints that you don’t agree with.
Jimmy Kimmel’s “gags” were praising a murderer for the murder he committed. That’s incitement to violence, which is not protected speech.
The US’s sanctions of Cuba are not related to speech in any way.
If you really want to cite American double standards, how about American banks denying service to Americans based on their stated political and religious beliefs? <https://www.occ.gov/news-issuances/news-releases/2026/nr-occ...>
Or how about the FBI declaring that parents at PTA meetings as “domestic terrorists”? Or targeting the Catholic church as an “extremist organization”?
Not true here in Florida. The governor banned and burned books that taught slavery was bad, revoked tenure and fired all teachers who were reported teaching that slavery was bad. The new state-approved textbooks teach that slavery taught blacks useful skills and that there was violence on both sides.
The books are not banned.
The public schools don't allow them, which is the case for many things.
Whether you agree with it or not, calling this "banning books" is dumb. There are a lot of things that are not allowed in schools, but we don't go around saying "Florida banned alcohol" or "Florida banned smoking" or "Florida banned pornography" because they're not allowed in schools.
What's a word that means "forbidden from being included" or "disallowed"? I suspect most people believe the word "banned" is such a synonym, as does practically every dictionary out there.
> Calling this "banning books" is dumb. There are a lot of things that are not allowed in schools, but we don't go around saying "Florida banned alcohol" or "Florida banned smoking"
No, it's not dumb. Children don't go to school for the purpose of getting drunk or smoking. They do go to school to learn things, including things that might be politically controversial or divisive.
You know what is dumb? Gatekeeping truthful information from being accessible to kids.
Statistically some of them would be here
While actual incitement to violence isn't protected speech, that wasn't even close to incitement to violence, which requires meeting three prongs clearly defined by SCOTUS.
I encourage you to review actual statements which SCOTUS has previously ruled are NOT incitement to violence. It's so incredibly narrow and particular, I was left wondering if anything can meet the definition. Jimmy Kimmel is so far from it your assertion is ludicrous.
Indeed, I think you should look at the speech that SCOTUS ruled is protected in the landmark Brandenburg v Ohio[0] case to see how extremely narrow the "imminent lawless action" standard is. It's ridiculously hateful and inflammatory, and filled with several non-specific threats of violence against minority groups. This was labelled protected speech. Brandenburg was a private citizen here, and he prevailed over the state of Ohio.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio
The statements were frankly defamatory, and only not actionable because they didn't define a clear target nor cause demonstrable "actual damages".
Is this the same general public whose backlash over the suspension got it reversed a few days later by the network, and by Nextstar and Sinclair a few days after that?
Those who objected to the speech were morally in the right, because the speech clearly crossed a line. It baselessly accused others of trying to cover up a truth which would have been damaging to them, except that it turned out to be the exact falsehood that Occam's Razor would have predicted. And it did so with the force of broadcast media behind it.
When the government declares under penalty of law that libraries cannot stock certain books, that is a book ban.
> If you really want to cite American double standards, how about American banks denying service to Americans based on their stated political and religious beliefs? <https://www.occ.gov/news-issuances/news-releases/2026/nr-occ...>
Unlike your other examples, banks are private entities and can generally refuse to do business with whomever they like.
Citation needed.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-court-dismisses-...
But all of your objections here (or rather, more specifically, the choice to present them all together as a list of grievances, given that they are connected by a theme but not otherwise related or coordinated) are 1) blatant whataboutism and 2) an attempt to wage "ideological or political battle" in violation of HN commenting guidelines.
Please point out where Jimmy Kimmel did that. I'll help, here's a transcript:
https://www.readtpa.com/p/read-the-jimmy-kimmel-monologue-th...
I'm going to need a jet pack to traverse the logical leaps you're making here.
No, that is not even remotely what I said, and not even a plausible reading of what I said. It is a blatant mischaracterization of very simple logic that I laid out explicitly.
Again: Kimmel made factually incorrect statements that he reasonably should have known were incorrect, which tended to demean the character of his political opponents, by ascribing to them a false cover-up while falsely assigning a murderer to their side.
That is not "taking a side in a debate", because the ideology of Tyler Robinson was not a matter of debate.
2. "tended to demean the character of his political opponents" - this is the world in which we live, and quite frankly, much of it is well deserved.
3. Whether something is a matter of debate is often time- and circumstance-dependent. When news breaks out, it's usually accompanied by a great deal of speculation, and people make mistakes. Only in the fullness of time do the facts come out. I'm not saying it's necessarily right if Kimmel (like others) came to a conclusion before the facts were settled, but it's also not unusual, and people can and should issue corrections if they are wrong.
Yes. Someone already linked it upthread.
> Unlike the Government, he doesn't owe his audience even the slightest semblance of impartiality.
He does owe them honesty.
> When news breaks out, it's usually accompanied by a great deal of speculation, and people make mistakes. Only in the fullness of time do the facts come out.
It was immediately obvious that the facts did not support his narrative to anyone who was actually attempting to gather the facts. Furthermore, that narrative should have been heavily discounted a priori on the basis of Occam's razor: obviously it is far more likely that a politically controversial figure gets targeted by opponents than by people on the same side.
Please show where he pinned the blame on anyone.
> KIMMEL: We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.
That's not assigning blame for Kirk's murder. There is no way to interpret that as saying "Charlie Kirk's murderer was MAGA." It's saying that MAGA representatives were jumping to conclusions, prematurely focusing on blame assignment. To steel man your argument, you could say that it is saying the likelihood that the murderer was MAGA is greater than what the MAGA crowd is reporting. But since they were saying the exact opposite, that reduces to "there is a non-zero probability the murderer is MAGA" -- that's not an extreme position five days after the event.
You will note that at no point did absolutely anyone whatsoever propose prison time for Kimmel. Kirk, on the other hand, lost his life in an act of what the evidence strongly suggests was vigilantism.
Please point out where Jimmy Kimmel did that. I'll help, here's a transcript:
https://www.readtpa.com/p/read-the-jimmy-kimmel-monologue-th...
If you think that is not worth attempting to get a host taken off the air for (at least for a while), I don't think you understand how dangerous amplified disinformation can be.
Now consider that one is a comedian and the other is a news outlet, what does that tell you about your argument.
Maybe there is some demonstrable difference to size and scale of willful dishonestly among outlets.
2. CNN settles out of court in defamation lawsuit
[1] https://apnews.com/article/cnn-guilty-defamation-afghans-137...
[2] https://www.reuters.com/article/world/us/cnn-settles-defamat...
They specifically argued that they are an entertainment broadcaster in court defending Tucker’s show.
Of course, they were also correct. But these quoted statements are primarily about intention and motive, not really arguing (or even speculating particularly strongly) that the shooter actually was MAGA.
Incidentally, this does not seem like particularly dangerous misinformation at all. MAGA supporters are probably the safest group in America (it is, after all, not a safe country for anyone).
That's the important part here, touch grass.
> touch grass
cringe
> [...], the CLOUD act, [...]
The CLOUD Act doesn't do what you think it does. Here's a comment from a while ago with more detail [1].
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49226822
Yes, the MLAT stuff is terrible, but it does not involve any double standard.
The non-MLAT stuff does not involve a double standard because pretty much every country has something equivalent.
The US version (and the foreign versions) are not extraterritorial because they are all compelling someone in their territory to turn over something that person controls.
If my government asks me for two files, one of which I happen to have stored on file storage service in my country, and one I've stored on a file storage service in another country, the fact that I scp from an in-country server for one an an out-of-country server for the other doesn't make it an exercise of extraterritorial power.
Correct, but this update is in regards to Ofcom's evidence of 20th October in front of the parliamentary select committee to which they have to report, and at which they conceded that their ability to make legally binding cross-jurisdictional enforcement actions is limited when faced with the laws of another country. The wording she used is in fact very interesting: "If foreign courts decide to try and get in our way, there will be a point at which we have to accept that we won’t be able to recover that money."
>Still, I suppose he needs to show he did something to earn his fees.
They have taken on the case pro bono.
And then you didn't. Don't throw 'obiter dicta' to the rubes and then completely fumble your distraction with the incoherent legerdemain of 'double standards.' Show some art, at least.
By deliberately going after unwinnable cases, there is perhaps here a deliberate attempt to project a "voice of common sense" - effectively demonstrating that this is uneforceable nonsense, regardless of what the then-current government and media insisted. So they make a big show of it being defeated in the hope that the powers that be seen sense and quietly drop it.
Or they really are delusional. I dunno.
Didn't the USA kidnap a president from another country from that country, just the other day?
What ties are there to the current conversation?
It's not just that courts generally decline. It's now also against US law for them to enforce the judgment without assessing the Constitutional issues. And the burden of proof is on those trying to enforce the judgment.
4chan sued Ofcom over the fines. Ofcom has been perhaps waiting for the outcome of this suit and is announcing they can't collect fines but I don't think that was the purpose. They have the power to instruct ISPs to block domains and to me it seems more likely that is what they will do and that was perhaps what they wanted from the beginning.
Demand online services change their services to conform to their law. Because its accessible from the UK.
Services refuse.
Up goes the wall.
4chan was already blocked by ISPs and you need to call them to unblock it ok your connection.
Because of this, it is questionable why Ofcom picked 4chan as a target it the first place.
Correct. UK ISPs already implement a fairly wide-ranging block list (which even includes archive.org) for any subscribers who do not explicitly opt-in to 'adult' content access privileges.
Yes this is exactly what they thought, and no it is not surprising. Section 204 of the Online Safety Act of 2023 specifically says the Act covers internet services provided from outside the UK as well.
Of course the rest of us think its stupid. But the UK government doesnt.
Not European politicians.
You see, in the EU international treaties supersede individual countries' constitutions in theory. This is the other way the EU is moving power to executive governments away from parliament and judicial branches.
Of course, in practice, you have at least a good chance that courts just ignore it (of course the laws of many European countries are a good match, the big thing you get many conflicts about is if 2 governments act on the same company/crime/...). Then the EU court makes a counter judgement ... and is ignored, despite the law. Which is one of the reasons you keep reading the EU is about to fall apart.
We all know the USA punishes its own people for that all the time, of course, but only when the current administration agrees with the ruling, which this one doesn't. It's not that the constitution can't be violated - it's that violating the constitution can be used as an excuse in cases like this one.
It's like the British government trying to enforce tea confiscations on US residents in a way that violates the fifth amendment protections against unreasonable confiscation of private property.
Byrne reasonably knew that FSIA applies; the point was to get the words on record that allow him to claim a victory in the court of public opinion. Filing the suit was irrelevant, that was the point: it highlights how Ofcom's attempts at enforcement were equally irrelevant and lacking in jurisdiction. Hence:
> All Plaintiffs seek in this action is a declaration that [Ofcom’s] Section 100 Orders, transmitted by e-mail, did not effect valid service in the United States.
No actual damages for the putative violation of rights; just an affirmation that Ofcom was FOS in trying anything in the first place.
And, per Byrne, the court gladly delivered:
> American courts generally decline to enforce foreign judgments that violate the United States Constitution, if indeed Plaintiffs are correct in their constitutional claims.
Byrne and 4chan clearly are correct in the original constitutional claim, and Ofcom has received and will continue to receive $0 of the fines they purport to assess.
Yeah, unfortunately the UK isn't a country, it is actually a circus, so you can't apply any regular logic, you must apply circus logic.
Notably, the two countries involved literally fought a war about one's wish to enforce laws in the other, with the latter declaring that no, it'd prefer to operate independently of those laws.
Look, that was 250 years ago, and we've buried the hatchet. We've had our spats, but it's more like siblings arguing. Let someone else attack one of them and they get reminded that only these 2 are allowed to pick on each other. That said, our entire country was literally built on a legal system that says Americans aren't subject to British law. It's kinda part of our national character.
State censors in western countries are becoming increasingly brazen and desperate. Despite the Orwellian slogans about "safety" they all constantly recite, their objectives are securing the supremacy of the regime not the interests of the people.
Well, to quote the post:
>Ofcom has targeted 200-ish American platforms with censorship orders; only four of those sites, all of which are my clients, refused, and only one is 4chan.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBBYvj4YQLE (full video is an hour and a half, but you can skip to any bit because he just makes the same handful of points over and over again)
I'm somewhat dubious of a Youtube channel called "Western Liberty" that was created the day of Cummings's testimony, which contains nothing but the session and short clips of it. Using the link above avoids any potential ad revenue going to that clearly political pointed channel.
For anyone that's interested, here are the links to the other sessions of this committee:
- 22nd April 2026: https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/e79ae489-4db6-4159-88b...
- 3rd June 2026: https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/f27d8b93-b09d-433a-8e6...
- 10th June 2026: https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/097aadbd-b58d-4f76-90e...
- 15th July 2026: https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/87f1e00f-82b5-432b-af6...
- 2nd September 2026: https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/110f81a5-32c4-4577-bab...
- 16th September 2026: https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/ecf7a237-54c9-40be-922...
Anyway, after watching the session with Cummings, I have to say I'm deeply unimpressed with his contribution. While I found his bluntness somewhat refreshing, he was clearly irritated at being (repeatedly) asked to suggest actual solutions instead of just using the session as a pulpit for his grievances.
For example, he claims that legal experts, regardless of their political leanings, agree that the small-boat crisis cannot be solved without primary-legislative changes to the Human Rights Act. Does he mention how the HRA is obstructive? No. Does he mention even one change to the HRA that would help? No. Does he mention the scale of changes required? No.
What's funny is that I'd actually use his HRA example as an example of our constitutional safeguards working exactly as intended: it's for Parliament to decide what our human rights are and their extent, not the whims of ministers. That the Prime Minister and Parliament are refusing to make those changes because they find them to be politically untenable is actually how a democratic system ought to work.
In fact, I'd summarise his testimony as him being irritated at constitutional safeguards working as intended. For example, he claimed that the biggest enemy to British Special Forces is not Russia, China, or Iran but the Cabinet Office and Ministry of Defence lawyers. Oh no, our ministries are operating within the law! How terrible! He seems to advocate for ministers and ministries to adopt a "ask for forgiveness, not permission" mindset with regards to the law, instead.
Trouble is, he thinks they're thixotropic - give 'em a big whack to get them moving faster - when they're actually by design closer to being rheopectic, absorbing sudden stresses to protect the nation.
So when faced with the multiple sudden gyrations in policy that we saw under the final five years of the last government, they of course acted as a dampener. That's what they're there for, that's why they're so valuable. But if you don't shock them, and instead apply constant pressure in a consistent direction, they'll move smoothly, efficiently, and effectively.
For a good example of that, see Francis Maude's term in the Cabinet Office in the first half of the 2010s which changed the civil service very much for the better and was responsible for, amongst others, GDS, the Government Security Group, and a lot of open government initiatives.
He’s like an incompetent Cassandra: people keep on agreeing with his diagnoses, giving him power in the hope that he’ll fix things at which point he makes a complete hash of everything and leaves in a huff having made things worse than they were before.
If the right ever takes power in the UK in the near-ish future I expect us to go through exactly this cycle again. Cummings seems to be very bad at the politics of driving organisational change & making it stick, which is ironic given that criticising public bodies is what he spends so much of his time doing.
His problem is he doesn't understand politics, and like Musk he's wasted his time getting involved with the worst people instead of focusing on what he's good at.
I'm pretty sure that if we ask the operative layer what should the policies be, they wouldn't even pursue this goal
What Ofcom wants next is to make VPNs illegal.
https://www.blocked.org.uk/site/http://www.4chan.org suggests the latter to me, but the checks aren't very recent
I think the Spain-Cloudflare case does IP level blocks and it has a lot of side effect damage, but if I recall they do IP-block level blocking because the vendor, cloudflare, provides header/envelope encryption and pooling, so the Spanish courts considers it legal to block the whole service even, alleging that they are not collaborating with court orders, they just choose not to block the whole provider to reduce the collateral damage, even if they consider they have jurisdiction to block all of CF
Beyond that, it is just madness to try to control the US company or fine it. Going beyond this duty shows that not all biscuits are present at the afternoon tea.
It's not like Facebook, or anyone's personal life or business, depends on 4chan.
I think OFCOM themselves recognize the problem with trying to ban VPNs, but extremely dim MPs and extremely angry newspapers (who are the underlying enemies of free speech here) don't.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vf2citudDA
But don’t worry! We will check your passport when you open your phone (already live in the UK, efforts supported by the GBP 2M secret donation of Meta to NGOs).
And what’s the worst thing that could happen? No one would for sure arrest you for being critical of a foreign government.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/palestine-action...
I thought the Russel Brand case might cause someone to ask why it's even legal for a grown man to pick a kid up from the school gates to have sex with them, but apparently not.
Would be nice if foreigners who raped 30+ kids could get more than 14 years in prison before we release them too.
I get the concern about kids on 4chan, but it just feels like such low priority that I'm surprised the government keep forgetting to tackle the more important stuff that's happening in real life.
Does _not_ need to be foreign.
People in Western Democracies assume we are immune to dictatorships.
Plenty of dictatorships in our modern history were regressions from at least some form of functional democracy, many even regressed from long lasting robust democracies.
So much of the UK, EU comission, Palantir moves is straight up Stasi playbook.
It is almost disrespectful of German History and collective suffering for VDL to stand on the wrong side of history with this corporate puppetering.
Ofcom knows its rulings don't apply internationally.
So yes, the status quo is enforced by the US courts, as if it was ever in doubt and nothing at all has changed.
Though I guess we've already seen something similar in 2024 with France and Telegram...
Though I guess we've already seen something similar in France with Telegram...
https://eylenburg.github.io/countries.htm
1) Notice that the odds that a foreign power is going to be able to harm them in any meaningful way for violating their "child 'safety'" laws that curtail freedom of speech and association are very low
2) Notice that 4chan is fighting harder to resist these attacks on free speech and association than many of big names in the sector and reflect on what it might mean when _4chan_ is the hero of the story
Alas.
Isn't the issue that the "big names" in the sector are not exclusively US based? The big American tech companies have employees, assets, or at least a business presence of some sort in countries outside the US, which means that they are exposed to legal systems in those other countries.
That is an issue, but it's explicitly not what I was talking about. To pick one example, Discord is -AFAIK- US-based. They decided to knuckle under rather than tell the UK, Australia, and others to fuck right off with their free-speech-and-association-limiting horseshit.
Multinationals have their own problems, but they're -when we measure by number of businesses- a tiny minority of businesses. My commentary was exclusively about US-based companies.
And even if a US-based company happens to have employees in a country that's pushing this shit, well, they can shrimply close that office and explain to local politicians exactly why. It's regrettable to lose good employees, but it's way worse to be far less of a hero in the fight for fundamental rights than 4chan and Kiwi Farms is just to keep a few good employees.
https://discord.com/careers
They have a registered office in Schiphol:
https://discord.com/company-information
Discord could keep all of its employees, infrastructure, and business within the United States, but like other big names it has not. It would rather pursue more business opportunities.
Ah, I stand corrected. Discord has a branch office in the Netherlands. Thanks for the correction.
> Discord could keep all of its employees, infrastructure, and business within the United States, but like other big names it has not. It would rather pursue more business opportunities.
As I said:
Trampling on fundamental rights in order to chase marginally more money is neither admirable nor prosocial behavior.This reminds me of the time you could use Twitter as a sort of an oracle to tell whether Twitter thought an account was probably pro-fascist. This wasn't something they'd necessarily surface in the US, but for compliance reasons in Germany they had to suppress fascist propaganda so the backend was aware of flags on individual posts and entire accounts.
At some point, at least, the API did expose that state; after the API got yanked, you could still hypothetically find it by accessing Twitter from Germany via VPN and comparing visibility of posts and accounts in and out of that environment.
Which was very funny to me, because it meant that institutionally, Twitter had an opinion on these accounts but they made it increasingly difficult for US users to know that opinion.
"Freedom of speech" indeed. ;)
You're agreeing with parent poster that they don't care to fight on principle (in the unlikely chance they hold any principle in the first place). You're just using avoidant terminology that skips the criticism inherent in parent's framing.
I am a US citizen and I approve of US-style free speech protection. If anything, I think that the US still has too much restriction on speech (e.g. DMCA limits on "anti-circumvention" software.)
However, I also approve of democratic government. If people in other countries vote to treat speech differently than the US, I wouldn't want to live under those laws, but I also wouldn't say that they are incorrect. I think that democratic principles mean implementing the will of the majority, even if I think that the majority is foolish. There are some things that I would fight against (not just lament) even if approved by the will of the majority; I can't fully reconcile my conflicting impulses, but I acknowledge them. All of this would have been a long and distracting aside to my original point, which was that most American businesses of note operate under multiple countries' jurisdictions.
I mean even if all of these companies closed up shop and fortified themselves inside the US, the countries wanting to enforce their rulings would simply block the IPs of the offending sites or their providers. This is what happened with CF and spanish football broadcasting rights.
Just as saints and captains of industry deserve no less scrutiny and liability under the law than the rest of us, scoundrels and horrible people deserve no less protection under the law than the rest of us.
If your disgust for an entity prevents you from being able to recognize when they're doing something that's an unalloyed good, then you still have quite a bit of emotional maturity to develop.
To put the previous paragraph another way: It's entirely consistent to decry an someone as a loathsome scumbag that all upstanding people should shun and refuse to associate with while also remarking that that one time they dove into a freezing river to save a child being swept away was a good and noble thing to do, and behavior that we should all aspire to mirror.
And they got it. "I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake." But that doesn't mean anyone needs feel sympathy for the devil. We're not obligated to cheer when the wretched hive of scum and villainy keeps its liquor license another year. The law was followed and we can move on.
> If your disgust for an entity prevents you from being able to recognize when they're doing something that's an unalloyed good
... It is usually the case when we're talking about 4chan (and always when talking about Kiwi Farms) that "unalloyed" is doing a lot of the kind of load-bearing one probably wants an alloy for. 4chan's most positive benefit to society is as a litmus test for precisely how far the [xkcd-1357](https://xkcd.com/1357/) principle goes. They are 100% welcome, per their freedom of the press (and the freedom of speech of their users), to host their website. On their infrastructure. With their own DOS protection. In a country that recognizes those rights and protects them. That's the system working as intended.
No? Saving a child from being swept away in a freezing river is an unalloyed good, no matter how terrible the scoundrel that did it.
Like I mentioned, it looks like you still have quite a lot of emotional maturity to develop.
What if it's only so the child can be forced into grueling slave labor until the day they die? Is that still perfectly unalloyed?
Emotional maturity is important. So is platform maturity. We are long past the point where "reader beware" and "it's just a hobby site" are good enough in an era where under-policed fora result in actual harm. I appreciate 4chan's strong stance on the topic of it not being their job to police their house... But I do often find myself cheering when someone compels them, as a site that receives 22 million unique monthly visitors, to act like they have any host responsibility.
It's hard for me to be deeply supportive, beyond my legal requirements to be so, of a site that hosts /b/, /pol/, /hc/, and /gif/ because it chooses to host them too.
Plus it feels "more humane" for the people of 4chan too, to have a place where they can freely be that toxic with others, get it all out, etc. I don't have evidence of this, but I feel like it would help them function better outside of the site, too.
It was cute in 2004.
So, yes, the poem does extend to all subcultures because it reaches out to include every voice of opposition to totalitarianism, until no one is left but the speaker.
It's also meant to be understood in the first four lines: The people mentioned — communists, trade unionists, social democrats, and Jews — were meant to be emblematic of people who are seen as enemies or outsiders to the author's cause. These are people whose values are seen to be radically different than our own.
Remember the context: the author of the speech, which was re-rendered as a poem, was a real person, Martin Niemöller, who was a pastor in the Confessing Church, which was an underground church movement organized in resistance to the Nazis.
However his speech, given in January of 1946, was an indictment of the Confessing Church. The movement was initially organized primarily as a form of resistance to governmental interference in religion, rather than to speak out for all people. Niemöller was, in fact, explicit that this was about people who were his "opponents" and his "enemies":
> "... The people who were put in the camps then were Communists. Who cared about them? We knew it, it was printed in the newspapers. Who raised their voice, maybe the Confessing Church? We thought: Communists, those opponents of religion, those enemies of Christians—"should I be my brother's keeper?"
Instead, Niemöller points out, in a theologically poignant allusion to the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4, that we have a responsibility to our fellow humans to look out for their wellbeing and their interests as our own. (Note that Niemöller was not the only person in the Confessing Church to draw this
So yes, that poem calls for you to look out for the wellbeing and interests — including freedom from oppression and censorship — for those folks who you might now perceive to be your enemies.
See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_They_Came
It should be noted that Niemöller was not the only one to draw on this story as an indictment of the church's inaction. Margarete “Marga” Meusel, a contemporary and correspondent of Niemöller wrote this in 1935 which was antecedent in the body of thought informing the 1946 speech:
> Why does the church do nothing? Why does it allow unspeakable injustice to occur? ... What shall we one day answer to the question, where is thy brother Abel? The only answer that will be left to us, as well as to the Confessing Church, is the answer of Cain. ("Am I my brother's keeper?" Genesis 4:9)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessing_Church#Aftermath
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marga_Meusel
This may be one of those "not everyone gets to win everywhere" situations. And if I have to choose protecting 4chan vs. protecting children...
... I can see two positions on the topic which have merit. So it's a good thing there are separate nations to decide on different bars of safety.
I would have no problem with a world where 4chan is free to operate in the US and blocked in the UK. Different countries with different cultures.
This message was sponsored by SafetyTM.
Every single day And every word you say Every game you play Every night you stay
I'll be watching you
No, in a free society the government doesn't decide, via its monopoly on violence, what it's okay for consenting adults to say or hear. And in a sane society, parents are responsible for policing what their children see and hear, and not the government.
(To be clear, there are definitely tradeoffs, and I see them. But I think it's important to steel-man the counter-position because the counter-position doesn't just go away. Especially since there's a non-ignorably-trivial number of citizens, in both the US and the UK, who feel the trade-offs are acceptable because they really do not like what they perceive open and unfettered Internet access to have done to one or two generations of humanity exposed to it in childhood at this point.
To argue against it, we have to face it, not dismiss it).
I reject the assertion that it is a "practical impossibility" for a parent to properly raise their child. The fact that it is common practice for a parent to outsource the raising of their child to strangers ("day care") and the government ("public schools") doesn't mean that is is smart, desirable, beneficial or conducive to raising a smart, moral and intelligent child. If your answer is, "I have to outsource the rearing of my child to others/the government because of XYZ", then my answer to you is don't have a child! The "trade-offs" that the non-trivial number of citizens in the US and the UK are choosing to make is to trade the freedom of other people so that they don't have to worry about properly supervising or raising their children. Sorry, you don't get to trade my freedoms for your convenience, especially when trading away my freedoms ultimately does nothing to solve the problem your tradeoff purportedly solves, as children will always find a way to access the internet anyway.
>Network television could control what showed up in your living room without you expecting it. Verizon and Comcast can't (nor should they, but the "can't" matters quite a bit here).
No parent was forced to buy a TV and no parent is forced to by their child a device with unfettered access to the internet. Suggesting that we should strip away the rights and freedoms of every adult and entirely abandon the right to privacy and anonymity in a fruitless attempt to bulletproof society for children is a non-starter for me and many others.
> You don't get to trade my freedoms for your convenience
Precisely that trade is most of politics and regulation, be it "You have to drive on the right side of the road" or "You can't swear on FCC-licensed airwave broadcast." We took a very liberal stance to the Internet, and much of Western society seems to be reevaluating that stance in this era.
The challenge with the Internet is that accessing it is so ubiquitous that even if a parent wants to keep a child off it, it's pretty impossible. You can get on it at any public library. Certainly we're not banning children from libraries to keep them safe? That's unworkable.
You yourself assert that children will always find a way to access the Internet. The unfortunate conclusion drawn from the strongest firm of that assertion is that we must therefore make the Internet they can access child-safe.
(I recognize how this is a non-starter for many. My concern is that failure to engage the argument may leave those for whom it's a non-starter at a severe disadvantage as the opposing view consolidates political power to effect change. I think the result of saying l assuming the status-quo holds is we're going to wake up one day to find half the Internet ID-walled and the other half behind Tor).
I didn't say it is a productive argument, I said, "I reject the assertion that it is a "practical impossibility" for a parent to properly raise their child." I don't believe it is possible to make a productive argument in the United States because the overwhelming majority of Americans lack the capacity to think critically and make good decisions. The authoritarians who run our country will eliminate anonymity and privacy and there isn't a damn thing anyone can do about it. It doesn't matter what argument you make.
And in my parent comment above that, I further qualified that by saying, "No, in a free society the government doesn't decide, via its monopoly on violence, what it's okay for consenting adults to say or hear. And in a sane society, parents are responsible for policing what their children see and hear, and not the government. Our society is neither free or sane, but the point stands. Freedom is anathema to the authoritarians who are in the process of stripping us of our few remaining freedoms and what remains of our anonymity and our privacy.
That doesn't mean that we can't jawbone about how a free society should operate, and what people who give lip service to the concept of freedom should support. We can also point out that the authoritarians in charge could care less about the welfare or safety of your children, and must laugh to themselves about how stupid the masses are to trade what few freedoms they have left for the illusion of safety for their children. At least for now. Until posting unregulated messages is outlawed for the safety of the children, with all the usual suspects cheering it on.
I strongly suspect it doesn't include 4chan of the future operating like 4chan in the early 2000s. Things do change sometimes. But hey, in the short run? They certainly can in the US. They will probably be banned in the UK very soon for anyone who doesn't know how to set up a VPN or access Tor, but across that bridge when we come to it right?
Which to be clear, is nothing but a fiction you built yourself in order to insist on your failed arguments, 4chan is a 18+ site and it enforces the rule. It's literally the second rule of the site just below not posting illegal content.
> every voice of opposition to totalitarianism
Unless your definition of "opposition to totalitarianism" is very different from mine, I would hope it is transparent that the examples given in the comment you replied to are not such voices.
Bunch of jihadists.
No, China is smart enough not expect foreign courts to carry out the work of the Chinese censorship regime.
Of course ofcom knows its power is limited, that shouldn't stop it attempting to do it's job, however much that job might irk foreign operators publishing to ofcoms jurisdiction.
The fact is the US has different standards to the UK. It doesn't mean one is right and one is wrong but it does mean that those differences will cause cultural and legal friction that responsible operators will attempt to diminish within reason, while others will attempt to capitalize for publicity.
We got our own problems with Authoritarianism. There is no need to protect our borders from something our own government and corporations are practicing day in and day out on our own people, in our own country. You might want to acknowledge that first, before assuming we got problems across the pond.
And BTW the real answer is to enforce antitrust and put an end to Citizens United to prevent money from flowing into our political institutions and reign in these corrupt business. You might want to add that as well to your point about the GRANITE Act
Number of US media organisations that have reached a financial settlement with Donald Trump: 6 (totalling about $91.5 million).
Number of UK media organisations that have reached a financial settlement with a UK Prime Minister: 0
The world wide web remains undefeated.
The problem is America cannot stand alone - everyone needs friends
The problem is platforms that millions do use and have no ability to counter Russian, Mossad and other foreign influence. The problem is that we are all complete cucks to Israel and they've done everything in their power to ensure the likes of Tik Tok will never be able to teach children about their genocide or dragging us into their forever wars. The problem is private equity and corporate dystopia and our cretinous politicians.
Any examples?
Reddit is complete trash, nobody can say anything that goes against the authoritarian mods on any subreddit, regardless of if those are good or bad rules, it's just an echo chamber. Twitter is hyperreal at this point, it's impossible to spend more than 3 minutes without being angry at the world.
4chan is so full of fake news, CIA/FSB/Mossad shills and doctored screenshots that it forces you to be skeptical, its not for the masses but I've seen genuine nuggets of gold on there. It's one of the few actual communities, where people actually "get" each other, which is ironic I suppose.