UK Regulator Ofcom Has Fined 4chan £520,000 Under a Law That Doesn’t Apply in the US
March 19, 2026
The regulator issued a £520,000 fine; the lawyer replied with a picture of a hamster.
The regulator issued a £520,000 fine; the lawyer replied with a picture of a hamster.
One developer has already registered their distribution under the law’s own definitions and declared intentional noncompliance on the front page.
A jury just ruled that making songs about what police did in your own home is exactly the kind of speech the First Amendment was built for.
The law stops the government from taking your location data, it says nothing about buying it.
Sweden built the world’s most seamless digital identity system, and someone just walked off with the blueprints.
Brazil built a national age verification system, called it child protection, and buried the surveillance infrastructure in the footnotes.
Blocking a Ukrainian education portal and killing Google Drive for 12 hours is what happens when private media companies get to shut down the internet with no court, no notice, and no appeal.
The six-month deadline to fix the consent screens and retention logs is the least interesting part of a ruling that quietly confirms governments are mandating surveillance infrastructure they haven’t thought through.
Modest but meaningful surveillance reforms, warrant requirements, parallel construction limits, may die on the vine if they stay hitched to a bill the Senate won’t pass.
The ad that followed you around the internet turns out to be the least invasive thing it was doing.
Parliament won the battle over mass scanning, but the version of this law that actually passes could still harm encrypted communication forever.
The system that just leaked directors’ home addresses through a back button is also the one the UK government plans to store biometric data in.
Starting May 8, every Instagram DM becomes readable by the same company that sells ads against everything else you do on the platform.
The government insists it isn’t surveilling ordinary Canadians; it’s just requiring every company to store their location data, device information, and daily movements for a year, just in case.
Microsoft built a product that knows your cholesterol levels, your step count, and your last hospital visit and faces none of the legal consequences your doctor would for mishandling any of it.
The woman tasked with policing the internet has decided that getting sued across the Atlantic isn’t a setback, it’s a performance review.
Spain’s government will now grade tech companies on speech removal twice a year, with the same officials defining what counts as hate setting the scores.
Attacks are usually from human error, not technology, which is why a five-minute audit is the most important thing you should be doing.
Uthmeier’s April 8 deadline gives platforms one month to build the identity surveillance infrastructure that Florida’s child-protection framing was designed to make you forget about.
313 people documented what a missile attack on their country looked like in real time, and their government’s response was to make that a crime.
The law successfully drove millions of Australians to VPNs and unregulated sites.
A system the government is describing as a digital convenience tool could, under legislation its own consultation proposed, become searchable by police without people’s knowledge or consent.
The DVLA was built to check whether people can drive, and the Lords just voted to turn it into the largest real-name face recognition database the police have ever had access to.
The bill’s child protection framing obscures what it actually creates: a legal architecture for government-controlled internet access that has no natural stopping point.
The regulator issued a £520,000 fine; the lawyer replied with a picture of a hamster.
One developer has already registered their distribution under the law’s own definitions and declared intentional noncompliance on the front page.
A jury just ruled that making songs about what police did in your own home is exactly the kind of speech the First Amendment was built for.
The law stops the government from taking your location data, it says nothing about buying it.
Sweden built the world’s most seamless digital identity system, and someone just walked off with the blueprints.
Brazil built a national age verification system, called it child protection, and buried the surveillance infrastructure in the footnotes.
Blocking a Ukrainian education portal and killing Google Drive for 12 hours is what happens when private media companies get to shut down the internet with no court, no notice, and no appeal.
The six-month deadline to fix the consent screens and retention logs is the least interesting part of a ruling that quietly confirms governments are mandating surveillance infrastructure they haven’t thought through.
Modest but meaningful surveillance reforms, warrant requirements, parallel construction limits, may die on the vine if they stay hitched to a bill the Senate won’t pass.
The ad that followed you around the internet turns out to be the least invasive thing it was doing.
Parliament won the battle over mass scanning, but the version of this law that actually passes could still harm encrypted communication forever.
The system that just leaked directors’ home addresses through a back button is also the one the UK government plans to store biometric data in.
Starting May 8, every Instagram DM becomes readable by the same company that sells ads against everything else you do on the platform.
The government insists it isn’t surveilling ordinary Canadians; it’s just requiring every company to store their location data, device information, and daily movements for a year, just in case.
Microsoft built a product that knows your cholesterol levels, your step count, and your last hospital visit and faces none of the legal consequences your doctor would for mishandling any of it.
The woman tasked with policing the internet has decided that getting sued across the Atlantic isn’t a setback, it’s a performance review.
Spain’s government will now grade tech companies on speech removal twice a year, with the same officials defining what counts as hate setting the scores.
Attacks are usually from human error, not technology, which is why a five-minute audit is the most important thing you should be doing.
Uthmeier’s April 8 deadline gives platforms one month to build the identity surveillance infrastructure that Florida’s child-protection framing was designed to make you forget about.
313 people documented what a missile attack on their country looked like in real time, and their government’s response was to make that a crime.
The law successfully drove millions of Australians to VPNs and unregulated sites.
A system the government is describing as a digital convenience tool could, under legislation its own consultation proposed, become searchable by police without people’s knowledge or consent.
The DVLA was built to check whether people can drive, and the Lords just voted to turn it into the largest real-name face recognition database the police have ever had access to.
The bill’s child protection framing obscures what it actually creates: a legal architecture for government-controlled internet access that has no natural stopping point.