Like Watching a Battle Between Pol Pot and Slobodan Milosovitch

4chan and Kiwi Farms are have sued the UK to block their enforcing the censorious and draconian Online Safety Act against them.

It appears that the UK ffice of Communications (Ofcom) has been making legal demands 

Let’s be clear upfront: 4chan and Kiwi Farms are not the heroes of internet freedom. [Their community members are nasty pieces of work, with Kiwi Farms arguably being the worst such lot on the internet] Both sites are notorious cesspools that have enabled harassment campaigns, doxxing, and some genuinely awful behavior over the years. They’re the kinds of places where maladjusted people gather to egg each other on toward increasingly toxic actions. Most reasonable people wouldn’t shed a tear if they disappeared tomorrow.

But here’s the thing about free speech principles: they’re not just for the speech you like. And when it comes to the UK’s disastrous Online Safety Act, even trolls can make valid constitutional points.

Last week, the two sites teamed up to file a lawsuit in US federal court against Ofcom, the UK agency in charge of regulating internet speech under the OSA, claiming the regulator’s attempts to enforce British law against wholly American companies violate their constitutional rights. The case highlights the fundamental absurdity of the UK’s approach to internet regulation—and raises serious questions about what happens when every country decides it can regulate the global internet. 

The Complaint: A Surprisingly Coherent Constitutional Challenge

The 22-page complaint, filed in Washington D.C., doesn’t mince words about what Ofcom has been up to. According to the filing, Ofcom has been sending “legally binding information notices” to both sites demanding they comply with UK law, despite having no operations, infrastructure, or legal presence in Britain beyond being accessible to UK internet users.

………

That’s worth pausing on. Ofcom’s first round of enforcement actions targeted exclusively American websites. One can argue that these four sites (the other two, SaSu—or Sanctioned Suicide—and Gab are also among the most controversial websites on the internet) can be seen as particularly problematic, but this sure does feel like an effort by the UK to regulate American companies.

………

The specific demands Ofcom has made are both breathtaking in their scope and chilling in their implications. According to the lawsuit, Ofcom has threatened both sites with:

civil fines, criminal charges, criminal fines, 6 months’ imprisonment when tried summarily, or even imprisonment for up to two years when tried on indictment.

For 4chan specifically, the threats escalated over several months. The complaint details a series of increasingly aggressive communications:

On April 14, 2025, Ofcom sent a so-called “legally binding information notice” to 4chan… The 4chan Information Notice stated that failure to comply with it “may also constitute a criminal offence” and that failure to provide the requested information in readable form to Ofcom “may result in a fine of £18 million or 10% of 4chan’s worldwide turnover, arrest, and/or imprisonment for a term of up to two years, or a fine (or both).” 

The lawsuit claims that this violates both sections of the Communications Decency Act and the 1st, 4th and 5th amendments of the US constitution, and that there was a war roughly 250 years ago that established that Britain has no soverignty over the United States of America.

They claim that the actions of Ofcom, because they are an attempt to regulate commercial entities in the United States, they are not covered by sovereign immunity.

My guess is that the courts will throw this out on the above grounds, it does seem to be an official government act by Ofcom, but we'll see.