Canada #74
New UK Internet Policing Law Targets US Online Forums
Authored by Owen Evans via The Epoch Times Saturday, Apr 05, 2025
Online forums based in the United States that rely on First Amendment protections are getting caught up in internet regulations in the UK, where they now risk being blocked under recent legislation.
Hailed by the British government as the world’s first online safety law, the Online Safety Act (OSA) became law in October 2023, but the duties related to the regulation of so-called illegal content took effect on March 17.
The law requires online platforms to implement measures to protect people in the UK from criminal activity, with far-reaching implications for the internet.
Gab, an American social media network, positions itself as a champion of free speech.
Gab CEO Andrew Torba said in a March 26 social media post that the UK government has demanded that it submit to “their new censorship regime under the UK Online Safety Act.”
Gab—which has no legal presence in the UK—was informed in a letter from UK regulator Ofcom on March 16 that it falls specifically within the scope of the law and must comply.
Under the OSA, sites that allow user interaction, including forums, must have completed an illegal harm risk assessment by March 16 and submitted it to Ofcom by March 31.
Ofcom warned that noncompliance could result in enforcement action—including massive fines of 18 million pounds (more than $23 million), or 10 percent of a company’s annual revenue—or even court orders to block access in the UK.
OSA was designed to ensure tech companies take more responsibility for user safety.
Under the act, social media platforms and other user-to-user service providers must proactively police harmful and illegal content such as revenge and extreme pornography, sex trafficking, harassment, coercive or controlling behavior, and cyberstalking.
Gab has refused to comply with the OSA.
“We will not comply. We will not pay one cent,” Torba said.
In a statement to The Epoch Times, Gab said that this “law operates outside their jurisdiction.”
Gab’s lawyers said that their client is a U.S. company with no presence outside of the United States.
“The most fundamental of America’s laws—the First Amendment to our Constitution—ensures Gab’s right to provide a service that allows anyone, anywhere, to receive and impart political opinions of any kind, free from state interference, on its US-based servers,” they said in a statement last month.
In 2018, Gab was cut off by payment processors after 46-year-old Robert Bowers allegedly posted anti-Semitic comments on the platform just hours before shooting to death 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue.
“I was horrified that this terrorist, this alleged terrorist, was on our site,” Torba said at the time.
Gab also refused to comply with legislation in other countries.
The company claimed it received a data request from the German government concerning a user who, in 2022, made a comment that was deemed offensive by a German politician.
“This comment, which referred to the politician’s weight, has prompted the German government to demand that we hand over the user’s data so they can identify and potentially imprison them for up to five years,” Torba said at the time.
Gab has also been banned from Google and Apple app stores, as both require apps to enforce strict content moderation policies.
Web forum Kiwifarms said it also received a letter from Ofcom.
The platform is now blocking users in the UK because of the legislation.
British users are now greeted with a message:
“You are accessing this website from the United Kingdom. This is not a good idea. The letter states the UK asserts authority over any website that has a ’significant number of United Kingdom users’. This ambiguous metric could include any site on the Internet and specifically takes aim at the people using a website instead of the website itself.”
The unsigned message added that the situation in the UK is “now so dire I fear for the safety of any user connecting to the Internet from the country.”
The law has already affected dozens of smaller UK websites, from forums for cyclists, hobbyists, and hamster owners, to those supporting divorced fathers.
More:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/new-uk-internet-policing-law-targets-us-online-forums