Infamous website 4chan to be investigated by UK communications regulator

Britain’s communications regulator Ofcom has announced its intention to investigate the notorious imageboard 4chan alongside several other sites for hosting illegal content and failing to verify users’ ages.

The investigation will be launched under the country’s Online Safety Act which introduced a number of safety and security requirements on platforms to prevent children from accessing inappropriate content such as pornography and to remove illegal content.

According to the regulator, it has received complaints about illegal content on 4chan while the site’s administrators have failed to respond to requests for information. Ofcom said it is also investigating several other sites, including a pornographic video service and several file-sharing providers that may have shared potential child sexual abuse material.

Ofcom had announced in January that online pornography sites would by July have to verify that all of their users were adults or potentially face being fined up to £18 million ($22.3 million) or 10% of their global turnover, whichever is higher, or even having their domains blocked by the country’s internet service providers.

Historically, 4chan has hosted some of the ugliest material on the web. The anonymous messaging board has been linked to the nonconsensual sharing of intimate images, as well as online harassment and racist agitation, much of which could fall foul of British laws although are considered protected speech in the United States.

As previously reported by Recorded Future News, officials in Westminster are bracing for a clash with the White House as far-right social media platforms have dismissed legal requests from Ofcom tackling illegal online content.

British envoys have been making purposefully quiet representations to their counterparts in Washington over a separate, unrelated legal order controversially given to Apple earlier this year.

As one official told Recorded Future News, that quiet approach was based on a strong desire to avoid provoking an “unproductive public argument” with U.S. Vice President JD Vance on the issue of British laws impacting U.S.-based technology companies, particularly in the wake of Vance chastising European countries for what he deemed to be their regulators’ lack of commitment to free speech on U.S.-based platforms.

Ofcom had in March sent advisory letters to online platforms that serve content to users in the U.K. warning them that they have certain duties under the British law to tackle illegal content, for instance material that could amount to a racially aggravated public order offence.

At the time, two far-right platforms publicly rebuked Ofcom. Gab, a messaging platform with a significant neo-Nazi user base, and Kiwi Farms, a harassment forum, both described the legislation as amounting to censorship.

Lawyers representing Gab, in a response to Ofcom shared by the company’s chief executive Andrew Torba, dismissed the legal request.

The letter cited President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14149 and said: “It is the policy of the United States to ensure that no United States agent or agency facilitates the censorship of American citizens. It is also the policy of the United States to use tariffs to combat digital censorship.”

Kiwi Farms, which was previously blocked by Cloudflare because the company deemed the site’s content to pose an immediate threat to life, currently prevents users from the United Kingdom from directly accessing the forum, encouraging them instead to use a VPN or the Tor browser.

Despite the considerable efforts of the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to ingratiate himself with Trump to secure U.S. support for Ukraine, senior British ministers have said that they will not negotiate on compliance with the Online Safety Act.

While Vance had previously spoken out strongly in support of Elon Musk and his social media platform X — before Musk’s recent falling-out with Trump — it is not clear whether Vance would extend his support to platforms used by the Tree of Life synagogue shooter and to host the manifesto and video of the Christchurch shooter.