Ofcom fines 4chan £20K and counting for violating UK's Online Safety Act

Summary

Ofcom, the UK's Online Safety Act regulator, has fined online message board 4chan £20,000 ($26,680) for failing to protect children from harmful content. The fine could rise by a further £6,000 – £100 per day for a maximum 60 days – if it continues to ignore its duties to comply with the regulator's request for information regarding two separate matters. 4chan can stop the additional fines by providing copies of its illegal content risk assessments and information about its qualifying worldwide revenue to Ofcom. The enforcement action announced today is months in the making after Ofcom first opened an investigation into the notorious image board on June 10. It requested the aforementioned risk assessments on April 14, and to this day 4chan still has not complied, the regulator said. When opening the investigation, Ofcom said it was looking to understand whether 4chan has failed, or is failing, to abide by its duties under the Online Safety Act. The watchdog also highlighted that the maximum penalties for these failures, as specified in the legislation, are £18 million ($24 million) or 10 percent of an organization's qualifying worldwide revenue, whichever is greater. The Register contacted 4chan for its side of the story. Ofcom's fine is the first made under the Online Safety Act since in-scope organizations' illegal content duties came into force on March 17. It also announced two provisional decisions to take action against file-sharing service Im.ge and pornography service provider AVS Group Ltd for similar failures to respond to information requests. In Im.ge's case, this relates to its duty to implement measures to prevent the circulation of child sexual abuse material (CSAM), and AVS Group was rapped over its duty to implement age-check mechanisms. Both organizations have the chance to appeal Ofcom's findings before it makes a final decision on how to reprimand them. Another porn provider, Youngtek Solutions Ltd, is also under an expanded investigation over it...