r/technology • u/EmbarrassedHelp • 21h ago

Politics Is 4chan the Perfect ‘Pirate Bay’ Poster Child to Justify Wider UK Site-Blocking?

https://torrentfreak.com/uk-govt-finds-ideal-pirate-bay-poster-boy-to-sell-blocking-of-non-pirate-sites-250824/
139 Upvotes

79% Upvoted

36 comments sorted by

139

u/Prior_Coyote_4376 21h ago edited 21h ago

According to Peter Kyle, Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, those with an opinion on the legislation fall into two categories:

1) People who want to protect kids and

Oh this next part will be measured and rational.

I’m just going to say you’re censoring access to resources that protect kids. Checkmate, idiot.

52

u/Deviantdefective 21h ago

Peter Kyle should be sacked for what he said absolutely fucking despicable. This censorship is only going to get worse as well.

19

u/Metal-fan77 17h ago edited 17h ago

He needs his pc looked at just for that disgusting accusation.

3

u/Deviantdefective 17h ago

Absolutely fucking vile statement to make about people.

3

u/forgotpassword_aga1n 15h ago

Plus Jimmy Savile deliberately never owned a computer because he didn't have the technical skills to not get caught.

67

u/EmbarrassedHelp 21h ago

Peter Kyle is also friends with child predators himself, yet he's seen in the UK media and government as being safe and credible.

24

u/LionoftheNorth 16h ago

Fucking hell, you weren't joking. From Wikipedia:

There has been criticism of Kyle's previous 'long term' friendship with Ivor Caplin.

In June 2024 Caplin was suspended from the Labour Party due to "serious allegations" made about him. The allegations were not made public.

In January 2025 Caplin was arrested in Brighton by Sussex Police on suspicion of engaging in online sexual communications with a child, after being involved in an operation carried out by a group of anti-paedophile activists. He was subsequently released on bail, extended a number of times, with the most recent extension requiring Caplin to return to answer bail on 8 October 2025.

25

u/Prior_Coyote_4376 19h ago

Sorry you said Peterfile?

I may have misheard but that would just be a horrible nickname to be stuck with

60

u/Festering-Fecal 17h ago

It was never about the children.

It's about controlling the Internet and next up is trying to ban VPNs and requiring a license to even access the Internet.

18

u/ydnubj 16h ago

“Oi mate, you got a loicense for that modem?

2

u/Grayson_Poise 5h ago

They already do that for TVs, so that's not out of the question.

2

u/m15otw 4h ago

Ehh, licensing is not going to happen. The "TV License" is just a "jump through hoops to avoid" tax, it's not really a license.

Not to say the law isn't total BS, it is. And the idea is to control the internet. Id like to see them figure out how to write laws that ban VPNs except for work, lol.

1

u/MontasJinx 4h ago

When you know who is doing what and where, it makes it a lot easier to tax. And the tech companies will earn revenue from verification. Win fucking win

16

u/DotGroundbreaking50 16h ago

arrest the politicians raping kids would be the perfect poster child

2

u/lurkmastersenpai 2h ago

How would society function with no politicians?

14

u/sinnur 13h ago

Blocking 4chan (or any site) won’t solve the problem—it just pushes it underground. When platforms are public, at least law enforcement and the public can see what’s happening. Drive it underground and it shifts to harder-to-track spaces: encrypted chat apps, IRC, Usenet, invite-only forums, Discord servers. Once hidden, oversight is gone, but the activity doesn’t stop.

It’s the same pattern we saw with Prohibition: banning alcohol didn’t end drinking, it just moved it into speakeasies where crime flourished and oversight vanished. These protectionist laws don’t eliminate piracy or extremism, they just make it harder to monitor and ultimately more dangerous.

2

u/metalyger 10h ago

And if they do restrict VPN access, imagine more people learning to use a TOR browser, and being far more exposed to scams and hackers.

5

u/Difficult_Ferret4010 9h ago

People called this pretty much the moment the news hit. I dont think Ofcom ever had any intention of taking this to court, and site blocking was always the goal, they just finally found someone who would fight back instead of simply blocking access to the UK.

Also, in regards to the US pushing back on these policies, just remember we've got our own. KOSA, Section 230 reform, and the Take It Down Act which is slowly approaching its May 2026 compliance deadline.

3

u/slightly_drifting 18h ago

Yea but there’s worse Chans out there. Not sure which are still there, but I remember lots of them. 

-75

u/Independent-Day-9170 19h ago

Yeah, it's fucking awful. CP, violence, software piracy, nazism, animal torture yada yada that shit site should have been shut down decades ago, after the first school shootings were planned on it.

Almost two decades ago I reported CP to FBI and they did absolutely nothing. Then I reported a planned school shooting, and they still did nothing, so I asked them WTF?!? and the FBI lied to my face and said that they were continuously monitoring 4Chan and would crack down on any illegal activities.

Well, at least we now know why JD Vance got pissy about the UK site blocking: 4Chan is the republican propaganda site which ended up on the wrong side of the Great British Firewall.

31

u/Headless_Human 19h ago

Yeah, it's fucking awful. CP, violence, software piracy, nazism, animal torture yada yada that shit site should have been shut down

You can most likely find more of that on Reddit.

6

u/ResilientBiscuit 17h ago

I'm not sure I would be sad if reddit got shut down. I am not convinced it is going more good than harm. But I also don't really want the government picking what gets censored.

-37

u/Independent-Day-9170 19h ago

No, you cannot. Not even on Xitter.

14

u/Headless_Human 18h ago

There is far more Violence/gore and piracy content on reddit than on 4Chan.

The other topics I don't know but considering that reddit is magnitudes bigger than 4chan and not everything is public there are most likely bigger communities for that stuff on reddit.

2

u/forgotpassword_aga1n 15h ago

There is far more Violence/gore and piracy content on reddit than on 4Chan.

Remember kids, watching a movie or the footy without paying is exactly as bad as watching a child being raped.

5

u/Mighty__Monarch 15h ago

Id bet otherwise.

Elon unbanned people who were banned explicitly because they were sharing CP. Wonder what theyre up to now.

7

u/RyanTheQ 18h ago

You have no way of knowing that they “did nothing.” Besides, the general consensus is that 4chan and the offshoots were fed honeypots.

-10

u/Independent-Day-9170 16h ago

Yeah, I kinda do know. And I also know that it's not possible for the FBI to conduct routine surveillance on a site with US users, they need FISA warrants for each case.

-94

u/ahfoo 20h ago

Just go away UK users, nobody cares. Same for Texas, Florida, etc. Bye!

50

u/LegateLaurie 20h ago

Not fighting censorship is how the internet dies. First it's a few places, then it's KOSA - so the whole US - Canada, Australia, the EU, etc.

3

u/praqueviver 20h ago

Its already coming to Brazil, lots of outrage over a guy that exploited teens for social network content. For this reason lots of voices are supporting measures like what the UK is doing.

3

u/EC36339 17h ago

Why did this get downvoted?

9

u/GlitchyGecko97 19h ago

Because these issues surely won't spread to other countries if people don't stand up against them now

-4

u/EC36339 17h ago

Funny, when I said "Can't we just cut the internet cables to the UK", I only got upvotes.

Is this a time zone thing?