4chan Sends Hilarious, Hamster-Filled Reminder That U.S. Companies Need Not Follow British Speech Regulations

"We are not in the mood to discuss the matter further, and have not been in the mood for 250 years."

It's not every day that I wish more U.S. tech platforms could be like 4chan. But the message board certainly has the right idea when it comes to the U.K. speech police.

Ofcom, the U.K.'s communications regulator, has fined 4chan £520,000 for failing to implement age verification procedures and other measures required by the U.K.'s Online Safety Act. The penalty includes "£450,000 for not having age checks in place to prevent children seeing porn on its site," per Ofcom.

Ofcom also cited 4chan for failing to provide Ofcom with an "illegal content risk assessment" and for not including a section in its terms of service "specifying how individuals are to be protected from illegal content."

4chan responded to Ofcom with an AI-generated picture of a giant hamster eating a peanut.

This was attached to a truly excellent email response to Ofcom from 4chan lawyer Preston Byrne (who also explains the hamster joke backstory here). "Thanks. As has been explained to your agency, ad nauseam, the United Kingdom lost the American Revolutionary War," the email starts. "We are not in the mood to discuss the matter further, and have not been in the mood for 250 years."

After the hamster image—Nigel J. Whiskerford "dressed up as Godzilla and holding an equally giant peanut"—the email goes on to state that 4chan "reserves all rights and waives none," including "the right to sue you again and/or to respond to future correspondence with an even larger rodent, such as a marmot."

This is exactly the attitude U.S. companies should be taking with foreign authorities intent on forcing their online speech regulations on the rest of us.

American companies like 4chan—which has no headquarters or assets in the U.K.—are not required to follow U.K. internet laws.

4chan's "only content regulator is the First Amendment," wrote Nico Perrino, executive vice president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. "The Brits don't get to colonize American companies operating out of America."

Those U.S. free speech protections include "the right to speak anonymously, as every 4chan user does, and the right to refuse foreign age verification mandates," as Byrne posted on X. The U.K.'s "2023 law doesn't override 250 years of American independence."

Ofcom director of enforcement Suzanne Cater told the BBC: "The UK is setting new standards for online safety" and will "take robust enforcement action against firms that fall short." She said that "companies—wherever they're based—are not allowed to sell unsafe toys to children in the UK. And society has long protected youngsters from things like alcohol, smoking, and gambling."

The U.K. has the legal right to try to shield children from whatever it likes, however it likes, within its own borders. If it thinks 4chan is dangerous, it can block U.K. residents from accessing 4chan by requiring internet service providers to block access and so on.

But it cannot punish "an American publisher with no assets in the country" for failing to comply with U.K. regulations, as Perrino points out. It cannot decide that its way of barring children from certain online speech must be the way of the whole world.

Alas, 4chan is far from alone in facing such attempts at global speech policing from Ofcom. "U.K. regulators have quietly been pressuring U.S. companies to comply with their orders, sparking outrage among a small but tenacious coalition of American legislators and free speech lawyers," Reason's Meagan O'Rourke reported in January.

O'Rourke noted how Byrne—who also represents Gab.com, Kiwi Farms, and Personal Autonomy LLC—was drafting model legislation to "allow U.S. companies and individuals to sue foreign governments that attempt to censor Americans."

Lately, Byrne has been helping to draft a "UK Free Speech Act 2026" as a model bill that a member of Parliament could pick up.

We are giving it to the world, anyone can pick it up.

I will happily speak with any MP in any party who is interested in expanding free speech in the UK. The bill is a menu of options. Any one of them would move the needle closer to the US 1A position.https://t.co/lAi5k0TAxY

— Preston Byrne (@prestonjbyrne) March 22, 2026

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In the News 

A California police officer has been criminally charged for allegedly taking bribes of money and sex from a sex business. Officer Benjamin Yarbrough of the Hayward Police Department faces one count of accepting a bribe, a felony. The Alameda County District Attorney's Office handled the investigation after the Hayward Police Department passed it off owing to the police chief's "familial relationship" with Yarbrough.

The matter is largely being framed as an issue of police corruption. But it also showcases the way that the criminalization of prostitution can make it easier for cops to exploit and abuse sex workers. If a police officer can throw you in jail if you won't sleep with him, is that really a free exchange of sex for protection?

The Mercury News reports:

On April 2, 2025, Yarbrough received a sexual service and took $1,000 as a bribe in response to extorting Yangiong Xiong "with the implied threat of arrest, or as payment to influence his present or prospective official duties as a police officer in ways such as providing protection, investigating competitors or providing intelligence about law enforcement activity," according to a declaration of probable cause.

The district attorney's office opened an investigation after San Jose police arrested Xiong in a separate case and discovered Yarbrough allegedly had frequent contact with her.

The declaration stated that Yarbrough used his work and personal cellphones "to arrange personal sexual appointments, receive free sexual services and further receive $1,000 after identifying himself as a friendly police officer who wanted to keep the operation safe."

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On Substack 

'Links between social media use and mental wellness in youth are an artifact of other factors.' Chris Ferguson, lead author of a new paper published in Current Psychology, explains the results in a new post to his substack, Grimoire Manor:

In a recent peer-reviewed paper I confirm what many people have been saying: that any weak correlations between time spent on social media and youth mental health are due to "third" variables. In other words, youth who are stressed by their real lives may turn to social media a bit more a compensatory mechanism rather than social media causing those mental health problems.

I analyzed a sample of thousands of youth in the UK in the BrainWaves dataset (and a heartfelt thank you to the BrainWaves folks for giving me access). This included data on hours per day spent on social media as well as several outcomes related to mental health (depression and anxiety, mental wellbeing, quality of life, self-esteem, social phobia1 as well as friendships and other activities).

More here.

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More Sex & Tech 

• What's in Trump's new "National AI Legislative Framework"? Reason's Jack Nicastro takes a look.

• Data on Australia's ban on under-16-year-olds using social media show the law "has barely moved the needle," notes Mike Masnick at Techdirt. "The usage drop was only marginally larger than the normal seasonal dip that happens every year. In other words, the 'world-first' ban achieved roughly the same effect as summer ending." Masnick suggests this is worse than just being useless, since "the ban selected for vulnerability and filtered against resourcefulness."

• J.D. Tuccille reports on last week's U.S. Senate Commerce Committee hearing on Section 230.

• Halter's AI-powered collars for cows "create a virtual fence for cattle and enable farmers to monitor the animals' locations and health indicators through an app," reports Bloomberg. "Its collars, which are solar-powered, connect to farmers' phones to allow them to manage pastures remotely—for example, a rancher can herd their cows using vibrations and audio cues from the collars."

• According to Spotify's self-reported data, 2025 saw "more than 13,800 artists who generated at least $100,000" from the site.

• Meet the Alabama gubernatorial candidate who wants to "legalize sex stores," "make Montgomery a strip club city," and "bring prayer back in schools."

Comments

[BYODB]

This isn't a conversation about free speech rights in the Untied States, it's simply noting that the UK has no jurisdiction in the United States.

The UK will probably end up with a 'great firewall' rather like China, if they don't already. Guess which side of the firewall American websites like 4Chan will end up on?

The problem, if it's a problem at all, is that American companies want that sweet sweet market share in the UK so they knuckle under for their government and just so happen to enforce those rules everywhere in order to be allowed to keep doing business there.

You see the same problem with companies doing business in China, or even California for that matter.

At some point, places like the UK will do enough damage that those companies can't hold their nose and make a profit there, and then they'll wonder why their internet sucks so bad and doesn't have anything but BBC content.

[mad.casual]

This isn't a conversation about free speech rights in the Untied States, it's simply noting that the UK has no jurisdiction in the United States.

Why do you hate womb/front-hole havers?

[mad.casual]

But it also showcases the way that the criminalization of prostitution can make it easier for cops to exploit and abuse sex workers.

The same way you would exploit and abuse workers of any other profession like software engineers, reporters, masons, farm laborers... because, you know, 1 in 5 engineers on a college campus designs a bridge or makes airplane engine parts without their consent.

[Idaho-Bob]

Preston Byrne
@prestonjbyrne
...mind you: in the only country in which 4chan operates, the United States, it is breaking no law and indeed its conduct is expressly protected by the First Amendment.

The UK is fining a company that doesn't operate in the UK. This sounds a lot like the time they said they would arrest Americans for hate speech.

[Uomo Del Ghiaccio]

I don't know anything about 4chan, other than hearing about it. The UK can go suck it in my opinion however. While I have issues with the USA forcing it's will on the world, I'm equally annoyed by european countries trying to force their peculiar and often demented rules on others. There is an elitist attitude, where some european countries still believe that they rule the world. They have lost stature and are more akin to parasites that rulers of the world. Kudo's to 4chan to remind them of their scope of power.

[MWAocdoc]

It's worse than that. If you go to the UK in person as a tourist, they can arrest you for saying what you just posted here. 4chan can get away with refusing to pay the fines in this scenario, and I'm glad someone is willing to stand up for their rights, but others may not be aware that they don't, even as visitors, have American free-speech rights when they travel outside the US.

[mad.casual]

Data on Australia's ban on under-16-year-olds using social media show the law "has barely moved the needle,"

And by "barely moved the needle" he means, "moved the needle down" by, in his own words, "marginally [more] than the normal seasonal dip that happens every year" in addition to the general between-season downward trend.

JFC, if I were rooting for the social media companies, the graph doesn't look good. But I suppose if anyone would know "worse than just useless" it would be Masnick and his groupies.

[Davedave]

The 4chan thing is performative trolling. The UK's law has a process to follow before sites can be blocked. The last step, after asking for responses or changes, is issuing a fine. If that is not paid, then blocking is required. No-one ever expected 4chan to pay or comply, but the rule of law means they have to be given the chance.

[MWAocdoc]

It's not just paying the fine, it's also complying with the rest of the law.

[Chuck P. (Now with less Sarc more snark)]

'Links between social media use and mental wellness in youth are an artifact of other factors.'

That other factor being teachers and media forcing existential angst upon them in the form of Marxist propaganda. Kids being miserable is an absolute necessity for revolution.