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.
The regulatory pressure and the many rules have caused many of them to shut down, despite some operating for decades.
‘Locked Out of UK Internet Space’
If Gab or other companies do not comply, Ofcom can use enforcement powers.
John Carr, one of the world’s leading authorities on children’s and young people’s use of digital technologies, told The Epoch Times by email that the regulator “has the power to go to a UK court asking for orders which could compel different actors to withdraw services from Gab if it remains non-compliant with Ofcom’s directives.”
It can, for example, apply to the court for “business disruption measures (BDMs).”
These measures allow the blocking of noncompliant services, meaning UK users could lose access to certain platforms. BDMs could involve requesting payment or advertising providers to withdraw services or ask internet service providers (ISPs) to restrict access.
He said it was a “negative form of enforcement insofar as, ultimately, Ofcom can get them locked out of UK internet space,” adding that it would be a business decision.
“If they don’t have many UK users they will probably defy Ofcom and big it up as brave defiance. It’s not hard to write the script,” he said. “There is no legal basis on which an overseas company can claim it has an exemption from applying local law.”
Legal commentator Tony Dowson told The Epoch Times that the legislation does allow services to be regulated even if they are not incorporated in the UK.
He said that there is a legal test in the law over whether it has “links” with the UK, which can mean “having a significant number of UK users or the UK being one target audience.”
Dowson said that another test in the law assesses if the service is capable of being used in the UK and if there are “reasonable grounds to think that it poses a risk of serious harm through its content.”
“So, Ofcom is entitled to, under the Act, to regulate services outside the UK, as unrealistic as it could be in practice,” he said.
The UK has blocked sites via court order before.
In May 2012, British courts ordered major ISPs, including Sky, Virgin Media, TalkTalk, O2, and Everything Everywhere (EE), to block access to The Pirate Bay, a file-sharing website, after a ruling found it facilitated copyright infringement.
‘Key Figures No Longer Buy the Fiction’
U.S. lawyer Preston Byrne said he believes that enforcement of the law could set it on a political collision course with the United States.
“London should brace for significant political blowback,” he told The Epoch Times by email.
Byrne is urging American companies that received letters from Ofcom to contact his law firm, Byrne & Storm. He stated that the websites’ decision to operate from the United States appears to be a lawful exercise of their First Amendment rights.
“The UK is, in effect, asserting that the First Amendment no longer exists,” he said. “It’s increasingly clear to me that key figures in Congress and the White House no longer buy the fiction that the UK is merely trying to make the internet a bit safer for kids, and now believe the UK is trying to undo the U.S. Constitution.”
Screenshot of attempts to access the video site Rumble in France. Epoch Times
James Tidmarsh, an international lawyer based in Paris specializing in complex international commercial litigation and arbitration, told The Epoch Times that he suspects this case “is going to attract a lot of attention [UK authorities] don’t need.”
Tidmarsh referenced France’s decision to block the American site Rumble.
In November 2022, Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski turned “off France entirely” after the company refused to comply with the country’s demand for the removal of Russian state-media accounts.
Tariffs
Tidmarsh mulled that the UK could also face threats of tariffs.
This year, U.S. President Donald Trump issued a memorandum seeking to protect American companies and innovators from what he called “overseas extortion.”
Much of Trump’s ire has been focused on the European Digital Services Act (DSA), with the European Commission staring down a series of deadlines to decide whether Apple, Meta, and Google are in breach of the EU’s digital competition laws.
The chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Brendan Carr, appointed to the FCC helm by Trump in January, said that DSA’s approach was “something that is incompatible with both our free speech tradition in America and the commitments that these technology companies have made to a diversity of opinions.”
The U.S. State Department said in a March 20 statement on social media that it was “concerned about freedom of expression in the United Kingdom.”
The department was referring to the case of 64-year-old Livia Tossici-Bolt, a campaigner who opposes abortion and was recently charged with infringing a public spaces protection order after holding a sign reading “here to talk” near an abortion facility in Bournemouth, England.
Tidmarsh said he believed there was a risk that the special relationship between the UK and the United States could be affected.
“We, as in Europe, still rely on the U.S. for so much, culturally, commercially,“ Tidmarsh said. ”My first reaction seeing this was, ‘Oh my God, how did they get the timing so wrong?’ I mean, if this goes across Trump’s desk, I mean he can very easily just extend all these tariffs to the UK.”
An Ofcom spokesperson told The Epoch Times that services that want to operate in the UK must comply with UK laws.
“The new duties that have just come into force under the UK’s Online Safety Act have free speech at their core and are all about protecting people in the UK from illegal content and activity like child sexual abuse material and fraud,” the spokesperson said. “We’re currently assessing platforms’ compliance with these new laws, and our codes of practice can help them do that. But, make no mistake, providers who fail to introduce measures to protect UK users from illegal content can expect to face enforcement action.”
