The UK speech regulator's chief executive, Dame Melanie Dawes, told MPs this week that the regulator won’t be able to recover every Online Safety Act fine. Nine of the eleven fines it has issued remain unpaid. 4chan was fined £520,000 plus £800 a day, and its lawyer replied with a picture of an AI-generated hamster. When Ofcom wrote again, he sent another hamster. In July, Ofcom closed a case against an American forum it had fined £950,000 because it had run out of legal routes. Then it asked the government for more powers. In the same hearing, Dawes said the UK’s under-16 social media ban will be “much more draconian” for Meta than its US settlement. Those were her words. The only way to keep under-16s off a platform is to check the age of every adult on it.

Reclaim The Net: Free Speech, Privacy, Digital Rights

UK Speech Regulator Ofcom Struggles To Enforce Censorship Law Fines Abroad

Ofcom can write the fines, but foreign courts get to decide whether anyone pays them.