Imgur and UK Shenanigans

Right, this is a post I really didn’t want to god damn make but I have to bring it up because it affects this blog.

I released a post on the 6th of September 2025 for Episode 3 of Brave, I have not published anything since, the reason might not actually be visible if you are not UK-based.

And this is that reason:

If you don’t know what this is, this is an Imgur placeholder, all of the images I post on this blog are usually hosted by Imgur.

This is now what I see whenever I view any page on my blog without using a VPN to spoof my location to appear as if I’m connecting from somewhere else.

This is because as of September 30th 2025, Imgur has blocked any and all UK access to it’s website.

Why?

Well if you’re not in the UK and don’t look at the news often, the UK back in July began enforcing something known as the Online Safety Act, sometimes referred to as the OSA.

To summarise, the Online Safety Act is something put into place because the Government wishes to keep those under the age of 18 safe from being exposed to what it deems “Harmful” content online. If you are a parent, you may understand this to mean things of an adult nature that your child shouldn’t be engaging with.

As part of this enforcement, the Online Safety Act puts the onus on anyone hosting a Website that UK citizens can access and has a non-zero chance of hosting anything inappropriate for minors, or offensive, to force them to reconfigure their website to verify the ages of their users, how they do this is determined by an entity called Ofcom, which is the UK’s Communications Regulator

Failure to perform this will have Ofcom impose fines on that company for every day that they do not comply. And Success results in the average UK citizen getting blocked from these websites unless they identify themselves.

Now, this might sound all fine and dandy in theory, Websites are forced to bear the responsibility of protecting children on the internet, right?

In practice however, the following problems arise

Issue #1: Technical Capacity

Not every Website is hosted by a company, and even if it is, not every company hosting a website has the funds and capacity necessary to implement the technical requirements to exist on a UK netspace. This Act gives Ofcom essentially free reign to tell a Website what it must do to comply or face fines and this can be beyond the scope of what that Website can actually achieve.

As a result, in order to avoid fines, they will do what Imgur did, and simply block any and all UK access, meaning they have plausible deniability that they are serving a UK Audience at all.

Issue #2: Privacy

If you are accessing a website that hosts content of sensitive natures, it can be reasonably presumed that you would like to access it anonymously, the OSA forces a prospective user to confirm their age which the act only does by forcing a user to waive their right to privacy.

In other words, households that do not contain children whatsoever (and therefore computers able to access these websites have no danger of being accessed by a child) are being inconvenienced by an act for the sake of children they do not have and may never keep in their house.

Issue #3: Responsibility

It should be the right AND responsiblity of the parent to decide what content is acceptable for their child and protect them from content that is not, infact, parental controls already exist for many devices that allow a parent to dictate what content a child is allowed to access and before anyone says “Well, you can’t block everything”, there is such a thing known as a “Allowlist” where rather than banning specific sites, you allow them, and these can be updated as a Parent is asked and given the opportunity to verify these sites for safety.

Issue #4: Reach and Authority

The 4th and final issue is that Ofcom essentially has to contact every single website hosting company in the world, not just in the UK, and demand they conform to the Laws imposed in the UK or risk getting fined by an outside country.

First of all, the reach is too large, Ofcom cannot achieve this, there is too many websites on the internet and too many companies to contact, it is impossible. This means they are going to target Websites with the highest traffic, websites who have the funds to implement these restrictions, but websites that don’t, and don’t care, which are far less safe and host far more offensive content, those aren’t going to be blocked, and that is what people are going to be herded towards, especially rebellious children who might be hunting for content they’re not allowed to access in the first place.

This means that no matter what, Ofcom cannot block all of the websites they hope to block under this act, and therein lies something else. What if a Website simply refuses to pay the fine?

That was the case with 4chan. A site that prides itself on complete anonymity and essentially zero moderation over the kind of content it hosts. When Ofcom came knocking on 4chan’s door, 4chan refused to implement the requested changes, and when threatened with fines, 4chan retained legal representation.

4chan claims that, as a website based in America, that it does not have to listen to the rules imposed on it by a foreign country. And that the UK cannot just write laws and expect every company in the world, British or not, to suddenly start obeying it. And that the UK definitely doesn’t have the authority to then fine foreign companies for not complying with the laws of a country they are not based in.

Naturally, the UK Government will argue that it has the right to regulate the content served to UK citizens, and that 4chan cannot serve content to UK citizens without it’s government’s say so.

Issue #5: National Security

Though we have been consistently told and promised to that our information is not kept after it is verified, in practice we know this is a lie, as the UK currently suffers several nationally significant Cyber Attacks every week due to the hoarding of the data used to verify these users. Meaning it’s putting UK Adults at risk of having identifiable data stolen by god knows who to keep children safe… Which it doesn’t even do effectively.

How does this affect this Blog?

As I am UK-based, my inability to host images on Imgur makes performing the duties of this blog… inconvenient.

Naturally, at present, VPNs by their nature, allow a user to bypass the Online Safety Act by routing traffic through another region. However, I wrote this blog for fun, and for free, forcing me to purchase a VPN subscription in order to continue it would make this suddenly require a monetary investment in the blog in order to keep it going. I would have to pay to keep doing something I started doing for fun and for free.

And while a VPN may work for me for a time, though the UK Government does not currently have any plans to ban VPNs in the country, it has also stated that it will saction VPN companies who explicitly advertise the ability for VPNs to bypass the OSA, and that “Nothing is off the table when it comes to keeping Children Safe”, citing that they may potentially ban VPN usage in the country if they feel they are undercutting the UK Government’s ability to enforce their stupid law.

(My personal tinfoil hat theory is that they’re holding off on banning them until the stock price rise from the influx of customers slows to a crawl, then they’ll sell off all their shares and ban them outright)

What can you do?

If you are not UK based, then this issue does not affect you like it does me, I would not expect you to try and lend a hand with an issue you cannot quite feel the scope of. As for the issues of VPNs being a monetary investment, I am not going to ask for donations or put up a Ko-Fi link or anything of the sort, the reason I am not doing this is because it would be what we call “Treating the Symptom but not the Problem”, the issue is that the UK Government has imposed a Law that by it’s very existence makes the Internet worse in this country due to the number of entities that would rather block UK visitors than create verification procedures, and those that do create verification procedures will not be used by as many visitors any way because it would require them to effectively tell their Government their internet search history… All in the name of “Protecting Children” which the act does not do effectively due to herding them towards non-compliant, far more harmful websites.

I refuse to ask for donations to keep this blog alive when all the UK government needs to do is ban VPNs like they’ve been threatening to do for the entire thing to fall down again. It would be short-sighted of me to do, and you can’t afford to be short-sighted with other people’s money.

If you are a UK-Reader of this blog however, then my only request for you is to contact your local MPs indicating blogs like this one who regularly host images on free places like Imgur who now have the undue burden of potentially having to replace every single image onto a new hosting website just because the host is now blocked in this country, and then having to do it everytime Ofcom discovers the next highest traffic image hosting website and the cycle starts again.

Inform them that the responsibility of ensuring the Internet is a safe environment is an issue under parental purview, not the Government’s, and that this Act actually undercuts them by herding users towards far more dangerous websites than they would have had the act not been passed.

What will I do?

I’ve done the best I can, what I plan to do is write to my local MP as well about this issue, but I’m not sure it will have the effect I desire, as my Local MP is unfortunately a Labour MP (the current party enforcing the act) and everyone who was a Labour MP in 2023 voted for the original Draft of the Online Safety Act.

Unfortunately, now that maintaining this blog is officially investing my money as well as my time on account of entities who very clearly do not have my best interests in mind, I will need a bit to seriously consider whether or not I want to keep writing it.

I am unlikely to write another post before the end of this year, if I choose to continue this blog you will see Brave Episode 4 posted at some point, if I do not, I will make a formal announcement.

I will once again remind all readers that though I may take excessive time to post updates, I will never retire this blog without a formal announcement of such.

I am sorry that I had to write this. And I hope that something spectacular happens that results in the OSA’s repeal.

Because this is a stupid act, with stupid rules, and all of it’s existing supporters, whoever they might be, insist on it anyway for the sake of something it sorely fails to achieve. The internet is worse in the UK purely by it’s existence and I do not believe the cost is worth it, we should be empowering parents to protect their children, not trying to do it for them.

If you read to the end, thanks. I hope I’ll return to this blog with good news.