Ofcom releases public 4chan decision under UK online safety rules
A public Ofcom decision says 4chan failed to meet UK online safety duties on illegal content risk assessment, service terms, and age assurance.
Ofcom has published a non-confidential version of its confirmation decision against 4chan, giving a fuller public account of one of the UK regulator’s early enforcement actions under the Online Safety Act.
The decision concerns 4chan.org and sets out Ofcom’s findings that the platform failed to comply with several duties under the Act. According to the regulator, those failures included failing to carry out a suitable and sufficient illegal content risk assessment, failing to clearly set out in its terms of service how users are to be protected from illegal content, and failing to use highly effective age assurance to prevent children from encountering pornographic content.
Ofcom said 4chan must now take a series of corrective steps, including completing an illegal content risk assessment, updating its terms of service, and implementing robust age assurance measures. The regulator also imposed separate financial penalties linked to each breach, including a substantially larger penalty connected to the child protection requirement.
The case is significant because it shows the Online Safety Act moving from general compliance expectations into concrete enforcement. Rather than only warning platforms about their duties, Ofcom is now publicly setting out what it considers to be specific operational failures and attaching financial consequences to them.
The decision also underlines the regulator’s broader approach to compliance. Ofcom has indicated that further daily penalties can apply after the relevant deadlines if required actions are not taken, showing that enforcement is not limited to one-off fines but can escalate where platforms continue to fall short.
However, the publication of the decision provides platforms with a clearer signal of what enforcement under the Act is likely to look like. The 4chan case suggests that Ofcom is focusing not only on the presence of harmful or illegal content itself, but also on whether platforms have the systems, rules, and protective measures in place that the law requires.
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