WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a promising sign that the weeks-long conflict in the Middle East could soon be over, President Donald Trump postponed strikes against Iran until all of its leaders assembled in one place again for a meeting.

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

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."

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.

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."

The post 4chan Sends Hilarious, Hamster-Filled Reminder That U.S. Companies Need Not Follow British Speech Regulations appeared first on Reason.com.

Like its larger and more famous namesake, Central Park in Mishawaka, Indiana, has a greenspace, walking path, nearby river, cold and snowy winters, and a statue dedicated to the renowned explorer Cristoforo Colombo.

The Maria SS. DiLoreto Italian Mutual Benefit Society donated the statue to the City of Mishawaka in 1992, on the 500th anniversary of Colombo’s arrival in The Bahamas on October 12, 1492. Central Park in New York City has a Columbus statue commemorating the 400^th anniversary of his arrival in 1892.

More commonly known as Christopher Columbus, the statue and its accompanying information identify him as Cristoforo Colombo, which is the modern Italian version of his name. Columbus believed he had sailed west across the Atlantic Ocean and had arrived in Asia. It is believed he landed on present-day San Salvador Island in The Bahamas. The island was known to the Indigenous people as Guanahani. Columbus called the Indigenous people “Indians.” When he died in 1506, he still believed he had found a western route to Asia.

Central Park features fishing, pickleball courts, a playground and splash pad, and picnic tables.

THE DESIRE NAMED STREETCAR:

From the leftist politicians’ point of view, it really was money well spent. As I wrote last year, when the DC streetcar was first announced as being phased out, why didn’t DC simply program a bus route right from the start? Because of the enormous amount of graft that a streetcar system can generate compared to busses: “A transit agency that expands its bus fleet gets the support of the transit operators union. But an agency that builds a rail line gets the support of construction companies, construction unions, banks and bond dealers, railcar manufacturers, electric power companies (if the railcars are electric powered), downtown property owners, and other real estate interests. Rail may be a negative-sum game for the region as a whole, but those concentrated interests stand to gain a lot at a relatively small expense to everyone else.”

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This letter of mine appeared in this past Thursday’s edition of the Boston Globe:

Dr. Ashish K. Jha and professor Irene Papanicolas correctly diagnose a serious disease that afflicts US health care: lack of competition (“Your hospital bill is too high. Price caps are the answer,” Opinion, March 9). But their prescribed treatment — capping the prices health care providers can charge — would further sicken the patient.

The high prices that distress Jha and Papanicolas are perhaps the most common manifestation of monopoly power. However, masking this unpleasant symptom with price ceilings not only would do nothing to cure what actually ails the patient but it also would cause that monopoly power to manifest itself in even worse ways, such as delays in medical treatment, reductions in quality of care, and surcharges on services that are now supplied gratis as part of health care packages, such as patients’ hospital meals and bed-linen changes.

A reasonable case can be made that the disease of inadequate competition is caused by excessive government interference in the health care market. Treating that disease by imposing symptom-masking price ceilings would be akin to treating patients suffering the agony of alcoholism with the temporary relief of a shot of whiskey.

Donald J. Boudreaux
Fairfax, Va.

The writer is a professor of economics and the Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

The post Price Ceilings Are Unhealthy appeared first on Cafe Hayek.

SAN FERNANDO, CA — An existing scandal was made even worse over the weekend, as a statue of the late union laborist and political activist Cesar Chavez allegedly groped a young woman as it was being taken down.