The entire Internet should block off the UK. Would be amusing to see how fast they backpedal
this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2025
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Forgot to mention usa
The Americans might not even notice
Thats true, most social media is teeming with americans, every other nationality is a minority on them.
Sounds like a great idea, then.
That's going to probably either encourage a lot of people in the UK to get VPN service or leave a whole lot of users staring at broken image icons.
imgur blocks VPNs. Ask me how I know.
https://gist.github.com/michelleeywao/b10f25152200040f291fd6c6d0d71329
This appears to be from three months ago. It sounds like Imgur can ban IPs
I assume that this is a tempban.
The above study lists success rates for requesting images on various VPNs. NordVPN is at 98%, ExpressVPN 97%.
It also says that free VPNs have a far lower success rate, as their IPs tend to be blacklisted.
How do you know?
Does Imgur even have infrastructure in the UK? How could they even levy a fine? If I'm running a business in the US or Canada or EU and the UK tries to tell me to to pay a fine, how can that possibly be enforced? I'm running a service entirely outside their jurisdiction. It's not my responsibility to enforce the laws of foreign nations.
You can choose not to pay the fine, or block them. If you do neither the UK will eventually block you. It works on the same basis that GDPR does, you are serving and handling data on UK citizens, they have rights that the UK gov is protecting (but in this case it's apparently the right to not accidentally see a boob or view personal health content).
So it sounds like they can't really enforce the fine, but they can restrict me from the region for noncompliance. Blocking me seems well within their rights, I suppose. This whole hypothetical was based on the idea I don't depend on their market at all, so it's not like it'd harm me.
It is very much your responsibility to abide by the laws of that region!
What are you talking about?
You may not choose to do so but that does not mean you don't have to abide by the laws of the country. Worst case you get arrested if you ever go into that country.
Best/worst example: Copyright
Edit: If you do business in that country
But does it really constitute doing business in that country when you do everything your home country? Your servers, your workers, your ISP, your bank accounts, your currency coming in and out of those accounts, the companies buying your ad space, all completely out of their jurisdiction, but since someone within that jurisdiction reached out and made requests to my web server, I'm obligated to abide by their laws? It doesn't seem tenable. It effectively means that any commercial website must comply with all laws anywhere in the world or geoblock outside their intended range.
Yes. And it sucks if your native language is English, as that will go across multiple regions. If your website was only available in Swedish, then you could easily argue that your website was not meant for people in England.
But as long as you do business - and you very much do so when you have users there that looks at ads that generate money to you - then that country can say that you have to follow the laws there.
Another good example is GDPR. When GDPR became active, you could run into many websites that blocked EU countries as they were not yet GDPR compliant and/or didn't want to be. And cookie banners - another EU thing that has spread across the world and maybe been adopted by other countries.