Discover the magic of the internet at Imgur, a community powered entertainment destination. Lift your spirits with funny jokes, trending memes, entertaining gifs, inspiring stories, viral videos, and so much more from users like Multipass.
Which whether you like it or not, is a commercial decision. They cannot realistically vet people for age, because 99% of requests are unauthenticated. Who is going to make an imgur account just so they can see imgur images?
So they made the commercial choice to avoid losing money through fines vs whatever revenue (ad based? I don’t know their model) they would earn from UK users.
Now, ICO and Ofcom have their own reasons to play it down in this way. But, they’re also technically correct.
“The ICO launched its investigation into Imgur in March - saying it would probe whether the companies were complying with both the UK’s data protection laws, and the children’s code.”
They are trying to avoid paying fines for earlier infringements, unrelated to the recent age checks.
But, that’s still the same thing. It’s a commercial decision to withdraw from the market rather than fight a legal battle. It’s entirely based on financial risk.
Like I say, the ICO and Ofcom are letting that fact pull a lot more weight than it should. But it’s technically a correct assessment.
“We have been clear that exiting the UK does not allow an organisation to avoid responsibility for any prior infringement of data protection law”.
They are not going to avoid paying the fines for previous infringements anyway, so it’s not really a financial decision, unless they’re just being stupid.
I find it strange that Imgur did not provide any reason for the withdrawal themselves, which is probably because they are trying to hide something, which can’t be good.
Well it is. If you get fined £50 a day for leaving your car parked in a no parking zone. And you get a notice your parking is being investigated. Do you a) Move your car to mean you “at worst” get the fine for the time you were there or b) Just leave it there, because “they’ve already got me”?
Just because there’s a POTENTIAL for some comeback from prior infringements, doesn’t mean a good financial decision isn’t to pull out of the market to avoid future infringement actions. This is ESPECIALLY so, when there’s a new law with stricter enforcement available to the state regulator.
My whole point has been from the start “Just trying to avoid being fined” is a financial business decision. They have multiple options. But the ones that matter are:
Remove yourself from the UK market, thereby limiting exposure to future fines.
Accept you will get more, significantly bigger fines and try to fight them in the courts.
One carries less financial risk than the other. They chose the option with lower financial risk to them.
I’m from the UK and it’s not a great situation for us. But, I also think businesses that have a genuine fear of ending up in Ofcom’s sights need to start making this kind of decision to the extent that normal people begin to feel the effect of the Online Safety act. Because that’s the only time they’re going to get the kind of backlash they need to respond to.
Which whether you like it or not, is a commercial decision. They cannot realistically vet people for age, because 99% of requests are unauthenticated. Who is going to make an imgur account just so they can see imgur images?
So they made the commercial choice to avoid losing money through fines vs whatever revenue (ad based? I don’t know their model) they would earn from UK users.
Now, ICO and Ofcom have their own reasons to play it down in this way. But, they’re also technically correct.
“The ICO launched its investigation into Imgur in March - saying it would probe whether the companies were complying with both the UK’s data protection laws, and the children’s code.”
They are trying to avoid paying fines for earlier infringements, unrelated to the recent age checks.
But, that’s still the same thing. It’s a commercial decision to withdraw from the market rather than fight a legal battle. It’s entirely based on financial risk.
Like I say, the ICO and Ofcom are letting that fact pull a lot more weight than it should. But it’s technically a correct assessment.
“We have been clear that exiting the UK does not allow an organisation to avoid responsibility for any prior infringement of data protection law”.
They are not going to avoid paying the fines for previous infringements anyway, so it’s not really a financial decision, unless they’re just being stupid.
I find it strange that Imgur did not provide any reason for the withdrawal themselves, which is probably because they are trying to hide something, which can’t be good.
Well it is. If you get fined £50 a day for leaving your car parked in a no parking zone. And you get a notice your parking is being investigated. Do you a) Move your car to mean you “at worst” get the fine for the time you were there or b) Just leave it there, because “they’ve already got me”?
Just because there’s a POTENTIAL for some comeback from prior infringements, doesn’t mean a good financial decision isn’t to pull out of the market to avoid future infringement actions. This is ESPECIALLY so, when there’s a new law with stricter enforcement available to the state regulator.
My whole point has been from the start “Just trying to avoid being fined” is a financial business decision. They have multiple options. But the ones that matter are:
One carries less financial risk than the other. They chose the option with lower financial risk to them.
I’m from the UK and it’s not a great situation for us. But, I also think businesses that have a genuine fear of ending up in Ofcom’s sights need to start making this kind of decision to the extent that normal people begin to feel the effect of the Online Safety act. Because that’s the only time they’re going to get the kind of backlash they need to respond to.