Ofcom: 4chan's £450K Fine Has Nothing to Do With Meta

Ofcom wants one thing clear: the £450,000 slice of 4chan's £520,000 penalty is not a Meta fine. The regulator said that portion of the message board's punishment relates to child-protection issues, part of a wider set of violations wrapped into the £520,000 total. The 4chan enforcement stands on its own, separate from Ofcom's running fight with Meta.

That fight is about fees. Meta is challenging how Ofcom calculates what companies owe under the Online Safety Act 2023, arguing the method is disproportionate and may be unlawful. Ofcom's approach bases the charge on global revenue instead of UK-only earnings — a difference Meta isn't willing to swallow quietly.

Ofcom points out the fee formula is a different beast from the law's maximum penalty. The statutory ceiling sits at £18 million, or one-tenth of a company's qualifying worldwide revenue when that number comes out higher.

Meanwhile, the regulator has opened investigations into whether Meta met risk-assessment requirements before rolling out Instagram Instants, a feature that arrived in May 2026. So Meta now faces scrutiny on two fronts: how it paid, and how it launched.