Wyoming's 'GRANITE Act' Defies Global Push to Regulate US Tech Platforms

UK media regulator Ofcom is moving toward a final enforcement decision against 4chan, the Delaware-based imageboard. It’s a major test of just how far the 2023 Online Safety Act (OSA) can reach across borders. Ofcom wants the platform—which has no offices or servers in Britain—to roll out age-verification and automated content filters. If 4chan doesn't comply, it's looking at daily fines or a total UK blackout. Essentially, London is trying to force a US-based company to overhaul its global operations to fit British speech standards.

You might see headlines suggesting the U.S. government is fighting these mandates, but the receipts say otherwise. In Washington, the Kids’ Online Safety Act (KOSA) has huge bipartisan momentum, and it uses the same 'duty-of-care' model the UK pioneered. This model requires platforms to bury speech that might cause emotional distress like anxiety—a standard the ACLU warns is a content-based regulation that’s 'presumptively unconstitutional.' Far from resisting, D.C. is largely following the British blueprint.

“The GRANITE Act creates a private right of action against foreign states attempting to enforce censorship in conflict with the U.S. Constitution.”

The real pushback started in Wyoming on February 10, 2026. That’s when House Bill 0070, the GRANITE Act, hit the floor. The name is a mouthful—Guaranteeing Rights Against Novel International Tyranny and Extortion—but the goal is simple: it gives Americans the right to sue foreign states or groups trying to enforce censorLoaded Languageship laws on them. It’s the first state-level effort to flat-out refuse the enforcement of foreign judgments, like those from Ofcom, that clash with the First Amendment.

For 4chan, this is an existential crisis. The site is a low-overhead, anonymous operation. The cost of building the sophisticated filtering and age-gating systems Ofcom wants would likely dwarf any revenue the site gets from UK users. But because the OSA targets any service with 'links to the UK,' the platform is stuck. It either has to abandon the British market entirely or spend millions on tech that would alienate its core user base of anonymous contributors.

The big question is whether Ofcom can actually collect fines from a Delaware LLC that holds no assets in the UK. The British government says it'll look for international cooperation to get its money, but laws like the GRANITE Act could lead to a massive jurisdictional stalemate. For everyone else, this is a sign the 'borderless internet' is fading. Platforms may soon be forced to geofence specific countries or simply adopt the most restrictive global standards just to stay solvent.