Sanctioned Suicide gets fined almost £1m (seemingly)

[noname223]

Suicide forum linked to string of deaths in Greater Manchester fined almost £1m

The site has been reportedly linked to more than 130 deaths in the UK

www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk

Someone posted this link in my thread "The death of Sanctioned Suicide". I wonder why not more people are talking about this.

An online suicide forum linked to scores of deaths across the UK - including eight in Greater Manchester - has today been fined almost £1m. Online safety watchdog Ofcom has slapped the American-based provider of the site with the fine due to failures to protect people in the UK for illegal content.

According to a report by suicide prevention charity the Molly Rose Foundation at least 133 people have died in the UK after taking a poisonous substance promoted by users of the site, which the Manchester Evening News is not naming, and similar forums, but warns the true figure 'could be much higher'.

Could this mean the end of SaSu? Will there be again Interpol agents looking for the administrator of this forum to enforce that? One of the former adminstrator was searched by Uruguay Interpol I think but eventually nothing happened to him as far as I know. My source the NYT article about this forum.

Maybe there will be a subcription model of SaSu where the users have to pay in order to pay the fine.

I am not sure how they want to enforce that...the owner(s) are anonymous as far as I know...

What do you think about that?

 

[8hsjyd]

It's indeed very interesting and I do wonder what will happen.

My rough understanding is that companies which operate entirely outside of the United Kingdom - the location wherein Ofcom has jurisprudence - are functionally capable of simply ignoring the imposed 'fine', at least as things stand at the moment. Due to this site being US-based, it's not subject to the same laws Ofcom's complaint references, thus making it difficult for Ofcom to petition a US court to uphold the fine or any other internationally punitive measure (especially when defenses related to free speech are levied, as is the case here.) There is, though, an ongoing US court proceeding initiated by other 'fined' sites which should definitively clarify whether Ofcom's complaint has any US bearing in a few months.

That all said, individual countries & regions do have the right/ability to domestically block sites of their choosing, even if one does not agree with their reasoning (in fact, nearly all countries do this to some extent); this is something I'm reasonably sure Ofcom can indeed actually enforce.

See the statement from the forum's attorney here: https://prestonbyrne.com/2026/05/12/thoughts-on-the-1000000-sasu-fine/

 

[Yakui]

most likely the admins will just brush it off. theyre not in the UK's jurisdiction. worst case, it gets blocked here, which the admins did anyway.

 

[noname223]

Based article...only read the start thus far though...usually I hate libertarians not in this instance...

The United Kingdom's online regulators/censors are at it again, attempting to punish American websites for publishing information that's perfectly legal in the United States but violates the law in the U.K.'s increasingly constricted environment for speech. This time, Ofcom—the U.K.'s telecom regulatory body—slapped a U.S.-based forum where some discussions are sympathetic to suicide with a £950,000 ($1,273,000) fine, despite its efforts to block British users. The censorship agency is unlikely to ever see a penny of the penalty, but its efforts to control speech well beyond its jurisdiction threaten to result in a walled online environment for Britons.

U.K. targets U.S. suicide forum with massive fine it’ll never collect

The U.K.'s online regulators are attempting to punish American websites for publishing information that's perfectly legal in the U.S.

reason.com

 

[SoulCage]

What the fuck is wrong with this world, people are suffering and choosing to end it not because of this site, but because of the state of society and because of laws that made them miserable in the first place.
Where is the justice in that? Mark Zuckerberg, Jeffrey Bezos, elon musk, have all this wealth and this site is the culprit? Make it make sense.

I know it's pointless to get angry at this, but I can't help it.

 

[Pluto]

 

[FoolsExpedition]

this is very silly to me, banning this site won't stop suicides. i can speak for myself on this and i'm sure it applies to others but i would kill myself with or without this forum. without it, it's just more likely deaths will be more grizzly and unclean, that's about it. before i found this forum i tried a lot of the non-methods that shouldn't be attempted and my next thought after that probably would of been trying to get hit by a train. the forum has given me some cleaner ideas but it also hasn't told me exactly when, where and how to get what i need- at the end of the day it's my choice and this forum hasn't coerced, instructed or inspired me to do it, it's simply given me cleaner options and less chance to suffer

 

[buriedinmyhead]

Honestly, I'd say this forum has helped prevent some suicides, since it gives people a safe place to vent without judgement

 

[hurts2b]

Like someone else said, this site is already blocked in the UK. Legal threats seem to be pretty par for the course.

Though sometimes I wonder if eventually this site will be forced to go darknet only.

 

[k.mihaaa]

Suicide forum linked to string of deaths in Greater Manchester fined almost £1m

The site has been reportedly linked to more than 130 deaths in the UK

www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk

Someone posted this link in my thread "The death of Sanctioned Suicide". I wonder why not more people are talking about this.

An online suicide forum linked to scores of deaths across the UK - including eight in Greater Manchester - has today been fined almost £1m. Online safety watchdog Ofcom has slapped the American-based provider of the site with the fine due to failures to protect people in the UK for illegal content.

According to a report by suicide prevention charity the Molly Rose Foundation at least 133 people have died in the UK after taking a poisonous substance promoted by users of the site, which the Manchester Evening News is not naming, and similar forums, but warns the true figure 'could be much higher'.

Could this mean the end of SaSu? Will there be again Interpol agents looking for the administrator of this forum to enforce that? One of the former adminstrator was searched by Uruguay Interpol I think but eventually nothing happened to him as far as I know. My source the NYT article about this forum.

Maybe there will be a subcription model of SaSu where the users have to pay in order to pay the fine.

I am not sure how they want to enforce that...the owner(s) are anonymous as far as I know...

What do you think about that?

I just really hope this site won't be taken down and that it will be recreated if taken down. I can read stories that are closely similar to mine and aren't censored as much as they are on other platforms. And when I vent on here people don't go on and say bs like "Noooooo don't ctb:(((((( no one deserves death" "You js gotta wait a few yearsss it will all get better" "Lol" as on other places and people I've tried to talk about it with. Not even mentioning real life. I'm not telling a fucker Irl about the ideology since I know they'll say the same things and then also attempt to force me into therapy or a psych ward that usually makes you feel even more worse after you get out.

 

[Scythe]

Lmao tf they gonna do? Until they figure out a deal with cloudflare(not sure on the name) to actually stop hosting us. Or somehow track down RaS and arrest her. Which requires overseas stuff and might be a bit complicated with current world events. UK and US doesn't have the best relationship rn? I think?

Yapping about fines from across the ocean doesn't really affect anyone. I just doubt they can make enough of a case to turn this into an oversea takedown and actually threaten RaS.

 

[Yakui]

Based article...only read the start thus far though...usually I hate libertarians not in this instance...

The United Kingdom's online regulators/censors are at it again, attempting to punish American websites for publishing information that's perfectly legal in the United States but violates the law in the U.K.'s increasingly constricted environment for speech. This time, Ofcom—the U.K.'s telecom regulatory body—slapped a U.S.-based forum where some discussions are sympathetic to suicide with a £950,000 ($1,273,000) fine, despite its efforts to block British users. The censorship agency is unlikely to ever see a penny of the penalty, but its efforts to control speech well beyond its jurisdiction threaten to result in a walled online environment for Britons.

U.K. targets U.S. suicide forum with massive fine it’ll never collect

The U.K.'s online regulators are attempting to punish American websites for publishing information that's perfectly legal in the U.S.

reason.com

In my opinion the most telling part of the article:

 

[webb&flow]

In my opinion the most telling part of the article:

Spoiler: Image

View attachment 201551

Text:

The fact that the provider is based outside the UK does not mean the forum is outside the scope of the Act. It is capable of being used by people in the UK, including without a VPN, and presents a material risk of significant harm. The Act is clear that this means it must comply with our online safety laws.

That's a bold claim of jurisdiction over any website that's accessible through a browser to the people of the U.K. Taken seriously, it would suggest that Saudi Arabia, for example, could punish Britons for posting risqué beach photos of themselves on the internet, or that China could do the same to anybody publishing Winnie the Pooh images mocking President Xi Jinping.

That is, it's preposterous.

Interestingly, Ofcom claims that SaSu is accessible in the U.K. "without using a VPN," which isn't true. The forum geoblocked U.K.-based internet users months ago, as a courtesy to the country's laws. After the fine was announced, confused Britons posted images of the "unavailable for legal reasons" notices they saw when trying to access the forum.

SaSu's attorney, Preston Byrne, writes that in digging through Ofcom's legal documentation of its case against SaSu, "we found, buried deep in the document and its footnotes, that Ofcom's evidence-gathering in this case was based on deliberate circumvention of the geoblock, both by Ofcom investigators and by the NGOs" with which it works to target offending internet content. "The bulk, if not the entirety, of Ofcom's evidentiary file was gathered via VPN use."

 

[Surek]

If you only knew how big Google's current fine from Russia is, you would burst into tears... (lol)

 

[Unbearable Mr. Bear]

UK: We're gonna make you pay!
SaSu: How?
UK: :-|
UK: >:-|