UK Online Safety Bill... if it passes, I may have to shutter LFGSS

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/draft-online-safety-bill

I've quickly read it a couple of times... and as far as I can tell:

• It would apply to LFGSS even though it's basically run by me on a non-profit basis from donations.
  
• It would create the risk that I could go to jail for shit other people say via a mechanism of making me responsible for a duty of care for some users.
  
  

It's worded in such a way that I couldn't even just host it in Switzerland or something... as any entity with "links" to the UK are in-scope of the bill... it's not just about things hosted here.

There seems to be no real threshold where it kicks in... so no matter how small an entity I could make LFGSS I'd still have to comply.

The conditions are onerous, I'd need risk assessments for the safety of children and adults, kept up to date, and essentially forced to start having additional costs that would be higher than the costs of running the place, i.e. legal fees to ensure I got this stuff right. None of which I wish to take on, nor feel the need to as LFGSS has always very quickly reacted to illegal content and removed it promptly without a burden of bureaucracy to tell me that I need to.

Worse though, is that "duty of care" is vague... some of this and prior Govt have already argued that end-to-end encryption is a breach of duty of care.

Oh... and if it shutters, I'd have to shut down all of the other fora I support, including things like the Rapha forum and Brixton Cycles, etc.

If someone is legally minded and has patience... please do take a scan of the above draft text and see if you can find any reason it wouldn't apply to this site.

Related:

• https://matrix.org/blog/2021/05/19/how-the-u-ks-online-safety-bill-threatens-matrix/
  
• https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/online-abuse-why-management-liability-isnt-the-answer/
  
  

Updates:

• https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/364006/?offset=50#16014590