LFGSS and Microcosm shutting down 16th March 2025 (the day before the Online Safety Act is enforced)

Haha i see what i accidentally did there 😂

I only had to type L

Such a shame , thank you so much @Velocio

Has this been resolved yet?

If I or someone I know created a site in another country and blocked UK users from accessing it, that would be cool right, not impacted by this potential new law?

But if some pesky UK users used VPNs to get around my anti UK-scum controls, that's no fault of the site's operator, is it?

It would be a huge loss for LFGSS to go, it’s been immensely valuable to me over the years and remains so- now more than ever in some ways as I’m so far from London/the UK, and it allows me to open a window back to that whenever I want to feel part of that community again.

I also owe a huge debt of thanks to a forum organised cycling trip to ride Monte Zoncolan some years ago now.

I like the sound of moving to be a sub-forum of the pignole (sp?) fixed forum.

Ahh man, just seen this. Been some years, even though I’m more of a lurker now this pace has been amazing for me. Never forget our first long ride together London to Southend.

Happy to volunteer with anything if needed.

I've only been on here a few years; what's more a blow-in from the other side of the world, and thus super jealous of all the folks who've been able to use this place to boost their IRL social life over the years...

But I'm no less NOOO, FUCK THIS than anyone else here - hoping against hope this is a false alarm. Even if that's all it turns out to be, this shitness drives home the impression that significantly good events are mostly in the past. The biggest significantly good event for a very long time was The Onion buying Infowars, in what's been an increasingly shit century so far...

LGFSS is a haven from the encroaching enshittification of it all. It's symbolic proof that not everything has to suck rancid corporate arse. Reason alone enough for dozens to mobilise in @Velocio 's defence.

If it does all go away, here's my suggestion: go and crash boingboing.net, where... Oh wait. Was gonna say, where there's another lovely hand-coded forum platform full of weirdos, but since I was there last they've ditched it and moved to a paid subscription model running on Substack, what the absolute fuck

I know it may feel hopeless right now but hopefully everyone here can mobilise and fight this law and atleast get it changed.

I think the best thing @Velocio can do is get in contact with news sites like The Guardian and The Register aswell as getting in contact with UK internet rights groups like the open rights group, big brother watch and index on censorship and users here should look into them and donate.

Also lawyering up may help seeing there may be Judicial review and legal challenges to this. I don't see how this will hold up under the ECHR. They can also help you look through the codes.

lastly this may not help much and it may be to late but everyone here should contact there MPs about this and tell them about this.

https://www.parliament.uk/get-involved/contact-an-mp-or-lord/contact-your-mp/

Salutations from Finland

Long time lurker and comrade from your sibling forum with our weird Finnish language. Thanks @Velocio for all the work on the forum and community, hope everything turns out ok. Didn't even realize this whole thing was a one-person project until now.

Very sad news. Despite mainly lurking and occasionally using the classifieds, this place has given me a lot over the years. Will miss it, but perhaps it's the nudge for me to actually go out and ride a bike instead of reading about someone else's Saab.

Massively appreciate all the work you've put into this @Velocio over the years. I totally understand your reasons for wanting to pull the plug. Real real shame, but I get it.

Very sad. I think regardless of people’s willingness to support Velocio, any fight/extra burden needed to keep LFGSS going would unfairly sit on their shoulders and I don’t think that’s fair.

@Velocio thanks for everything you’ve done to keep this place running. Anyone who’s ever used the forum owes you a huge debt of gratitude.

Tough decision I'm sure, but while microcosm is an incredibly tidy implementation -

It's always been about people.

^^

I wish I’d been braver about meeting people on here in real life, but despite that I’ve read these pages every day, and it’s the only place I go with that regularity. Glad it exists/existed. Xxx

My life would look very different without the forum @Velocio , I owe a lot of great experiences, the meeting of many great people, a huge about of knowledge and I would go as far to say i owe my career to the forum and its people. Echoing the many responses above the loss of the forum and it’s archives of knowledge and shit chat would be a real shame, along with the loss of the ongoing community.

.

Everyone needs to stop with the melancholy twittering and get organising a massive fucking party.

Also - the fact that this is going to further concentrate internet content into the hands of a few wealthy and dangerous cunts can hardly be said to be protecting anyone.

Everyone needs to stop with the melancholy twittering and get organising a massive ...

...Fucking move to an underground online bunker to weather this storm and come out stronger later

It was difficult to try to put this message into words yesterday and it hasn't gotten much easier overnight. First of all, thanks @Velocio, it's been good. I must have started to lurk on the forums in the early 2010's and I can't emphasize enough how much cycling, and related communities on IRC, LFGSS and the Finnish forum have affected my life and where I've ended up.

Didn't even realize this whole thing was a one-person project until now

300 sites, 1 person... For all the tech, and all the moderation, and all the finances.

I guess it was a bit much.

😬

This is insane!

Has a petition been covered in the last 13 pages?

Lolz, I find myself talking to a few people who run a large private torrent tracker and site as to how they do things.

It is an option for me to give up control and help shepherd the site to a structure that puts it beyond the scope of the UK, especially given that we've already proven it can quickly change domain name (when the .sm was revoked) and IP addresses (when I changed hosting provider and no one noticed).

Some thoughts about options:

1. an internationally legal way that avoids the UK and didn't bother complying, a maze of foreign assets and volunteers in multiple jurisdictions (Switzerland, Spain, Germany, USA, Sweden) with nothing centralised or top of hierarchy to target.
   
2. a less legal way, a no name band of volunteers and a very fluid infrastructure, all hosted who knows where... Similar to private torrent trackers, etc.
   
3. Continue the way we were, but do all the compliance and legal work probono or at a discount, seek insurance for the risk, set up a UK company to limit liability, etc... but this doesn't feel as ideal given that it constructs a more fragile target as now too much is in the UK (more than is actually in the UK today).
   
   

In the first two scenarios I'd give up all control but might be an advisor. In the last scenario, unless someone else wants to take the risk I'll be doubling down, it's possible but feels least desirable.

If there's any any chance that we can get 1 or 2 to work (and if your are willing) we should try for it. This forum is a very important and needed sanctuary for a lot of people (me included!)

The most vulnerable bit of infrastructure is probably email notifications as they reveal server IP if I don't use a third party, I wonder if protonmail would do transactional email 😂

For server IP addresses, there's nothing that a mesh of OSS tailscale / wireguard can't hide. I'll experiment with this over Christmas.

And if your need any resources, money, volunteers or anything at all really, you have a few hundred people here who are very happy to help.