LFGSS Collective

If this moves overseas, wouldn't you still need someone willing to run the servers/backend etc. who is willing to shoulder the risk of enforcement (which is in practice probably low and particularly if they're overseas, though) as long as UK users keep accessing the forum..? Not sure decentralisation necessarily would help unless there is a lot of technical effort to mask IPs etc. of the people involved which is beyond my understanding (because of the wide definition of person/officer in the OSA)! I'd think the majority of the people here are UK based and would probably want access to the forum though, so if it does live on in that form it may be a very different beast to how it is now.

Not to downplay the amount of work needed to comply as you have looked into this the most, but given Ofcom guidance isn't out, is there the chance that when it does come out it'll provide some paths for lower compliance burdens on SMEs/single-person outfits? As I understand the CSAM scanning thing is still slightly in the air as the tech doesn't exist yet/is not widely available..?

then the only bit to solve is the money... for which I very highly recommend OpenCollective EU.

Time for a new thread with a (for once) serious list? Committed £10 a quarter donors. Lot of love, chat and introspection these past few days, so if there is a way forward and the stumbling block is money, time for people to put up or shut up.

Another forum I occasionally frequent has a "forum supporter" badge on people's profiles that shows who's donated and who hasn't - also a lot of regular prompts to people to donate... seems reasonably effective in getting people to do so going by the number of these badges on profiles, although people on that forum are largely US based and seem more willing to spend money on things generally.

is there the chance that when it does come out it'll provide some paths for lower compliance burdens on SMEs/single-person outfits? As I understand the CSAM scanning thing is still slightly in the air as the tech doesn't exist yet/is not widely available..?

From what was published two days ago that seems unlikely, the guidance was relatively clear (linked in the main shutdown thread first post)... a forum would come under "All Services" and "Multi-Risk Services"... and the Multi-Risk services include scanning of content (links, images), as well as additional moderation tools, and training for moderators, etc.

The burden I see isn't just the compliance risk assessment, but the actions needed to mitigate the risk identified.

I am old, so recall the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_Nigger_Association_of_America trolls spamming Slashdot continuously for years... and I recall 4chan and 8chan forum invasions and the uploading of an overwhelming amount of porn onto other forums.

We cannot say that the risk is not there, and the Streisand Effect shows that once it's known how to weaponise the risk then it will be weaponised.

To really mitigate the risk we'd need a much larger team of volunteers, all very active... today if I went on holiday, hiking and stargazing, or did a work trip that took me offline as I'm too busy... it could be 1-2 weeks before I could respond to moderation requests. This is realistic today.

Under the Online Safety Act, whilst the material posted remains unmoderated, harm is caused and the risk is realised.

This is fundamentally my concern... I think there is a path for compliance, but it requires not just legal work, but technical work... on a platform that is a decade old and that only I know intimately today.

There is also a path for not making compliance necessary, which is just to leave it as-is in terms of technical capability (no scanning of content, etc), and to take it fully out of the UK (my involvement ends anyway, hosting moves to France or Germany, someone manages the money side from Europe, all UK specific sites shut down).

We do need to evaluate what would be required to consider the compliance path... but if we cannot meet that standard and no-one wants to take the full liability, then what's the path to just keeping the international side of things and breaking all links with the UK?

Another offer turned up yesterday by a company in the US to give us a shelter... it all works, but only if links to the UK are broken (though I'm inclined towards an EU shelter instead).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_Nigger_Association_of_America

Man wtf is wrong with people

I'd happily pay that per month, if needs be. I pay subs to plenty of things that are less important to me than this or that I use a hell of a lot less. I'm sure others would feel the same.

Apologies, I didn't mean to trivialise the work required to comply, this would deffo be an additional overhead but not impossible.

The benefit being that it would allow the forum to continue to exist in much the same format.

We've also seen a few people willing to step up amd help you with this, which we'd really love to do. It must all feel so overwhelming right now.

Re. CSAM,
I read that it is a requirement only for high risk sites, and I think it's reasonable to justify that this is not a high risk site.

Re. Mods, agree.
We'd need things like an admin email address, defined volunteers, moderator best practice guidance.

We'll also need to document things like complaints resolution process, appeals resolution process, details around age verification, SLAs for mod response, forum members terms of use etc etc etc.

Happy to start drafting some of this if it's an approach we want to explore, but feel like waiting until the Jan guidance seems sensible before making any firm plans.

Welcome to the World for a forum moderator / admin.

The shit I've seen.

And some of the people on this site have done all manner of stuff for which I could've been held liable... they corrected their behaviour, but damn, that liability would've been real whilst they were in the throes of their anger and stupidity.

There was that guy only a week or two ago who wanted to be banned for essentially far-right statements, transphobic statements, and misogynistic statements... I banned him for spam instead as he'd trolled several fora... but still... this is not a zero risk, this is in fact the primary risk.

Another thing that occurs to me—how can you moderate risk in PMs? Wouldn't it be very easy to 'share' CSAM material in messages that only the recipients can see? You've always been clear that PMs are off-limits for moderation, but does the new law now not require that?

The shit I've seen.

The tragedy of the commons—people acting out and pushing their issues into the public realm in all kinds of abusive ways, the virtual equivalent of destroying public infrastructure, etc.

Yeah I saw the troll.

Dammit's comment in the other thread raised a good point also
https://www.lfgss.com/comments/17615292/

Not that we'll always avoid that crap

Another thing that occurs to me—how can you moderate risk in PMs?

I can't... and DMs have been used to share shock images like Goatse, and some of those get reported.

The Act also covers harassment and stalking, and many would say that some people who bear grudges have done that on here, that it happens daily.

The Act also covers hate, and I myself have encountered transphobia, and every woman on here will show you the sexism everywhere, or the racism that is pretty much everywhere. It's subtle, but it's there.

There's no way we're a good place... we may be better than most, and more tolerant and accepting... but there's always some few who are present and also exhibiting the worst traits that drive the risk up... I cannot stop them, and tools proposed by the Act won't stop them either.

Thanks, that's what I thought.

tools proposed by the Act won't stop them either

That really seems to be the nub of why it's a bad law.

Eh, I think the tools proposed by the Act are intended to get big social media to bear responsibility for doing something. The dumpster fire that is X will not survive the OSA in its current form, for example, and the riots we previously had would also be clear targets of this sort of thing. Think the law has its uses, but when you draft something so paradigm changing (the internet has to be policed!?) it is always going to have collateral damage as the finer points get worked out and we need to find a way to navigate that.

I'm still don't understand why there's a need for hosting the site outside the UK and all the rigmarole that entails since most users will be in the UK.

If we do establish a legal entity underpinned by cooperative principles to bear the liability

And work on compliance with the new online safety guidance using the tools to be published in January with a group of people on here, legal and governance

And sort out how and who from us work on monitoring, moderating and reporting

And sort out the finances to run the forum

And mainly ensure @Velocio 's role is solely advisory and they bear no liability or responsibility

Then we're OK.

From the skill set offered by people on this thread we should be able to cover these bases, or finally conclude that we can't.

Perhaps my view is simplistic though from my perspective others seem to be over complicating things.

KISS

Oh, nobody denies there's a problem, but I very strongly doubt that the large companies will really suffer from it, even X/Twitter. I think at best you'll get extremely long drawn-out court cases and obfuscation. We'll see. (I still think the only viable measure would be a general prohibition of such exploitative data-gathering sites, but obviously people addicted to them would disagree.)

There is a single person who donates £1 per month, less than half reaches the account

I think I have a small monthly donation set up (notthat small) - I will change to quarterly.

I'm still don't understand why there's a need for hosting the site outside the UK and all the rigmarole that entails since most users will be in the UK

The point would be to shutter all UK focused sites (hyper specific and 100% UK such as Islington, Brixton, etc).

And to instead acknowledge that LFGSS has a global audience (yesterday 50% of all traffic was from the USA alone, about 20% of traffic is currently from Tor where I've no idea where it's from)... rename LFGSS to something that isn't London specific, and let it just be a site on the internet, not a site aimed at UK users. It's almost hilarious how many people posting about how sad it is are not even in the UK.

Then, alongside the large international fora in other languages, such as Pignole Fixe, etc... to basically go "no staff in UK, no servers in UK, not aimed at UK people"... and if the Europeans who pick this up do it in Germany and to comply with strict data laws there just disable all logging of country of access, etc...

... well, that would not be a UK service to UK users run by UK staff... in fact, it's way outside of the OSA and UK reach... but only by shuttering the explicitly UK oriented sites.

And honestly, if any user ever says they're in the UK... they should just be banned. Feel free to talk about the place, but internet users should be users of the internet.

WFGSS... not wrestling but...World Fixed Gear and Single Speed forum?

LibertyFGSS, maybe LaissezFGSS.

The point would be to shutter all UK focused sites (hyper specific and 100% UK such as Islington, Brixton, etc).

I get that this would possibly be a solution though if we can sort the other stuff to become compliant that wouldn't be necessary

Though perhaps from your perspective Dee, the tech solution would be more easily achievable than using the governance route?

my personal belief, which is certainly open to being challenged, is that the compliance route is hard today... it's not clear if we're Low or Medium risk, and we're almost certainly a Multi-risk service... it's not just completing a risk assessment, it's then about taking steps to mitigate the risk.

the steps we'd have to take are not just completing paperwork, but a mix of people, tech, process. that's a larger burden, and still some risk and the liability remains.

the tech option is attractive to me as a possible solution others take... because I know tech. and I know that no part of this service really requires any knowledge of location or nationality of the person accessing it... the only thing that grants it that are the person running it (me, I'm in London), where it's hosted (in London), the name of the site (London again), and the self-declared most visible users (London)... but LFGSS is huge, and it's not been about just London for a long while... and 3 of those things are trivial to change, I can stop being involved, the service can be hosted elsewhere, the name can change... and the last, where users declare that they are, maybe don't do that. as a technical exercise to put websites beyond the reach of a jurisdiction, there are lots of examples of this working... it does seem crazy to run a platform of forums as if it's the pirate bay... but this is what happens, when laws have side effects, things go underground, I have a better idea of how to do that and hand it over to someone, than I do of how to make the service fully compliant according to my current understanding of what would be needed.

of course a technical solution appeals to a techie.

you all do need to decide what you want to do though... I can only share opinions.

I will opt for letting go on 16th March, but if I can line it up for whatever your chosen route is... I'll do so.

I get this completely though as a non techie and anarcho-syndicalist I prefer running the forum as a collective even though this means working within 'the man's' directives

It is worth persuing both routes at this stage and to do so you would have to support / advise any governance working group (which I'm sure you will :}

Did you see https://www.lfgss.com/comments/17615599/ ?