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

ooh! Amazing!

This sounds promising.

Hopefully you can help.
Age ass is funny though.

Hi,

I worked in Ofcom’s online safety team, and now run http://www.illuminatetech.co.uk. We want to help you keep these forums open, for free.

I think there is a huge discrepancy between what smaller services actually need to do, and the perception created by Ofcom’s thousands of pages of consultation.

The best version of the Internet is one where small, niche websites like yours can thrive - an ecosystem of ideas and services. I recognise the perceived risk the OSA poses to sites like yours, and am really keen to create resources to help sites like yours not have to worry about compliance (for free or close to free).

We think we can sort out OSA compliance for you in half a day, max. And as said, we’ll do it for free. Please get in touch at hello@illuminatetech.co.uk if you’re interested!

I suspect the catch is that we'd be a high profile case study (given the coverage in the Telegraph, Telegraph (so good they ran it twice!), Computing UK and forthcoming New Scientist article)... but hey, that would be fine with me.

My concerns to be very explicit aren't just the risk assessment, but things required to mitigate risk afterwards... i.e. CSAM scanning, building new moderator tooling or training, being "on-call" in case of reported content whilst I'm on vacation, etc... i.e. all the ways that a single person run hobby site (even when they support such a large audience) has to achieve the implementation standard of big tech. The context is that I put a few hours per month in... I have a day job that I love, and a life outside of running websites... so if the compliance concludes that to mitigate risks I need to go spend hundreds of hours coding things, and writing things... I'd still seek to close it all on the 16th March.

But you likely know what the impact is better than I, so if you think it's unlikely that I'd need to change anything other then just assess impact and some minor things, I'll take you up on it.

Edit: I wouldn't accept "for free" as that would come with no guarantee or liability for the work, but I'd so "small fee" for an indemnity regarding the compliance.

If you can enlighten us as to the discrepancies, please do so. At the minute, it seems you are just offering a free service to a high profile case, and promoting your own paid services in doing so.

Forgive me for being blunt, but reading between the lines, it is still going to mean many small to medium sites (like my own) having to close.

If it takes you and your crew "half a day, max" to sort out compliance, then what about the rest of us?