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

Hive mind, time to write to our MPs and/or councillors?

One of those 1 click type of letter spam

With prefilled editable text?

No idea how to set it up though!

This seemed like a fairly high bar before anything serious happens:

Enforcement

If you’re found not to be complying with the OSA, Ofcom will notify you and ask you to fix it first (a “provisional notice of contravention”). If you don’t, they have the ability to fine you up to 10% of worldwide revenue or £18m (through a “confirmation decision”). The purpose of these fines is to act as a deterrent, not to put you out of business.

If a service doesn’t comply with a confirmation decision, and Ofcom believes the risk of harm is sufficiently high, they can deploy “business disruption measures”, by ordering ISPs, service providers, or app stores to block the service.

If you fail to comply with a requirement in the confirmation decision, and the requirement relates to children’s online safety, you can be prosecuted (s138). Corporate officers can be made personally liable for these offences (s202).

It all seems quite the ballache to comply though

Given this was penned by the last government I imagine that this whole section might be interesting: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/50/section/22/enacted

If the forums terms of service forbid being irritating about say right wing politics, is that breaching someone’s freedom of expression or do TOS trump OSA?

Still reading through all 19-something-pages right now so maybe already asked - serious but not serious question - could the forum not just be geo-blocked to deny access to those accessing from the UK?

At least I could still access it here in EUland, and everyone else who's abandoned ship :)

Or anyone with a VPN..

It's not unheard of. In Spain for example they have rules like this. There was a Warhammer tournament last year where a guy turned up in a nazi hoody, put his name down as Austrian Painter and basically dared his opponents to concede rather than play against him. They couldn't kick him out of the event because he was threatening to sue over freedom of expression laws.

I’m a member on other forums where my posts have been deleted for very vanilla left of centre political opinions, because they hurt the feelings of the far right members.

Absolutely love that this story has landed and been published by the Daily Telegraph first... of all places..

Bloody snowflakes

Post modern woke mob!

Oh gosh, I can't see the comments thankfully. Unsure which of my many blocking things did that

On the face of it, that seems to put the onus on the forum owner to allow a level of freedom of expression equivalent to general UK law. You know, the legal framework that allows these fascist mofos to demonstrate in the streets:

That's a griefers' charter if ever these was one.

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!

Clicked on here to see the lie of the land, hopefully the implication of the post above is as positive as it sounds!

And Musk's belly again.
He gets around

Any idea what other similar forums are going to do regarding this stupid act?

May be worth to find out - see if there is any other options / better routes to go down

ooh! Amazing!

This sounds promising.

Hopefully you can help.
Age ass is funny though.

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I did (sort of jokingly) suggest that.

If this turns out the way we are all hoping it will, this is probably a good time to setup a small monthly donation if you can afford it.

It is evident how much personal value we all get from this place.

Illuminate confirmed

That's where you want to sling a message to one of the local antifa gangs and let them 'have words'. I wonder how many miniatures a human anus can retain?

Actually, don't most events/places have some kind of "we reserve the right to refuse service" kind of things or are they not worth the paper they're written on?

Depends. You have the right not to serve someone- but not for a reason that is illegal.

Don’t give that as the reason and you are generally fine- for example you suspected they were using fake ID rather than they’re black.

But- if this is a case of banning someone for saying something that the mods don’t like, then the suggestion from the passage I posted above is that that’s not permitted.

Super sorry to read this. Came back after a long time away.

Completely understand.