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

Yes I’ve been looking into football forums too for them to catch on. I only really lurk mine and they’re oblivious. Also the music ones I frequent - Discogs, DOA - and know someone who runs a small one and he had no clue about the implications.

Early days? Still got the season to think about, it only takes a moment to flip when it becomes more widely known?

Like I say, candle in the wind.

This is the view of the guy who runs the football messageboard I'm on:

My gut feeling is that due to the brilliant moderation on this site we already remove offensive "content" and have the complaints process covered, we just need to document what we do and submit the assessment. Since the beginning we've been treading a fine line between functionality on this site and keeping out spam and other malicious content.

If we are deemed to have breached the rules we can remove the offensive material quickly but thanks to the many posters who report these things to the moderators I reckon it would be gone before a complaint was processed anyway.

The only people who'll be impacted by this is are me and Tony. I'm going to have to work with him to document what the moderators do. I'm the one that will need to do the assessment and pay any fines should they arise. I'm counting on everyone to make sure that we never get to that point. I also want to re-iterate my thanks to all of the people who have helped to moderate this board through the years to keep us on the right side of the law and as a place where we can have respectful discussions even with those who hold different views to our own.

They are very proactive on moderation, helped by a no politics rule.

They are very proactive on moderation

A few people have responded here and elsewhere that this is somehow a protective thing... it's a form of "If you've done nothing wrong, you've nothing to hide"... we're very proactive on moderation, I swing the ban hammer freely and nuke everything someone says when I do so, and I also follow up all reports, and this software keeps every version of what someone has said so I can see when they've done shit and attempted to cover their tracks.

I don't buy it though, the Act has parts that talk about the duration of time that "harmful" (not illegal) content is visible, and that harm is effectively in the eye of the beholder.

With all best intents, if you don't have a 24/7 coverage of moderation and surety that when you go on vacation that someone else is covering it... this is the risk of weaponisation.

Those who have run forums for a long time have seen "fun" forum invasions, or the guy you banned register 10 accounts and start spouting off all over the place, or the "hilarity" of someone writing a crappy bit of JavaScript that does something nefarious... it's just a question of time even when it hasn't happened recently.

My fear, which I think is reasonable, is that the law actively encourages retribution by those who are moderated / banned or just trolls... because where their act of retribution was always futile in the past, it now carries real consequences for those who are named as the "officers" for the site (typically the individuals running it).

In that World, it basically incentivises the aggrieved to find their moment and act.

These asshats that we ban are apparently more creative than I, but I can think of many ways to weaponise the OSA based on what I've seen in the past.

The idea that "no politics" and "proactive moderation" and "we are fine we are superb at running sites" is going to save site operators feels to me like hubris. A lot of sites will never have action taken against them because of luck, pure luck, but a small minority will because of bad luck, that they just had the one angry troll, the one really vulnerable person, the couple of people who bully another, the few that share effed up material via DMs... hubris is not going to help you if you are the unlucky site where someone does commit suicide due to the behaviour of others, or some act of harm happens due to some subtle act of bullying that didn't break any number of well intentioned strict rules, this is out of our control.

A long time ago I ran sites in a zero tolerance way, you couldn't even tell someone to fuck off... and all that happened is the bullying, harassing, all the bad stuff the OSA targets... moves to plausibly deniable territory, soft words all deniable, by a cohort of people who are friends and effectively dislike someone else.

I've found the current style works better... I let you all swear at each other, it actually provides far better signal to me as a moderator and site admin, that I get to see it and then act on it.

In my experience, the more proactive the moderation, the more strict the rules, the more it just exists but all flies below the radar level of your rules... the outcomes remain the same. That sites haven't experienced the bad outcomes so far is little to do with their moderation, and more to do with luck.

I may be wrong, but - I think “no politics” rules (and similar) are no longer allowed - the section I posted earlier, maybe 22?

It’s vague, but - how does a ban on politics get along with:

22-(2)When deciding on, and implementing, safety measures and policies, a duty to have particular regard to the importance of protecting users’ right to freedom of expression within the law.

I agree with you... it's hard.

We basically have to allow things, and let the tone of the community handle it... which, is that not a form of mass harassment from another perspective.

My thinking there was to put people on others block lists if they are being annoying, so they’re allowed to say legal things, but no logged in user can see them.

A real World example some will recall from a decade or so ago:

• A person was active on the forum, built bikes, took photos, seemed to be an entirely normal user
  
• A few of that person's posts were a little hard to believe, but that's something that can be said about virtually everyone's posts
  
• We learn that they were involved in a road traffic incident, and later that they died
  
• Their girlfriend registered and shared this news and starts fund-raising for funeral costs
  
• A couple of people get suspicious because of similarity in language used, nothing more, and I investigate
  
• I find that the "girlfriend" is the person in question via some internet sleuthing, and track down their address, mother's address (the person is young adult, late teens but still an adult), where they're working (thank you LinkedIn)... they had "faked" their death, and were now fundraising their own funeral
  
• I share this news on the forum, and the person is shamed into apologising
  
• A bit of a bundle-on ensues, because people are angry, the person leaves the site
  
  

The situation ended fine, they left the site, life goes on.

Let's consider which parts of the OSA that breaks...

• Fraud? Yes, attempted, only discovered by language analysis by some other people on here
  
• Vulnerable person? Yes, that person was clearly struggling with their own mental health issues and at risk
  
• Stalking? Probably, a few individuals took it on themselves to follow everything, make themselves known
  
• Bullying? Yes, the reaction of the community to this was not mild / polite
  
• Harassment? Probably, because of the community reaction, especially a few individuals who were quite angry at having been duped
  
  

Now consider what might have happened, if that person, in their vulnerable state, and under the pressure of shame from the response to their actions, had then actually ended their life as they claimed that they had... a thing that was threatened by them at the time.

We were lucky... extremely lucky.

The actions of many, from a third party reasonable viewpoint, and each interaction taken in isolation without the larger context... can very easily have been read as having breached the OSA to a severe degree and in multiple ways.

We were unlucky that person attached to this site, we were lucky to have it detected (and none of the OSA tools would've), and we were lucky it ended fine. If in fact that person had ended their life, I'd be carrying that still... I don't need the OSA risk to be there to try and do the right thing, but likewise... none of what the OSA covers will protect against the bad luck of how a scenario plays out.

There's no way to quantify how extraordinarily lucky this, and so many other sites, have been.

It's not a question of moderation skill, it's luck.

You can certainly be negligent in moderation, but you cannot have good luck all the time.

My thinking there was to put people on others block lists if they are being annoying, so they’re allowed to say legal things, but no logged in user can see them

We have global ignores, shadow bans, individually controllable ignores, etc.

If we applied them to everyone who is annoying, it is the whole site... it's human to have a bad day.

Sure, but what I meant was that rather than deleting content/banning the person and risking infringing on their speech as protected by the act, just make them invisible to logged in users and they’ll scream into the void for a while and then bugger off (hopefully).

they’ll scream into the void for a while and then bugger off

A few people here never buggered off 🤣

It's obviously vague but I would think that a football board could get away with a blanket ban on politics due to that being outside of the scope of the board.

The difficulty would come with politics being allowed but certain viewpoints not being allowed.

FWIW the weaponisation of troll content is also what the OSA is targeting. If you're the one who can get hit with a fine/jail time etc. for pissing around on forums then you're less likely to do it, and people were generally doing it because it's the internet and everyone gets away with objectionable behaviour on the internet. Someone posting goatse here is going to be the ofcom target, not the one getting the forum in trouble with ofcom because they've done it. I'm not saying necessarily that policymakers should go this far, but I'm saying that maybe weaponisation is actually a lower risk now that this very far reaching act exists.

This particular site is much smaller than LFGSS and has, I think, eight moderators of which at least a couple are retired and on the board a lot. It also doesn't have DMs so no issue with non-public posts.

But generally I agree, the risk is very small but it isn't zero.

It’s not the core focus of the board, but is it a reasonable restriction on free speech?

If you're the one who can get hit with a fine/jail time etc. for pissing around

it might extend beyond pissing around, e.g.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y74479yk4o

Wow I didn’t know Lynchman was in late teens. Incredible

This forum has seen things...

1 Attachment

In my mind he was in his 30s/40s

Too young to die.

Wow I didn’t know Lynchman was in late teens. Incredible

Peak time in life for people wanting to reinvent themselves, if you think about it.

You are catastrophizing. You are describing forums as "lucky" that they haven't had bad things happen yet you are not acknowledging your own luck. How many times have you faced lawsuits for things that have happened on your forums? How many times have you been attacked in public because of things that have happened on your forums? How many times have people tried to interfere with your personal life because of things that have happened on your forums? All of these bad outcomes can (and do) happen today to forum operators, I am sure they have happened to you. And if they have happened to you already, why are you so focused on this new legislation as an existential risk? Bad things happen to people who don't operate forums, too: many internet famous people have relationships with their local police departments due to the volume of swatting, stalking, harassment and threats that anyone with a profile on the internet experiences.

Philosophical disagreement with this legislation is one thing, intellectual dishonesty about the impact is another. The other forum operators mentioned by aggi aren't reckless risk-seekers intent on orchestrating the destruction of their own life, they're pragmatists who understand this legislation is another grain of sand in the bucket of risk taken on when putting yourself in the crosshairs of nerds.

Given the choice between death threats against my family from an aggrieved and motivated person who has gone to the effort to identify me personally, or a report to Ofcom from the same aggrieved and motivated person, I will take the report to Ofcom every day of the week. Wouldn't you?

On the other hand, why should Velocio take any risk? They don't owe us anything and have done plenty enough for everyone here already.