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

So you get everyone to use Tor.

Aa a non user, what would this involve?

I haven't used Tor/Onion in forever, I'm sure it's all changed now. But it was very straightforward, I logged in and that was that.

Downloading the TOR browser, that's it.
I'm not sure id encourage people en masse to use tor or the darknet. It's concerning how quickly and easily you can come across quite nasty stuff without going looking for it

First I'm not trying to change your decision. It is for you to decide of course!

Just that I'm not sure if you have accurate information as the basis of it. Once you have more accurate information then you can make your decision better.

So that's the only reason for replying again also. I may not have read the situation correctly but if you are interested in more information then this message may help.

But you didn't focus on the risk of criminal liability faced by officers of the entity, which breaks the Ltd structure of a company or a CIC

I did cover the criminality issue in case you missed it. I don't see any need to become a limited company anyway which is a hassle, if the maximum fine is a proportion of your small turnover.

On criminality

But it would be astonishing if they were to spend time fining never mind a court case to imprison someone who does this voluntarily a few hours a month.

I also talked about the many steps they have before they would fine you.

I don't see how it would be criminal if someone in one of your forums shared something you didn't know about and you didn't take it down in time. That would be very hard to establish as criminal surely. Again you should get advice on this if you want to follow it up, I'm not a lawyer or anything.

But with you not even having any evidence of anyone using your forums to share Child Sexual Abuse Material - then when you go through the tool you will likely be asked if anything like that has been shared on your forums and answer no. It will surely rate you as very low risk.

A page or two ago I gave a real-World example of an event that happened on this site when a person who could easily be argued to be vulnerable, faked their own death and attempt to fund-raise for their own funeral... this ticks so many of the "harmful but not illegal" boxes

This wouldn't be harmful to kids so I don't see it as relevant. The Online Safety Bill is about reducing serious risks such as suicide from things that are harmful to kids but not illegal but it doesn't work the other way around that anything that potentially might have small harm to kids is covered. I think when you go through that tool that this wouldn't be something you need to mention.

the argument of "they are understaffed so will only focus on the big tech" rings empty to me,

That wasn't the argument. It is that they would focus on the cases that have most impact for optimal use of their resources including funding. They would focus on the big social media companies. They would just not be expected to and wouldn't have the funding to investigate small organizations like yourself.

You can get an idea of their focus by looking at their complete list of the organizations they fined for various offences, and the amount of the fines in 2024 and 2023.

In 2024 so far they have fined four organizations. TikTok, GB News and BT

GB News £100,000 31 October 2024
TikTok £1,875,000 24 July 2024
BT £17,500,000 22 July 2024
BT £2,800,000 22 May 2024
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/about-ofcom/annual-reports-and-plans/other-financial-reporting

In 2023 they fined
BT £2,800,000 22 May 2024
Big City Radio £1,200 24 March 2024
Shell Energy Retail Limited (Shell Energy) £1,400,000 21 November 2023
Royal Mail £5,600,000 13 November 2023
Islam Channel Limited £40,000 26 September 2023
Revolution Radio Limited £400 20 September 2023
Retrocadia Limited £400 16 June 2023
Bauer Radio £25,000 1 June 2023
Ahlebait TV Networks £10,000 25 April 2023

https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20240627152557/https://www.ofcom.org.uk/about-ofcom/annual-reports-and-plans/other-financial-reporting

So fines are rare, they are also smaller for smaller organizations.

Example, this is their decision for Retrocardia:

QUOTE STARTS

Shoreline FM was a community radio service for Dymchurch and the surrounding areas of Romney Marsh, which was provided by Retrocadia Limited ("Retrocadia"). The station is now called Cinque Ports Radio.

Ofcom has imposed a £400 financial penalty on Retrocadia Limited after our investigation found that it had failed to comply with the conditions of its licence.

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv-radio-and-on-demand/broadcast-standards/decision-retrocadia-limited/

QUOTE STARTS

Revolution Radio is a community radio service for the diverse ethnic communities of Northampton, which is provided by Revolution Radio Limited ("Revolution").

Ofcom has imposed a £400 financial penalty on Revolution Radio Limited after our investigation found that it had failed to comply with the conditions of its licence.

In our decision published on 10 October 2022 in issue 459 of Ofcom’s Broadcast and On Demand Bulletin, Ofcom found that Revolution had failed to serve its target community as set out in the character of service of its Key Commitments and was therefore in breach of Licence Conditions 2(1) and 2(4) of its licence. This was the second time that Revolution had been found in breach of these conditions of its licence.

This penalty would have been higher had Revolution not taken various additional steps to ensure compliance with its Key Commitments from mid-2022. In light of those additional steps, we do not currently have concerns that Revolution remains non-compliant.

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv-radio-and-on-demand/broadcast-standards/decision-revolution-radio-limited/

And I don't think these cases would involve court cases. Just a letter from Offcom and then they pay the £400 fine.

I can't find a list of criminal cases but I expect they would be very rare indeed.

Also there is no way you'd just get a letter out of the blue saying you are summoned to a court for some offence you don't even know you committed.

They would talk to you over a long period of time before doing that.

It is very different from the subpostmaster thing.

So anyway I hope this helps you.

Or someone else if you want to transfer it to someone else in the UK say.

If this was a different situation and you were some close friend or relative say, or I was a long term member of the community you knew well, I'd be willing to take it on with no hesitation and no worries about risk at all.

It sounds as if it's not a huge time commitment for someone else. And you'd doubtless help them too, sounds like it would be more about them being the official figure in charge.

As you say we vary in our tolerance of risk. But my own risk tolerance level is also very low for different reasons.

If this was something I was doing and I was really keen to keep it going, I'd work through it some more, try out the tool, try to contact Ofcom, go through the assessment process which seems likely to be pretty simple for something like you.

I'd expect it to count as the lowest possible level of risk they have for something like what you do.

And I'd expect never to hear from them after submitting my assessment except form letters to say they received it and that it's okay.

But I would ask for help from Ofcom and other advice available to me to be sure :). I wouldn't rely on someone like me to advise me.

So, hope that helps. And if not that's fine and once again not trying to change your decision at all. Just hopefully helping with access to information you may not have encountered yet.

Thanks.

Sealand

Pirate Bay tried to buy that didn't they?

I had to google that.

I’m afraid you are going to end up hosting it in Russia if you want to escape direct legal action, but that’s not the route I’d advise personally.

Well I had hoped there'd be an option that wasn't Russia, China, North Korea, etc.

How about one of those flag of convenience type places, Liberia, British Virgin Islands, etc? Do they serve as digital freeports as well?

Haven’t read your whole post but isn’t looking at what fines they’ve issued thus far a bit like comparing apples and boomerangs, they haven’t fined anyone under the new osa yet because it isn’t in force yet?

^ this, and that they have gone after the little operators blows the argument that they'd only be interested in FB/Twitter etc apart.

& @RonAsheton useful to know it is simple & also the concern raised, ta.

To me, the contributions from @RobertInventor are quite helpful in demonstrating how regulators tend to operate, and are in line with my experience of regulators in other sectors.

Otoh, I don't think this view point changes the issue at hand.

Got to agree with you there, it can get brutal really fast just having a look around.

Oh - well sort of. Little compared to TikTok or BT. But big compared to you.

Annual running costs for year two: £26,950
Got a grant from Ofcom of £20,000
https://mmo.aiircdn.com/593/65b24591b8658.pdf

It employs 5 people. Surely part time.

Chris Gregg - Managing Director
Ife Thomas - Director
Ian Hickling - Technical Director
Anya Walsh - Company Secretary
Nick Lowther - Deputy Programme Controller
Jake Oliver - Technical Manager
David Hellier - Diversity Content Coordinator
https://www.revolutionradio.com/about-us/revolution-team/
But it's a bigger operation than one person doing a few hours a month.

And only fined £400 out of an operation with running costs over £20,000 a year.

And that is out of I don't know how many community radio broadcasters there are in the country.

I'm not saying it's impossible that they would look at you more closely but they would need a really good reason to focus on you out of all the thousands of similar operations out there. And - I really can't see it getting to the point of a fine but if it was then surprised if it is more than a few £100.

And as for prison - I can't see it at all. It would have to be really really major and serious, not something you could do accidentally unaware of it. Not some new thing that surprised you that you could never have guessed one of your users would do. Something going on that was really serious, you knew about it and did nothing about it. It would have to be something like that to send someone to prison or have a criminal case.

Of course do ask someone else and don't rely on me saying that but I'm saying that just to make it clear I don't have that knowledge or expertise not because I have any reason to think anyone else would advise you that there is a significant risk.

Oh - yes of course it's impossible to give examples for the new law until the first cases whenever they happen. But it's the same regulatory body, Ofcom and the same approach to how they handle fines, an organization that is used to fining organisations that go against their formulated policies for many years now.

It illustrates that big companies like TikTok and BT get million dollar fines and small companies - very rare to be fined at all. Bearing in mind there are far more of the smaller than the larger companies that they could have fined. Also illustrates that smaller companies are fined with smaller fines as expected from their fining policy document I shared and not with fines anything like their total annual revenue.

Basically just gives you some idea of how this sort of thing works with Ofcom which may be useful extra information.

Thanks glad to have helped :).

I'm not sure id encourage people en masse to use tor or the darknet. It's concerning how quickly and easily you can come across quite nasty stuff without going looking for it

More of amey's bikes :'(

Shudder

The Telegraph a few days ago: Hundreds of websites to shut down under UK’s ‘chilling’ internet laws

The Telegraph today: Social media firms to be forced to ‘drive out’ under-age users

Watchdog will make apps use facial recognition and other age checks to identify children

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/12/22/social-media-firms-to-be-forced-to-drive-out-under-age-user/

No talk in the article on how this will affect small websites or the huge privacy and legal issues with this.

Just realised I haven't commented on this thread yet, but just wanted to add another heartfelt thanks to Velocio for the work they've put in over the years.

I was fortunate enough to stumble upon this forum when I first moved to London, and have met most of my London-based friends through the forum.

I got my career started through people I met here, and met my now wife through people I met here.

It's been a massive part of my life, and regardless of whether it continues or not, I just wanted to say thanks. Probably haven't seen you personally since a bridges ride or a coffee at LMNH 10-15 years ago, but your efforts have literally been life-changing for me.

So thanks again for your efforts.

Just to say the "hundreds of websites" story is just you. Because you run hundreds of forums according to them. I got here as a result of fact checking that "hundreds of websites" story for scared people. It's not hundreds of providers.

Hundreds of websites will be shut down on the day that Britain’s Online Safety Act comes into effect, in what are believed to be the first casualties of the new internet laws.

Microcosm, a web forum hosting service that runs 300 sites including cycling forums and local community hubs, said that the sites would go offline on March 16, the day that Ofcom starts enforcing the Act.

Its owner said they were unable to comply with the lengthy requirements of the Act, which created a “disproportionately high personal liability”.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/12/22/social-media-firms-to-be-forced-to-drive-out-under-age-user/

I originally found your site from a discussion here, there are other comments in it that may be helpful:

QUOTE STARTS

I have been directly involved as part of the consultancy between OfCom and the publishing industry on this – Singletrack was identified as an entity that would fall under the scope of this legislation by OfCom and they invited me to takle part in a series of workshops to shape the communication. It’s a good thing on the whole and I’m not overly worried about our compliance or procedures. There will be admin at the start but in the grand scheme of things I’m pretty confident we are able to comply. I think the LFGSS owner has over reacted a bit.

I guess we’ll soon see though.

https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/lfgss-shutting-down-and-the-online-safety-act-future-of-stw/

That is from Mark who by his profile is the publisher of SingleTrack World.

https://singletrackworld.com/user/mark/

That's in a long forum discussion of whether there is a risk for the forums of "singletrack world", a cycling magazine. Seems they are not concerned.

https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/lfgss-shutting-down-and-the-online-safety-act-future-of-stw/

Sorry should have mentioned that in my first post here. Didn't think to say.