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

Oh no he isn't!

I have just spotted this, gutted. I might not comment much but I read a lot and its personally answered a lot of bike/non bike questions I had at a time when the internet is no longer delivering answers, only adverts for companies.

Having dealt with regulators elsewhere, I fully respect the decision made by @Velocio I too would not want that personal liability. I pray theres a last minute change to the legislation that rules the forum out of scope but its actually unlikely.

I have done discord moderation heavily so can offer advice on structure/ protection/bots etc but those also cost money so would also need funding from somewhere. otherwise it will be swamped with fake users/scammers attempting to post scammy links. if it isnt locked down someone is going to get screwed over. Happy to discuss if needed, haven't investigated the discord set up yet, will join it later from my personal machine.

Just. Gutted. I havent totalled up the donations I have made over the years, £20 per month for a long while + some additional top ups along the way. I would pay it all again to keep it alive.

Thanks Dee for the place, shouldering the burden, not being scummy with our data, letting us join you and by your actions promoting those values amongst us too. You are the best of us. Although looking round at these cunts thats not a difficult bar to clear...

Damn, I haven't been active due to life stuff for the last year and a bit. I just logged in to take a look. This is sad, I have some catching up to do to better understand the situation.

It has been a pleasure to be a part of this community and I appreciate everyone I have been fortunate enough to meet here. I hope the solution and alternative is easily achieved and although I have no knowledge or skills relating to what may help right now, I will stay up to date incase I can.

Thank you everyone for being awesome

Thank you everyone for being 531

ftfy

Appreciated! Clearly been off my bike too long

It's not about level of understanding it's just extra information I'm providing that as far as I could tell, nobody in the discussion previously seemed to have. Of course it all needs to be checked if anyone is interested in it.

You probably didn't see my reply where I shared this quote from the general page at Ofcom about penalties:

QUOTE While a body with a larger turnover might face a larger penalty in absolute terms, a body with a smaller turnover may be subject to a penalty which is larger as a proportion of its turnover

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/about-ofcom/corporate-policies/penalty-guidelines/

The natural way to understand "larger as a proportion of the turnover" is that the penalty would still be a proportion of the total turnover though larger as a proportion for a company with a smaller turnover. There is nothing to suggest a fine larger than the total turnover. They likely take all that as understood.

The aim of the fines is to get a company to comply not to shut it down.

I also looked at the record of the fines Ofcom imposed in all their recent enforcement actions on all companies. Again this seems to be new information for your discussion.

They are very rare. Of course this doesn't include fines for the new law which isn't in place yet but all other laws they currently enforce.

In 2024 so far they fined BT, TikTok and GB News. And GB News as the smaller organization is the only one with a fine of under £1 million at £100,000.

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/about-ofcom/annual-reports-and-plans/other-financial-reporting

In 2023 they fined nine organizations. The only £million+ dollar fines were for BT again, Shell and Royal Mail.

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

Very small organizations got very small fines. As an example, Revolution radio was fined £400 out of a turnover of over £20,000 a year. They said the fine could ahve been larger if they hadn't taken efforts to comply since the previous £400 fine.

But that gives an idea.

It doesn't make sense to fine a company more than its turnover when the aim is to try to get them to comply with new legislation, it's not proportional.

See my comment here for more details:

https://www.lfgss.com/comments/17619232/

Also, as I mentioned in another comment, 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/

This also seems to be new information.

As for a surprise criminal conviction based on something the website owner wasn't even aware of in a site that as far as I can tell has no history of any known harm to kids - that seems beyond incredible and surely not legal though I'm no legal expert.

But to have a criminal investigation there has to be something indicating responsibility, some action the website owner took that they knew had a serious risk of exposing young kids to harmful content on their website or something they knew was going on that they didn't stop which they knew had serious risk of harm. Otherwise I don't see how it can be a criminal case.

Plus I shared the details of their procedures, typically they start with a complaint by a user of the website or an alert from the owner themselves. Then if they find an issue, their standard procedure is to work with the owner of the site to help them comply. If this doesn't work, then warning letters come next and fines only after that.

Just here to help, not to criticise, not to suggest that anyone does anything particular.

But I thought it would be helpful to be aware of other sourcers than New Scientist and Daily Telegraph who are just amplifying what Velocio said and exaggerating it as 100 websites when it is all just one provider microcosm. They do this exaggeration in the headlines for clicks and views not to inform. Same also for Techdirt. It is just a blog by one guy and none of them added any new information, they all just use Velocio as their source and repeat what he said, or use each other as sources, which just amplifies what he said. None of them say they contacted Ofcom to see what they said and nobody else seems to have followed Microcosm's example.

If you put something like this out into the internet then there will always be a small number of journalists and bloggers that exaggerate and reflect it back at you without checking anything.

My tolerance of risk is very low indeed and I wouldn't do anything to risk a multi-million dollar fine or a criminal conviction. I wouldn't be concerned. But I would check.

So anyway hope this helps again, thanks :).

Appreciate your engagement on this. It's an emotive topic.

Thanks glad to help and yes it's understandable that emotions are high on an occasion like this :).