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 :).

This is gutting.

This forum feels like it’s been a part of my life in different ways for nearly 20 years, and I’m not even that involved, it’s being able to ask questions, reading opinions etc.

It’s so sad to hear it could be gone.

Is the forum most likely to shut and move to to discord?

Or is the save the forum campaign likely to work out?

Is the forum most likely to shut and move to to discord?

Yes, most likely.

Or is the save the forum campaign likely to work out?

Maybe, slim but possible chance.

Needs a strong leader to really step up and own it, to take on the personal risk and liability, to reduce that risk as much as possible, and engaged engineers to modify the code to reduce that risk, additionally needs that leader to align people on sustainable fund-raising.

This is possible, but no leader has yet stepped forward willing to take this on long-term.

So the "most likely" outcome remains the shutdown... the default should nothing change is that the platform that runs this and other forums shuts on March 16th, and LFGSS goes with it.

The default is death. I'm copacetic about this, everything has it's time, and this end is premature but perhaps it's just the time for it, if someone steps forward and proves there's a lot more life to live in this guise, then great... if it dies I'll celebrate the past, if it lives I'll celebrate it's future. The community will always survive, people are connected individually, via small local groups who are friends, and most loosely via Discord now... it may not have the same vibrancy, but it exists, and communities that exist remain wonderful things.

everything has it's time,

These 2 videos combined feel relevant:

https://youtu.be/BxV14h0kFs0

&
https://youtu.be/mUF4afxMpQk

Needs a strong leader

Dov needs to unflounce

Too busy being a grown up these days. Poor bastard.

If it goes, will the website and anything posted before the cut off date go?

Really sorry to read this and just want to add my thanks to @Velocio for all of your work on this and running the forum over the years, as well as the other moderators in the background.

For the last year or so I've had a lot of shit on where I live and I've had so much help and advice from people on here in bastard neighbours and the home owning thread. Not ridden much but that has kept me on an even keel. Before that and in slightly happier times, I met some amazing people through here who were total strangers and are now friends. I did my first bikepacking trip with total strangers whilst I was at uni. I got so much out of this place. There's a corner for everyone and everything. It will be a disaster to see it go.

Now I need to quickly flog some stuff in the classifieds ..!

Hopefully someone can take the throne, I dont really know that much about coding or stuff so couldn't do it myself sadly.

I don't think that person / role Velocio referred to needs to be a tech person, they'll need tech support, finance and legal support

That person leads ensuring things happen within the deadline.

If it goes, will the website and anything posted before the cut off date go?

Yes.

I'll leave a small link to the discord, but everything else will disappear and then be deleted.

There will be no backup kept after the closure, to ensure the privacy and safety of all private parts of the forum I will delete it all.

The public parts will be archived by ArchiveTeam and made available by the Wayback Machine.

I don't think that person / role Velocio referred to needs to be a tech person, they'll need tech support, finance and legal support

If they cannot find those resources then they should choose the route I've chosen and shutter it. The risk cannot be managed without modifications to the software, without understanding the legal stuff, and without ensuring it can be paid for.

I.e. DMs are very likely going to be scanned, which is likely a paid service and need more funds, and then it needs implementing... Alternatively the legal may recommend fully disabling DMs, which will also kill all of the classifieds section, so then the recommendation may be to recommend ways to have private communication elsewhere, etc.

There's a lot of implications of keeping there place running that revolve around managing the risk identified in the OSA risk assessment.

Whomever chooses to put their name to it has to really be sure they can follow through on all of this, acting like a company director, to steer the shop in the right direction and avoid shipwreck, otherwise it's just volunteering for pain, a role for masochists, and the pain primarily will fall on the individual.

For this person, and for the small team of other roles that support them, it's going to consume their lives for the next year or two. It's not really a part time commitment any longer.

Hence my decision... I can't do this full time, and I can't align what it would to have to become with my ethics (privacy focused), the combination of those factors makes this a very obvious choice for me.

A proposal to take over the forum has appeared in Discord, but not mirrored here, oddly.

https://discord.com/channels/605497628259516447/1323595158826254479

Reads less like a takeover and more like a new forum with a similar name. The later doesn't really need anyone's blessing. If they start something new, promote it and it gets critical mass it happens but it isn't the same.

looks better than discord, but not free which ultimately may mean low membership.

It was originally done by email in the few days when I was receiving hundreds of emails and notifications... so it got lost, I read it and thought "reply later", and then didn't, that happens.

I've replied, and will copy the core of the reply here:

I should've replied, but I will flat out reject your offer HighGear .

I am only considering a single option, and that's to hand it over to existing members of the LFGSS forum who are long-tenured and active members, on the basis that the forum in roughly the same shape continues to exist.

I will not sell the Microcosm platform, nor the communities or data therein, and nor would I move them in their current form to anyone who isn't a long-tenured member with aligned ethics... I will only gift it to the community itself, or shut it down and delete it.

That should also re-assure people here... I am not considering selling the forum or gifting it to any commercial entity. This is not a cash-in or sell-out.

And if a group does form to take over and has a leader, I will state roughly the requirements in a contract form: non-commercial, non-profit, respecting the privacy of users as much as is possible given reasonable constraints (that you may need technical measures to operate within the OSA).

Reads less like a takeover and more like a new forum with a similar name. The later doesn't really need anyone's blessing. If they start something new, promote it and it gets critical mass it happens but it isn't the same

Also this... if it's just a "stand up an existing piece of forum software", well... it doesn't get anyone out of the coverage of the OSA, and go ahead and start using whatever you feel. This one is Simple Machines Forum, and in the bottom it says "Powered by ForoConnect" which only has 2 hits on Google... both are the sample site he's showing us.

It would be a jump in a total unknown, with an unknown leader, and unknown motivations of that leader... but hey, that's no worse than creating a Facebook group and attempting to build a successor there.

That choice doesn't need my blessing, which is fine as I won't give it.

DMs are very likely going to be scanned

That in its self may not be legal under the ruling Roman Zakharov v. Russia if you have to weaken encryption to do it.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/03/european-court-human-rights-confirms-undermining-encryption-violates-fundamental

Another big problem is many of Ofcom new rules and the law itself are on very shaky legal grounds, So they may demand you do something, you then do it, but then the rules are taken down by a Judicial reviews and legal challenges.