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Install the Discord app, and "Join server" using a link in the first post

Where my head is at, if there's no equivalent to a "this only applies to entities with global revenue above £25M" or something like that... and there remains liability for me as described in the OSA... I'm out, I'm done.

I think personally that the best thing to do is preserve this place, and make the life raft (Discord) work.

I simply don't think this is enough of a vote winning issue that politicians care, and the media have so long run stories on the theme of "Won't somebody think of the children"... that the chances of a carve-out or U-turn are vanishingly small.

Additionally... I find thinking of the scenario of a U-turn damaging still... a lot of the damage has been done, we know we need to shutter, people are already trying to make other places work... if a reprieve came in the 11th hour, what would survive in the many communities facing this will be a shadow of their former selves.

I can say "Yes, I'd carry on"... but it feels like that weird conversation, "Would you still love me if I was a worm?"... it's never going to happen, so I can say yes, but that reply is glib as that reality doesn't exist.

I'm not sure either TBH, and my (poor) memory doesn't help here.

The fallout of this bill and what it is doing to sites like this one is going to be a literal death knoll for a lot of people. Chronic loneliness and lack of community is such a massive trigger for suicide in men. Rates of which are disgustingly high already given the state of our mental health services and any support for young people to try and get in front of any issues. Taking away what is likely the only lifeline for them to be open or discuss something they share and interest in, is going to fucking suck, hard. I focus on men here as it is very likely that a lot of these fora are probably strongly weighted in that way, not that only men will be affected.

Thank you for writing this... this is why I'd continued all this time, it worked like this for me as well. But thank you, for writing this.

Will the site be archived and able to view in its final form? It will it be "the true death"?

True death... to run the site read-only will have ongoing costs, but I cannot expect this to come with future donations.

I'm open to someone crawling the public visible site in it's totality and making a workable archive that looks like this.

You should know that the Archive Team https://wiki.archiveteam.org/ are already crawling us, and we are on their Deathwatch https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/Deathwatch#2025 and that I've said I will add them to the allow list and ensure they can fully archive us. I don't know today how that will be accessed.

I am fine saying to the people on here that if you want to run a recursive wget, feel free to do so.

You should archive everything that hits https://www.lfgss.com and all files / attachments that come from https://lfgss.microcosm.app/ . The final archive will be somewhere between 1-2TB.

Actually, scratch this... I'll do it and will make a torrent available.

also, thank you for sharing the impact.

If others see sites impacted and shutting down, please share them... this thread will form part of the archive that is being created, and will be a record of the total impact of the bill up to the 16th March.

I've updated the first post since it's clearly the one being cited by others to be a little clearer about the impact and reasoning.

Honestly, spoke to a political editor at a major publication yesterday and she essentially distilled this down to being the end of "safe harbor" and "mere conduit", that she believes my interpretation to be sound.

She was supportive of providing contacts and intros, or running a story, but what struck me was her own conclusion that she would not wish to be a small site operator in this environment.

I'll continue to fight it, in part because if I succeed in any small way it will help all small sites, but for me personally I am committed to not being involved after 16th March.

I believe too deeply that the risk is not low and the liability is high, combine that with transitioning and I am too visible and too much a target for this stuff being weaponised by trolls/TERFs and others.

I still personally believe that the Discord life raft is probably the wisest thing to put effort into, but to enjoy this and other sites for as long as we can.

Another place shutting down https://www.gamingonlinux.com/forum/topic/6463/

Which also means there probably is a case for writing to MPs.

Sooo.. Anyone know who the secretary of state is?

Apparently there is a way to not have to do this stuff... The secretary of state has authority and power to make exceptions and carve outs.

Lolz, but seriously... If you represent other small sites then journalists keep asking me for examples of others affected... You should make yourself known.

I kinda like the "user agreement that forces arbitration prior to any Ofcom involvement" route too... sorta combine all of the evil legal things together so that they cancel each other out.

this is likely wishful thinking, this wouldn't work... but I can hope.

less of a challenge than the suggestion someone made of forcing everyone to VPN.

Out standing in my field, yes.

Well, if you're going to actually ride your bike... there's no helping some people

I wouldn't go that far, but astrophotography is the perfect hobby... you buy a telescope, a flask for whiskey, it's too cloudy, you have a drink... repeat forever.

I've replied to it

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!

I suspect the catch is that we'd be a high profile case study (given the coverage in the Telegraph, Telegraph (so good they ran it twice!), Computing UK and forthcoming New Scientist article)... but hey, that would be fine with me.

My concerns to be very explicit aren't just the risk assessment, but things required to mitigate risk afterwards... i.e. CSAM scanning, building new moderator tooling or training, being "on-call" in case of reported content whilst I'm on vacation, etc... i.e. all the ways that a single person run hobby site (even when they support such a large audience) has to achieve the implementation standard of big tech. The context is that I put a few hours per month in... I have a day job that I love, and a life outside of running websites... so if the compliance concludes that to mitigate risks I need to go spend hundreds of hours coding things, and writing things... I'd still seek to close it all on the 16th March.

But you likely know what the impact is better than I, so if you think it's unlikely that I'd need to change anything other then just assess impact and some minor things, I'll take you up on it.

Edit: I wouldn't accept "for free" as that would come with no guarantee or liability for the work, but I'd so "small fee" for an indemnity regarding the compliance.

did you say that it's better to bundle them up to once a quarter rather than monthly?

PayPal makes it better to have a higher donation less frequently... as they kick in a fixed fee + a %. the fixed fee is 30p, and then it's a % of transaction... hence when people do a 50p donation the % is deducted from 20p... it's pointless... when people do a £1 donation it's almost pointless but still appreciated... but it's best when it's £10 as then the total fees are a low % of the overall.

if you were donating £3 per month, it's better to just do £9 every 3 months, etc... as then the fees consume far less of it.

I think the % is 3%... I'd need to check that.

and once in a while someone will forget they have a donation and dispute it, and then the dispute fee typically wipes out someone else's donation too.

the huge benefit of lots of small transactions is resilience... in the early days we only had a few people donating a high amount, and 1 person stopping the donations would suddenly create a peril that month.

so lots of small is preferred... but not too small as too much goes to fees.

then occasionally people come along and do a one-off £50, £100, £200... and that offsets minor losses for a few months, and sometimes I'm lucky and I'm not out of pocket at all for a long stretch.

you all do need to decide what you want to do though... I can only share opinions.

I will opt for letting go on 16th March, but if I can line it up for whatever your chosen route is... I'll do so.

my personal belief, which is certainly open to being challenged, is that the compliance route is hard today... it's not clear if we're Low or Medium risk, and we're almost certainly a Multi-risk service... it's not just completing a risk assessment, it's then about taking steps to mitigate the risk.

the steps we'd have to take are not just completing paperwork, but a mix of people, tech, process. that's a larger burden, and still some risk and the liability remains.

the tech option is attractive to me as a possible solution others take... because I know tech. and I know that no part of this service really requires any knowledge of location or nationality of the person accessing it... the only thing that grants it that are the person running it (me, I'm in London), where it's hosted (in London), the name of the site (London again), and the self-declared most visible users (London)... but LFGSS is huge, and it's not been about just London for a long while... and 3 of those things are trivial to change, I can stop being involved, the service can be hosted elsewhere, the name can change... and the last, where users declare that they are, maybe don't do that. as a technical exercise to put websites beyond the reach of a jurisdiction, there are lots of examples of this working... it does seem crazy to run a platform of forums as if it's the pirate bay... but this is what happens, when laws have side effects, things go underground, I have a better idea of how to do that and hand it over to someone, than I do of how to make the service fully compliant according to my current understanding of what would be needed.

of course a technical solution appeals to a techie.

I'm still don't understand why there's a need for hosting the site outside the UK and all the rigmarole that entails since most users will be in the UK

The point would be to shutter all UK focused sites (hyper specific and 100% UK such as Islington, Brixton, etc).

And to instead acknowledge that LFGSS has a global audience (yesterday 50% of all traffic was from the USA alone, about 20% of traffic is currently from Tor where I've no idea where it's from)... rename LFGSS to something that isn't London specific, and let it just be a site on the internet, not a site aimed at UK users. It's almost hilarious how many people posting about how sad it is are not even in the UK.

Then, alongside the large international fora in other languages, such as Pignole Fixe, etc... to basically go "no staff in UK, no servers in UK, not aimed at UK people"... and if the Europeans who pick this up do it in Germany and to comply with strict data laws there just disable all logging of country of access, etc...

... well, that would not be a UK service to UK users run by UK staff... in fact, it's way outside of the OSA and UK reach... but only by shuttering the explicitly UK oriented sites.

And honestly, if any user ever says they're in the UK... they should just be banned. Feel free to talk about the place, but internet users should be users of the internet.

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

Another thing that occurs to me—how can you moderate risk in PMs?

I can't... and DMs have been used to share shock images like Goatse, and some of those get reported.

The Act also covers harassment and stalking, and many would say that some people who bear grudges have done that on here, that it happens daily.

The Act also covers hate, and I myself have encountered transphobia, and every woman on here will show you the sexism everywhere, or the racism that is pretty much everywhere. It's subtle, but it's there.

There's no way we're a good place... we may be better than most, and more tolerant and accepting... but there's always some few who are present and also exhibiting the worst traits that drive the risk up... I cannot stop them, and tools proposed by the Act won't stop them either.

Welcome to the World for a forum moderator / admin.

The shit I've seen.

And some of the people on this site have done all manner of stuff for which I could've been held liable... they corrected their behaviour, but damn, that liability would've been real whilst they were in the throes of their anger and stupidity.

There was that guy only a week or two ago who wanted to be banned for essentially far-right statements, transphobic statements, and misogynistic statements... I banned him for spam instead as he'd trolled several fora... but still... this is not a zero risk, this is in fact the primary risk.