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“We are trying to dismantle the idea that these criminals are monsters,” Antoine said. “The Mazan case showed with websites like Coco these people can be your neighbors – even in the smallest town people can connect online and commit these crimes.”

Lol. Wtf. Yeah, these dudes are the real victims here. They were just your average Joe... it was the website that perverted them and turned them into bloody rapists and murders 🤦

I had a stab at it. Hopefully people can chip in and help turn this brain dump into something coherent and eloquent that we can all use.

—-

Dear XXX,
I am writing to you about the Online Safety Act due to come into force March 17th 2025.
Ofcom has published advice pertaining to the categorisation and requirements for user-to-user internet services (i.e. services that allow users to create/upload and share content).

Specifically, this advice sets out the obligation for any service with links to the UK to:

someone please fill this in with the requirements applicable to all or multi-risk services. my eyes are bleeding and its 1am

The Secretary of State must now consider this advice and pass regulations to a make it into law.

The act, which clearly was originally meant to target tech companies (as evidenced by Ofcom’s frequent use of terms “companies”, “businesses” and “tech companies” in its literature), was set out in such broad and vague terms that small online forums such as those owned and operated by sports clubs, hobby societies and other special interest community groups, will now become regulated services.

These forums and message boards are used by the groups to communicate and organize themselves and, particularly since Covid, have become extremely important spaces, bringing people with common interests together, serving as an important outlet for personal development and expression and being an effective avenue to combat loneliness and social isolation (which are in current times their own epidemic). In many cases, communities exist solely within the realm of these online forums.

These platforms are most often ran by volunteers in a personal capacity or as members of non-profit organisations and the overly onerous and complex compliance effort required to meet the proposed requirements as well as the personal liability risk faced by the individuals operating these forums, pose a serious threat to their continued existence.

I believe regulation serves an important purpose, particularly where it pertains to the online safety of our children, and applaud its introduction. However, the proposed requirements, in their current form, will have a disproportionate impact on the above mentioned communities. They will then be faced with the choice of using commercial internet service providers (where most abusive and dangerous content is actually disseminated, as illustrated by Ofcom’s own research) or simply cease to exist.

insert personal impact statement (e.g. I personally am a member of…) or delete

The national media seems to have only just picked up on this issue. Please see below for some relevant news reporting:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/12/17/hundreds-of-websites-to-shut-down-under-chilling-internet/

more links would be nice

I therefore politely request that you to look into this matter and intercede with the Secretary of State to consider incorporating changes into the advice received from Ofcom, to align the requirements with the nature, size and resources of these self-organized communities (which are an expression of the centuries-old British tradition of associativism), minimising the impact of the act in their operation and ensuring their continued existence.

Kind regards,

Unlikely 3rd dibs

Ummm... I am not exactly a bright legal mind but, could we perhaps not be exempt from this as we do not fit the proposed criteria of:

Condition 1:
• the use of a content recommender system on its service; and
• have more than 34 million UK users on the user-to-user part of the service,
representing c.50% of the UK population.

nor

Condition 2:
• have a functionality that offers users the ability to forward or re-share usergenerated content >with other users of the service; and
• the use of a content recommender system on its service; and
• have more than 7 million UK users on the user-to-user part of the service,
representing c.10% of the UK population.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/12/17/hundreds-of-websites-to-shut-down-under-chilling-internet/

yowsers, i hope this wasn’t meant at me! i’m not sure i meant to pin anything on anyone but sorry if i am missing the implications of something i put

Not at all. Mere coincidence it came after your post. Scan through the thread and you'll understand where I'm coming from.

Sorry, I meant "archive.org is on it apparently". Edited.

Happy to contribute in any way needed.

Stop trying to pin this on Velocio by saying idiotic things such as "Velocio have you considered..." and stop invalidating their very reasonable personal concerns by saying shit like "nothing will happen... Ofcom won't care about LFGSS". It's your community you fucking wimps! If you are so gutted about its demise, YOU do something about it!
From my perspective, there's various fronts we can and should be working on:

Stop the whole thing

- is this really unavoidable?
- can the act still be stopped?
- can we realistically do something about it (pester MPs, bike pile-up in front of parliament, get sympathetic media talking about this, rally other communities on the same boat)?

Skirt it

- can we find a solution to exempt ourselves from this (move site abroad, "block" UK traffic, go P2P)?

Deal with it

- can we find a solution to be compliant (transfer site ownership into LTD / CIC, fundraise to pay / employe someone to do compliance / monitoring work or crowd-source that effort)?

Fucking KILL it

- if we can't make it, we might as well go out with a Bang
- organize rides / socials / whatever (looks like there's a thread going)

Endure

- how do we preserver the data from LFGSS (archive.org is on it apparently)
- how do we keep going when LFGSS is gone (discord server is up and running but fuck Discord, are there any viable alternatives)?

That has got to have been the most fucked up page change ever. Brutally sad news.

Soma Double Cross in Exeter

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/256740175100?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=sruEBuIpRBe&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=MU4HulzRQvq&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

They have a 15% off first order thingy as well.

Not exactly a bargain, but Panaracer tyre sets can be had for a very decent price on their own website. BF discounts combined with EMAILPAIRS20 code mean the new edition Slick+ TLRs can be had for 36 quid.

Even more of a discount now, with the 20% BF eBay code.
39.99£ for a set of Ultegra Di2 brifters. Bonkers!

Thank you so much for this. Had been scouring ebay for a couple weeks looking for some cheap pairs and somehow completely missed this.

Rim brake, 32h, 9x100, black. Brand new. Bought for a build that never happened (moved to 12x100).

I'm trying to get rid of a brand new SP PV-8, if that fits the bill?

Yeah, those are the ones I meant. The 282 and 281 (unlined version). Don’t know where I got the 812 from lol.

Agreed. I've got a fair few t-staks that I've accumulated over the years and I absolutely hate them. They are no doubt great to carry around to job sites in the back of a van, but to have at home they are a lot of faff.
The interlocking mechanism, the lid latches and the weird molding form factor make them very secure and robust, but very faffy and hard to organize.
I cannot recommend them and I'm personally looking to replace them with something else when I have the time and money to invest. Eurocrates will probably be the new thing.
Or this, if my dreams of having a shed/garage ever come true.

Yeah, that would be my expectation, but a man can dream... Just found the wording on their response to @tmevans a bit confusing. Like, why would they bring the BF discount up?

This is a fairly common solution among ultralight hikers and mountaineers. I did a week long hike in negative temperatures with just a pair of rubber gloves and a pair of wool liners. Showa (industrial hand protection manufacturer) 812 gloves are recommended so often that they started selling them in black and actually went ahead and created an outdoor sports product line.
Definitely not for fashion conscious peeps.

Does that mean we would be able to use both the group order and BF discounts on the same order? If so, it's worth going ahead. Otherwise, I'll just order using @spinnnout code.

I'm up for a wheelset / some rims. Looks like they have some 10-20% discounts coming up for Black Friday too.

Dibs brakeset and 1150 cassette please.

GT CX frame, Gravelking SK, Hope RX crankset, Hope DM chainring, microshift bar end shifters, m7000 cassette, Brooks C17 gone