UK Online Safety Regulations and impact on Forums

Mr Lucky said:
I can’t see anything at the moment that seems too onerous.

It just seems to me all you need do at the moment is a risk assessment. It took me about 15 minutes, and it would seem that is a better option than closing the forum down.

That and requiring age verification, but it seems there may be more to that than just getting people to say how old they are.

Whether it’s enough remains to be seen but I’m certainly not going to close a forum down because of it. Of course maybe I would think otherwise if my forum relied on illegal or harmful content
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For now, that’s all that’s required. That will likely change by March depending on how much brain measles the advice comes out with (e.g. mandating CSAM scanning, which may come with a cost that hobby forums may choose not to cover, or may not be able to afford to cover)

Disabling PMs (or, at the very least, disabling PMs where attachments are an option) is certainly being talked about as a risk mitigation technique because “I didn’t know they were doing it” may not be an adequate defence if it later turns out that you’ve had someone quietly spreading illegal material without your knowledge.
 
I'm sure I saw somewhere among the many many confusing pages re: the act , that there needs to be a nominated individual who is responsible for compliance.

Or was I imagining that? If not please can someone refer to the page, thanks

EDIT: ah this is what I'm looking for in the act documentation:

lazy llama said:
There’s mandatory risk assessment, named responsible individuals etc.
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Mr Lucky said:
I'm sure I saw somewhere among the many many confusing pages re: the act , that there needs to be a nominated individual who is responsible for compliance.


EDIT: ah this is what I'm looking for in the act documentation:
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So the bit about risk assessment is here:
All providers of user-to-user and search services in scope of the Act must complete their illegal content risk assessments within three months of us publishing this final illegal content risk assessment guidance. Providers will need to be prepared to complete these assessments by mid-March 2025, and we will expect specific providers to disclose their risk assessments to us from 31 March 2025

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The bit about nominated individuals is here:

ICU A2/ ICS A2 -
Service providers should name an individual accountable to the most senior governance body for compliance with the illegal content safety duties and the reporting and complaints duties.
(Applies to providers of all services)

(Chapter 5 in https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets...-governance-and-risks-management.pdf?v=388024 )
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lazy llama said:
So the bit about risk assessment is here:

The bit about nominated individuals is here:
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Many thanks. So having nominated myself and carried out a risk assessment which finds that there is negligible risk, given that all 17 of the listed illegal content would be against our rules anyway and we have moderators and a report system, then that is all we need at the moment I believe.

So I do wonder why forums are closing because of this, is it because they can’t function without a high risk of illegal content being posted?
 
Mr Lucky said:
Many thanks. So having nominated myself and carried out a risk assessment which finds that there is negligible risk, given that all 17 of the listed illegal content would be against our rules anyway and we have moderators and a report system, then that is all we need at the moment I believe.

So I do wonder why forums are closing because of this, is it because they can’t function without a high risk of illegal content being posted?
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They see the penalties, they consider that reporting isn’t necessarily enough (because you have to remove bad content swiftly, but how swiftly is not clear), they see that they are potentially personally liable and just go “nope”. If you run a site purely as a volunteer, this can feel like a burden and a stress factor that just isn’t worth the hassle - even if it isn’t as bad as it seems.
 
Mr Lucky said:
So I do wonder why forums are closing because of this
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Because, if you have had enough and are closing anyway, it's a good excuse. I can't think of another valid reason.

Unless of course, your forum is about how to perfect self harm or discusses whether high falls or fast trains are the best way to end it all. Or maybe facilitates the meeting of Paedo's and children. Otherwise, its forum owners fussing about nothing. IMO
 
Arantor said:
because you have to remove bad content swiftly, but how swiftly is not clear
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So after pages upon pages of guff, it’s still not clear. Maybe we’ll only know after a “test case” or appeal.
MentaL said:
If needed, all users could be limited to age and region.
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That’s all very well, but my understanding is that users covers anyone seeing the site, not just your logged in members.
 
Mr Lucky said:
Many thanks. So having nominated myself and carried out a risk assessment which finds that there is negligible risk, given that all 17 of the listed illegal content would be against our rules anyway and we have moderators and a report system, then that is all we need at the moment I believe.
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Don’t forget the record-keeping as well.

Not that onerous but that’s because other have done the hard work and worked out what the actual obligations are from the thousands of pages of “guidance”. And there’s a lot more to come.

As with most things, the legislation (when considered with the OFCOM documentation plus the many many more regulations which they’ll bolt on to this) is a sledgehammer to crack a walnut.

Back in the 1990s there was a proposal in the UK to make all bulletin boards (pre-widespread Internet access) have licenses, ostensibly to prevent child abuse material, but it was sponsored by FAST and was really about copyright protection.
Fortunately, the government of the time rejected the proposal. This time we weren’t so lucky.
 
JamesBrown said:
Because, if you have had enough and are closing anyway, it's a good excuse. I can't think of another valid reason.

Unless of course, your forum is about how to perfect self harm or discusses whether high falls or fast trains are the best way to end it all. Or maybe facilitates the meeting of Paedo's and children. Otherwise, its forum owners fussing about nothing. IMO
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I disagree. Running a forum - especially as a volunteer on a non profit basis - means: It costst time and money, there's stress tied to it and you suffer from personal attacks more or less regularly. On top of that comes the risk, especially the legal risk which may have a dramatic impact on your personal life and financiial situation in the worst case. People have in general become way less factual, way more weird and way more aggressive over the last years, at least that's my impression. And probably exactly that is the reason why regulations like this new act come into play at all. At the same time regulation, legal boundaries and constraints have risen constantly over the years. So running a forum has become more stressful and way more risky than 20 years ago, for many reasons. Whenever a new "big" regulation is rolled out it turns out to be overly buerocratic, possibly with good intentions but poorly written and in ignorance of the situation of smaller communities or communities run by volunteers with no budget in their spare time. While big corps have no issue implementing the buerokracy or getting away with just ignoring it (using a cohort of expensive lawyers and or a multinational structure to escape) this is not an option for small communities. Any new regulation creates uncertaincy in the beginning and a risk tied to it. If one feels overburdening or the risk or the buerocratic effort being to high it is a valid option to just let go: The price you'd have to pay (or at least potentially to pay) may seem to high. If you earn money with your forum it is a commercial decision if it is worth it. If you don't it is a personal decision and what ever you decide is valid.

When GDPR came into play a couple of years ago we had a similar situation: An utterly complex new regulation with good intentions, a very high level of uncertaincy about the consequences and a lot of risk and effort tied to it. As a consequence many forums have closed down because of it. Seems we do have a similar situation again, at least in the UK. While people from other countries may can possibly happlily decide to ignore the act for one reason or another in many if not most cases a person from the UK would be stupid to do so.And may come to the conclusion that this is the last bit that leads to the conclusion: It's just no longer worth it. If you read through the statement of the person running LFGSS in the start posting of this thread it seems a perfect example for this:

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

www.lfgss.com www.lfgss.com

It is very sad, but perfectly understandable for me. And btw.: This is a bike forum, a very good one. Nothing at all connected to paedos or self harm or anything in that direction. Your suggestions regarding that are really disgusting @JamesBrown .
 
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That's sad to read:
LFGS Admin said:
I can't afford what is likely tens of thousand to go through all the legal and technical hoops over a prolonged period of time just to learn what I'd then need to technically implement and do, the site itself barely gets a few hundred in donations each month and costs a little more to run... this is not a venture that can afford compliance costs... and if we did, what remains is a disproportionately high personal liability for me, and one that could easily be weaponised by disgruntled people (trolls) who are banned for their egregious behaviour (in the years running fora I've been signed up to porn sites, stalked IRL and online, subject to death threats, had fake copyright takedown notices, an attempt to delete the domain name with ICANN... all from those whom I've moderated to protect community members)... I do not see an alternative to shuttering it.


The conclusion I have to make is that we're done... Microcosm, LFGSS, the many other communities running on this platform... the risk to me personally is too high, and so I will need to shutter them all.
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LFGSS and Microcosm shutting down 16th March 2025 (the day before the Online Safety Act is enforced) | LFGSS

www.lfgss.com www.lfgss.com
 
Arantor said:
I was just about to quote that paragraph - the targeting in particular is very much a concern if you have ever had disgruntled folks with an axe to grind and limited upper ceiling on how far they’ll go.
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Exactly that. The chances are a small forum or site will in all probability fly under the regulator's radar unless you are very unlucky but all it takes is one disgruntled member...
 
smallwheels said:
a very high level of uncertaincy about the consequences and a lot of risk and effort tied to it. As a consequence many forums have closed down because of it.
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Forums actually closed down because of GDPR? I know there was discussion about it and XenForo made it clear that the software itself easily allowed GDPR compliancy (e.g. in regard to cookie notice, deleting accounts)
 
Mr Lucky said:
Forums actually closed down because of GDPR? I know there was discussion about it and XenForo made it clear that the software itself easily allowed GDPR compliancy (e.g. in regard to cookie notice, deleting accounts)
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Definitely I know some sites that stopped offering services to EU members. I wouldn’t be surprised if forums were in that cohort, but there’s been a decline in forums over the last decade, it wouldn’t surprise me also if they were closing anyway and GDPR just formed a final nail in the coffin rather than being the only primary nail.
 
Arantor said:
Definitely I know some sites that stopped offering services to EU members.
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Yes I remember just after GDPR, LA Times stopped working in UK. But I think they soon realised it was not necessary. This could be a bit like that with instant knee-jerk reaction to "something foreign"
 
Mr Lucky said:
Yes I remember just after GDPR, LA Times stopped working in UK. But I think they soon realised it was not necessary. This could be a bit like that with instant knee-jerk reaction to "something foreign"
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I think more likely they realised how much ad revenue they were losing and their advertisers got it figured out. Same reason we’re stuck with all the cookie banners - sites would rather compromise their users’ experience than have less targeted ads/less analytics data for data harvesters etc.

But these events definitely do stop and make people think, even if they don’t make what might look in hindsight as rational decisions .
 
Arantor said:
I was just about to quote that paragraph - the targeting in particular is very much a concern if you have ever had disgruntled folks with an axe to grind and limited upper ceiling on how far they’ll go.
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I think that any site that has received GDPR requests or complaints over the years, will probably also receive OSA requests or complaints. GDPR complaints can also be made to service providers like Google or hosting for example., which can result in pages getting blocked from the service. Similar situations will likely occur.

It's not the end of the world, but it doesn't make running a community more fun either.
 
smallwheels said:
Your suggestions regarding that are really disgusting @JamesBrown .
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Give over, I wasn't suggesting they were. Rather, if a forum does those things, they have cause to worry. A properly managed bike forum has no need to worry about legislation designed to combat the disgusting things above.


You seem the worrying kind, I'll let you do the worrying for me :)
 
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