UK Online Safety Regulations and impact on Forums

I can't see what difference does it make going to an overseas server - unless the ownership is changed to US as well (ie give or sell the forum to someone in the US) and they block all Uk members. Both my forums were predominantly Uk members.
 
Alvin63 said:
I can't see what difference does it make going to an overseas server - unless the ownership is changed to US as well (ie give or sell the forum to someone in the US) and they block all Uk members. Both my forums were predominantly Uk members.
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I agree, except you would not need to block UK members if you are not specifically catering to them (although you were so probably still are).
 
Well one of mine was active, successful and growing! Uk members only. But members are all migrated elsewhere.

The hamster one was growing - 800 members after 2.5 years. Fairly active but only a handful of regular posters. New members would come and go and post occasionally. It had a lot of sign ups - new ones daily - some to just read articles though. Active members have also migrated elsewhere as a group. Predominantly Uk members with a handful from other countries. Instagram is rubbish btw IMO

It isn't just a risk assessment - it's mitigating for risks also. And then the child risk assessment due soon which is a much bigger risk assessment and further mitigations needed. Leading to costs. The Hamster forum members aren't keen on Instagram and keep hoping I'll start the forum up again - which is why I'm still looking into age verification.

But as a part time venture, when you have a life, it becomes a much bigger thing to manage with all the mitigations and there is a time element involved too and the amount of mental space it takes up.

Otherwise the ones I've read about are
LFGSS and Microcosm
Some local community forums
A cancer forum
A couple of football forums
Bike Radar Forum

Googling shows (as a result of the OSA): Also

Track and Field forum
Fermanagh Lakeland Forum (in April)
Vinted Forum
Barrow Town Hall forum
Rover 75/MG ZT Club
World of Tanks Blitz Forum
Green Building forum
Arokhs Lair
Premier metal detecting forum
Dark Horse digital
Ambient online
A snooker forum

didn't look any further ........There are probably a lot that don't show up on google or haven't announced it publicly.
 
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@chillibear As well as an API to integrate age id software - how would I then go about implementing a £1 fee for registration as well? And presumably that would need to come AFTER the age is verified - as if someone failed age verification they'd want their £1 back.
 
Alvin63 said:
@chillibear As well as an API to integrate age id software - how would I then go about implementing a £1 fee for registration as well? And presumably that would need to come AFTER the age is verified - as if someone failed age verification they'd want their £1 back.
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My flow is quite simple:
  1. User registers and has whatever permissions you decide (could be lots, could be few)
  2. User goes to Account Upgrades and buys "age verification" for £1.50 (currently just paypal with address required)
  3. User goes back to idling around forum
  4. In the background my software notices the purchased upgrade and initiates an age-verification based on the address
  5. If the user doesn't pass age-verification immediately they will get notified and have an email prompting them to use one of the other methods (AI selfie, ID, Credit card)
  6. If the user has passed age-verification they are put into an "eighteen plus" group and get whatever permissions associated with the group.
  7. If the age-verification failed they are put into the "under eighteen" group and get whatever restrictions you've associated with that group.
I opted for that because I was writing a tool that sat outside of XF. If you had someone writing an add-on you could potentially add menu items and buttons and whatnot to trigger verification, plonk verification in at registration, accept webhooks back from the verification companies. All sorts of options. Other than a little tinkering at the edges with XF I don't know the framework and my PHP is ancient so I didn't want to spend time both writing my code and learning the framework (and PHP again). I just wanted a working option in case I needed it. Hence opting to tie it all in via other interfaces and just do it in Ruby. I think the flow I selected works fairly well for XF if you are happy to have users register before verification (you could always restrict "everything" until they had done a verification).

Can't speak for other suppliers but one plus with the (incredibly slow to reply to messages) VeryifyMy is that they don't charge you if the verification fails apparently! So actually I could refund the purchases in theory. Could easily be a faff if you had quite a few so I wasn't going to shout about doing it!
 
Thank you. So basically you let everyone pay to register and then age verification puts them in different groups. I'm trying to work out how you would set up a restricted group for under 18's!

Ideally I would like everyone to pass the over 18 age id. Then be asked to pay the registration fee. If it was email checking with verifymy then that would only take a few seconds. So they'd do that first and then ideally when that passes, a notice come up saying - thank you for verifying you are over 18, there is a £1 one off membership fee for registering - and the payment option come up.

But I can't work out how you would integrate paypal - as opposed to just relying on them to donate £1!. Also a lot of people don't have paypal accounts I've found....... integrating banking details would be much more complicated. which is why I was looking at the possible shopify option with One ID - but gave up on that because you have to pay to use shopify as well. Although it would be interestng to see what their costs are because it could be very convenient to have a payment and age ID in one integration - just one process.

Edit: Shopify basic fee seems to be £19 a month. That limits you to 3 global markets (presumably countries) so a bit limiting. 50 global markets costs $2300 a month! Three global markets is standard but for £259 a month you can add additional global markets for $59 per market/country. So RATHER expensive.

It's all the financial and accounting side of things that feels like extra work though.....
 
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Well I might when I find the time look to see how I'd do Stripe for payments alongside Paypal - this particular site has just always had paypal. You can do paypal as a guest - you don't need to have an account (although I know they like to "encourage" users, and some people just wont use paypal). That involves figuring out what the payment log looks like for Stripe and writing a parser for it.

I'd charge my users up front myself otherwise you risk paying for them... which if it's not huge numbers I get you might just do. I partially went the pay first route as it gave me something to "trigger" the age-verification off the back of - ie the active "user upgrade" record in the database.
 
chillibear said:
My flow is quite simple:
  1. User registers and has whatever permissions you decide (could be lots, could be few)
  2. User goes to Account Upgrades and buys "age verification" for £1.50 (currently just paypal with address required)
  3. User goes back to idling around forum
  4. In the background my software notices the purchased upgrade and initiates an age-verification based on the address
  5. If the user doesn't pass age-verification immediately they will get notified and have an email prompting them to use one of the other methods (AI selfie, ID, Credit card)
  6. If the user has passed age-verification they are put into an "eighteen plus" group and get whatever permissions associated with the group.
  7. If the age-verification failed they are put into the "under eighteen" group and get whatever restrictions you've associated with that group.
I opted for that because I was writing a tool that sat outside of XF. If you had someone writing an add-on you could potentially add menu items and buttons and whatnot to trigger verification, plonk verification in at registration, accept webhooks back from the verification companies. All sorts of options. Other than a little tinkering at the edges with XF I don't know the framework and my PHP is ancient so I didn't want to spend time both writing my code and learning the framework (and PHP again). I just wanted a working option in case I needed it. Hence opting to tie it all in via other interfaces and just do it in Ruby. I think the flow I selected works fairly well for XF if you are happy to have users register before verification (you could always restrict "everything" until they had done a verification).

Can't speak for other suppliers but one plus with the (incredibly slow to reply to messages) VeryifyMy is that they don't charge you if the verification fails apparently! So actually I could refund the purchases in theory. Could easily be a faff if you had quite a few so I wasn't going to shout about doing it!
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Will you have to report your income of 1.50?
 
JamesBrown said:
What niche were they in? Was it a growing forum?
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Significant enough to have specialised UK based hosting for last 10+ years. One did not like idea of extra cost / liability. Other sounds like its gone to USA cloud host - possibly sold up but that is speculation.

OSA has, in a small way, lost a UK ISP company business there as a side effect.
 
Mr Lucky said:
If it's UK, I believe there is a threshold at which you do or don't need to report freelance:


"Although you are self employed, when your gross profit is less than £1000, you do not need to report the self employment on a tax return. "
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That’s interesting to know. I thought it would just be classed as any other business earnings provided you keep a profit and loss record. In my case it would be simple - more going out than coming back in - therefore it’s not income.
 
JamesBrown said:
That doesn't mean anything, lots of failing websites are on dedicated servers. What was the name of this closed because of OSA forum?
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I don’t think its as simple as saying it’s failing sites. Many forums are run for communities or groups and active, without being profitable. They have plenty of members in their own specific area. They are there for chatting with others with similar want and need of info - especially if it’s a health support site.
 
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I do think the gov have really messed up with this with smaller sites. They have put the onus on the site owner, rather than the individuals using the site. As site owners, prior to this act, it was simple. The TOS stated the harms they mustn’t do and if a member broke that they got banned (or reported to the police if it was bad enough).

It seems unfair to make a site owner responsible for other people’s behaviour.

And if a site was really bad for all sorts of nasty stuff, it would probably be reported anyway.
 
Alvin63 said:
more going out than coming back in - therefore it’s not income.
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It's not quite that simple. Gross profit is after deduction of direct sales expense (e.g. the cost of age verification in this case) but would not included general expenses such as your xenForo licence or server/ hosting costs.

In other words income from age verification minus costs of age verification would classed as gross profit and if that is under £1000.

That's my understanding. Maybe someone more knowledgeable might correct this?
 
Mr Lucky said:
It's not quite that simple. Gross profit is after deduction of direct sales expense (e.g. the cost of age verification in this case) but would not included general expenses such as your xenForo licence or server/ hosting costs.

In other words income from age verification minus costs of age verification would classed as gross profit and if that is under £1000.

That's my understanding. Maybe someone more knowledgeable might correct this?
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If your gross income is over £1000 you have to declare it, even if your net takes you below that.
 
Didn't realise that. When I've run a small business before/freelance work, your purchases and costs offset your profits. If it costs say £600 a year for server costs, email and software (including stock photos sometimes), and say £420 a year for age verification (35p per registration x 100 registrations a month). And you charge £1 per registration, giving an income of £1200 a year, Then costs are £1020 and income is £1200. So yes an income of £180 a year would be taxable. Any donations would also be classed as income if running it as a "business". In which case it might be simpler to charge 50p per registration :-)
 
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