UK Online Safety Regulations and impact on Forums

I've also seen a couple of really quite large forums, US based with a LOT of Uk users, who don't seem to be doing anything at all. Maybe they don't even know about the Online safety act!
 
True - although they could be risking fines. I can't see people who live and run forums in the US, taking kindly to the idea they are subject to any Uk laws. And how is it possible? Are there agreements between countries on this?
 
As I see it, the OSA is hardly enforceable. It's pretty much impossible to comply with it. So what are they going to do? Fine everyone? I don't think so. Not unless they are going to hire 10k extra staff.

I also think the last thing they want is a media disaster that portrays them as dictatorial censors of free speech. Which is what would happen if they start fining innocent organizations like hamster forums.
 
The way how i'm going about this is making my forum private and watching who signs up.
I have a thread stating about the UK laws (due to the software being UK based) so it covers everything.
That same thread has links to Australian law on minors and social media.
My age restriction is 18+ and people have to use their paid for email addresses.
I know my own forum is just a plain general forum but the fact is you have to be safe than sorry especially when other countries are involved with some law changes.
 
I'm not so sure. Ok so the only fine so far (that we know of) has been to an "adult" site for over a million pounds. But Ofcom's job is to enforce harm and illegal harms. So if someone complains, they will investigate. And you could be fined just for not having done the paperwork or for not having enough mitigations. I am sure there would be some "malicious" complaints. A rival site? A disgruntled member?

The Hamster Forum currently doesn't need to be a compliant. It just has a read-only page. But means I don't have my forum (and neither do my former members). The group is still all together elsewhere but it's a half-baked option. There is nothing quite like a forum. Where you can actually write and posts are organised.
 
Well there certainly is no shortage of disgruntled forum members on this planet. They will find their way to ofcom report page quickly enough. More than ofcom can process.
 
Alpha1 said:
Well there certainly is no shortage of disgruntled forum members on this planet. They will find their way to ofcom report page quickly enough. More than ofcom can process.
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Ofcom will have plenty of funding - from the fines! Over a million just went to the treasury from the recent fine.
 
Alpha1 said:
As I see it, the OSA is hardly enforceable. It's pretty much impossible to comply with it. So what are they going to do? Fine everyone? I don't think so. Not unless they are going to hire 10k extra staff.

I also think the last thing they want is a media disaster that portrays them as dictatorial censors of free speech. Which is what would happen if they start fining innocent organizations like hamster forums.
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It may be innocent, but in the view of the Act, it attracts children and therefore could attract groomers .......
 
Alpha1 said:
As I see it, the OSA is hardly enforceable. It's pretty much impossible to comply with it. So what are they going to do? Fine everyone? I don't think so. Not unless they are going to hire 10k extra staff.

I also think the last thing they want is a media disaster that portrays them as dictatorial censors of free speech. Which is what would happen if they start fining innocent organizations like hamster forums.
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OSA should not be enforced into they get everything in order on their side first. Most likely they'll end up delaying real enforcement until they get their side sorted out first anyway.
 
Ofcom is not hiring a significant number of people. Currently they have 4 job openings. None of which relate to handling complaints. Most of these relate to technical implementation of LLM's. This indicates that they may have no intention to process a mass of complaints manually, but rather scan the internet for issues with AI. i.e. when a complaint comes in then scan the related site with an LLM.
 
I brought up this idea on another forum, so thought I'd share it here.

Wonder if it would work if you make folks reporting jump through some hoops. Setup a long-ass reporting form and say OSA requires record keeping for reports etc so direct reporters to the form. Have then specifically need to read through 17 categories of risk and harm and then categorize their reports into those and get them to outline why they think they belong in that category etc. Get to have to read through OSA before they can submit the report :)

Now you can kill 2 birds with 1 stone, if you engineer the form to automatically do all the record keeping paper work for you in a pre-made template that you can then export to docx/pdf formats for printing and record keeping etc.
 
Just considering whether I'd be prepared to pay £550 upfront for credits for Shufti Pro. But presumably there would be developing costs again to integrate it. Waiting for a reply about that.
 
Alvin63 said:
Verifymy say the £2000 is an "integration fee" (not a pre-purchase of credits) and non-negotiable. So that's goodbye to them.
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Maybe tell them that there are plenty of xenforo big boards with hundreds of thousands of members. If they create the integration then they will be able to list the addon/plugin here on xenforo.com and start accepting xenforo webmasters as their paying customers.
 
Shufti at least reduced the minimum upfront credit price. But haven't got as far as discussing integration with them yet.
 
Shufti Pro sent documentation for integrating their API. It says "run it in Postman". There is a free version of Postman but not sure if it's enough for the requirements, or whether it's something you could do yourself or still need a developer. I've shared it with @chillibear

This is for Face ID (with liveness).

Verifymy said the £2000 upfront is for "ongoing support" and a one-off. Still goodbye to them though. Too expensive.
 
Shufti Pro seem good to deal with - reply to emails very quickly and answer questions in a helpful and friendly way. They have confirmed that face ID does verify age (and you set the age) and if it fails they are given the option to produce ID.

Logically, I should accept leaving the forum closed down. When despite having 850 members, there was just a regular group of about 12 posters and new members would post once or twice and then go - when they had the info needed. Many just joined up to read articles. The articles are still viewable on a read-only page.

But it's the principle of it in some ways - I don't want to be forced to close if I didn't want to. However I'm not sure people would bother to pay 50p to register just to read articles.....with the hassle of having to do face age ID and do a payment process. Strong, loyal group of former members would like it to keep going - but they're not offering to pay the bills! Although all would be prepared to pay a one off 50p
 
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