It sounds to me OFCOM wants to have it both ways i.e. a large number of users on a small site and a small number of users on a large site. At least that's the way their word salad reads to me.
UK Online Safety Regulations and impact on Forums
- Thread starter lazy llama
- Start date
-
- Tags
- regulation
They do have that strange smell about them
As an update, I'm up to 363 members again now and all going well 
Although it was 850 members pre March. But getting there. Seem to have picked up a few from Reddit strangely. Reddit REFUSE to remove the post saying the Hamster Forum is closed - which comes up high on Google searches still! So I added a post saying the Hamster Forum is open. The big headline comes up saying closed, and the snippet underneath says "open again".
Anyway it seems to have given the forum some publicity on Reddit lol.
Although it was 850 members pre March. But getting there. Seem to have picked up a few from Reddit strangely. Reddit REFUSE to remove the post saying the Hamster Forum is closed - which comes up high on Google searches still! So I added a post saying the Hamster Forum is open. The big headline comes up saying closed, and the snippet underneath says "open again".Anyway it seems to have given the forum some publicity on Reddit lol.
XenForo does not allow for deletion of direct messages. I believe this is mandatory in both the Online Safety Act as well as the EU Digital Services Act.
Did anyone already encounter issues with the OSA about this topic? Or find a solution?
Did anyone already encounter issues with the OSA about this topic? Or find a solution?
Up to 535 members now ...............As an update, I'm up to 363 members again now and all going well
Anyway it seems to have given the forum some publicity on Reddit lol.
My solution was to delete them all at server level, turn permissions off for direct messages, except for admin. So members get an automatic welcome message from admin. If they need to contact admin they can reply to their welcome message. That's basically no direct messaging. Keeps all posting on forum. Nobody seems to mind! Just admin contact. Alternatively, the AI Content moderator addon has an option to auto moderate all direct messages - but that just moderates them for harmful or illegal content - doesn't allow members to delete them.
Just over a year today since I closed the forum down, deleted all members (most moved with me elsewhere). At the time of closing it had about 850 members. Reopened again in May last year with 45 former members. It's now back up to 622 members. Also closed down another forum at the same time and I miss it. Members of that one moved to Discord - not the same.
Last edited:
Very sad.
To make my life easy and virtually eliminate any potential legal issues, I used "GeoBlock" to effectively limit my forum to the USA only. I blocked the entire EU and UK and a host of other countries. Any country not blocked or not the USA is held for admin review (I reject most of them). It's just not worth the trouble.
Last edited:
There has been no real issues my end from this so far. We are aware of it but our users are respectful mostly. My userbase are all getting older, wiser and are a bunch of wholesome nerds. We will do what is needed to stay above board but so far, all is well. We did limit some functions for under 18s by restricting it but our UK demographic is pretty small overall.
Anyone been effected at all? We did consider some potential verification for UK users but once again, a lot of our users are behind VPNS. We even have a sizable chinese userbase due to their own issues there.
Anyone been effected at all? We did consider some potential verification for UK users but once again, a lot of our users are behind VPNS. We even have a sizable chinese userbase due to their own issues there.
Australia is in the same boat.
There is a ban on all people who are under the age of 16 who use social media.
We adopted this and what we did is made sure that the person who signed up is an adult.
To be honest though who cares if a kid posts on there. It's not that bad considering they're not being abused by creeps on social media.
Out of curiosity - would you mind sharing how? I did briefly skim over the Australian legislation (since as far ask I could tell from it Forums counted as Social Media) and I don't remember what their requirements were for verifying "under/over sixteen". The UK regulations required quite "robust" (as Ofcom puts it) age verification (where you have to do it). What did the Australian rules end up being for verification?
There is a social media ban in Australia for kids under the age of 16.
That means by law kids are not allowed on social media because of how unsafe it is. You have morons who post up some not so nice things as well as adults trying to groom kids.
So as for verification it's just the age requirement.
Minimum age has to be 16 before they can sign up on our site.
Last edited:
One knock effect of the regulations is people are clearly increasing the use of VPNs. While this may not present an issue for the majority of forums, it's a pain in the neck if your forum exists to help diagnose ISP related problems.
Sorry I meant how had you done the technical implementation on your site to prevent under 16s from using it. ID checks, AI face scanning and so forth ... Or is a simple solution such as a tickbox "I'm over 16" or filled in DoB considered acceptable in Australia?
That would not be acceptable and in any case sites that fall within the regulations are obliged to implement more than one form of identification approval. That said, just like the UK, the Australian regulations do seem to be a bit of a moving target.
We don't need to go that far.
We're told not to allow kids who are under the age of 16.
It's an actual law that makes it a ok because their parents need to supervise them on the internet.
For example their parents take hold of any facebook group they might be in for any sporting group, scouting group, etc until their kids turn 16.
Kids actually get emailed often now which is better.
Things going fine on my forum. There are some quite amusing false positives from the AI content moderator. It's a pet forum and it sometimes thinks mention of cages are child cruelty, when pets are referred to as he or she. Just shows it works well though.