These UK laws might boost Tor usage.. let's hope something good will come from the full censorship political tyranny in Europe.
Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act
11–20 of 318 posts
Re: Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act
#12What features are lacking from vBulletin that prevents being compliant? I suspect some details are missing.
It's not necessarily a technological problem that software has to solve. There's a bunch of processes around reporting and age verification that have to be in place.
Ah I see. I guess that's where the current direction of law and I have parted ways. Had they focused on making laws requiring better parental controls support on all devices then server operators could add a single RTA header and be done with it. It's not a perfect technical solution but I believe it delegates the legal liability on the parents where it belongs. Parents could then simply consent for their kids to view whatever they want if they feel they are psychologically ready.
Re: Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act
#13Summary: The UK has some Online Safety Act, any websites that let users interact with other users has to police illegal content on its site and must implement strong age verification checks. The law applies to any site that targets UK citizens or has a substantial number of UK users, where "substantial number" is not defined. I'm going to guess this forum is UK-based just based on all the blimey's. Also the forum see…
IANAL
> any websites that let users interact with other users has to police illegal content on its site and must implement strong age verification checks.
But I believe you only need age verification if pornography is posted. There's also a bunch of caveats about the size of user base - Ofcom have strongly hinted that this is primarily aimed at services with millions of users but haven't (yet) actually clarified whether it applies to / will be policed for, e.g., single-user self-hosted Fediverse instances or small forums.
I don't blame people for not wanting to take the risk. Personally I'm just putting up a page with answers to their self-assessment risk questionnaire for each of my hosted services (I have a surprising number that could technically come under OSA) and hoping that is good enough.
Re: Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act
#14So, what makes the UK Online Safety Act close the forum?
Because the UK refuses to elaborate on who qualifies under the act, and the only "safe" way to operate a website that might hypothetically be used by someone in the UK is to simply not. The costs required to operate any website covered by this act (which is effectively all websites) is grossly excessive and there are either NO exceptions, or the UK has refused to explain who is excepted.
> The costs required to operate any website covered by this act (which is effectively all websites) is grossly excessive
That depends what you count as the costs. If you're a small site[0] and go through the risk assessment[1], that's the only costs you have (unless pornography is involved in which case yes, you'll need the age verification bits.)
[0] ie. you don't have millions of users
[1] Assuming Ofcom aren't being deliberately misleading here.
Re: Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act
#15Related post with a large discussion from someone who said:
"Lfgss shutting down 16th March 2025 (day before Online Safety Act is enforced)
[...] I run just over 300 forums, for a monthly audience of 275k active users. most of this is on Linode instances and Hetzner instances, a couple of the larger fora go via Cloudflare, but the rest just hits the server.
and it's all being shut down [...]"
For the same reasons.
Re: Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act
#16These UK laws might boost Tor usage.. let's hope something good will come from the full censorship political tyranny in Europe.
I doubt it. I think these laws were made to herd users towards big tech's established platforms that are 'policed' by community guidelines deemed 'appropriate' and where the content is never more than a takedown request away.
Welcome to the new internet.
(and it's funny how everyone's yelling 'fascist' at whatever happens in the US instead)
Re: Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act
#17Feels more and more like we're at the end of an era when it comes to the internet.
Re: Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
This list of requirements is excessive and nobody wants to read through endless documents and do endless risk assessments. https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-c... Children's access assessments - 32 pages Guidance on highly effective age assurance and other Part 5 duties - 50 pages Protecting people from illegal harms online - 84 pages Illegal content Codes of Practice for user-to-user services…
What happens with cross nation access? Will international sites start to refuse accounts to brits?
I believe lobste.rs is one site that's going to geoblock the UK as a precautionary measure at least
Re: Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act
#19Could someone please shed any light on why simply geoblocking the UK in its entirety would not be sufficient for an average forum to avoid having to deal with the Act?
A lot of US websites initially geoblocked EU to avoid dealing with GDPR, for example.
Re: Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act
#20Could someone please shed any light on why simply geoblocking the UK in its entirety would not be sufficient for an average forum to avoid having to deal with the Act? A lot of US websites initially geoblocked EU to avoid dealing with GDPR, for example.
In this particular case, the forum is UK-based ("HEXUS is a UK-based technology reporting and reviews website founded by David Ross in 2000")
In other non-UK-based cases, geo-blocking is the answer being used by some people.
Per https://geoblockthe.uk/, they state:
"Luckily OFCOM (the UK Government department responsible for 'enforcement' of these new rules) have confirmed that blocking people in the UK from accessing your website is a perfectly legal and acceptable way to comply with the law.".