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Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act

forums.hexus.net

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Re: Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act

#41

Post by pembrook »

throw_m239339 wrote: post #22
pmdr wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Right, it is called Regulatory Capture, because big actors have the means to comply.

Trust me, while the big social media sites love this, it wasn't their lobbying that made this happen.

The UK government has a long history of meddling in media coverage to achieve certain aims. Up until Covid, legacy media still had control over the narrative and the internet was still considered 'fringe,' so governments could still pull the tried-and-true levers at 1-3 of the big media institutions to shape opinion.

Post-covid, everyone became internet nerds and legacy media in english-speaking countries fully lost control of the narrative.

This regulation is intended to re-centralize online media and bring back those narrative control levers by creating an extremely broad surface area of attack on any individual 'creator' who steps out of line.

Re: Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act

#42

Post by _fjg8 »

nickdothutton wrote: post #28

Anyone* would be crazy to run a UK-based or somewhat UK-centric forum today. Whether it be for a hobby, profession, or just social interaction. The government doesn’t perceive these sites as having any value (they don't employ people or generate corporation tax). [*] Unless you are a multibillion $ company with an army of moderators, compliance people, lawyers.

The opposite is true. The new law makes it considerably more risky for large companies because the law is specifically designed to hold them to account for conduct on their platforms. The (perceived) risk for small websites is unintended and the requirements are very achievable for small websites. The law is intended for and will be used to eviscerate Facebook etc. for their wrongs. We are far more likely to see Facebook etc. leave the UK market than we are see any small websites suffer.

A small website operator can keep child pornography off their platform with ease. Facebook have a mountain to climb — regardless of their resources.

Re: Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act

#43

Post by ziddoap »

aimazon wrote: post #36

Headline: 2.6M posts Reality: the forum has negative 358 posts in the last month. The forum has negative ~2k posts over the last 12 months. The forum is so inactive that they’re deleting posts faster than creating them. 8 people have created accounts in the last year. The forum has been long dead.

I'm not sure why you're comparing total posts to monthly new posts. The tragedy here is that 2.6 million posts, potentially full of great content, is being deleted.

>The forum is so inactive that they’re deleting posts faster than creating them.

They've been in read-only mode, more or less, for awhile. Primarily, again, due to the (at the time proposed, now passed) law.

Not to mention, this comment is missing the forest for the trees. This is not the only forum or website to shutter operations in the wake of the UK Online Safety Act.

Re: Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act

#44

Post by mjburgess »

What is the meaning of "illegal content" given in the OSA? What will social media platforms be forced to censor (, remove, ..) ... let's take a look:

Table 1.1: Priority offences by category ( https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/documents/onli... )

Disucssion of offenses related to: prostitution, drugs, abuse & insults, suicide, "stiring up of racial/religious hatred", fraud and "foreign interference".

So one imagines a university student discussing, say: earning money as a prostitute. Events/memories related to drug taking. Insulting their coursemates. Ridiculing the iconography of a religion. And, the worst crime of all, "repeating russian propaganda" (eg., the terms of a peace deal) -- which russians said it, and if it is true are -- of course -- questions never asked nor answered.

This free-thinking university student's entire online life seems to have been criminalised in mere discussion by the OSA, there may have been zero actual actions involved (consider, though, a majority of UK students have taken class-A drugs at most prominent universities).

This seems as draconian, censorious, illiberal, repressive and "moral panic"y as the highs of repressive christian moralism in the mid 20th C.

Re: Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act

#45

Post by pbhjpbhj »

yuriks wrote: post #18
dv_dt wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I thought that was a tech site, are they hosting porn now? I'd have thought they'd already police hate crimes, encouraging suicide, self-harm, and such?? Perhaps they have a special section where they encourage kids to huff glue?

Re: Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act

#46

Post by pembrook »

aimazon wrote: post #36

Headline: 2.6M posts Reality: the forum has negative 358 posts in the last month. The forum has negative ~2k posts over the last 12 months. The forum is so inactive that they’re deleting posts faster than creating them. 8 people have created accounts in the last year. The forum has been long dead.

Apparently any piece of informational older than a year has no value to you?

Thankfully you aren't writing the laws in my country.

Creating a law that makes internet creators want to delete all historical record for fear of potential prosecution under extremely broad terms -- doesn't seem like it's in the interest of the greater good.

Re: Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act

#47

Post by cjs_ac »

aqueueaqueue wrote: post #37

Some kinda online safety law is probably needed (download button is just up there if you must :/) but there should be a carve out for small operations. Set a revenue minimum or something.

The Act does in fact scale the obligations according to the size of the community/service.

Re: Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act

#48

Post by kelnos »

hexator wrote: post #17

Feels more and more like we're at the end of an era when it comes to the internet.

How so? This is just the UK. While the UK really does want to enforce this globally, they really have no enforcement power against non-UK citizens who do not reside in the UK.

Certainly it's possible (and perhaps likely!) that the EU and US will want to copycat this kind of law, but until that happens, I think your alarm is a bit of an overreaction.

Re: Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act

#49

Post by CamperBob2 »

_fjg8 wrote: post #42
nickdothutton wrote: post #28

Anyone* would be crazy to run a UK-based or somewhat UK-centric forum today. Whether it be for a hobby, profession, or just social interaction. The government doesn’t perceive these sites as having any value (they don't employ people or generate corporation tax). [*] Unless you are a multibillion $ company with an army of moderators, compliance people, lawyers.

The opposite is true. The new law makes it considerably more risky for large companies because the law is specifically designed to hold them to account for conduct on their platforms. The (perceived) risk for small websites is unintended and the requirements are very achievable for small websites. The law is intended for and will be used to eviscerate Facebook etc. for their wrongs. We are far more likely to see Face…

No, that is not how it works. Large companies can afford compliance costs. Smaller ones can't.

Re: Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act

#50

Post by aimazon »

ziddoap wrote: post #43
aimazon wrote: post #36

Headline: 2.6M posts Reality: the forum has negative 358 posts in the last month. The forum has negative ~2k posts over the last 12 months. The forum is so inactive that they’re deleting posts faster than creating them. 8 people have created accounts in the last year. The forum has been long dead.

I'm not sure why you're comparing total posts to monthly new posts. The tragedy here is that 2.6 million posts, potentially full of great content, is being deleted. > The forum is so inactive that they’re deleting posts faster than creating them. They've been in read-only mode, more or less, for awhile. Primarily, again, due to the (at the time proposed, now passed) law. Not to mention, this comment is missing the fo…

The forum has had less than 100k posts in the last 10 years.

Forums and small websites have been killed off by changing consumer behaviour, the shift to big social media platforms. Using big numbers to suggest that the UK Online Safety Act is responsible for killing off these smaller independent websites is disingenuous.

If you do the same exercise for the other forums, you’ll find they’re all long dead too.

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