Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by spacechild1 » Tue, Feb 25, 2025, 10:40 PM UTC

DarkmSparks wrote: post #98

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.

more than just forums, it's basically a failed state now. I knew when I left (I was the last of my school year to do so) it was going to get bad once Elizabeth died, and that would be soon, but I never imagined it would get this bad. The plan for April is to remove the need for police to obtain a warrant to search peoples homes - that bad. I'd say "there will be blood on the streets", but there already is... This vid…

> The plan for April is to remove the need for police to obtain a warrant to search peoples homes - that bad.

This seems to be limited to stolen geo-tagged items: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/feb/25/police-new-p...

I would agree that this law is a slippery slope, but at the same time we should not omit important facts.

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

#122

Post by michaelt » Tue, Feb 25, 2025, 10:40 PM UTC

_fjg8 wrote: post #58

CamperBob2 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What are the compliance costs for this law that would apply to a small independent forum?

Many of the provisions of the act apply to all user-to-user services, not just Schedule 1 and Schedule 2 services.

For example, the site must have an "illegal content risk assessment" and a "children’s risk assessment". And the children's risk assessment is a four-dimensional matrix of age groups, types on content, ways of using the service and types of harm. And it's got to be updated before making any "significant" change to any aspect of a service’s design or operation. It also makes it mandatory to have terms of service, and to apply them consistently. The site must have a content reporting procedure, a complaints procedure, and maintain written records.

Now obviously the operator of a bicycling forum might say "eh, let's ignore all that, they probably don't mean us"

But if you read the law and interpret its words literally, a bicycling forum is a user-to-user service, and a public forum is almost certain to be read by children from time to time.

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

#123

Post by andrei_says_ » Tue, Feb 25, 2025, 10:41 PM UTC

CamperBob2 wrote: post #49

_fjg8 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I believe file uploading services like cloudinary have this capability already. It does have a cost, but it exists.

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

#124

Post by unethical_ban » Tue, Feb 25, 2025, 10:43 PM UTC

aimazon wrote: post #105

x0x0 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We pinky swear to totes not enforce the law as written [unless and until we decide, with no notice or warning, to do so] up to and including criminal penalties". Not as reassuring as you claim it to be.

We don’t need to trust what they say, we just need to engage in a little critical thinking. What’s the benefit for Ofcom in pursuing tiny websites? There’s no political benefit, no financial benefit… the guidance from Ofcom reaffirms the natural conclusion.

There is no political benefit to imposing liability on any online forum operator for content posted by others?

Governments can abuse their power to silence speech it doesn't like. Governments can use agitators to develop pretext for legal action. Governments can make examples out of small-time defendants to send chilling effects. Governments can have prosecutors who may not be evil, but merely overzealous and harmful.

At the end, it is about a default to freedom of speech and content online (short of objectively illegal content) or a default to self-censorship and closing the gates on open forums.

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

#125

Post by choo-t » Tue, Feb 25, 2025, 10:43 PM UTC

aimazon wrote: post #96

rjbwork wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's right there in your post. >they will only be expected to have basic but important measures to remove illegal content when they become aware of it. These include: >easy-to-find, understandable terms and conditions; a complaints tool that allows users to report illegal or harmful material when they see it, backed up by a process to deal with those complaints; the ability to review content and take it down quickly…

All of those things are buttons to click and ship with every piece of forum software from the last decade. No forum can survive without moderation because of spam so these tools and policies will already be in place on every website with user generated content.

Some forum use custom backend, and updating them for an asinine law may not be the maintainer priority.

Having someone dedicated to contact with this authority is also a burden on hobbyist projects.

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

#126

Post by zamadatix » Tue, Feb 25, 2025, 10:45 PM UTC

ninininino wrote: post #119

jonatron wrote: post #75

HEXUS stopped publishing in 2021, and the company no longer exists. The forums were kept because they don't take much work to keep online. Now, there's a lot of work to do, like reading hundreds of pages of documents and submitting risk assessments. There's nobody to do that work now, so the idea was it could go into read only mode. The problem with that was, some users may want their data deleted if it becomes read…

Sort of like burning down a library because you can't make it ADA compliant and install a wheelchair ramp.

I feel as though the "sort of" is doing a lot of work there.

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

#127

Post by rich_sasha » Tue, Feb 25, 2025, 10:45 PM UTC

observationist wrote: post #116

rich_sasha wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This act itself, I believe, does not reference "hate speech", which as you seem to point out is ambiguous, and I in turn only use it as short hand. For the most part, this act says that content already considered illegal by existing and new laws must be policed by platforms. What is illegal is actually quite well defined, it seems. This article covers it nicely: https://www.theguardian.com/law/article/2024/aug/08/wha…

The practical impact is the self censorship and suppression of all sorts of speech because it's too onerous and burdensome to maintain. This effectively centralizes control, in as blatant and evil a way as the Great Firewall. Decades old forums and communities have been destroyed, all for the sake of... what? Things that were already criminal and offenders could be held to account? Freedom of speech is a binary choic…

I think I expressed it clearly. I don't like this legislation. I'm saying that I do understand the underlying tension though, it is real, and hard to legislate, and what can you do. In your first paragraph, you seem to essentially criticize this piece of legislation. I'm not defending it.

I do however reject the notion that it's either absolute freedom of speech or a totalitarian censorship state. Freedom of speech has always had well defined boundaries, well before the Internet - and yes, even in America, just these boundaries are somewhere different to eg. Europe.

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

#128

Post by psunavy03 » Tue, Feb 25, 2025, 10:47 PM UTC

rich_sasha wrote: post #84

observationist wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't. "Hate speech" is code for "the government knows better and controls what you say." Yes, racism exists and people say hateful things. Hate speech is in the interpretation. The US has it right with the first amendment - you have to be egregiously over the line for speech to be illegal, and in all sorts of cases there are exceptions and it's almost always a case-by-case determination. Hateful things said by p…

I see no reason why hate speech should be given the benefit of the doubt. And no, it's not because my government told me so, I have my own opinion, which is that freedom of speech ends where threats of violence appear. If you don't want it tolerated online, which I don't, you need some kind of legal statement saying so. Like a law that says, you can't do it, and websites can't just shrug their shoulders and say it's…

> Liberal gun laws mean lots of people have them, logically leading to more people being shot.

Explain Czechia and Switzerland, then, please.

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

#129

Post by Swenrekcah » Tue, Feb 25, 2025, 10:49 PM UTC

TeaBrain wrote: post #114

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was gonna say looking at world affairs, it's starting to feel like the end of the Westphalian system.

Any pretense of the Westphalian system in most of Europe ended with the European Union.

Then how come the UK has left the European Union? This is a common misunderstanding, but a misunderstanding nonetheless. Any country in the EU has full sovereignty and chooses to exercise it by combining forces with other countries in order to strengthen their combined influence in the wider world.

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

#130

Post by thrance » Tue, Feb 25, 2025, 10:49 PM UTC

observationist wrote: post #73

rich_sasha wrote: post #59

It's awkward. It's clear this law affects terribly bona fide grassroots online communities. I hope HN doesn't start geoblocking the UK away! But then online hate and radicalization really is a thing. What do you do about it? Facebook seems overflowing with it, and their moderators can't keep up with the flow, nor can their mental health keep up. So it's real and it's going to surface somewhere. At some level, I think…

You don't. "Hate speech" is code for "the government knows better and controls what you say." Yes, racism exists and people say hateful things. Hate speech is in the interpretation. The US has it right with the first amendment - you have to be egregiously over the line for speech to be illegal, and in all sorts of cases there are exceptions and it's almost always a case-by-case determination. Hateful things said by p…

How would you feel about receiving daily credible death threats to you and your family? Should that be tolerated too in the name of the first amendment?

Point is, we must draw the line somewhere. It's never "everything goes". Tolerating intolerance always ends up reducing freedom of expression.

Look at the US, the government is doing everything it can to shove trans people back in the closet, their voices are silenced and government websites are rewritten to remove the T in LGBT. By the very same people who abused "the first amendment" to push their hateful rhetoric further and further until it's become basically fine to do nazi salutes on live TV.

"Free speech absolutism" is a mirage, only useful to hateful people who don't even believe in it.