Is this the first casualty of the Online Safety Act? An online cycling community web forum with over 60K users shutting down - as they say dealing with the compliance requirements of the act is too much - https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/401475/ #OSA #censorship
We have the power to fine companies up to £18m or 10% of their qualifying worldwide revenue – whichever is greater – and in very serious cases we can apply for a court order to block a site in the UK.
Firstly I'd expect regulators to focus on the big fish rather than this minnow. Secondly losing 10% of revenue isn't a huge deal whilst any fines larger than that would get the entire news media rallying behind you. Shutting down the site is premature to say the least.
That being said I am surprised that this legislation applies to everyone immediately. You'd think they'd start with a high threshold of say 1 million active monthly users and then reduce that each year as practices and technologies get established. It's ridiculous to expect hobbyists and small scale operations to be able to meet this burden just as easily as multi-trillion pound corporations.
I don't think independent forums exist in the eyes of many legislators. The internet equals big tech.
If they accidentally kill off the independent web they won't even notice. They're probably still on X, thinking it's still hip and unaware alternatives even exist. Never mind trying to explain them about independent forums.