6d ago

Is this the first casualty of the Online Safety Act? An online cycling community web forum with over 60K users shutting down

social.openrightsgroup.org Open Rights Group (@openrightsgroup@social.openrightsgroup.org)

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

Technology @lemmy.ml

social.openrightsgroup.org /@openrightsgroup/113663594296226943

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8 comments

Link to the actual forum announcement:
https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/401475/
Quote from it:
On Sunday 16th March 2025 (the last day prior to the Act taking effect) I will delete the virtual servers hosting LFGSS and other communities, and effectively immediately end the approximately 300 small communities that I run, and the few large communities such as LFGSS.

Seems like it's time to start Geo-Blocking UK users. Ain't nobody with an independent site got the time nor money to deal with the UK's OSA laws.
Until this overbroad act is protested on the world stage; neither Brits themselves, nor their liberal leaders will prioritize repealing it. They'll just shrug hopelessly and blame it on their Tories; much like Americans blame our own Republicans.
If you run a small community website and you have worries about this; make it felt. Countries that enact laws like this should be rebuffed; and their people excluded as much as is necessary to ensure full malicious compliance with those laws.

Libs gonna push and push to censor TikTok, etc... Until the precedent comes back to haunt them.
- This comment was brought to my attention as it was reported for being too dumb to exist.
  As I'm not a moderator of this community, I'll leave that judgment to others.
  However, I will point out that the Online Safety Act was passed in 2023, towards the end of well over a decade of British politics being dominated by the Tories. Labour only won the election in 2024.
  So, despite popular belief, the liberals are not the ones taking your rights away. Unless you consider Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, and Sunak to be liberals, of course. Which you might, as nobody using the word "liberal" seems to have even the faintest idea what it means any more.
  The Online Safety Act is not about regulating TikTok, it's about surveillance underneath a thin veil of protecting children. And it is very much a Tory piece of work.
  
  One might say it's piece of work by pieces of work.
- This is OSA in the UK, not KOSA in the US. I don't disagree with you, but this was just British conservatives doing their thing, not based off of US legal precedents.

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.

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