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
I’m sorry but this seems to be an over statement of the problem. I’m not saying it’s not a problem but the post is a little OTT in describing the problem. OfCom hasn’t even published final guidance yet on what websites need to do to comply with the act.
In the draft guidance they define a large service as anything with 7million users a month - 10% of the UK population. Less than that is a small service. I do wonder whether the author has misread the guidance. They also define risks related to the content or service that require more action for small sotes - E.g. Hate offenses, stalking, abuse etc - none of which apply to a cycling site.
For smaller websites that are low risk it’s basically proposed that they need to have someone named to be responsible for governance, that they have some kind of complaints process, that they have content moderation to remove content that is illegal swiftly, that they carry out a risk assessment each year and they keep records.
It’s not particularly onerous and won’t cost 1000s of pounds. Most websites already do all this; they likely don’t formalise it with a governance person, risk assessments and data retention though.
However I also totally understand if people can’t be arsed to do it and would rather shut their website down. It does seem to be bureaucratic nonsense that probably won’t make any difference to the actual problem. It’s more in the realm of bureaucratic virtue signalling.
Also this applies to ALL websites providing services to UK users no matter where they are. That is totally unenforceable and shows how stupid the law is.
You can read the draft guidance for User-to-user (U2U) and search services here:
I’m sorry but this seems to be an over statement of the problem. I’m not saying it’s not a problem but the post is a little OTT in describing the problem. OfCom hasn’t even published final guidance yet on what websites need to do to comply with the act.
In the draft guidance they define a large service as anything with 7million users a month - 10% of the UK population. Less than that is a small service. I do wonder whether the author has misread the guidance. They also define risks related to the content or service that require more action for small sotes - E.g. Hate offenses, stalking, abuse etc - none of which apply to a cycling site.
For smaller websites that are low risk it’s basically proposed that they need to have someone named to be responsible for governance, that they have some kind of complaints process, that they have content moderation to remove content that is illegal swiftly, that they carry out a risk assessment each year and they keep records.
It’s not particularly onerous and won’t cost 1000s of pounds. Most websites already do all this; they likely don’t formalise it with a governance person, risk assessments and data retention though.
However I also totally understand if people can’t be arsed to do it and would rather shut their website down. It does seem to be bureaucratic nonsense that probably won’t make any difference to the actual problem. It’s more in the realm of bureaucratic virtue signalling.
Also this applies to ALL websites providing services to UK users no matter where they are. That is totally unenforceable and shows how stupid the law is.
You can read the draft guidance for User-to-user (U2U) and search services here:
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/documents/consultations/category-1-10-weeks/270826-consultation-protecting-people-from-illegal-content-online/associated-documents/consultation-at-a-glance-our-proposals-and-who-they-apply-to/?v=330411