Hi All,

Some sad news, but it has become apparent in order to safeguard the longevity of this site, there are no options left other than to cease allowing people from the United Kingdom to access Lemmy.zip.

Just to reassure everyone else right at the start - this ONLY affects users from the UK accessing Lemmy.zip. There is no effect on everyone else, and nothing in your Lemmy experience will change.

Due to the implementation of the Online Safety Act, we will be restricting access to Lemmy.zip to UK users starting 15th February 2025 —one week from today.

Why is this happening?

Lemmy.zip is hosted in Finland, and we have always strived to operate with respect for privacy and in line with all applicable laws. However, the UK’s Online Safety Act presents significant legal and operational challenges for small, independent fediverse sites, just like this one. The Act’s vague and overbearing requirements, combined with the potential for disproportionate and extreme fines, force us to make this decision to protect both the site and its users.

This law impacts a wide range of content with vague or conflicting definitions, and as a volunteer-run site, we cannot ensure full compliance. We do not wish to compromise your privacy or force you to verify your identity through intrusive age checks, which is the only method allowed under the Act. Therefore, we have no choice but to block access from the UK.

This won’t impact on federation, nor accessing the communities from an instance that tries to comply with (or ignores) the Act. Obviously if you’re from any other country in the world that isn’t the UK, this won’t apply to you at all.

If this affects you, then you are able to export your data (subscriptions etc) from your profile settings, and import them on to another instance (Feddit.uk is a good shout for brits!)

Unfortunately this is also brought about by my personal circumstances as the site owner - I’m not in a position to just ignore the Act like many are. Complying with the act would mean we would either have to implement Age Verification for all users to access the site, or we would have to disable NSFW entirely, which means communities that use NSFW tags for spoilers or content warnings also wouldn’t be accessible.

For those curious, UK users will instead be directed to this page when they try access the site.

This has been a really hard decision to make, and I fear many more fediverse sites that are somehow linked to the UK will need to take this step in order to protect themselves.

If this is overturned by the courts in the UK, then the block will be removed as soon as possible. I have my fingers crossed.

Happy to answer any questions in the comments.

Demigodrick.

  • SwizzleStick@lemmy.zipEnglish
    41·
    8 hours ago

    Compliance by non-service will be the best way for anyone who can afford to lose UK users for an undetermined amount of time.

    It’s the easiest way and it pushes people to do something about it. Either by instigating change or working around it to make it publicly ineffective.

    Complying the ‘proper’ way only normalises the draconian legislation. It is not normal, and frankly the folk need to be told as such.

    • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝AEnglish
      5·
      6 hours ago

      I’m afraid we don’t have a choice about compliance with the rules. We are the largest UK Lemmy instance (so geoblocking isn’t an option) and, if we did ignore the laws, we’d be hit with ruinous fines.

      • SwizzleStick@lemmy.zipEnglish
        2·
        4 hours ago

        Given the size of the feddit instance, the general geolocation of the users, and that most fedi users are at least somewhat technically switched on - your position is even less enviable than Demigodrick’s.

        As a user, all the verification options suggested in legislation are unacceptable. Sites that implement such checks would also become unacceptable by association. I’d rather see a hard lesson taught, as this instance has chosen to do.

        Comply and upset the users. Dont comply and upset the gov. The users don’t have a stick with which to beat you, so I suppose for you compliance it is. Do you know yet what compliance is going to look like for feddit?

        A large portion of users tend to come in waves, fleeing what they see as overbearing bad behaviour from their previous homes. I am one of them. I expect a lot of users will migrate to less discerning instances if your compliance method doesn’t pass the sniff test, and I can’t forsee any method managing that and keeping in line with legislation.

        If you see a significant enough level of migration, would you bite the bullet and just shut up shop for the UK anyway? What’s the point in investing in compliance methods if the core userbase decides to move away?

        Sorry for the jaded speculative babble, I’m just really interested in seeing how this is all going to pan out.

        • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝AEnglish
          3·
          2 hours ago

          Do you yet what compliance is going to look like for feddit?

          Behind what we are currently doing (NSFW filter on, Lemmy’s own systems, ways to contact Admins directly and AutoMod), so far I think we need:

          • More contact email addresses
          • A contact form
          • A policy document on abuse
          • A policy documents outlining the risk assessment and mitigations

          The law isn’t designed to be onerous for small website owners (and that is pretty much anyone whose membership isn’t in the upper 100s of thousands) and all of the above should exceed the requirements. If not, then it demonstrates we’ve done our homework and improved our processes and documentation (which it seems is the laws intent - it forces you to think about the issues and what you can do about it, when you may have been muddling on through until now), so we are opening a dialogue with The Powers That Be and if there is room for improvement they will let us know, rather than having to get threatening.

          If you see a significant enough level of migration, would you bite the bullet and just shut up shop for the UK anyway? What’s the point in investing in compliance methods if the core userbase decides to move away?

          I really don’t see it coming to that. It should make no difference to the users of the site. It’s a bit of a time sink for Admins at the moment but, once it is done, it should, hopefully, only require the odd tweak at most.

          • SwizzleStick@lemmy.zipEnglish
            2·
            1 hour ago

            Thanks for taking the time, very informative :)

            I suppose a lot of it comes down to how nsfw is handled. If there are no means to access it on the home instance, then what you’re doing is probably A-OK.

            That’s assuming the filter is locked on and any communities that fall into (or are likely to) the target categories are prevented from forming or expunged where they already exist. No need for invasive methods to verify age if there’s nothing to verify for.

            The only problem I can see would be other federated instances that may feed poorly filtered or flat out unfiltered/untagged nsfw into yours. I imagine that’s going to be a decent chunk of the risk assessment, given that federation with others is the main point of lemmy as a whole.