[HN Gopher] Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online...
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Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act
Author : jonatron
Score : 157 points
Date : 2025-02-22 13:55 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (forums.hexus.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (forums.hexus.net)
| omer9 wrote:
| So, what makes the UK Online Safety Act close the forum?
| lofaszvanitt wrote:
| they don't want to reengineer the forum...
| jonatron wrote:
| This list of requirements is excessive and nobody wants to read
| through endless documents and do endless risk assessments.
| https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-c...
|
| Children's access assessments - 32 pages
|
| Guidance on highly effective age assurance and other Part 5
| duties - 50 pages
|
| Protecting people from illegal harms online - 84 pages
|
| Illegal content Codes of Practice for user-to-user services -
| 84 pages
| dv_dt wrote:
| What happens with cross nation access? Will international
| sites start to refuse accounts to brits?
| yuriks wrote:
| I believe lobste.rs is one site that's going to geoblock
| the UK as a precautionary measure at least
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| I thought that was a tech site, are they hosting porn
| now? I'd have thought they'd already police hate crimes,
| encouraging suicide, self-harm, and such?? Perhaps they
| have a special section where they encourage kids to huff
| glue?
| Aurornis wrote:
| You're missing the point. The law is so vague and broad
| that it could be interpreted as covering even far more
| innocuous content than the few extreme examples you
| listed here.
| thereisnospork wrote:
| The 'if they have nothing to hide' argument? Really?
|
| I look forward to reading your fully compliant risk
| assessment before interacting with this comment, lest it
| be judged to contain offensive, inappropriate, or
| pornographic content.
| mystified5016 wrote:
| Because the UK refuses to elaborate on who qualifies under the
| act, and the only "safe" way to operate a website that might
| hypothetically be used by someone in the UK is to simply not.
|
| The costs required to operate any website covered by this act
| (which is effectively all websites) is grossly excessive and
| there are either NO exceptions, or the UK has refused to
| explain who is excepted.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > The costs required to operate any website covered by this
| act (which is effectively all websites) is grossly excessive
|
| That depends what you count as the costs. If you're a small
| site[0] and go through the risk assessment[1], that's the
| only costs you have (unless pornography is involved in which
| case yes, you'll need the age verification bits.)
|
| [0] ie. you don't have millions of users
|
| [1] Assuming Ofcom aren't being deliberately misleading here.
| hu3 wrote:
| Couldn't they wait for some kind of inquiry from UK Gov and
| then closed the forum reactively if it was an unreasonable
| financial burden?
| LinuxBender wrote:
| What features are lacking from vBulletin that prevents being
| compliant? I suspect some details are missing.
| cricalix wrote:
| It's not necessarily a technological problem that software has
| to solve. There's a bunch of processes around reporting and age
| verification that have to be in place.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Ah I see. I guess that's where the current direction of law
| and I have parted ways. Had they focused on making laws
| requiring better parental controls support on all devices
| then server operators could add a single RTA header and be
| done with it. It's not a perfect technical solution but I
| believe it delegates the legal liability on the parents where
| it belongs. Parents could then simply consent for their kids
| to view whatever they want if they feel they are
| psychologically ready.
| goalieca wrote:
| Moderating UKs regressive speech laws might be a problem.
| nerdile wrote:
| Summary: The UK has some Online Safety Act, any websites that let
| users interact with other users has to police illegal content on
| its site and must implement strong age verification checks. The
| law applies to any site that targets UK citizens or has a
| substantial number of UK users, where "substantial number" is not
| defined.
|
| I'm going to guess this forum is UK-based just based on all the
| blimey's. Also the forum seems to have been locked from new users
| for some time, so it was already in its sunset era.
|
| The admin could just make it read only except to users who
| manually reach out somehow to verify their age, but at the same
| time, what an oppressive law for small UK forums. Maybe that's
| the point.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| IANAL
|
| > any websites that let users interact with other users has to
| police illegal content on its site and must implement strong
| age verification checks.
|
| But I believe you only need age verification if pornography is
| posted. There's also a bunch of caveats about the size of user
| base - Ofcom have strongly hinted that this is primarily aimed
| at services with millions of users but haven't (yet) actually
| clarified whether it applies to / will be policed for, e.g.,
| single-user self-hosted Fediverse instances or small forums.
|
| I don't blame people for not wanting to take the risk.
| Personally I'm just putting up a page with answers to their
| self-assessment risk questionnaire for each of my hosted
| services (I have a surprising number that could technically
| come under OSA) and hoping that is good enough.
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| I geo-block UK visitors on all of my websites. It's sad but
| the safest solution.
| rixed wrote:
| What if a large number of brits access your websites from a
| different country? :-/
| _bin_ wrote:
| why? if you're located elsewhere you can literally just
| ignore UK/EU law. they don't have jurisdiction over you;
| worst-case scenario is probably them ordering ISPs to block
| your site.
| jltsiren wrote:
| While the actual risk is minimal, countries do have reach
| beyond their borders.
|
| For example, if you ever leave your home country to visit
| a third country, that country could arrest you and
| extradite you to the country that doesn't like you.
|
| Or they could force any financial institution (or even
| any company) that wants to do business within their
| territory to stop doing business with you. The EU
| probably wouldn't do that, because it's difficult and
| expensive to get the member states agree on sanctions.
| The US does it regularly. The UK could probably try, but
| they have less leverage.
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| I like London and want to visit the city again some day.
| tremon wrote:
| _I believe you only need age verification if pornography is
| posted_
|
| But if you let users interact with other users, you're not in
| control of whether pornographic material is posted, so it's
| safer to comply beforehand.
|
| I commend you for keeping your site up and hoping for the
| best. I don't envy your position.
| bostik wrote:
| > _Ofcom have strongly hinted that this is primarily aimed at
| services with millions of users but haven 't (yet) actually
| clarified [...]_
|
| This has echoes of the Snooper's Charter and Apple's decision
| to withdraw ADP from all of UK.
|
| It is not enough for regulators to say they won't anticipate
| to enforce the law against smaller operators. As long as the
| law is on the books, it can (and will) be applied to a
| suitable target regardless of their size.
|
| I saw this this same bullshit play out in Finland. "No, you
| are all wrong, we will never apply this to anything outside
| of this narrow band" -- only to come down with the large
| hammer less than two years later because the target was
| politically inconvenient.
| mattlondon wrote:
| It's for 7 million active UK users per month.
| https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/documents/onli...
| - definition on page 64.
|
| That's quite sizeable. How many sites can you name have 7
| million monthly active UK users? That's over one-in-ten of
| every man, woman and child in the UK every month using your
| site.
| kimixa wrote:
| Yes, the actual draft doesn't really add many requirements to
| non "large" services, pretty much having a _some_ kind of
| moderation system, have some way of reporting complains to
| that, and a filed "contact" individual. I note it doesn't
| require proactive internal detection of such "harmful"
| content that many people here seem to assume, just what they
| already have 'reason to believe' it's illegal content. Even
| hash-based CASM detection/blacklisted URLs isn't required
| until you're a larger provider or a file share product.
|
| It just seems like an overly formalized way of saying "All
| forums should have a "report" button that actually goes
| somewhere", I'd expect that to be already there on pretty
| much every forum that ever existed. Even 4chan has
| moderators.
| massifgreat wrote:
| These UK laws might boost Tor usage.. let's hope something good
| will come from the full censorship political tyranny in Europe.
| pmdr wrote:
| I doubt it. I think these laws were made to herd users towards
| big tech's established platforms that are 'policed' by
| community guidelines deemed 'appropriate' and where the content
| is never more than a takedown request away.
|
| Welcome to the new internet.
|
| (and it's funny how everyone's yelling 'fascist' at whatever
| happens in the US instead)
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| Right, it is called Regulatory Capture, because big actors
| have the means to comply.
| pembrook wrote:
| Trust me, while the big social media sites love this, it
| wasn't their lobbying that made this happen.
|
| The UK government has a long history of meddling in media
| coverage to achieve certain aims. Up until Covid, legacy
| media still had control over the narrative and the internet
| was still considered 'fringe,' so governments could still
| pull the tried-and-true levers at 1-3 of the big media
| institutions to shape opinion.
|
| Post-covid, everyone became internet nerds and legacy media
| in english-speaking countries fully lost control of the
| narrative.
|
| This regulation is intended to re-centralize online media
| and bring back those narrative control levers by creating
| an extremely broad surface area of attack on any individual
| 'creator' who steps out of line.
| tehjoker wrote:
| they were alarmed they lost what used to be tight control of
| media narratives around e.g. the gaza genocide and are
| working overtime to concentrate control so it doesn't happen
| again
|
| let it be known the UK used its carve out territory in Cyprus
| to process bomb shipments to the IDF in furtherance of a
| genocide
|
| https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/15/uk-bases-in-
| cyprus-...
| aqueueaqueue wrote:
| Leave this "vile" "unsafe" forum and go talk on ... er ...
| Twitter.
| a0123 wrote:
| Two countries can be fascist at the same time.
|
| And it's not like the UK and the US aren't known for
| exchanging the worst of the worst with each other all the
| time.
| kittikitti wrote:
| I have it on good authority that the majority of Tor nodes are
| compromised.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| The UK is not in Europe, which would otherwise impose human
| rights legal constraints on UK government legislation.
| ksp-atlas wrote:
| The UK is in Europe, it didn't suddenly break off and float
| away, it's just not part of the EU, there's a bunch of
| European countries that aren't in the EU
| ziddoap wrote:
| Related post with a large discussion from someone who said:
|
| " _Lfgss shutting down 16th March 2025 (day before Online Safety
| Act is enforced)
|
| [...] I run just over 300 forums, for a monthly audience of 275k
| active users. most of this is on Linode instances and Hetzner
| instances, a couple of the larger fora go via Cloudflare, but the
| rest just hits the server.
|
| and it's all being shut down [...]_"
|
| For the same reasons.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42433044
| hexator wrote:
| Feels more and more like we're at the end of an era when it comes
| to the internet.
| mbostleman wrote:
| By Internet do you mean Western Civilization?
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| I was gonna say looking at world affairs, it's starting to
| feel like the end of the Westphalian system.
| TeaBrain wrote:
| Any pretense of the Westphalian system in most of Europe
| ended with the European Union.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| 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.
| kelnos wrote:
| How so? This is just the UK. While the UK really does want to
| enforce this globally, they really have no enforcement power
| against non-UK citizens who do not reside in the UK.
|
| Certainly it's possible (and perhaps likely!) that the EU and
| US will want to copycat this kind of law, but until that
| happens, I think your alarm is a bit of an overreaction.
| hexator wrote:
| Similar laws are being written elsewhere, Section 230 may not
| last the next few years. It's not just the UK.
| gotoeleven wrote:
| Well the attacks on section 230 from the right are about
| removing censorship not adding censorship so I'm not sure
| section 230 is a good comparison.
| nradov wrote:
| A lot of people who travel internationally occasionally
| transit through UK jurisdiction, such as a connection at LHR.
| This potentially places forum operators in personal legal
| jeopardy. Would the UK authorities really go after some
| random citizen of another country for this? Probably not, but
| the risk isn't zero.
| Yizahi wrote:
| USA has backdoor laws afaik. Sweden is targeting Signal to
| force them create a backdoor. And this is only from regular
| news, I'm not even reading infosec industry updates. All
| govts are targeting privacy tools and the clock is ticking
| for them. I'm only hoping that one day these fuckers will be
| targeted themselves via exploits they have forced on us.
| smarx007 wrote:
| Could someone please shed any light on why simply geoblocking the
| UK in its entirety would not be sufficient for an average forum
| to avoid having to deal with the Act?
|
| A lot of US websites initially geoblocked EU to avoid dealing
| with GDPR, for example.
| ziddoap wrote:
| In this particular case, the forum is UK-based (" _HEXUS is a
| UK-based technology reporting and reviews website founded by
| David Ross in 2000_ ")
|
| In other non-UK-based cases, geo-blocking _is_ the answer being
| used by some people.
|
| Per https://geoblockthe.uk/, they state:
|
| " _Luckily OFCOM (the UK Government department responsible for
| 'enforcement' of these new rules) have confirmed that blocking
| people in the UK from accessing your website is a perfectly
| legal and acceptable way to comply with the law._".
| tremon wrote:
| Would be great if services like e.g. Wikipedia would do
| exactly that.
|
| "This website is not available in the UK. Ask your
| representative about the UK Online Safety Act for more
| information".
| ksp-atlas wrote:
| Wikipedia tries to act as a source for information all
| around the globe, they never block, they only get blocked,
| blocking the UK would go against their goals
| jszymborski wrote:
| Other comments here have suspected its audience might be
| primarily UK-based, so geoblocking might not be the best
| option.
|
| I'm also not familiar with UK law, which may or may not deem
| that be a sufficient counter-measure against VPNs. Also, if the
| forum's operator is based in the UK this also might not be an
| option.
| wrs wrote:
| That doesn't help a UK-based forum. But otherwise, the law
| doesn't limit itself to the UK, so there is concern about what
| happens if you don't comply with it and ever intend to visit
| the UK.
| pcdoodle wrote:
| Can't they just block the UK?
| ziddoap wrote:
| They are a UK-based forum.
| nickdothutton wrote:
| 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.
| aimazon wrote:
| 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 Facebook etc. leave the UK market than we are see
| any small websites suffer.
|
| A small website operator can keep child pornography off their
| platform with ease. Facebook have a mountain to climb --
| regardless of their resources.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| No, that is not how it works. Large companies can afford
| compliance costs. Smaller ones can't.
| aimazon wrote:
| What are the compliance costs for this law that would apply
| to a small independent forum?
| TylerE wrote:
| Have you run a forum, in, say, the last decade? The
| amount of spam bots constantly posting links to
| everything from scams to pints to guns is immense - and
| no, captchas don't solve it.
| rjbwork wrote:
| You can just read any of the writing by the people
| operating these fora that are closing.
| aimazon wrote:
| I have read every post, every article, every piece of
| guidance. I'm asking for specifics, not hand waving. What
| are the actual compliance costs?
| MassiveQuasar wrote:
| > I have read every post, every article, every piece of
| guidance.
|
| Prove it. I'm asking for specifics, not hand waving.
| aimazon wrote:
| https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-
| harmful-c...
|
| Last month.
|
| " We've heard concerns from some smaller services that
| the new rules will be too burdensome for them. Some of
| them believe they don't have the resources to dedicate to
| assessing risk on their platforms, and to making sure
| they have measures in place to help them comply with the
| rules. As a result, some smaller services feel they might
| need to shut down completely.
|
| So, we wanted to reassure those smaller services that
| this is unlikely to be the case"
|
| "If organisations have carried out a suitable and
| sufficient risk assessment and determined, with good
| reason, that the risks they face are low, 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 if they have reason to
| believe it is illegal; and a specific individual
| responsible for compliance, who we can contact if we need
| to."
|
| Your turn. Where are these compliance costs?
| rjbwork wrote:
| 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 if they have reason to
| believe it is illegal; and a specific individual
| responsible for compliance, who we can contact if we need
| to."
| aimazon wrote:
| 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.
| choo-t wrote:
| 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.
| x0x0 wrote:
| "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.
| aimazon wrote:
| 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.
| x0x0 wrote:
| Sorry, but that's foolish beyond belief. The law allows
| and probably mandates them to do so. You can pretend
| that's not what the law says but it clearly does. And it
| was written with intent and advice, so that's what the
| writers intended as well.
|
| But if it's so simple, volunteer. Take on the criminal
| penalties yourself and perform the reviews.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| 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.
| greycol wrote:
| I'll remind you of two thing which a lot of people often
| forget with hobbies/volunteering and may make this
| argument moot for you: Just because someone gives time
| for free doesn't mean that time doesn't cost them or can
| easily be increased without significantly impacting the
| giver. Secondly that some parts of a hobby can be work
| that is required for the fun part of the hobby and
| changing the ratio of fun:work can kill any motivation
| for the hobby.
|
| To your point even your extract from the link there are
| compliance costs.
|
| >So, we wanted to reassure those smaller services that
| this is *unlikely* to be the case
|
| Your source admits there are extra costs that will likely
| cause some small services to have to shutdown if the
| costs are to burdensome for them, they are just saying
| that they hope the costs are small enough that it doesn't
| put most small services in that position.
|
| Even in your quote it explicitly lists extra costs. i.e.
| the cost of a compliant compliance tool. Obviously the
| government isn't going to implement it or spend the time
| moderating reports or abuse of reports. Which means the
| cost of extra hours moderating and setting it up are on
| the service provider.
|
| "Must have an individual responsible for compliance". So
| either employ someone to take this risk or take on the
| risk and responsibility yourself and the associated due
| diligence costs (lawyers in the UK are only free if
| you're already losing hours of your life to the court
| system).
|
| These costs will definetly push some people over the line
| to not wanting to host such services. Especially when the
| wording is so wide that you need to moderate out insults
| in your forum.
|
| Jesus Christ! Your comment would probably be flagged as
| foreign propaganda to soft peddle broken UK policies,
| that is if the US had such rules. My comment should be
| flagged because that could be an insulting insinuation or
| the expletive at the start of this paragraph could be
| stirring up religious hatred by being needlessly
| blasphemous. And a moderator has to read the entire post
| to get to the non compliant part.
| michaelt wrote:
| 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.
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| I believe file uploading services like cloudinary have this
| capability already. It does have a cost, but it exists.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > A small website operator can keep child pornography off
| their platform with ease. Facebook have a mountain to climb
| -- regardless of their resources.
|
| Facebook can actually train AI to detect CSAM, and is
| probably already doing so in cooperation with NCMEC and
| similar organisations/authorities across the world.
|
| Your average small website? No chance. Obtaining training
| material actively is seriously illegal everywhere, and
| keeping material that others upload is just as bad in most
| jurisdictions.
|
| The big guys get the toys, the small guys have to worry all
| the goddamn time if some pedos are going to use their forum
| or whatnot.
| DarkmSparks wrote:
| 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 video pretty much sums up what the UK is now.
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zzstEpSeuwU
| spacechild1 wrote:
| > 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.
| DarkmSparks wrote:
| Its not a slippery slope, its carte blanche for a police
| force with a reputation for e.g. beating elderly people to
| death because they looked at them wrong (most famous being
| Ian Tomlison, but its fairly regular) to not have to hold
| back just simply because they run into a locked door.
|
| And that is before you get into the court system, which if
| you need a quick primer, just look at the treatment of
| Julian Assange - and thats a "best case" for someone with
| millions of global supporters.
| whartung wrote:
| Well I'm on a forum run by a UK company, hosted in the UK, and
| we've talked about this, but they're staying online. And, no,
| they're not a multibillion dollar company.
|
| I don't see our moderators needing to do any more work than
| they're already doing, and have been doing for years, to be
| honest.
|
| So we'll see how the dice land.
| aimazon wrote:
| Headline: 2.6M posts
|
| Reality: the forum has negative 358 posts in the last month. The
| forum has negative ~2k posts over the last 12 months. The forum
| is so inactive that they're deleting posts faster than creating
| them. 8 people have created accounts in the last year.
|
| The forum has been long dead.
| ziddoap wrote:
| I'm not sure why you're comparing total posts to monthly new
| posts. The tragedy here is that 2.6 million posts, potentially
| full of great content, is being deleted.
|
| > _The forum is so inactive that they're deleting posts faster
| than creating them._
|
| They've been in read-only mode, more or less, for awhile.
| Primarily, again, due to the (at the time proposed, now passed)
| law.
|
| Not to mention, this comment is missing the forest for the
| trees. This is not the only forum or website to shutter
| operations in the wake of the UK Online Safety Act.
| aimazon wrote:
| The forum has had less than 100k posts in the last 10 years.
|
| Forums and small websites have been killed off by changing
| consumer behaviour, the shift to big social media platforms.
| Using big numbers to suggest that the UK Online Safety Act is
| responsible for killing off these smaller independent
| websites is disingenuous.
|
| If you do the same exercise for the other forums, you'll find
| they're all long dead too.
| ziddoap wrote:
| I posted another example in this thread of someone running
| forums with 275k monthly active users that also decided to
| shut down. That does not qualify as "long dead".
|
| That's just _one_ other example. I can assure you that it
| is not just long-dead forums deciding to shut down, despite
| your preconceived notion.
| aimazon wrote:
| You're falling for the big numbers that do not stand up
| to scrutiny. There's no such forum shutting down. Are you
| referring to lfgss? First, it's not shutting down,
| second, the user numbers are completely wrong. As is the
| claim that the platform supports over 300 forums. You're
| an order of magnitude off. Go and visit it and look at
| the activity, it's clinging to life. 275k active users?
| Pure fiction.
| ziddoap wrote:
| I'll avoid searching for other examples, as you seem to
| want to latch onto the example itself rather than the
| broader message the examples communicate. The fact is
| that some people are shutting down operations of
| websites, deleting data, etc. in response to this law.
|
| Just considering that the law is forcing people to
| _think_ about shutting down operations is a sign that the
| law is having a chilling effect. Both for existing
| websites and the potential creation of new ones.
|
| Just because you believe yourself to be the sole arbiter
| of which websites are valuable and which can be deleted
| without worry doesn't change the fact that this law is
| having a negative effect on small websites.
|
| Perhaps with better communication about the law, rather
| than the hundreds on hundreds of pages of vague guidance,
| the law could remain as-is and small website operators
| wouldn't be as concerned. However, that is not the case.
| aimazon wrote:
| Some people are protesting against this law by
| threatening to shut down their websites or by deleting
| content. The founder of lfgss explicitly said they're
| against the law on principle.
|
| I think historic content is very valuable which is why I
| am offended by this absurd response on hacker news where
| people are conflating the actions of a protest with the
| consequence of a law.
|
| If someone chooses to protest this law by deleting their
| website then more power to them but we must be honest
| about what it is: protest.
|
| People should be considerate about the consequence of the
| services they release onto the internet. We can debate
| the specifics of whether certain requirements are
| reasonable/fair/beneficial but it's patently absurd to
| label choices these website owners are making as being
| caused by this law. The law has zero to do with historic
| content, there's not a single risk to anyone who leaves a
| website online in read only mode as an archive.
| pembrook wrote:
| Apparently any piece of informational older than a year has no
| value to you?
|
| Thankfully you aren't writing the laws in my country.
|
| Creating a law that makes internet creators want to delete all
| historical record for fear of potential prosecution under
| extremely broad terms -- doesn't seem like it's in the interest
| of the greater good.
| aimazon wrote:
| The law has absolutely nothing to do with historic content,
| it has no provisions for or relevance to content published
| decades ago. Even in the most cautious response to this law,
| there is no reason to take content offline.
| aqueueaqueue wrote:
| Some kinda online safety law is probably needed (download button
| is just up there if you must :/) but there should be a carve out
| for small operations. Set a revenue minimum or something.
| cjs_ac wrote:
| The Act does in fact scale the obligations according to the
| size of the community/service.
| macintux wrote:
| But size and revenue/budget are different things entirely.
| Does it scale down to pocket change for large community
| forums with no commercial backing?
| msie wrote:
| So sites will geoblock the uk and users will use VPN software.
| Ugh. More software layers, more waste. Also a problem that is
| solved by a layer of indirection.
| mjburgess wrote:
| What is the meaning of "illegal content" given in the OSA? What
| will social media platforms be forced to censor (, remove, ..)
| ... let's take a look:
|
| Table 1.1: Priority offences by category (
| https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/documents/onli... )
|
| Disucssion of offenses related to: prostitution, drugs, abuse &
| insults, suicide, "stiring up of racial/religious hatred", fraud
| and "foreign interference".
|
| So one imagines a university student discussing, say: earning
| money as a prostitute. Events/memories related to drug taking.
| Insulting their coursemates. Ridiculing the iconography of a
| religion. And, the worst crime of all, "repeating russian
| propaganda" (eg., the terms of a peace deal) -- which russians
| said it, and if it is true are -- of course -- questions never
| asked nor answered.
|
| This free-thinking university student's entire online life seems
| to have been criminalised in _mere discussion_ by the OSA, there
| may have been zero actual actions involved (consider, though, a
| majority of UK students have taken class-A drugs at most
| prominent universities).
|
| This seems as draconian, censorious, illiberal, repressive and
| "moral panic"y as the highs of repressive christian moralism in
| the mid 20th C.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| 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 it's reasonable that online spaces take
| some responsibility for staying clear of eg hate speech. But I'm
| not sure how you match that with the fundamental freedom of the
| Internet.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| Governmental attempts to reduce "online hate" (however defined,
| as it is entirely subjective) are just going to make our
| problems worse.
| staticautomatic wrote:
| Hate and radicalization are products of existential
| purposelessness. You can't make them go away by preventing
| existentially purposeless people from talking to each other.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| No, you can't, but also theres is no reason why the law about
| allow these to be up. Plenty of people have racist thoughts,
| and that's not illegal (thoughts in general aren't), but go
| print a bunch of leaflets inciting racist violence and that
| _is_ illegal.
|
| I see this as an internet analogy.
| mjburgess wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Quran_burnings_in_Sweden
|
| Does burning a religious book "incite violence" ? It
| _causes_ it, for sure. Free expression brings about, in the
| fanatic, a great desire to oppress the speaker. That 's why
| we have such a freedom in the first place.
| thorncorona wrote:
| It seems though that allowing a country which already has
| problems with "lawful free speech," to tamp down more on
| free speech would bring issues no?
|
| Without mentioning the oxymoron that lawful free speech is.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > You can't make them go away by preventing existentially
| purposeless people from talking to each other.
|
| At least you can limit the speed of radicalization. Every
| village used to have their village loon, he was known and
| ignored to ridiculed. But now all the loons talk to each
| other and constantly reinforce their bullshit, and on top of
| that they begin to draw in the normies.
| mrtesthah wrote:
| Online hate is skyrocketing in large part because billionaires
| and authoritarian regimes are pumping in millions of dollars to
| uplift it. Let's address this issue at its source.
| mjburgess wrote:
| Is it a thing?
|
| I mean we had the holocaust, Rwandan genocide and the
| transatlantic slave trade without the internet.
|
| The discovery, by the governing classes, that people are often
| less-than-moral is just as absurd as it sounds. More malign and
| insidious is that these governors think it is their job to
| manage and reform the people -- that people, oppressed in their
| thinking and association enough -- will be easy to govern.
|
| A riot, from time to time -- a mob -- a bully -- are far less
| dangerous than a government which thinks it can perfect its
| people and eliminate these.
|
| It is hard to say that this has ever ended well. It is
| certainly a very stupid thing in a democracy, when all the
| people you're censoring will unite, vote you out, and take
| revenge.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| It is a thing for sure. How often it happens, I don't know.
|
| I read a number of stories about school children being cyber-
| bullied on some kind of semi-closed forum. Some of these
| ended in suicide. Hell, it uses to happen _a lot_ on Facebook
| in the early days.
|
| I totally understand a desire to make it illegal, past a
| certain threshold. I can see how you start off legislating
| with this in mind, then 20 committees later you end up with
| some kind of death star legislation requiring every online
| participant to have a public key and court-attested age
| certificate, renewed annually. Clearly that's nonsense, but I
| do understand the underlying desire.
|
| Because without it, you have no recourse if you find
| something like this online. For action to be even available,
| there has to be a law that says it's illegal.
| mjburgess wrote:
| Of course hatred, bullying, etc. is real -- what I was
| referring to is some special amount or abundance of it as
| _caused_ by free discussion on the internet (rather than,
| say, revealed by it; or even, minimised by it).
|
| We're not running the counter-factual where the internet
| does not exist, or was censored from the start, and where
| free expression and discussion has _reduced_ such things.
|
| The salem witch trials are hardly a rare example of a
| vicious mob exploiting a moral panic to advance their own
| material interests -- this is something like the common
| case. It's hard to imagine running a genocide on social
| media -- more likely it would be banned as "propganda" so
| that a genocide could take place.
|
| We turned against the internet out of disgust at what? Was
| is the internet it itself, or just a unvarinished look at
| people? And if the latter, are we sure the internet didnt
| improve most of them, and hasnt prevented more than its
| caused?
|
| I see in this moral panic the same old childish desire to
| see our dark impulses as alien, imposed by a system, to
| destroy the system so that we can return to a self-imposed
| ignorance of what people are really thinking and saying.
| It's just victorian moralism and hypocricy all over again.
| Polite society is scandalised by the portrait of dorian
| gray, and we better throw the author in jail .
| rich_sasha wrote:
| I think these views are not necessarily contradictory.
| You can't wipe out Bad Things by making them illegal
| online. But I think not proliferating them certainly
| helps, and for sure I don't see why they should be
| tolerated online.
|
| IMO there's benefit in making easy Bad Things hard, even
| if you can't stop them. Like gun ownership in Europe. How
| you do that while respecting internet freedom - my
| original question - I don't know. But I disagree with
| simply stating there is no conflict.
| observationist wrote:
| 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 people being hateful is a culture
| problem, not a government problem. Locking people up because
| other people are offended by memes or shitposts is draconian,
| authoritarian, dystopian nonsense and make a mockery of any
| claims about democracy or freedom. Europe and the UK seem
| hellbent for leather to silence the people they should be
| talking with and to. The inevitable eventual blowback will only
| get worse if stifling, suppressing, and prosecuting is your
| answer to frustrations and legitimate issues felt deeply but
| badly articulated.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| 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 not their problem.
|
| I don't line this legislation as it seems to be excessive,
| but I disagree that the root issue it tries to address is a
| made up problem.
|
| EDIT it just struck me that in speech and otherwise, the US
| has a far higher tolerance for violence - and yes I do mean
| violence. Free speech is taken much further in the US, almost
| to the point of inciting violence. Liberal gun laws mean lots
| of people have them, logically leading to more people being
| shot. School shootings are so much more common, and it
| appears there is no widespread conclusion to restrict gun
| ownership as a result.
|
| Maybe that's a core difference. Europeans genuinely value
| lower violence environments. We believe all reasonable things
| can be said without it. That doesn't make this legislation
| good. But at least it makes sense in my head why some people
| glorify extreme free speech (bit of a tired expression in
| this age).
| thorncorona wrote:
| What defines hate speech? Who defines hate speech? Does
| hate speech result from the speech or the actions of those
| against the speech? Should the speech of protestors have
| consequences for disturbing the peace? What consequences
| should the state force onto individuals for speech, or
| actors affected by speech?
|
| Americans for lack of a better description grapple with
| violence of the state differently than Europeans, but it
| seems neither are without consequence.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| 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/what-
| is-...
|
| Indeed, the controversy is, it appears, not about _what_
| is illegal, but about how the onus on policing this, and
| other things like the restrictions, is put on platforms.
| There are no major changes to what _content_ is and isn
| 't illegal! There are some additions, like "revenge
| porn", which is likewise easy to define and hard to see
| as a fundamental freedom of speech issue.
| observationist wrote:
| 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 choice for a society. When
| you introduce politically motivated discretion and
| ambiguity, then instead of protecting people, such laws
| serve only as tools of power and control. With freedom of
| speech and press, the laws preclude any attempts at
| control like this. Freedom of expression and press
| supersede responsibility for the potential of other
| people doing something bad.
|
| This is why they can't have nice things. It's the
| equivalent of shutting down businesses because you impose
| a law that 20 armed guards must attend every building
| 24x7, just in case some bad guys with guns try to get in.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| 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.
| Asooka wrote:
| The problem is that policing hate speech creates a police
| state worse than allowing hate speech to exist. The system
| you need to create to police the hate speech will result in
| more violence against people than letting the hate speech
| exist. To me, your very statement "freedom of speech ends
| where threats of violence appear" is a form of hate speech.
| You are hating on my principle of free speech. It actually
| makes me physically sick to read those words, because I
| know where they lead.
|
| Generally on the Internet you would make use of existing
| tools to prevent people from talking to you if you find
| them hurtful. For example, I could just block you and not
| deal with you any more. Sometimes people get around those
| to harass others. That is definitely bad and we already
| have laws against harassment and ways for law enforcement
| to find those individuals without creating a full police
| state on the Internet. Posting your opinion once is not
| harassment, no matter how much it makes me want to puke. Or
| as we used to say in a more civilised time, I abhor your
| speech, but I will fight to the death for your right to
| speak it.
|
| I don't know where you got your conclusion from - I am
| European and I don't mind violent speech. In fact I think
| we generally need a lot more freedom since many countries
| give their citizens barely more freedom than serfs had.
| School shootings have been a perennial favourite for your
| type to parade around so you can rule over a disarmed
| population, but e.g. Czechia lets you have a gun at home as
| easily as the USA and they do not have that problem. USA's
| problem is mostly societal.
|
| Your opinion sounds like it was formed in the ivory tower
| of university with no connection with reality. Please get
| more varied life experience and reconsider your position.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| > To me, your very statement "freedom of speech ends
| where threats of violence appear" is a form of hate
| speech. You are hating on my principle of free speech. It
| actually makes me physically sick to read those words,
| because I know where they lead.
|
| Hmm. Well, it's the US that has liberal freedom of speech
| and freedom of violence. It also has a "free speech
| absolutist" as a first buddy and that's going great too.
| To me that is a picture of where this kind of "absolute
| free speech" leads to, and I'm frankly happy with going
| in the opposite direction.
|
| > Your opinion sounds like it was formed in the ivory
| tower of university with no connection with reality.
| Please get more varied life experience and reconsider
| your position.
|
| You have literally no idea. I could easily say the same
| to you - except this is highly impolite. But suit
| yourself.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| > Liberal gun laws mean lots of people have them, logically
| leading to more people being shot.
|
| Explain Czechia and Switzerland, then, please.
| thrance wrote:
| 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.
| verisimi wrote:
| > online hate and radicalization really is a thing
|
| People have always had opinions. Some people think other
| people's opinions are poor. Talking online was already covered
| by the law (eg laws re slander).
|
| Creating the new category of 'hate speech' is more about
| ensuring legal control of messages on a more open platform (the
| internet) in a way that wasn't required when newspapers and TV
| could be managed covertly. It is about ensuring that the
| existing control structures are able to keep broad control of
| the messaging.
| mihaaly wrote:
| UK is sensitive about verbal manners, that is 'of utmost
| importance' (among all the others of course), just to use one
| of the most popular phrase here. If you suffer some outrageous
| impact in your life and complain in bad manner you may be
| punished further some way, socially or even contractually. One
| example is the TOC of Natwest. They close your account
| _immediately_ if your conduct is offensive or discriminatory
| towards the staff. What counts as offensive? That detail is not
| expanded. Cannot be. It is a bit worrisome for those paying
| attention being nice to others as well. How to do that exactly?
| Where is the limit nowadays or in that situation? It is often
| people get offended nowadays for example by looking at
| upsetting things, or could feel discriminated. The bbc.co.uk is
| flowing with articles of people felt very intensive about
| something unpleasant. Be very careful about your conduct or you
| bank will kick you out. We are not even talking about
| hatefulness or radicalization.
| stonogo wrote:
| Heavily editorialized headline here. Just as accurate: "Forum
| with 2.6M posts being deleted due to insufficient moderation"
| jonatron wrote:
| It already has moderators. But they'd need to know the details
| about the 17 types of illegal harm too. And someone would have
| to submit a yearly risk assessment and contact information to
| the regulator. And there's a children's access assessment. And
| there'd need to be a complaints procedure. Oh and a children's
| risk assessment. Plus whatever else is contained within the
| hundreds or thousands of pages of guidance.
| logicallee wrote:
| The State of Utopia has published this report on the source of
| funding of Ofcom, the U.K. statutory regulator responsible for
| enforcing the Online Safety Act:
|
| https://medium.com/@rviragh/ofcom-and-the-online-safety-act-...
|
| (In short it is funded by the regulated tech companies, which
| must pay fees to it.)
| jonatron wrote:
| 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 only. Therefore, the
| only option is to delete it.
| ninininino wrote:
| Sort of like burning down a library because you can't make it
| ADA compliant and install a wheelchair ramp.
| zamadatix wrote:
| I feel as though the "sort of" is doing a lot of work there.
| moffkalast wrote:
| I think a more accurate comparison would be burning down a
| library because you can't afford the manpower to check
| every single book for arbitrarily defined wrongthink.
| animitronix wrote:
| Just host it all elsewhere, I don't understand the problem here.
| Double freedom rockets to the UK
| datadeft wrote:
| Finally the true decentralized internet could start.
| kyleee wrote:
| I would ordinarily be upset about this but in this case it is
| probably for the best as there is unfortunately a lot of
| islamophobic content on the site
| _bin_ wrote:
| actual question, why bother? if they are domiciled in the UK,
| sell it to someone outside it or move the company elsewhere. let
| the britons kick and scream; the fun thing about the internet is
| they can't really do anything about it.
| jonatron wrote:
| The company no longer exists and it doesn't make any money so
| it isn't worth anything.
| _bin_ wrote:
| someone owns the forum and it's still a big archive of stuff.
| backlinks pointing there, old info, can run ads so it should
| cashflow somehow.
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