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Comment by CamperBob2

4 months ago

No, that is not how it works. Large companies can afford compliance costs. Smaller ones can't.

I believe file uploading services like cloudinary have this capability already. It does have a cost, but it exists.

  • But you shouldnt need to use file uploading services! File upload doesnt require additional services, it has been a well understood part of HTTP for decades. You can do file upload using normal web form submission in your web server/CMS/Rails/Laravel/CGI program without paying a monthly subscription to some service at an exorbitant markup.

    Also, those filters are obviously imperfect. Remember the man who got his Google account terminated because he took a photo of his son's rash to send to his doctor? Pedo alert, pedo alert, a child is naked in a photo. My parents must be pedos too, they took a photo of me sitting in the bath when I was a toddler. Call the police.

What are the compliance costs for this law that would apply to a small independent forum?

  • 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.

  • You can just read any of the writing by the people operating these fora that are closing.

    • 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?

      14 replies →

  • 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.