Comment by graemep
15 days ago
The problem with the focus being on porn behind age verification as the main effect, is that it ignores all the other effects. Closing community forums and wikis. Uncertainty about blog comments.
It is actually (as noted in many previous discussion about the Online Safety Act) pushing people to using big tech platforms, because they can no longer afford the compliance cost and risk of running their own.
> pushing people to using big tech platforms
so big tech platforms will cheerfully embrace it. as expected, major players love regulations.
GDPR killed small and medium online advertising businesses and handed everything to Google and Facebook.
It’s a shame it wasn’t able to get them all.
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Frankly, that's their fault for pursuing individually targeted advertising. The sad thing isn't that some small shitty businesses lost out, it's that some large shitty businesses didn't.
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Those sort of sites already had better moderation than big tech because they’d have their own smaller team of volunteer moderators.
I suspect any smaller site that claims the Online Safety Act was a reason they closed, needed to close due to other complications. For example an art site that features occasional (or more) artistic nudes. Stuff that normal people wouldn’t consider mature content but the site maintainers wouldn’t want to take the risk on.
Either way, whether I’m right or wrong here, I still think the Online Safety Act is grotesque piece of legislation.
I think the impact is a lot worse than that. There are still compliance costs especially for volunteer run sites. Ofcom says these are negligible, because they its unlikely to be more than "a few thousand pounds". Then there are the risks if something goes wrong if you have not incorporated.
HN has already has discussed things like the cycling forum that hit down. lobste.rs considered blocking UK IPs. I was considering setting up a forum to replace/complement FB groups I help admin (home education related). This is enough to put me off as I do not want the hassle and risk of dealing with it.
I think what you are missing is that this does not just cover things like porn videos and photos. That is what has been emphasised by the media, but it covers a lot of harmful content: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/50/section/62
It took a fair amount of legal analysis to establish blog comments are OK (and its not clear whether off topic ones are). Links to that and other things here: https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/06/uk_online_safety_act_...
Some good points. And I do agree with your general opinion of this law. Albeit not all of specific points you've made:
> I think the impact is a lot worse than that. There are still compliance costs especially for volunteer run sites. Ofcom says these are negligible, because they its unlikely to be more than "a few thousand pounds". Then there are the risks if something goes wrong if you have not incorporated.
What are these "compliance costs"? There's no forms that need to be completed. Sites don't have to register themselves. For smaller sites, the cost is just what I described: the time and effort of volunteer moderators who already moderate the site. If they're already removing adult content, then there's no extra work for them.
> HN has already has discussed things like the cycling forum that hit down. lobste.rs considered blocking UK IPs. I was considering setting up a forum to replace/complement FB groups I help admin (home education related). This is enough to put me off as I do not want the hassle and risk of dealing with it.
None of this proves your point though. It just proves that some sites are worried about potential overreach. It's an understandable concern but it a different problem to the one the GP was describing in that it doesn't actually make it any harder for smaller forums in any tangible way. Unless you called "spooked" a tangible cost (I do not).
> I think what you are missing is that this does not just cover things like porn videos and photos.
I didn't miss that. But you're right to raise that nonetheless.
There's definitely a grey area that is going to concern a lot of people but no site is going to be punished for mild, or occasional "breaches". What the government are trying to police is the stuff that's clearly inappropriate for under-18s. The UK (and EU in general) tends to pass laws that can be a little vague in definition and trust the police and courts to uphold "the spirit of the law". A little like how US laws can be defined by past cases and their judgments. This ambiguity will scare American sites because it's not how American law works. But the UK system does _generally_ work well. We do have instances where such laws are abused but they're infrequent enough to make national news and subsequently get dropped because of the embarrassment it brings to their department.
That all said, I'm really not trying to defend this particular law. The Online Safety Act is definitely a _bad_ law and I don't personally know of anyone in the UK (outside of politicians) who actually agrees with it.
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Compliance costs are a couple of hours at most to do and record the assessments then the effort and discipline to moderate and react quickly to reports. That's it.
A lot of misplaced fear and over-reactions. For instance, lobste.rs could basically safely ignore the whole thing being a small, low risk forum based in the US.
> It took a fair amount of legal analysis to establish blog comments are OK (and its not clear whether off topic ones are)
It looks like it only took someone to actually read the Online Safety Act, as Ofcom's reply kindly points to the section that quite explicitly answers the question.
I don't think that the Online Safety Act is a good development but many of the reactions are over the top or FUD, frankly...
If you have examples of this happening, please add them to the ORG list: https://www.blocked.org.uk/osa-blocks
Ironically this is blocked at my workplace.
I clicked on loads of those and only a minority of them are actually blocked for me. E.g. it lists lobste.rs as "Shutting down due to OSA" but it clearly isn't.
I am very skeptical that the Online Safety Act forces community forums and wikis to close. By and large the Act forces forums to have strong moderation and perhaps manual checks before publishing files and pictures uploaded by users, and that's about it.
Likewise, I suspect that most geoblocks are out of misplaced fear not actual analysis.
It has caused many community forums to close, past tense.
Many cited the uncertainty about what is actually required, the potential high cost of compliance, the danger of failing to correctly follow the rules they're not certain about, and the lack of governmental clarity as significant aspects of their decision to close.
The fear may be misplaced, but the UK government has failed to convince people of that.
I don't think it is so much a failure of the government to communicate as a vocal opposition to this law that has focussed on and amplified the maximum penalties and caused fear.
Now, I don't think this is a positive law but it is not armageddon, either, and objectively many reactions do seem overblown. Time will tell.
It was misplaced but the UK government has a long history of incompetence when it comes to legislation regarding the use of technology. So I cannot blame people being erring on the side of caution.
I mean, it’s not like this particular piece of legislation isn’t stupid to begin with. So I cannot blame people for assuming the worst.
“Strong moderation” and “manual checks” and pro-active age verification are exactly the burdens that would prevent someone from running a small community forum.
You do not need age verification in the vast majority of cases.
Moderation is part and parcel of running forums and all platforms and software provide tools for this, it's nothing new. If someone is not prepared to read submissions or to react quickly when one is flagged then perhaps running a forum is too much of a commitment for them but I would not blame the law.
In fact I believe that forum operators in the UK already got in legal trouble in the past, long before the Online Safety Act, because they ignored flagging reports.
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