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The actual OfCom code of practice is here: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/documents/online-safety/information-for-industry/illegal-harms/illegal-

by owisd 2y ago

The actual OfCom code of practice is here: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/documents/online-safety/information-for-industry/illegal-harms/illegal-content-codes-of-practice-for-user-to-user-services.pdf https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/documents/onli... A cycling site with 275k MAU would be in the very lowest category where compliance is things like 'having a content moderation function to review and assess suspected illegal content'. So having a report button.

raverbashing 2y ago
If only more people actually read the actual documents in context (same with GDPR), but the tech world has low legal literacy
- constantcrying 2y ago
  Expecting people to read and correctly interpret complex legal documents is absurd. Obviously any lay person is heavily dissuaded by that. I would never except personal liability for my correct interpretation of the GDPR. I would be extremely dumb if I did.
xdennis 2y ago
> having a content moderation function to review and assess suspected illegal content That costs money. The average person can't know every law. You have to hire lawyers to adjudicate every report or otherwise assess every report as illegal. No one is going to do that for free if the penalty for being wrong is being thrown in prison. A fair system would be to send every report of illegal content to a judge to check if it's illegal or not. If it is the post is taken down and the prosecution starts. But that would cost the country an enormous amount of money. So instead the cost is passed to the operators. Which in effect means only the richest or riskiest sites can afford to continue to operate.
constantcrying 2y ago
This isn't how laws work. If you give a layperson a large law and tell him that, if he is in violation, he has to pay millions, then it pretty much doesn't matter that there is some way where, with some effort, he can comply. Most people aren't lawyers and figuring out how to actually comply with this is incredibly tedious and risky, as he is personally liable for any mistakes he makes interpreting those laws. Companies have legal departments, which exist to figure out answers to questions like that. This is because these questions are extremely tricky and the answers might even change as case law trickles in or rules get revised. Expecting individuals to interpret complex rulesets under threat of legal liability is a very good way to make sure these people stop what they are doing.
- Barrin92 2y ago
  >This isn't how laws work. The law worked the same way yesterday as it does today. It's not like the website run in Britain operated under some state of anarchy and in a few months it doesn't. There's already laws a site has to comply with and the risk that someone sues you, but if you were okay with running a site for 20 years adding a report button isn't drastically going to change the nature of your business.
  - constantcrying 2y ago
    You don't get it. The law is completely different for people and corporations. A corporation has the resources to figure out how exactly the law applies to them and defend that at trial. An individual does not. It is plainly insulting to say that "adding a report button" is enough, obviously that is false. And investigating how to comply with this law is time consuming and comes with immense risk if done improperly. The fact that this law is new, means that nobody knows how exactly it has to be interpreted and that very well you might get it completely wrong. If a website has existed for 20 years with significant traffic it is almost certain that it has complied with the law, what absolutely is not certain is how complying with the law has to be done in the future. I do not get why you have the need to defend this. "Just do X", is obviously not how this law is written, it covers a broad range of services in different ways and has different requirements for these categories. You absolutely need legal advice to figure out what to do, especially if it is you who is in trouble if you get it wrong.
    - creer 2y ago
      > A corporation has the resources to figure out how exactly the law applies to them and defend that at trial. A very large fraction of corporations are run on minimal margins. Some of them still do try and keep up with regulations and that is then (often) a very large part of their operating costs.
      - constantcrying 2y ago
        The big tech corporations which are the presumed targets of this will have absolutely zero problems paying their legal teams for the work they have to do to comply.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
orf 2y ago
This: OP seems to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Im surprised they don’t already have some form of report/flag button.
- rob74 2y ago
  From how I understood the post, the forums were never self-sustaining financially and always required a considerable amount of time, so the new legislation was probably just the final straw that broke the camel's back?
  - simmo9000 2y ago
    Exactly. Adding punitive governance hurdles hinders the small and/or solo. Those that do whist not seeking financial gain are impacted the most. Regulatory capture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
- Kostchei 2y ago
  OP runs 300 essentially free forums. It's just too much.
- bilekas 2y ago
  I get the same feeling as the repercussions for bad actors are fines relative to revenue, 10% if I read correctly, given that the OP has stated that they work off a deficit most of the time, I can't see this being an issue. Also if it is well monitored and seems to have a positive community, I don't see the major risk to shut down. Seems more shutting down out of frustration against a law that, while silly on it's face, doesn't really impact this provider.
  - trogdor 2y ago
    >the repercussions for bad actors are fines relative to revenue, 10% if I read correctly, given that the OP has stated that they work off a deficit most of the time, I can't see this being an issue. From another commenter: Platforms failing this duty would be liable to fines of up to £18 million or 10% of their annual turnover, whichever is higher.
wizzwizz4 2y ago
Answered here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42434349 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42434349
- owisd 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - wizzwizz4 2y ago
    The actual rules are vulnerable to this attack. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/50 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/50 If you think the attack won't be attempted, you've never been responsible for an internet forum.
    - IanCal 2y ago
      Can you explain what you mean by "this attack"? They'll submit a complaint to the regulator that you've not done a risk assessment? I've tried submitting issues to the ICO before but didn't have enough for them to go on and so the other company was never contacted.
      - wizzwizz4 2y ago
        This is Ofcom, not the ICO; and stuff like "flood the site with child abuse material" (not in your risk assessment, why would it be? this is a public forum about cycling and nobody's ever done that before) and try to get you prosecuted for not having adequate protections in place.
        IanCal 2y ago
        Their examples of it being right to say you're low risk have a key part about it not happening before. Medium risk example had "has had warnings of csam being shared before from international organisations and has no way of spotting it happening again". You don't have to stop everything happening to comply. So is the scenario you're picturing that someone spams child porn, complains you don't stop it and makes you add a URL filter? Would you do something different if someone was spamming csam anyway?

by owisd 2y ago

raverbashing 2y ago

If only more people actually read the actual documents in context (same with GDPR), but the tech world has low legal literacy

constantcrying 2y ago
Expecting people to read and correctly interpret complex legal documents is absurd. Obviously any lay person is heavily dissuaded by that. I would never except personal liability for my correct interpretation of the GDPR. I would be extremely dumb if I did.

xdennis 2y ago

> having a content moderation function to review and assess suspected illegal content That costs money. The average person can't know every law. You have to hire lawyers to adjudicate every report or otherwise assess every report as illegal. No one is going to do that for free if the penalty for being wrong is being thrown in prison. A fair system would be to send every report of illegal content to a judge to check if it's illegal or not. If it is the post is taken down and the prosecution starts. But that would cost the country an enormous amount of money. So instead the cost is passed to the operators. Which in effect means only the richest or riskiest sites can afford to continue to operate.

constantcrying 2y ago

This isn't how laws work. If you give a layperson a large law and tell him that, if he is in violation, he has to pay millions, then it pretty much doesn't matter that there is some way where, with some effort, he can comply. Most people aren't lawyers and figuring out how to actually comply with this is incredibly tedious and risky, as he is personally liable for any mistakes he makes interpreting those laws. Companies have legal departments, which exist to figure out answers to questions like that. This is because these questions are extremely tricky and the answers might even change as case law trickles in or rules get revised. Expecting individuals to interpret complex rulesets under threat of legal liability is a very good way to make sure these people stop what they are doing.

Barrin92 2y ago
>This isn't how laws work. The law worked the same way yesterday as it does today. It's not like the website run in Britain operated under some state of anarchy and in a few months it doesn't. There's already laws a site has to comply with and the risk that someone sues you, but if you were okay with running a site for 20 years adding a report button isn't drastically going to change the nature of your business.
- constantcrying 2y ago
  You don't get it. The law is completely different for people and corporations. A corporation has the resources to figure out how exactly the law applies to them and defend that at trial. An individual does not. It is plainly insulting to say that "adding a report button" is enough, obviously that is false. And investigating how to comply with this law is time consuming and comes with immense risk if done improperly. The fact that this law is new, means that nobody knows how exactly it has to be interpreted and that very well you might get it completely wrong. If a website has existed for 20 years with significant traffic it is almost certain that it has complied with the law, what absolutely is not certain is how complying with the law has to be done in the future. I do not get why you have the need to defend this. "Just do X", is obviously not how this law is written, it covers a broad range of services in different ways and has different requirements for these categories. You absolutely need legal advice to figure out what to do, especially if it is you who is in trouble if you get it wrong.
  - creer 2y ago
    > A corporation has the resources to figure out how exactly the law applies to them and defend that at trial. A very large fraction of corporations are run on minimal margins. Some of them still do try and keep up with regulations and that is then (often) a very large part of their operating costs.
    - constantcrying 2y ago
      The big tech corporations which are the presumed targets of this will have absolutely zero problems paying their legal teams for the work they have to do to comply.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

orf 2y ago

This: OP seems to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Im surprised they don’t already have some form of report/flag button.

rob74 2y ago
From how I understood the post, the forums were never self-sustaining financially and always required a considerable amount of time, so the new legislation was probably just the final straw that broke the camel's back?
- simmo9000 2y ago
  Exactly. Adding punitive governance hurdles hinders the small and/or solo. Those that do whist not seeking financial gain are impacted the most. Regulatory capture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
Kostchei 2y ago
OP runs 300 essentially free forums. It's just too much.
bilekas 2y ago
I get the same feeling as the repercussions for bad actors are fines relative to revenue, 10% if I read correctly, given that the OP has stated that they work off a deficit most of the time, I can't see this being an issue. Also if it is well monitored and seems to have a positive community, I don't see the major risk to shut down. Seems more shutting down out of frustration against a law that, while silly on it's face, doesn't really impact this provider.
- trogdor 2y ago
  >the repercussions for bad actors are fines relative to revenue, 10% if I read correctly, given that the OP has stated that they work off a deficit most of the time, I can't see this being an issue. From another commenter: Platforms failing this duty would be liable to fines of up to £18 million or 10% of their annual turnover, whichever is higher.

wizzwizz4 2y ago

Answered here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42434349 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42434349

owisd 2y ago
[flagged]
- wizzwizz4 2y ago
  The actual rules are vulnerable to this attack. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/50 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/50 If you think the attack won't be attempted, you've never been responsible for an internet forum.
  - IanCal 2y ago
    Can you explain what you mean by "this attack"? They'll submit a complaint to the regulator that you've not done a risk assessment? I've tried submitting issues to the ICO before but didn't have enough for them to go on and so the other company was never contacted.
    - wizzwizz4 2y ago
      This is Ofcom, not the ICO; and stuff like "flood the site with child abuse material" (not in your risk assessment, why would it be? this is a public forum about cycling and nobody's ever done that before) and try to get you prosecuted for not having adequate protections in place.
      - IanCal 2y ago
        Their examples of it being right to say you're low risk have a key part about it not happening before. Medium risk example had "has had warnings of csam being shared before from international organisations and has no way of spotting it happening again". You don't have to stop everything happening to comply. So is the scenario you're picturing that someone spams child porn, complains you don't stop it and makes you add a URL filter? Would you do something different if someone was spamming csam anyway?