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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 d

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.

_fjg8 2y ago
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 2y ago
  No, that is not how it works. Large companies can afford compliance costs. Smaller ones can't.
  - _fjg8 2y ago
    What are the compliance costs for this law that would apply to a small independent forum?
    - TylerE 2y ago
      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 2y ago
      You can just read any of the writing by the people operating these fora that are closing.
      - aimazon 2y ago
        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 2y ago
        > I have read every post, every article, every piece of guidance. Prove it. I’m asking for specifics, not hand waving.
        _fjg8 2y ago
        https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-content/helping-small-services-navigate-the-online-safety-act/ 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?
        2y ago
    - michaelt 2y ago
      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_ 2y ago
    I believe file uploading services like cloudinary have this capability already. It does have a cost, but it exists.
    - milesrout 2y ago
      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.
- mschuster91 2y ago
  > 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 2y ago
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 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zzstEpSeuwU
- spacechild1 2y ago
  > 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-powers-to-find-stolen-phones-crime-bill-england-wales 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 2y ago
    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. Uk police have targets to hit, they can't hit those targets going after real criminals, so they predominantly target people nieve enough to think they want to help them. Of course they had to make running public forums a crime.
    - crimsoneer 2y ago
      I'm sorry, are you accusing the UK police of killing more innocent old people than the US police? Because if so that's a funny joke.
whartung 2y ago
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.
- ChrisRR 2y ago
  At least they're a UK company though so presumably they've at least got some money to support this. If you're an individual running a hobby forum then you're SOL
- like_any_other 2y ago
  As long as they don't upset anyone with influence (government, media, etc.), they'll probably be fine. Otherwise, at best they'll be looking at a ruinously expensive legal battle to justify if what they did was "reasonable" or "proportionate" - the vague terms used by the law. For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.

_fjg8 2y ago

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 2y ago
No, that is not how it works. Large companies can afford compliance costs. Smaller ones can't.
- _fjg8 2y ago
  What are the compliance costs for this law that would apply to a small independent forum?
  - TylerE 2y ago
    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 2y ago
    You can just read any of the writing by the people operating these fora that are closing.
    - aimazon 2y ago
      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 2y ago
        > I have read every post, every article, every piece of guidance. Prove it. I’m asking for specifics, not hand waving.
        _fjg8 2y ago
        https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-content/helping-small-services-navigate-the-online-safety-act/ 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?
        2y ago
  - michaelt 2y ago
    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_ 2y ago
  I believe file uploading services like cloudinary have this capability already. It does have a cost, but it exists.
  - milesrout 2y ago
    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.
mschuster91 2y ago
> 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 2y ago

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 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zzstEpSeuwU

spacechild1 2y ago
> 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-powers-to-find-stolen-phones-crime-bill-england-wales 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 2y ago
  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. Uk police have targets to hit, they can't hit those targets going after real criminals, so they predominantly target people nieve enough to think they want to help them. Of course they had to make running public forums a crime.
  - crimsoneer 2y ago
    I'm sorry, are you accusing the UK police of killing more innocent old people than the US police? Because if so that's a funny joke.

whartung 2y ago

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.

ChrisRR 2y ago
At least they're a UK company though so presumably they've at least got some money to support this. If you're an individual running a hobby forum then you're SOL
like_any_other 2y ago
As long as they don't upset anyone with influence (government, media, etc.), they'll probably be fine. Otherwise, at best they'll be looking at a ruinously expensive legal battle to justify if what they did was "reasonable" or "proportionate" - the vague terms used by the law. For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.