_fjg8
Joined 2 years ago
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799
Submissions
143
Member since
Apr 22
Recent submissions
Comment · 1 year ago
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.
Comment · 1 year ago
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.
Comment · 1 year ago
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.
Comment · 1 year ago
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?
Comment · 1 year ago
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.
Comment · 1 year 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?
Comment · 1 year ago
What are the compliance costs for this law that would apply to a small independent forum?
Comment · 1 year ago
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.
Comment · 1 year ago
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.
Comment · 1 year 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.
Comment · 1 year ago
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.
Comment · 1 year ago
obviously some government employees are not providing value for money to the people because that’s just what happens in big organizations (public or private). The point being made by critics of DOGE is not “there’s no waste in the government” it’s that the DOGE goal is to gut government services, whether they’re wasteful or not is immaterial.
Comment · 1 year ago
I was wondering what happened to micro recently (loved the m3o domain). Sorry to hear it’s over. Have you written a post-mortem? I’d love to hear more about it — if you don’t feel too downbeat about it.
(is the domain for sale?)
Comment · 1 year ago
There has been new information since that blog post which has reaffirmed the "this is much ado about nothing" takes because Ofcom have said that they do not want to be a burden on smaller sites.
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-c...
"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."
Comment · 1 year ago
You're right. Plus, the overreactions have been walked back or solved in some cases, e.g: LFGSS is going to continue on as a community ran effort which will comply with the risk assessment requirements. Most of the shutdowns are on long-dead forums that have been in need of an excuse to shutter. The number of active users impacted by these shutdowns probably doesn't break 100.