The Online Safety Act for forum and blog owners | Hacker News Reader

The Online Safety Act for forum and blog owners

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4 pointshermitcrab25 comments

Just geoblock the UK.

As a resident of the UK... I agree. This is probably the best option.

For those of us outside the UK that makes sense. The UK acts as if it's still master of its 19th C. Empire when for much of the world it's falling further into irrelevancy.

Only when its citizens realize this and ditch all the supercilious rules and nonsense that's gripped the country for decades will it recover and join the world again.

I say that as one who once owned a UK passport.

Unfortunately, Britain exceptionalism is alive and well. The sun never sets on the British Empire, we won WWII etc. Lots of nostalgia for a perfect Britain that never was. The result: jingosim and Brexit.

I say that as one who currently owns a UK passport.

For those outside the UK what makes sense is just ignore this law. It will not cause any issues.

TLDR:

If you:

* have a forum or blog that allows readers to see each other's comments

And

* are based in the UK or have users in the UK

Then (the UK government thinks that) the UK online safety act applies to you and you could be fined £18 million+ for ignoring it.

… though with the caveat that the body that’s empowered to do the enforcing, Ofcom, is required to factor size of the surface and risk of harm into ensuring that enforcement is proportional.

If you’re a blog with a small number of UK users, you’re not obviously appealing to children, and you haven’t allowed people to upload arbitrary images / video / files to your other users, then the realistic odds are you’ll be at no more actual risk here than you are / were from the cookie law or the GPDR.

This law sucks for so many reasons, and is inane, but the risk to micro-bloggers of £18M+ fines is, in reality, nil.

> This law sucks for so many reasons, and is inane, but the risk to micro-bloggers of £18M+ fines is, in reality, nil.

A little naivety methinks. You should say rather

... the risk to micro-bloggers of £18M+ fines is, in reality, nil. ...should the bloggers not publish opinions contrary to the state and its current objectives.

I am cynical as the next guy. However, I think the UK government is just trying to protect people (children in particular) from what it considers harmful content. They are just being heavy-handed about it.

The previous and current UK government have also been steadily hacking away at UK citizen's right to peaceful protest. But I think that it is a different issue, and it doesn't help to conflate the two.

However, I think the UK government is just trying to protect people (children in particular) from what it considers harmful content.

I can't come close to agreeing. The same minister pushing this, who is by his own admission semi literate and can't understand very basic concepts, has basically no understanding of technology (or indeed expertise in any area), has made no secret of the fact this is about censoring online speech he personally does not like[1]. He is a paid up yes man deep in the pockets of companies selling low effort AI solutions to governments for the purposes of enforcing speech[2] who wants, all said and done, to shut down twitter/X because people express opinions there he doesn't like. This has almost literally nothing to do with the old fashioned pearl clutching "think of the children". So much so he's going around holding anyone with reasonable opposition to this bill for child sexual assault, future, past and present[3]. This is obvious overcompensatory zeal. And it is week one.

What he has not done is engage earnestly with legitimate concerns about privacy and the bill. And he never will.

[1] https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/labour-peter-ky... | https://archive.is/Snw7y

[2] https://news.starknakedbrief.co.uk/p/we-need-to-talk-about-s...

[3] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgery3eeqzxo

Peter Kyle has not been on my radar. I agree that giving a senior government post to someone with a reading age of 8 (assuming that is true) is alarming. It is also noticeable that Rayner, the deputy Prime Minister, left school at 16 with no qualifications. Hardly confidence inspiring.

I despise Farage. But I think equating him with Savile because he didn't agree with a bill, was totally unacceptable and Farage deserves an apology (probably the only time I am ever going to say that).

Why do you despise Farage?

Everyone else is so great and the UK's been doing well under their "we're great and Farage is the enemy of this paradise continuing"?

I have no great love for the Labour party. The Conservative party even less so.

However many of the challenges the UK is facing come from the fur-lined, ocean going balls-up that is Brexit. And Farage was the main architect of Brexit. And that is just for starters.

Can you explain why that is though, Brexit being such a big deal?

I don't know how to reconcile that with other countries doing fine on their own two feet (especially when that country has very much done fine on its own feet before)

I am in exactly the same Farage-wise. I think he is a vile human being, but equating him with Savile is the worst kind of gutter politics, the kind I never thought we would see in the UK. I now resent this Labour government even more, for making me feel sympathetic towards Farage.

> I am cynical as the next guy.

Hold my beer.

>and you haven’t allowed people to upload arbitrary images / video / files to your other users

I believe it applies equally to text as to images / video / files.

>This law sucks for so many reasons, and is inane, but the risk to micro-bloggers of £18M+ fines is, in reality, nil.

Agreed. But small companies could face substantial fines. Whether any small companies are prosecuted remains to be seen.

It does, in theory, apply to text, but there’s a relatively narrow scope of text that would fall within the intent of this law but that wouldn’t already be very obviously criminal activity under numerous other laws.

The intent of this (admittedly, bad) legislation is stated on its face… it is going to, in reality, fail utterly in protecting children from pornographic media while at the same time failing utterly to protect children from being [ab]used in pornographic media, and it will fail to do so spectacularly because it’s chosen the wrong approach a priori, but I don’t think it’s reasonably portrayed as a great threat to the texting freedoms of small blogs and forum users, either.

Classic case of how you move from "rule of law" to "rule of man" - illegalise everything, then selectively enforce the law - usually when the topic of the forum gets deemed unsavoury to the ruling class.

That caveat sounds incredibly vague and subjective. It doesn't appear to make it impossible for Ofcom to levy a fine of £18m at a free hobbyist site that has a forum. Taken to its limits, this Act makes big, bug chunks of the internet inaccessible to UK citizens.

… of course it’s vague and subjective, that’s every act of every parliament ever, especially those that will never, ever, bother to actually write down the constitution they’re supposedly bound by.

Shorter TL;DR:

If you live in the UK, don't.

That is a decision each company has to make. Realistically, if you are small company, with no employees in the UK, then it is unlikely to be enforceable against you.

I would want an assurance that I won't be fined £18m that's slightly stronger than "it's unlikely".

Why would you be fined at all?

At some point this line of thinking is like refusing to drive because driving a car is risking unlimited fines and years in jail... In fact driving a car is probably riskier that ignoring this law if you're not in the UK.

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