@dee 😟😟😟

@dee I may have to hang my hobby OS on the nail with the last law change over here too, and I hate the very idea (I may be lucky and the fact it’s not i10d may help categorise it as "not typically used by kids" so I don’t fall under that law but… whi knows)

why can’t we have nice things 🤬

@dee Oh shit, I'm sorry. Every day it seems like the UK is getting closer to becoming the US, honestly. Hopefully y'all will be able to stop it before it gets to our level.

@dee Maybe someone else would be willing to accept that risk. May be worth seeing if someone, possibly already using your services would be willing to take over.

@dee This seems like something your MP, or MPs of soon-to-be-affected members of your fora, should hear loudly and clearly. I have no idea if it is too late in the lawmaking process for that sort of thing, but bad legislation is bad legislation. Better to challenge it now than through the courts. 275k active users is a lot - that is a voice that, if unified, can be awfully loud.

@dee Dee, I'm so sorry to hear that you need to do this. And I totally understand: "Low risk" of being ruined by a malicious party is not "NO risk" and you need to take care of your responsibilities.

Thanks for what you've facilitated 'til now. 🙏

I've no doubt, you will do other, also good, things after this, in other ways. ❤

@dee I was never a member of LFGSS but I've known of it for decades and I know many people who spoke fondly of it. Thank you for all you've done.

I rather suspect the end result of the Online Safety Act won't be as bad as it looks, but OFCOM has continued to leave small sites in limbo with their guidance, and at any rate I wouldn't want to run one without the protection of a limited company in future...

@dee That sounds like a tough choice that you shouldn't have had to make.

I am sorry. I have run forums before. A lot of work, a lot of conflict, but often rewarding (not financially though.

I don't know what the different communities are, but would be happy to help create a new home for some of them if they align with my callings.

@dee maybe the @BBCRadio4 @BBC_News_Labs @BBCRD
wants to see this …

@dee
I'm just reading through the act and, frankly, I think that *every* company is going to consider it too onerous to comply with. The expansiveness of the scope even captures Github and such ffs. Although it regularly mentions businesses, giving a possibility that only limited companies might be targets, it's not clarified further. "[T]he size and capacity of the provider of the service" is mentioned many times though in determining actions, so an individual would be treated differently to Meta, for example. The £18MM figure though remains the scare tactic. (I've been bankrupt and wouldn't recommend it), This law may have good intentions but it is a blunderbuss instead of sensibly targeted all in the name of "won't someone think of the children". Gah!
I'm so sorry you've found yourself in this position, it must really suck that your 28+ years of work comes to an end in this awful way.

@dee so sorry to hear. What’s happening to the data, can you donate it to archive.org or some UK archive?

@dee I'm wondering if this will hit people running Mastodon servers in the UK too, like the one I'm posting from?
Also my own little web gateway to #usenet ?
#OnlineSafetyAct #fediverse

@dee Would this law also endanger people running Mastodon instances?

@dee Yeah, a lot of countries are starting to pass laws that make it difficult to run a server people use to communicate. I think we need a solution that doesn't require your profile and commentary be hosted by anyone. If everyone is their own host publishing their own content that is just integrated then stuff like this just doesn't apply. Then it's all just your content, even other peoples' comments on your content are hosted somewhere else by other people that can be filtered by the user.

@dee

🙁