zlacker

>>buro9+(OP)
> this is not a venture that can afford compliance costs... and if we did, what remains is a disproportionately high personal liability for me, and one that could easily be weaponised by disgruntled people who are banned for their egregious behaviour

I'm a little confused about this part. Does the Online Safety Act create personal liabilities for site operators (EDIT: to clarify: would a corporation not be sufficient protection)? Or are they referring to harassment they'd receive from disgruntled users?

Also, this is the first I've heard of Microcosm. It looks like some nice forum software and one I maybe would've considered for future projects. Shame to see it go.

>>bogwog+Dg
I think OP feels it indirectly creates massive personal liabilities for site operators, in that a user can deliberately upload illegal material and then report the site under the Act, opening the site operator up to £18M in fines.

This seems very plausible to me, given what they and other moderators have said about the lengths some people will go to online when they feel antagonised.

>>akobol+3l
Zero chance it will be enforced like this.

The UK has lots of regulatory bodies and they all work in broadly the same way. Provided you do the bare minimum to comply with the rules as defined in plain English by the regulator, you won't either be fined or personally liable. It's only companies that either repeatedly or maliciously fail to put basic measures in place that end up being prosecuted.

If someone starts maliciously uploading CSAM and reporting you, provided you can demonstrate you're taking whatever measures are recommended by Ofcom for the risk level of your business (e.g. deleting reported threads and reporting to police), you'll be absolutely fine. If anything, the regulators will likely prove to be quite toothless.

>>camero+2X
Hopefully the new law is enforced sensibly, i.e., with much leniency given to smaller defendants, but hoping for that to be the case is a terrible strategy. The risk is certainly not zero as you claim -- all it takes is for one high-profile case of leniency resulting in some terrible outcome (e.g., child abuse) getting into the news, and the government employees responsible for enforcement will snap to a policy of zero-tolerance.

> provided you can demonstrate you're taking whatever measures are recommended by Ofcom

That level of moderation might not be remotely feasible for a sole operator. And yes, there's a legitimate social question here: Should we as a society permit sites/forums that cannot be moderated to that extent? But the point I'm trying to make is not whether the answer to that question is yes or no, it's that the consequences of this Act are that no sensible individual person or small group will now undertake the risk of running such a site.