zlacker

>>buro9+(OP)
We have something similar in Australia with the Online Safety Act 2021. I think this highlights a critical misunderstanding at the heart of the legislation: it imagines the internet as a handful of giant platforms rather than a rich tapestry of independent, community-driven spaces. The Online Safety Act’s broad, vague requirements and potential penalties are trivial hurdles for billion-dollar companies with in-house legal teams, compliance departments, and automatic moderation tooling. But for a single individual running a forum as a labour of love—or a small collective operating on volunteer time—this creates a legal minefield where any disgruntled user can threaten real financial and personal harm.

In practice, this means the local cycling forum that fostered trust, friendship, and even mental health support is at risk of vanishing, while the megacorps sail on without a scratch. Ironically, a measure allegedly designed to rein in “Big Tech” ends up discouraging small, independent communities and pushing users toward the same large platforms the legislation was supposedly targeting.

It’s discouraging to watch governments double down on complex, top-down solutions that ignore the cultural and social value of these smaller spaces. We need policy that recognises genuine community-led forums as a public good, encourages sustainable moderation practices, and holds bad actors accountable without strangling the grassroots projects that make the internet more human. Instead, this act risks hollowing out our online diversity, leaving behind a more homogenised, corporate-dominated landscape.

>>schapp+8H
You're assuming the point of these laws is what they say on the tin and the people writing these laws are ignorant. A huge amount of legislation is written by think tanks and lobbyists.

Authoritarians don't want people to be able to talk (and organize) in private. What better way to discourage them than some "think of the children" nonsense? That's how they attacked (repeatedly) encryption.

Google, Facebook, and Twitter all could have lobbied against this stuff and shut it down, hard. They didn't.

That speaks volumes, and my theory is that they feel shutting down these forums will push people onto their centralized platforms, increasing ad revenues - and the government is happy because it's much easier to find out all the things someone is discussing online.