>>ColinW+(OP)
URL should be https://lobste.rs/s/ukosa1/uk_users_lobsters_needs_your_help...

>>ColinW+(OP)
Related, a list of other sites which are blocking the UK or shutting down altogether rather than deal with OSA:

https://onlinesafetyact.co.uk/in_memoriam/

>>ColinW+(OP)
https://web.archive.org/web/20250108091906/https://lobste.rs...

>>ss64+E4
That's a good point, but the thing to do in that case is post the original URL and add an archive link in the thread. I've done that now (>>43152546 ).

>>seposi+Y5
Neil Brown[0] has been attending the Ofcom online sessions and asking them about Fediverse servers but they've been unhelpfully vague as to how/if/why/when they fall under OSA.

[0] https://onlinesafetyact.co.uk

>>basisw+t6
Small forums run as hobby projects need to require little-to-no investment of time and money, or the ROI quickly goes negative and they just shut down instead.

A little while back there was the story [0] of a Mastodon admin who hated CloudFlare and its centralized protection, but found that he had no choice but to sign up for it anyway because a disgruntled user kept launching DDoS attacks and he had no other way to keep his instance online. A bunch of people here and elsewhere kept unhelpfully replying that, “you don’t need CloudFlare, you could just do [incredibly convoluted and time-consuming solution] instead”, and all of those people were missing the point: CloudFlare is “set it and forget it”, which is a non-negotiable requirement for anything which is run as a hobby instead of a full-time job.

It’s the same with this UK law: yes, you could spend weeks of your life learning the intricacies of laws in some other country, or you could just block them and be done with it. Businesses which might need revenue from UK users will do the former, but if I’m running a site out of my own time and money, I’ll do the latter. And I don’t want hobby sites to have to disappear: the Internet is commercialized enough as it is, and regulating passion projects out of existence would kill the last remaining independent scraps.

[0]: >>21719793

>>ColinW+(OP)
I definitely get the proactive response here, as I’ve considered the same for my small platform. The biggest issue is the definitions of who the majority of the requirements apply to is quite hard to find. It’s buried on page 65 of this pdf:

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/documents/onli...

It defines “large service” as “a service that has more than 7 million monthly active United Kingdom users”. This is 25% of the UK population. If your service isn’t a household name, it mainly doesn’t apply to you, but the language they use makes it seem like this applies to more.

>>Red_Co+K5
You can scroll through the lobste.rs moderation log to get in impression of how moderation on lobste.rs works:

https://lobste.rs/moderations

Also incidents like this:

https://lobste.rs/s/zp4ofg/lobster_burntsushi_has_left_site

This kind of stuff gives me hugbox vibes, i would not feel safe there. I'm somewhat sure some of the moderators use the website as personal political leverage.

>>ColinW+(OP)
Related ongoing thread: In memoriam - >>43152154

>>Red_Co+K5
This is why Brave was blocked [1.]. I'd have felt the same way, and people are entitled to their grudges. I think the grudge is reasonable.

[1.] https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters-ansible/issues/45#issue...

>>hagbar+sr
> At least HN allows you to come back under another name

You can also come back under the same account, which is what I did. I emailed dang, and promised to respect the site's guidelines this time.

Lobste.rs on the other hand has terrible moderation, with moderators arguably being from one political clique. You can find details about the ridiculous ban they issued on my account in this X thread: https://x.com/sridca/status/1751586241110519837

pushcx then tried to argue with me here after 3 months, lying about the ban: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40166912#40176320