https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/1c9a3df944e48bac
Hamster forum and local residents’ websites shut down by new internet laws
Scope and scale of
Online Safety Act likened to China’s ‘great firewall’ as small websites
struggle to comply
Dozens of small internet forums have blocked
British users or shut down as new online safety laws come into effect, with one
comparing the new regime to a British version of China’s “great firewall”.
Several smaller community-led sites have stopped
operating or restricted services, blaming new illegal harms duties enforced by
Ofcom from Monday.
They range from a hamster owners’ forum, a local
group for residents of the Oxfordshire town of Charlbury, and a large cycling
forum.
The hosts of the lemmy.zip forum, hosted in
Finland, blocked users from the UK accessing the site, saying the measures
“pave the way for a UK-controlled version of the ‘great firewall’”.
The great firewall refers to the strict controls
imposed by Chinese internet authorities, which restrict Western sites such as
Google, Facebook and Wikipedia in the country and is seen as a model of online
censorship.
Britain’s Online Safety Act, a sprawling set
of new internet laws, include measures to prevent children from seeing abusive
content, age verification for adult websites, criminalising cyber-flashing
and deepfakes, and cracking down on harmful
misinformation.
Under the illegal harms duties that came into force
on Monday, sites must complete risk assessments detailing how they deal with
illegal material and implement safety measures to deal with the risk.
The Act allows Ofcom to fine websites £18m or 10pc
of their turnover.
The regulator has pledged to prioritise larger
sites, which are more at risk of spreading harmful content to a large number of
users.
“We’re not setting out to penalise small, low-risk
services trying to comply in good faith, and will only take action where it is
proportionate and appropriate,” a spokesman said.
“We’re initially prioritising the compliance of
sites and apps that may present particular risks of harm from illegal content
due to their size or nature – for example because they have a large number of
users in the UK, or because their users may risk encountering some of the most
harmful forms of online content and conduct.”
‘The home of all things hamstery’
However, many smaller internet forums have said
they are not willing to deal with the compliance, or shoulder the theoretical
financial burden of the new laws.
“While this forum has always been perfectly safe,
we were unable to meet [the compliance requirements of the Act],” wrote the
operators of The Hamster Forum, which describes itself as “the home of all
things hamstery”.
Richard Fairhurst, the administrator of the
“Charlbury in the Cotswolds” forum, wrote that the Act was “a huge issue for
small sites, both in terms of the hoops that site admins have to jump through,
and potential liability”.
“Running a small forum is much harder than it was
when I started doing this almost 25 years ago,” he wrote on the site. The site
has remained open but closed a debate board where people discussed off-topic
issues.
Mr Fairhurst, who has run the forum since 2001,
told The Telegraph: “By putting all these burdens on the small sites its going
to push people away from these small locally run British-owned sites and
towards the American giants.”
Bike Radar, the forum of the cycling magazine, shut
down on Monday blaming “continually rising operational costs” without
mentioning the Act specifically. The site has millions of posts.
The Green Living Forum, which was set up in the
early 2000s and had more than 470,000 posts, has also closed down, with the
site’s administrator saying they were not willing to be liable for fines.
The host of lemmy.zip, a forum for sharing links,
said he would block UK-based internet addresses from accessing the site.
“These measures pave the way for a UK-controlled
version of the ‘great firewall,’ granting the government the ability to block
or fine websites at will under broad, undefined, and constantly shifting terms
of what is considered ‘harmful’ content, a message on the site said.
The UK-based administrator of the site, who did not
want to be named, said: “If I was living in any other country I’d be ignoring
this, but because of this personal risk I can’t. I can’t deal with the
possibility of an £18m fine for something I can’t guarantee I can comply with.”
Ofcom defends regulation
Ofcom has said that for small sites, the costs of
complying “are likely to be negligible or in the small thousands at most”.
Digital rights campaigners the Open Rights Group
(ORG) said Ofcom should exempt smaller sites from enforcement. “The Online
Safety Act places onerous duties on small websites and blogs that may lead them
to close or geoblock UK users rather than risk penalties,” the ORG’s James
Baker said.
“The closure of small sites will not keep children
safe but will benefit bigger sites, including Facebook and X, who are laying
waste to content moderation on their platforms.
“There is a simple solution – the Secretary of
State can exempt small, safe websites from onerous Online Safety duties, and
protect plurality online.”
