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.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/busines...-local-residents-websites-shut-down-new-laws/ (Archive)
