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Lfgss shutting down 16th March 2025 (day before Online Safety Act is enforced)

https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/401475/
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None of this seems to describe exactly what the problem with this new act is. Can someone ELI5 what this new law does that means it's no longer safe to run your own forum?
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I run just over 300 forums, for a monthly audience of 275k active users

I can't imagine one person running over 300 forums with 275,000 active users. That gives you an average of eight minutes a week to tend to the needs of each one.

I used to run a single forum with 50,000 active users, and even putting 20 hours a week into it, I still didn't give it everything it needed.

I know someone currently running a forum with about 20,000 active users and it's a full-time job for him.

I don't understand how it's possible for one person to run 300 forums well.

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What we need is some entity setup in the United Arab Emirates, Ukraine, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, anywhere that is outside of where this law will matter. Sites turned over locals, legally and in other ways.

The thing though is how to finance it and how to provide stewardship for the sites going forward.

Running sites like this post is about is not profitable. Nor is it too resource intensive.

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> The act only cares that is it "linked to the UK" (by me being involved as a UK native and resident, by you being a UK based user), and that users can talk to other users... that's it, that's the scope.

So basically is this act a ban on indvidual communication through undermoderated platforms?

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In addition to the cookie privacy pop-over when viewing that site, I (as an American) am just amazed how regulated the internet is in Europe compared to the USA.

Is there an argument why we would want it any other way?

> In addition to the cookie privacy pop-over when viewing that site

I don't know where you're seeing that as the site does not have such things. The only cookies present are essential and so nothing further was needed.

The site does not track you, sell your data, or otherwise test you as a source of monetisation. Without such things conforming with cookie laws is trivial... You are conformant by just connecting nothing that isn't essential to providing the service.

For most of the sites only a single cookie is set for the session, and for the few via cloudflare those cookies get set too.

Why we would want it any other way than what? It's not clear to me whether you see the added European regulation as positive or negative.
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