> For those who are concerned that they will have to engage a solicitor to write reams of policies for their small Mastodon instance, need I remind you how utterly half-arsed everything in this country is?
The problem is that it's very easy to selectively enforce this sort of thing. Most people will never have an issue, but whoever manages to sufficiently annoy someone who has the ability to trigger an enforcement action could be screwed. That leads many of the people who might find themselves in that situation to stop annoying the government or stop running websites entirely.
That's called a chilling effect.
People would probably not be as concerned if the law only applied to large platforms.
The Online Safety Act is about content moderation. If Ofcom taps you on the shoulder, they're asking for your moderation policies, and proof you're enforcing them. Platforms can no longer wash their hands of responsibility by saying that some random user uploaded the content and an opaque algorithm showed it to hundreds of thousands of people: the platform allowed the content to remain, and it was the platform's algorithm that showed the content to hundreds of thousands of people.
The Web isn't the information superhighway in cyberspace that it was in the '90s. The muggles are here, and they're treating social media like another part of the physical world, and we just have to live with the consequences of that. Mandatory content moderation is just one of those consequences.
You're not entitled to run any business, let alone a social media platform. Every right has attendant responsibilities. Fulfil your obligations to society.
This comment talks about large platforms with opaque algorithms showing some content to hundreds of thousands of people. I will not debate the merits of this law in that context here. My objection addresses your example of a "small Mastodon instance", which I'll extend to include a hobbyist forum, a blog with a comment section, or any similar website that can be run by a single person or informal, noncommercial group of people.
By not exempting the latter, this legislation makes it unreasonably risky for an individual with sufficient connection to the UK to operate such a website. The moderation policy is "I run some open source spam filter software and if I happen to see anything heinous, I delete it". Such websites are usually not businesses and often represent a net cost to their operators. A universal duty to moderate will accelerate the disappearance of hobbyist websites and further entrench corporate social media. I think that's a bad thing.
Blog and news website comment sections are explicitly exempted from the Act.
> A universal duty to moderate will accelerate the disappearance of hobbyist websites and further entrench corporate social media. I think that's a bad thing.
I also mourn the loss of the lawless Internet, but it's spilling out into the real world, and that's where I happen to live. We have to make compromises.
When the English people decided that our flirtation with being a republic was a failure, the some of the puritans who supported that republic refused to compromise, and left to start a new country across the Atlantic Ocean. They called themselves... Pilgrims.
Do you think harmful behavior from anywhere online other than large platforms is spilling out into the real world in a way that the Online Safety Act will prevent? If so, can you offer examples?
> Do you think harmful behavior from anywhere online other than large platforms is spilling out into the real world in a way that the Online Safety Act will prevent?
I have no idea.
If you're thinking of how to protect the fediverse, my solution (which I intend to use if I am kicked off mainstream social media because of this or other regulations in the UK) is to run my own server, only allowing people I know personally to have accounts on that server, and federating with other servers. Federation may be a grey area in this law - it'll be interesting to see how that plays out, if it ever goes to court.
Blogs are only not covered if the author of the Blog is the website owner. If the owner allows other people to post blogs - or in a forum start new threads then they have to take note of the law.
The problem is that it's very easy to selectively enforce this sort of thing. Most people will never have an issue, but whoever manages to sufficiently annoy someone who has the ability to trigger an enforcement action could be screwed. That leads many of the people who might find themselves in that situation to stop annoying the government or stop running websites entirely.
That's called a chilling effect.
People would probably not be as concerned if the law only applied to large platforms.