"Companies will have three months from when the guidance is finalised to carry out risk assessments and make relevant changes to safeguard users…“Platforms are supposed to remove illegal content like promoting or facilitating suicide, self-harm, and child sexual abuse.”

This is already impacting futurology.today - one of the Mods is British, and because of this law doesn’t feel comfortable continuing. As they have back-end expertise with hosting, if they go, we may have to shut down the whole site.

How easy is it to block British IP addresses? Would that be enough to circumvent any legal issues, if no one else involved in running the site is British and it is hosted somewhere else in the world?

  • Demigodrick@lemmy.zip
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    4 days ago

    If you’re using cloudflare you can block counties via that.

    I’m also in the UK and run an instance - the problem is that the guidance is too large and overbearing. The stuff that actually mattered hadn’t even been released by OFCOM last time I bothered looking, such as the risk assessment.

    I guess we’ll know more when they release the guidance on age verification - that will be what kills most sites off if they insist its required for all social media

    • Lugh@futurology.todayOP
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      4 days ago

      the problem is that the guidance is too large and overbearing.

      This.

      Who gets to decide what “self-harm” is? There’ll be some busybodies who’ll say that any remotely positive messaging for LGBTQ youth is ‘self-harm’ for them.

      • schizo@forum.uncomfortable.business
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        4 days ago

        It sounds like British politicians are the ones deciding harmful content, no?

        So this will probably go exactly how you’re expecting, in the long term.

      • Demigodrick@lemmy.zip
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        4 days ago

        Exactly. Don’t get me wrong, meta and X are a cesspool without moderation or a thought for the users wellbeing, and deserve tidying up. But it’s going to kill spaces where people can express themselves, and drive UK users underground.

        Now would be a good time to start a VPN business targeted to UK users. Actually…

      • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de
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        4 days ago

        anything teenagers actually want to do and enjoy doing is self-harm, haven’t you gotten the memo that adults know in 100% of all cases what’s good for them a lot better than they themselves do

        (To any reader unironically agreeing with the above paragraph, I suggest reading this webcomic.)