Tough news for our UK users

Scope and Enforcement of the UK Online Safety Act

• Commenters note the Act applies very broadly to any “user‑to‑user” or interactive service with UK users, not just big platforms.
• Ofcom’s checker suggests even small forums or niche tools with UK visitors can fall in scope; the “significant number of UK users” concept is seen as vague.
• Categorisation thresholds (millions of users) apply only to extra obligations; everyone else still gets a “duty of care” plus documentation and risk assessments.

Compliance Burden and Small Sites’ Response

• Many argue the administrative and legal workload (thousands of pages of guidance, 70+ page summaries, risk matrices, potential £18m fines and criminal liability) is impossible for small teams or hobby projects.
• Examples cited: a hamster enthusiast forum temporarily closing, a solo search engine (Marginalia) and personal forums considering or implementing UK geoblocks.
• Several say it is rational to block UK IPs or UK signups rather than hire specialists and build age‑verification systems for a tiny user base.

JanitorAI, Porn, and Child Safety

• People who clicked through describe JanitorAI as uncensored or lightly moderated AI chat, much of it sexual; many agree it clearly falls into “pornographic service” territory and thus high‑risk.
• Some think the blog post underplays that risk and that this sort of service is exactly what lawmakers had in mind.
• Others separate that from the structural problem: the same framework also hits benign small communities.

Age Verification, Parenting, and Harm

• Strong debate over who should protect children: parents vs platforms vs government.
• One camp insists “it’s parenting,” and laws will have big side effects while determined kids bypass checks anyway.
• Another camp argues parental capacity is wildly uneven, online extremity is qualitatively worse than past eras, and pure “parental responsibility” is unrealistic.
• Some support the goal (limiting children’s access to hardcore or violent material) but condemn this Act as heavy‑handed and likely ineffective.

Jurisdiction, Extradition, and VPNs

• Questions raised: what if a site is run from abroad and ignores the law? Answers include blocking UK payments, arrest on entry, and theoretical extradition.
• Detailed discussion on how countries like Germany treat UK extradition requests, especially post‑Brexit and given UK prison conditions.
• VPN use is seen as the obvious workaround; several warn that platforms hinting at VPN circumvention might increase their legal exposure, since the Act prohibits helping users bypass checks.

Civil Liberties, Surveillance, and Political Context

• Multiple comments see the Act as part of a broader UK drift toward censorship, over‑broad terrorism and hate‑speech laws, and eventual digital ID–linked surveillance.
• Others push back, calling this a normal democratic outcome: both major parties backed “online safety,” and lawmakers, not just civil servants, voted it in.
• There is concern that regulation with no size calibration entrenches large incumbents, accelerates “balkanisation” of the internet, and drives small, experimental sites offline or behind national geofences.