Online Safety Act

[northernladuk]

The criminal offences introduced by the Act came into effect on 31 January 2024. These offences cover:

• encouraging or assisting serious self-harm
• cyberflashing
• sending false information intended to cause non-trivial harm
• threatening communications
• intimate image abuse
• epilepsy trolling

Epilepsy trolling? Is that even a thing? Why on earth would people do that? Damn there are some twisted people around. Fair play for calling it out as an offense but you'd hope people weren't that stupid or mean to even consider it.

[ladymuck]

So any lay person hobbyist who has a blog that's read by one person would have to comply with an act designed for large corporations if they allow comments on their articles? That's proportionate.

(No, I haven't read the links)

[hobnob]

The first milestone is to carry out an illegal content risk assessment (by 16th March), then submit it to OFCOM:
Important dates for Online Safety compliance - Ofcom

However, OFCOM's "quick guide" links to an 84 page pdf, so "quick" is a matter of opinion!

(As a silver lining, there might be a new niche in the market for contractors to come in and do the governance work for clients...)

[cojak]

Hmm… will need to read this and digest what it means. Admin will need to think this one through before making any decisions.

[hobnob]

I've just been reading about the Online Safety Act:
Social media platforms have work to do to comply with Online Safety Act, says Ofcom | Social media | The Guardian
Online Safety Act: explainer - GOV.UK

The Act will apply to forums (e.g. this one), and I heard about it because a cycling forum is shutting down:
LFGSS and Microcosm shutting down 16th March 2025 (the day before the Online Safety Act is enforced) | LFGSS

I think the Act would also apply if the website allows people to post comments. Thinking about the shared responsibility model for cloud hosting, if you have your own installation of WordPress or similar (i.e. PaaS rather than SaaS), you would then be responsible for complying with the act; the simplest option is to disable comments on blog posts. So, that's worth keeping in mind if you have a website for your limited company.