Given our small UK user base, lack of any target market, and absence of material harm, we believe Woof.group is not in scope of the #OnlineSafetyAct. We intend to continue service as normal for UK users until we hear otherwise. #admin
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Items tagged with: OnlineSafetyAct
What we need: lots of people, including individuals, small voluntary organisations, and small businesses, running online services using Free software, on a small scale, with decent export/import options
What the UK’s Online Safety Act encourages: people to throw in the towel and switch to a hosted/centralised service run by a rich, well-lawyered company, which can take on the risk and burden of compliance
Ofcom replied to our earlier questions regarding the #OnlineSafetyAct, and declined to answer essentially all of them. We try to understand Ofcom's vague guidance, and contrast it with the stern warnings in today's livestream:
blog.woof.group/announcements/…
Updates on the OSA
In today's livestream (58:00), Ofcom's James Proudfoot told service providers, "If people reach out, what's useful is we can talk to you a bit more speci...Woof.group Announcements
god this #OnlineSafetyAct livestream is depressing. Everyone keeps asking what "a significant number" means. Ofcom says there are no numeric thresholds, and it could be "small". If you decide you don't have a significant number of UK users, you need to be able to provide a "robust" justification for that decision. How can anyone do that if Ofcom insists on being this vague?
Ofcom just told us that sports, keeping in touch with friends, and pornography are attractive to children, so uhhhhhhhhhh good fuckin luck to anyone declaring their web site "not of interest to children" #OnlineSafetyAct
Is 185 users "a significant number"?
Will Mastodon.social be required to shut down its public web pages and cease federation?
Is AWS S3 required to ban pornography or implement age-assurance protocols for public HTTP requests?
Can Sotheby's auction house display images of Robert Mapplethorpe's "X" series on their web site?
These are some of the questions we asked in our letter to Ofcom regarding the #OnlineSafetyAct. blog.woof.group/announcements/…
Letter to Ofcom Regarding the Online Safety Act
This letter (lightly edited for formatting and clarity) was sent to Ofcom's Online Safety Team on 2025-01-27 to clarify open questions re...Woof.group Announcements
In the UK, the #OnlineSafetyAct comes into effect on March 16. Woof.group has a lot of UK members, including two of our moderators. I've been trying to read through the Ofcom guidance, which is both extremely complex and surprisingly vague, and I have no idea how woof.group is going to comply. Since I work in the UK occasionally, I'm hesitant to expose myself to steep fines and jail time. We don't have the budget to hire a UK solicitor for the kind of analysis that would be required.
Implementing the Online Safety Act: Protecting children from online pornography
Ofcom is consulting on guidance on age verification for #porn sites, under the UK’s #OnlineSafetyAct.
I’ll write it up properly later today, but for now, just let me know:
How would you feel about handing over your driving licence/passport, and then turning on your camera for a “liveness” check?
Implementing the Online Safety Act: Protecting children from online pornography
Children are set to be protected from accessing online pornography under new age-check guidance proposed by Ofcom today to help services to comply with online safety laws.Ofcom