The Online Safety Act.

I would be quite happy to pay a membership subscription, but I'm not sure if it would put potential new members off if they had to pay for say a few visits to ask advice on couple of things, maybe get some answers then leave. There are quite a lot of new members all the time here who maybe make a few posts and are never seen again. That would be a great shame for them, as the forum as a whole has a lot of members with great knowledge. They are not as interested (or obsessed as my husband calls me) in WW2 as a lot of us are.

Otto has always said that he wants the forum to be free for anyone, which is admirable considering how much it costs him yearly to host the site.
I remember Adam quoting some figures from November 2021, around 5000 dollars for licences and hosting forums here and WW2f, just under 2000 dollars for hosting alone here.
To quote Adam "We play at the personal generosity of a man (Otto) that pays the bills".

I should imagine that there has been a lot of extra time and expense looking into the possible extra complications of running the forum with the onset of the online safety act too.

As some members have said before, it would be a good idea if there could be a facility on the forum whereby we could put in some extra money whenever we feel able to.

Bit of a long winded reply sorry.

Lesley

 

If you're wondering about a facility that could pay for the site as a community effort there are options.

On Mastodon(it's like twitter but has lots of individual sites that can send messages to different sites in its network) for example people pay money to the site owners to keep it going. It's not like a membership due. Where my own account for this is on, the instance has a bank account, and so many people paid in, that they had to ask us to stop for a little while.

But that way, some people who can afford to put in something and want to can put it in, but not everyone has too. So you still have the amazing community aspect.

Some sites use patereon, some sites use Open Collective.

Home — Patreon

Open Collective
Raise, manage and disburse money with full transparency.

There is also liberapay.

Liberapay

There are more, but these tend to be for individual artists etc. The thing to remember with all these sites is that they do take a small cut out of the donations. As that is their funding model.

Hope this helps.

 

My own limited experience with a variety of UK regulatory bodies, including Of Com, has generally been unimpressive, even when the lawyers get involved. They are generally poorly funded, bureaucratic - so move slowly - and when it suits them discover new reasons to not be involved, one suddenly declared they could only freeze bank account(s) for a calendar year.

The recent National Audit Office on OFWAT confirms my views IMHO. See: Regulators have failed to deliver a trusted and resilient water sector, says NAO report | Envirotec

Of Com may be different, although the public and government gaze may mean it will be different. Just whether they will have the "bottle" to engage with the social media giants is a very moot point - who can get the best legal advice. As a result they may go for the "minnows".

 

Ofcom isn't different. They are all useless.

All the best

Andreas

 

The Online Safety Act was mentioned 15 times in the Commons on 7th May in the "Consideration of the "Data (Use And Access) Bill( Lords)" - debate. The bill that leads to authors being concerned about their copyright and AI.

 

The Great British Public:

"Never heard of it—strongly in favour—it won't do anything, mind you."

 

Proof if ever that complex systems believed to be unbreakable are not.

Took less than 24hrs for this use of game characters to be disclosed as a workround

Discord users 'bypassing age-checks with video game characters'

to paraphrase - turns out you that using a computer generated character to fool a computer is all you need.

Ross

 

It's causing havok already on my social networks. We have a verification provider scam problem at the moment.

The founder of Andrews and Arnold wrote a pretty good article about the Age Verification nonsense.

RevK®'s ramblings: Age verification

I'm pleased wikipedia is making a stand.

Wikimedia Foundation Challenges UK Online Safety Act Regulations – Wikimedia Foundation

 

"Is it safe? Is it safe? BUT, is it safe?"

The drill's been started. Kiss goodbye to your enamel. Stand by dentin. Nerves next.

And that's just for starters.

Kind regards, "is it safe?", always, but never,

Jim.

 

Now they need to ask the question again, but this time don't mention 'porn', replacing it with 'social media and Wikipedia or similar sites'

All the best

Andreas

 

"Ofcom should ensure expectations on very low-risk services are proportionate, providing them with the freedom to innovate without imposing overly burdensome requirements or enforcement actions where there is little risk or evidence of harm. "

see Final Statement of Strategic Priorities for Online Safety

The above published on 2nd July.

A case relating to section 6 of the Data Protection Act 2018 (“DPA 2018”) and Article 4(7) of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (“the UK GDPR”). A fine of £27,000,000 was reduced to £12,700,000 and last week judgment in part of the appeal process was published:

TikTok Inc & Anor v Information Commissioner - Find Case Law - The National Archives

 

This is literally insane.

If you cannot use a VPN for corporate work from home, the security risk to your company is going through the roof. This will hammer productivity, and 'bUt rEtURn tO oFFiCe' won't fix it.

All the best

Andreas

 

Today in 'Government Cyper Awareness':

The government: "We are in a cyber security crisis"

Also the government: "If you're using a VPN you're a nonce and we will shut it down."

All the best

Andreas

 

The government should not be able to have it both ways.

A boycott of all government websites would be a start.

A spokesperson said "this is the modern age, you can only do that on the prerequisite government website".

Joe public "but it's not safe".

A S S "Who told you that?"

J P "You".

Their's is good and safe. Our's is not. According to the arbiters of what's ok, or not as the case may be (and currently is).

Pile of horsesh1te.

Don't use any government websites for any transactions. Boycott. Geoffrey.

Keep playing the dead bat or we will be one!

Kind regards, it's the spook's fault, always is (and dear Edward of the welsh mountain blew the whistle for us years ago).

The things that come to pass and bite you in the a..

Jim.

P.S. "Is it safe?"