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A member of our forum has contacted me to ask whether there is likely to be any problem for us, or others like us, under the UK's new Online Safety Act, due to come into force next year ?(more info at ?)

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He's anxious because he's seen other hobby/fan groups talking about closing down because they think it will be too difficult to comply, or prove that they comply, with its terms.

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I doubt a bunch of ageing cricket statisticians is the primary target of the Act, but as far as I can make out we fall under the category of a user-to-user service with user-generated content.

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Has anybody looked into the implications of the Act for forums on groups.io?

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All the best

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Harriet Monkhouse

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Hello Harriet,

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Some years ago, Mark worked with lawyers for compliance with GDPR:
"We’re committed to helping Groups.io customers and users understand, and where applicable, comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The GDPR is the most comprehensive EU data privacy law in decades, and went into effect on May 25, 2018."

See:

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Just a reminder - this group is a peer-to-peer group and Groups.io management are not participants in GMF. However others, especially UK based group owners, may have more info for you.

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Frances

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On Fri, Dec 20, 2024 at 02:22 PM, Harriet Monkhouse wrote:

Has anybody looked into the implications of the Act for forums on groups.io?

My thoughts are based on the first paragraph, "It puts a range of new duties on social media companies and search services, making them more responsible for their users’ safety on their platforms. The Act will give providers new duties to implement systems and processes to reduce risks their services are used for illegal activity, and to take down illegal content when it does appear. "? Since it specifically mentions social media and search engines, that's probably what it's aimed at.? Groups.io already has procedures in place, and part of the TOS, that cover illegal activities.? I doubt that this site has anything to be concerned about.

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Duane

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A blog came my way to alert me to this, which in turn pointed me at (headline title: Does the Online Safety Act apply to your service?); ; and ("a layperson's summary...")

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My own thought - based on a quick read - is that on groups.io, for most, smallish, groups, with restricted membership and and based on specialist interest, normal 'good practice' moderation will probably be enough. More generally, I suspect groups.io (i.e. Mark:? it wasn't clear to me whether it is the overall service, or individual groups, that should be concerned) need to be aware (and hopefully are) - as Duane said it 'has procedures in place, and part of the TOS, that cover illegal activities.' which should put it in a good starting point.?

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Jeremy

Question please. How could this UK's new Online Safety Act affect anyone or anything not in the UK?

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Don G

Thanks especially to Duane and Jeremy for their thoughts on this.? If anyone runs into any further expert advice, I'd be glad to hear about it!

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All the best

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Harriet

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On Sun, Dec 22, 2024 at 12:02 PM, Don Grass wrote:

How could this UK's new Online Safety Act affect anyone or anything not in the UK?

From my reading, they'll be assessing "fees" to companies that can be accessed in the UK, based on the income of the company, if any of the 'rules' are broken.? It appears that this isn't even a government department, just a group that has decided there should be more protections.? If/how it will work and/or be accomplished certainly isn't clear.? They're preparing to enforce it, but haven't even finished defining/clarifying it.? I plan to wait and see.

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Duane

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On Sun, Dec 22, 2024 at 06:41 PM, Duane wrote:

It appears that this isn't even a government department, just a group that has decided there should be more protections.? If/how it will work and/or be accomplished certainly isn't clear.?

The UK Online Safety Act came into law in October 2023 and you can read an explanation of what it's trying achieve on the .? It is one of the latest things that will be overseen by which is the UK regulator and competition authority for communication industries.?? The EU has the Digital Services Act (DSA) which also relates to online safety and from 2022 attempts to describe where they overlap and where they differ.

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Regards

Andy

We have a grand total of 12 members in our Group - I know them all as they have to be paid up members of our Astronomical Society.

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I've just gone through Ofcom's regulation checker for the act () and answered six, what seemed like straight forward questions and found that: "Yes, the Online Safety Act does apply to your service."

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I suspect Ofcom will have no interest in investigating our group and I'd be a bit surprised if they wished to impose a fine of up to ?18 million on our society. I don't think our members' subscriptions would cover this.

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I note that Ofcom has published information to help organisations and their lawyers achieve compliance with the new Act - it amounts to more than 2,000 pages.

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Although being retired I must have a lot of spare time on my hand, I'm not inclined to study this information.

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Are any Group Owners or Moderators here going through the legislation to fulfil the legal obligations?

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Cheer,

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Martin?

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Group Owner for HAS - Herefordshire Astronomical Society

As previously mentioned, Mark Fletcher worked with a lawyer to comply with GDPR.

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Please take a look at the documents here - /static/tos

Privacy, and especially compliance (GDPR), etc.

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Frances

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On Wed, Jan 15, 2025 at 04:05 PM, Frances wrote:

As previously mentioned, Mark Fletcher worked with a lawyer to comply with GDPR.

Perfectly true, but compliance with GDPR and compliance with the requirements of the On Line Safety Act are not one and the same thing.?

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Both Harriet (in her original post) and Andy Wedge (in a later one) referred to a and I strongly suggest that anyone with concerns should read it before worrying any further. If nothing else it sets out in fairly simple terms what the On Line Safety Act is there to achieve. It is completely different to the purpose of the GDPR.?

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Chris?

In the following link:

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The section that jumped out at me was:

Which to me seems fairly specific. However, by no means am I an expert.

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Cheers,

Dave F.

We are definitely not an "email/SMS/MMS only" group - our members love to share night sky photographs they take. I suspect this is where we drop into the scope of the Ofcom checker - none of the exemptions appeared to apply to our group.

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This takes me down other rabbit holes - we have a website where we publicly share information about the society and images taken by members; we have a YouTube channel where we share recordings of some of the talks given at our meetings. I'll hope that Google and YouTube are responding to Ofcom for these.

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My puzzle is whether Groups.io is responding on our behalf for discussion groups.

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Martin

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Group Owner for HAS - Herefordshire Astronomical Society

On Fri, Jan 17, 2025 at 08:30 AM, Martin wrote:

My puzzle is whether Groups.io is responding on our behalf for discussion groups.

I've started a so we can get the correct answer.? Because of the way the site is set up, I feel that each group should be responsible for their content.? For example, I'm sure your group has predominantly UK members.? However, even in this case, the ToS should cover any complaints anyone might have.

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Duane

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Apologies, I have just read the Explainer (), which is fairly short, and in the Section "Who the Act Applies to", it says "The Act applies to services even if the companies providing them are outside the UK should they have links to the UK. This includes if the service has a significant number of UK users, if the UK is a target market, or it is capable of being accessed by UK users and there is a material risk of significant harm to such users."

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So it's clear my group comes under the Act. As an unregistered, not-for profit, group, there is no revenue to take 10% of, as a fine, but I guess they could, in theory come after me in Austria. It would involve an extradition, not the easy to obtain EU arrest warrant., thanks to Brexit.

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Also, no-one in my group has come close to committing any of the offences covered by this Act, so I do not feel threatened :-

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

Regards
John Russell

On Sat, Jan 18, 2025 at 09:28 AM, John Russell wrote:

there is a material risk of significant harm to such users.

and this is what would need to be proved and what is classed as a 'material risk'. This kind of statement is always open to interpretation and debate and usually, the only winners are the lawyers.

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If you read the Conditions of Use on the Groups.io Terms of Service you'll see that the type of material/activities this Act is supposed to be protecting people from is what Groups.io does not allow. In cases where people/groups have been reported for breaking these terms, then Mark has taken steps to ban them from the site.?

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The Act isn't aimed at individual groups, it's aimed at social media companies and search services (and the major ones at that). I doubt Groups.io could be classed as a major service and while it does have a search facility, it's only for content that's on the Groups.io site.

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The exemption for email/sms/mms services and content mentioned by Dave in #48618 also jumped out at me.? Groups.io is marketed as an email based service so whether you share night sky pictures or other content, you probably send and receive that by email.

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I think a whole bunch of people are getting worked up over nothing with this and I for one, would like to get back to discussing the features of Groups.io.

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Regards

Andy