⚠️ Forum Announcement – Online Safety Act Changes

[Craig]

Well done for following the labour liar's freedom of speech sensorship request. I hope one day people here will fight back at the ballot box to fight these ignorant dumb politicians. Not one cabinet member has worked in a business so it will be interesting to see how much further the country falls.

And here lies the issue. The Online Safety Act isn’t a request, it’s the law. Regardless of my own opinions on it, myself and Sazzle are legally responsible for this website. As much as it’s great to talk the talk of ignoring things and carrying on as normal, one takes a very different view when there’s a possibility of legal action and financial penalties off the back of it!

Just to note though, this topic is regarding the changes to the forum. If you’d like to discuss the wider implications of the law or your criticism of it, we have already had some discussion in the politics topic, or if you’d like to generally rant - over in the Pet Hates topic. I’d suggest continuing discussion on that in there if you wish.

 

[pluk]

The loss of photo upload is a great loss, and the only part of this that feels like a bigger reaction than is really required.

The boobs topic had been dead for years anyway!

 

[Matt N]

The loss of photo upload is a great loss, and the only part of this that feels like a bigger reaction than is really required.

The boobs topic had been dead for years anyway!

You can still upload photos if you host them on an external site (e.g. imgBB), you merely can’t upload them directly onto the server. I uploaded one hosted externally earlier, so I know the functionality still works if you use a URL to embed from an external site.

I can definitely understand the team’s rationale behind getting rid of site-hosted pictures. It’s very ripe for abuse if not moderated stringently; back in February, Mumsnet got spammed with child sexual abuse images by allowing a similar function: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c93qw3lw4kvo

Granted, Mumsnet is much bigger in terms of user numbers than TS, but even still, the point still stands; a bad actor could easily abuse such a feature, and the team don’t want to be privy to complaints and legal trouble from Ofcom if any loopholes did exist.

That particular topic you mention did come to mind as one that definitely isn’t PG! I remember having a look through the older topics in the Tavern one evening, stumbling across that topic and some of the other… less than family-friendly subject matter that was discussed in there in the site’s earlier days and being very surprised that it was ever posted on here. The Tavern had been much mellower in recent years, and to be honest, I can never remember it being that lewd in the entire time I’ve been on here (8 years on Friday!), but I think some of the earlier content did warrant the 18+ recommended age rating from the team!

 

[Ted]

The way the OSA has been implemented across the web has been very poor especially when you take in stuff like subreddits that deal with serious subjects that help people (regardless if you're over 18 or not).

It's more minor, but the loss of the Towers themed names for some of the subforums is a massive shame. I guess one positive of it is that it's now clearer for new users though

Regardless, Well done to both @Craig and @Sazzle on handling it

 

[Jb85]

At the end of the day team you are doing an amazing job in voluntary roles. You’ve had your hands tied by law (a necessary law I may add) and have handled it in a good way.

I can’t see any of the changes being detrimental to the community

 

[Jonathan]

The one frustrating loss is that images have to be hosted externally as opposed to directly on here, but I do completely understand why. It would've been completely unworkable for the Team to have to approve every single image that were to be uploaded!

 

[Wildboy1983]

I can't include images to a post even by hosting them separately

 

[Matt N]

I can't include images to a post even by hosting them separately

You can do it by pressing the image icon in the editor and pasting a URL.

Where are you hosting? I use imgBB, and on there, I copy the link entitled “image URL” rather than “image link”.