⚠️ 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”.

 

[venny]

Thank you to all the team for implementing the necessary changes. As has been said, it’s a shame it was necessary, but the implementation is totally understandable.

Really appreciate all the effort that’s been made to navigate and implement this, and keep this brilliant forum running.

 

[Bowser]

Some other forums have a feature where if you click “copy image address” and paste, it automatically embeds the image, is that something that can possibly be implemented here?

Would be handy when sharing news articles without having to save and rehost relevant images.

 

[jon81uk]

Some other forums have a feature where if you click “copy image address” and paste, it automatically embeds the image, is that something that can possibly be implemented here?

Would be handy when sharing news articles without having to save and rehost relevant images.

Use insert image on the tool bar and you can link to images.

Imgur doesn't like embed linking to images though, so use this link
From: https://imgur.com/RxAmtm3



For sites that will allow hotlinking it works though, such as this image from a BBC News story.

 

[Bowser]

Use insert image on the tool bar and you can link to images.

Imgur doesn't like embed linking to images though, so use this link
From: https://imgur.com/RxAmtm3



For sites that will allow hotlinking it works though, such as this image from a BBC News story.

Ironically your first image doesn't work but here is my test:

Which seems to have worked, thanks!

 

[jon81uk]

Ironically your first image doesn't work but here is my test:

Which seems to have worked, thanks!

Yes the first one didn't work (it seems Imgur don't like direct linking) which is why I edited and added the Imgur post and the second image hotlink as an example too.

Before the forum allowed uploading of images I used to use this a few times.

 

[Alsty]

I'm sure there's reasons rooted in this ridiculous piece of legislation, but what's the difference between an image hosted on this site vs one hosted externally? If it's offensive then it doesn't matter where it's hosted?

 

[jon81uk]

I'm sure there's reasons rooted in this ridiculous piece of legislation, but what's the difference between an image hosted on this site vs one hosted externally? If it's offensive then it doesn't matter where it's hosted?

My guess is if it externally hosted then it is that site’s problem if it is an issue. TS aren’t then hosting problematic content, just linking to it and the link can easily be removed.

 

[Rob]

Craig and Sazzle have done most of the reading of the legislation and the work on this, but I believe it is essentially that yes. If we were to host the images then we would be responsible for checking each one for harmful content whether that be manually (very time consuming) or using automated tools (cost prohibitive). Whereas if it is hosted elsewhere we are not responsible for that image and can simply remove the link to it if there is an issue as we would with moderation of any other issues on the forum (reactive rather than proactive).

 

[Dave]

I'm sure there's reasons rooted in this ridiculous piece of legislation, but what's the difference between an image hosted on this site vs one hosted externally? If it's offensive then it doesn't matter where it's hosted?

If you deliberately sell stolen goods you are a criminal, if you unknowingly sell stolen goods you are not (I actually think the law is less forgiven on the stolen goods thing but in practice you won’t be prosecuted). But it’s the same principle.

I know Craig has said this is not the place for discussion on the law itself and I respect that (Craig would be shocked I respect anything but there we go), but I think we need to remember not everything is bonkers in the bill and making the hosts of images rather than those who’s forums link to it isn’t actually a stupid idea. Just like the idea that children should be protected from the dross on the internet isn’t a bad idea in principle it’s just this law is woeful at actually doing it.

 

[Craig]

I'm sure there's reasons rooted in this ridiculous piece of legislation, but what's the difference between an image hosted on this site vs one hosted externally? If it's offensive then it doesn't matter where it's hosted?

So I covered a bit of this in a previous post in the topic:

The issue with continuing to allow new uploads to TowersStreet's servers is that it seriously increases the work we have to put in for moderation. As explained above, we'd have to proactively scan images as they're uploaded. There's a huge cost to that - both in the tools required, and the time needed to be taken on the admin side of things to handle that. It's simply not feasible on what is a relatively small forum in the grand scheme of things.

External images still have a possibility of being offensive, but we have to have processes in place to mitigate that. For a small forum, the moderation setup we have currently is pretty sufficient, including allowing people to report posts that they see. Couple that with moderating the first posts of a new members also provides some additional mitigation.

Our responsibility as a host of the images is a little more onerous. Those proactive scans wouldn’t be realistic given the relatively small budget that we have, and the resources to manually check each and every image uploaded just isn’t feasible either.

As mentioned earlier too, it’s the main thing I’m personally gutted about losing - I was chuffed when we were able to enable it back in the day! We did point out in the announcement though, that the team will be happy to add posts manually if they’re really required and you’re struggling to host them elsewhere as an exception to the rule.