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This isn't a message I wanted to write, but having been made aware of this a few days ago and now discussed it with some forum members, it feels right to be open about this situation.
From the off, let me say this: The publishing company Sea Lion Press is not in any danger. It may, however, need to close down the forum in order to safely keep operating.
This is all because of new legislation in the UK relating to 'online harms'. While it has noble intentions to do with enforcing culpability of major social media giants when it comes to children's exposure to inappropriate material or radicalisation, it has unfortunately got very few exemptions for small (or, in our case, microscopic) organisations and communities. This means that the rules designed for megacorporations must be complied with by tiny organisations like us. To give one simple example, the documentation is 155,000 words long - and we have to read it and make sure we are compliant before mid-March 2025.
There is a pessimistic summary from a long-standing cycling forum here. It is hard for me to escape the same conclusions at the moment. The core issue is that our moderators would need to remove 'harmful' content at a rate which is potentially incompatible with the size of team and volunteer nature of the job. Further to this, relying on volunteer moderators in and of itself may not actually be compliant in the first place.
tl;dr: legislation designed to make sure Meta take proper care of younger users now also appears to be requiring that SLP take steps on content moderation which go way beyond what can be expected of our volunteer team, or myself with the low income it generates for me, and the risk is a fine of up to £18 million. While SLP is a limited company and thus my exposure to this would not be personal (though I am double checking this!), if something bad did occur, SLP would immediately go into liquidation and I would face personal consequences as the director of a bankrupted company. I hope it is not controversial for me to say that this is not something I can risk.
I should also emphasise that this is not a call for fundraising or similar - this community's support for SLP (and indeed individual members in need) has been greatly heartening over the years, but I want to be clear that this is not a problem that can be fixed with money, at least not on the scale that some kind of fundraiser would resolve. This is about the size of SLP as an organisation, and what can realistically be expected of a team that is almost entirely volunteers, and the remuneration people do receive is very low.
There are a few unknowns here - more clarity will come in January, apparently. Friends and members of the community with some experience in this field are also examining the rules, because in spite of the above, there are a handful of things which suggest some exemptions are possible, or that there are lower-intensity ways to be compliant if you're a small organisation.
So, we are in the woods. We may be out of them in January. I will not say any tearful goodbyes to this place just yet, and I would like it if others also held back on that. If the time comes for that, then we are a community of writers and, as the LFGSS post says to its own users, there are ways to move this community somewhere else (ironically, probably to a platform owned by a tech giant) and keep our connections alive.
And there is hope. There may be a way for us to become compliant. But there also may not be.
Thank you for reading, and you'll get updates whenever I have them.
EDIT 1: @iainbhx has found this helpful summary, which we are picking through to see what is viable. The fact we have a report function already appears to be useful.
From the off, let me say this: The publishing company Sea Lion Press is not in any danger. It may, however, need to close down the forum in order to safely keep operating.
This is all because of new legislation in the UK relating to 'online harms'. While it has noble intentions to do with enforcing culpability of major social media giants when it comes to children's exposure to inappropriate material or radicalisation, it has unfortunately got very few exemptions for small (or, in our case, microscopic) organisations and communities. This means that the rules designed for megacorporations must be complied with by tiny organisations like us. To give one simple example, the documentation is 155,000 words long - and we have to read it and make sure we are compliant before mid-March 2025.
There is a pessimistic summary from a long-standing cycling forum here. It is hard for me to escape the same conclusions at the moment. The core issue is that our moderators would need to remove 'harmful' content at a rate which is potentially incompatible with the size of team and volunteer nature of the job. Further to this, relying on volunteer moderators in and of itself may not actually be compliant in the first place.
tl;dr: legislation designed to make sure Meta take proper care of younger users now also appears to be requiring that SLP take steps on content moderation which go way beyond what can be expected of our volunteer team, or myself with the low income it generates for me, and the risk is a fine of up to £18 million. While SLP is a limited company and thus my exposure to this would not be personal (though I am double checking this!), if something bad did occur, SLP would immediately go into liquidation and I would face personal consequences as the director of a bankrupted company. I hope it is not controversial for me to say that this is not something I can risk.
I should also emphasise that this is not a call for fundraising or similar - this community's support for SLP (and indeed individual members in need) has been greatly heartening over the years, but I want to be clear that this is not a problem that can be fixed with money, at least not on the scale that some kind of fundraiser would resolve. This is about the size of SLP as an organisation, and what can realistically be expected of a team that is almost entirely volunteers, and the remuneration people do receive is very low.
There are a few unknowns here - more clarity will come in January, apparently. Friends and members of the community with some experience in this field are also examining the rules, because in spite of the above, there are a handful of things which suggest some exemptions are possible, or that there are lower-intensity ways to be compliant if you're a small organisation.
So, we are in the woods. We may be out of them in January. I will not say any tearful goodbyes to this place just yet, and I would like it if others also held back on that. If the time comes for that, then we are a community of writers and, as the LFGSS post says to its own users, there are ways to move this community somewhere else (ironically, probably to a platform owned by a tech giant) and keep our connections alive.
And there is hope. There may be a way for us to become compliant. But there also may not be.
Thank you for reading, and you'll get updates whenever I have them.
EDIT 1: @iainbhx has found this helpful summary, which we are picking through to see what is viable. The fact we have a report function already appears to be useful.
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) maybe even unions or religious organisations.
