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do as kid you say?

fixieskidders.com appears to be available should anyone want to add it to their collection of unused domain names.

high potential for unintentional misreadings though... what is this "fix i es kidders"?

Avoiding the "giving false information" point would require everyone to have to submit significant documentation to prove their identity, and this would need to be held somewhere, which is unworkable for many other reasons

It also doesn't work for me who operates the site, I no longer use my birth name, and more of my identity is now as Dee. I wouldn't provide my deadname to be in a public register, and yet to not do so is also a crime under the Online Safety Act.

Being a trans person running a moderately sized platform for forums has unexpected consequences it seems.

It's my own fault, I put "London" in the name and made it appeal to people within an area, rather than calling it fixieskidders.com and just not having a clue where anyone lived or accessed from.

Also, I'm old

Ah, welcome to the club... that'll be most of us nowadays

I am already talking to https://wiki.archiveteam.org/ about a full site (public facing content) preservation.

are you on a VPN? can't join on one... the links do work

well there's a Bridges thrown in too!

Fine...

1) Mashton
2) dubkev
3) Jakub96
4) d0cA
5) Polka_Dot
6) DoubtfulAce
7) Oliver
8) psg1ben
999kg) hippy
10) ChainBreaker
10.5) BenJam
😜) Photoben
🏳️‍⚧️) Dee
...
...
69) Jonny69

fucking hell.. I spent all that time building an Events system, and you make it a "quote thread" 🤦‍♀️

Good suggestion for a forum rename too... have done.

i’ve not read all through the act yet

please read the Act first and the Ofcom announcements, etc, a lot are linked in the first post.

there is additional liability and consequences (including criminal) for the officers of a company, which would apply to a Community Interest Company too.

The effect of appearing on Hacker News yesterday around 6pm.

@Velocio have you considered structural hot glue?

Only for my outfits.

I will speak to some individuals within the UK coop movement to see if this potentially could remove liability from you @Velocio. (if this is a direction you wish to explore)

If I had no liability, and the forums did not need to be sold (an option I am flat out not considering)... then yes, assuming risk is diffused, reduced, or otherwise mitigated... they could live on.

I'd likely still want to make it more resilient in future, it's always been me doing everything, it can't be that if I'm not accepting the risk... so if the forum survives, it survives because a group forms to run it.

The more interesting question is probably binary:

• If a group formed in the UK to serve UK users, what would this look like? From an entity, compliance, financial status, etc... and who would take the various roles needed, how would it be structured and operate, etc.
  
• If a group formed outside the UK and focused on providing service to international users with a minority of UK users (location is not a requirement, who knows where people are), and LFGSS became post-geographic, what would this look like? Where would it be registered (I've had offers from Switzerland and the USA this morning), how would the finances work, etc, etc.
  
  

What should be obvious is that change must happen, and to survive it requires a lot of change... I can't just accept donations and top up with my own money when it falls short, it would need some way to accept donations and manage the expenses, maybe Open Collective, etc.

The first option includes compliance, the second likely does not... have nothing in the UK and I let go fully (am clearly happy to do this as shuttering the site is the same thing)... but in both scenarios, who are these people who will operate it, do they understand what they're getting into, etc?

I've received a lot of messages in the last 24h, from press, people in tech, individuals who just believe in privacy and freedoms, and of course forumengers who care not to lose the forum.

I think it's clear to all that I personally do not accept the risk and liability... it's too much of a weapon, this is Chekhov's gun in the UK's own style of bureacracy... a weapon on stage in Act I will be fired in Act III... there is nothing preventing the Online Safety Act directly being used against those who operate and are involved with community websites.

But, if there is a path to finding continuity for the communities, that doesn't involve selling the soul of the communities (I won't consider migration to Facebook for example), then it's responsible of me to try and find that path... yesterday morning that seemed impossible, as the only person involved, how do I find a path? But a lot of people have stepped forward to potentially do different things, so there's more hope today that something might happen.

Ironically of course, a number of the options are directly against what the Online Safety Act attempts to achieve, because a number of the options are just "move it beyond reach and only impact the communities geo-located in the UK".

Suggest a whole new subforum area is needed for various threads about the current situation: possible places for people to migrate to, the rescue plan you just mentioned, final party/ride plans if that doesn't come off and so on.

Good idea, done

Don't people ever charge their phone?

The most vulnerable bit of infrastructure is probably email notifications as they reveal server IP if I don't use a third party, I wonder if protonmail would do transactional email 😂

For server IP addresses, there's nothing that a mesh of OSS tailscale / wireguard can't hide. I'll experiment with this over Christmas.

Lolz, I find myself talking to a few people who run a large private torrent tracker and site as to how they do things.

It is an option for me to give up control and help shepherd the site to a structure that puts it beyond the scope of the UK, especially given that we've already proven it can quickly change domain name (when the .sm was revoked) and IP addresses (when I changed hosting provider and no one noticed).

Some thoughts about options:

1. an internationally legal way that avoids the UK and didn't bother complying, a maze of foreign assets and volunteers in multiple jurisdictions (Switzerland, Spain, Germany, USA, Sweden) with nothing centralised or top of hierarchy to target.
   
2. a less legal way, a no name band of volunteers and a very fluid infrastructure, all hosted who knows where... Similar to private torrent trackers, etc.
   
3. Continue the way we were, but do all the compliance and legal work probono or at a discount, seek insurance for the risk, set up a UK company to limit liability, etc... but this doesn't feel as ideal given that it constructs a more fragile target as now too much is in the UK (more than is actually in the UK today).
   
   

In the first two scenarios I'd give up all control but might be an advisor. In the last scenario, unless someone else wants to take the risk I'll be doubling down, it's possible but feels least desirable.

Didn't even realize this whole thing was a one-person project until now

300 sites, 1 person... For all the tech, and all the moderation, and all the finances.

I guess it was a bit much.

I was not mentioning that here because this thread is public and too many people are reading it.

Could you remove that bit please.

I run a community sauna and a free session is all yours

I would take you up on this, but body changes due to HRT makes me very nervous about saunas nowadays, but thanks for the kindness.

Lawyer Mate: I agree with the assessment that it could be weaponized by dickheads

The key part which takes the risk from low to medium IMHO.

Medium risk of a high liability... is too high a thing for me to accept.

Thanks Nat, so glad you've got an Omnium, they're ace.

Already looked into it, it's relatively easy for me to move the forum to Europe, specifically to Linode Europe in the German datacenter.

I'll do this to at least provide the french forums confidence that there is a path.

It is most likely the stupidest idea ever, but I guess that at this stage anything goes: the fate of the french side of LFGSS, pignolefixe.microcosm.app, is of course completely tied to that of LFGSS.

I understand that, given the potentially gigantic fine, you don't want to be even a little bit at risk @Velocio. Would passing the reins (on paper) to a french citizen and have a majority french userbase put you comfortably out of harm's way?

If that's the case, could we imagine a merger of some kind? Pignolefixe userbase is unfortunately much smaller than lfgss', but maybe keeping the access limited to currently active lfgss users (until the legislation gets clearer, at least), you might achieve a majority non-UK users on the merged website?

I think, on the french side, we'd all be more than happy to create tens of accounts if needed to tip the scales, though I imagine the legislation will mostly track actually active users.

This is actually not a bad idea. At least to preserve PignoleFixe and a few of the international forums on this main instance of the server.

I'll investigate moving the servers to a European Linode as PignoleFixe is actually on Linode London. I'll need to work with someone to pass ownership to... and hey PignoleFixe you'll have to finally raise a few donations to pay for it.

Some of the forums are English language, but I don't know where the users are, maybe UK, but could easily be Ireland... this place doesn't require location or track it. On this instance, the primary one, there's about 20 fora, the biggest are LFGSS and PignoleFixe.

Let me look into that tomorrow.