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ah yes, this is why I didn't

The Catholic Church still exists so it doesn't seem to me that any government is actually that concerned with children's welfare.

This is so spot on I momentarily thought about bringing back rep.

Not really.

I run this platform...so I would need to age verify everyone using this platform.

I'm sure there's some way to get agreements in place that a Google profile with some specific OAuth scope set to indicate age verification is done would suffice.

But... doesn't that feel unsatisfying to you? Would I need to drive every user to have a Google account? Now access to this site is controlled by a third party and we're dependant on them.

The work arounds and technical steps to mitigate the identified risks... do seem to kill the essence of these types of websites.

Out of interest, would the risk assessment change at all if you didn't allow uploads/attachments?

Not enough.

But the things that create issues and the most obvious actions:

• Prevent all File Uploads, force the use of ImgUr or another 3rd Party - mitigates exchange of potentially harmful images, videos, etc via the forum
  
• Prevent all Direct Messages, encourage the use of WhatsApp / Signal, etc - mitigates the risk of stalking, harassment, hate, fraud, etc via the forum
  
• Close all the Classifieds, encourage eBay - mitigates the risk of fraud, stolen goods, etc via the forum
  
• Add age verification - mitigates the grooming of children
  
  

We'd still have the risk of vulnerable individuals experiencing harm, and honestly that's just society at large.

And the forum would now be a very very different beast, a public only, text only message board... with age verification.

This is where any of these steps start hitting the lines of what I don't wish to do, I don't wish to intentionally cripple the site. I find that unacceptable.

We have a band of volunteer lawyers currently looking into things, but so far they've roughly concluded along the same lines of myself... that there are two things to look at, the risk level and the type of service.

The type of service is captured in https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/documents/online-safety/information-for-industry/illegal-harms/illegal-content-codes-of-practice-for-user-to-user-services.pdf?v=387711 and forums appear to be multi-risk according to the definition on page 78 of that document... mostly based on the risk involved, i.e. can you conclusively say that file uploads do not contain harmful or illegal content? if you say yes, does this include attachments on a DM? hence we start triggering some of the criteria... similar for stalking / harassment, threats and abuse... which is also extended to be "harmful but legal".

Forums appear to be a "multi-risk service".

The other doc is this one https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/documents/online-safety/information-for-industry/illegal-harms/risk-assessment-guidance-and-risk-profiles.pdf?v=388231 and on first read we thought "Low risk", but then it starts saying you have to look at the risk profiles... and those too include things (page 64) stating that "discussions forums and chat room" are "We would normally expect such services to be assessed as at least medium risk" and we don't have strong reasons to assess elsewise.

The high level reads not so bad... but once you (like we have) start cross-comparing their own words, it becomes much harder to not conclude we're a Medium risk + Multi-risk service... and that's where the scanning of DMs, scanning of attachments, potential age verification and other implications start arising.

We're still investigating and awaiting tools, and considering options... but the default announcement of closure stands as it gives the greatest possible notice of the presently most likely outcome.

I do hope we don't have to, and likewise that you don't have to close the forums either.

Why so angry nick?

Have you slept on it, and are you at least slightly aware how deranged and angry your posts appear to be?

If something else is going on in your life then fair enough, but keep that anger under control.

There's nothing here bannable, but you just come of as an angry jerk, a bit deranged, and like the blood veins on your head are about to burst... It's not a good look, I'm pretty sure you have more capacity for joy than you're currently showing.

By that i mean, is your code compatible you think with other forum hosting platforms ?

Before I built this platform I attempted to modify the skins / themes of existing software to look like this. It did not work... those platforms are not capable of doing this... the experience goes too deep.

Instead I built an experience that combined old Twitter, a little Reddit, a bit of vBulletin, kept high familiarity with forum software, and then simplified simplified simplified (with a lot of help from Big Daddy Wayne to keep it simple).

This frontend, this UI, this experience... it's not compatible with any other software, it's inherently coupled to this platform and backend.

Oh the VW Transporter camper is an option too for sure.

Discord channel already?

Linked from the Discord thread in the End is Nigh forum.

This might have been asked already, sorry if so, but is there a way to download our stuff, I.e. posts/private messages ?

Unless someone builds it, there is not.

There are APIs https://lfgss.microcosm.app/api/v1 and they merely require your access_token from your Cookie to be added as a query string ?access_token= for it to have your permissions.

Undocumented but present is https://lfgss.microcosm.app/api/v1/huddles which are the DMs and which comments belong to them.

But I have build no exporter, and do not intend to export or preserve anything... the only preservation is via Archive Team which will put publicly accessible content into the Wayback Machine.

The problem is drumming up the motivation to do that after a long day at work.

I have the motivation to go drive somewhere, and the equipment is always packed... I'm even OK staying out for a number of hours in the cold.

Where it fails is when it's early hours of the morning, it's very cold, and I am very tired, and now have to drive a couple of hours home... I don't like this, I'm not comfortable driving when tired especially when the roads might be icy.

That's the bit I need to solve, not having to drive home at 2am when I'm already shattered.

Yeah, might need to buy a house to go with a field.

Currently looking at a few places and comparing to a light pollution map.

Love it all and getting very comfortable with it.

The big inconvenience is London light pollution and lack of garden.

I went out yesterday, 2h drive to find a good place to stargaze and then it's so cold and I'm so tired that I only stayed out for 4 hours and got back at 2am a bit scared of driving in icy conditions.

So I need to find a place to rent at very sorry notice or something so that I can crash over and not have to drive.

All the right equipment, but the wrong place to have the equipment.

How come this thread isn’t in the end is nigh section

People didn't notice it when they came to the site... so I made the thread top level

My Win 10 support ending motion has been to replace everything I can with Debian 12... except a single machine which is now Windows 11.

I am tempted to Debian all the things... but the Win 11 machine is my gaming machine and not all of the games I play have a working Linux port, and I also use this for content creation and work things, which means a lot of AV stuff. I don't yet have alternatives to all of my Windows software, so just this one machines running Windows 11 carries that load.

Oh, then you probably can buy a little card to go onto the motherboard to give you TPM.

I did that with my Asus board, and then installed Debian.

What would Jesus do?

Give the laptop to me to donate to https://transtechtent.com/ who will wipe it, install an OS, and then give it to kids in needs or families in poverty.

Buy yourself a TPM compatible laptop and move on :)