UK Users: Lobsters needs your help with the Online Safety Act | Lobsters
The UK’s Online Safety Act is scheduled to take effect on March 16, 2025. Lobsters can’t comply with it and needs your help to avoid having to geoblock the UK.
The Online Safety Act regulates most sites where users can interact with each other. The law explicitly claims authority over all forums with visitors located in the UK, regardless of where it’s are hosted or the nationality of their owners.
As a practical matter, Lobsters can’t comply. The OSA is written for commercial sites far bigger than this non-commercial, hobbyist forum. The regulator’s statements include many long, cross-referenced legalese documents (an incomplete sample, because I can’t find a directory): 1 2 3 4 5. Sites are required to produce lengthy documentation about their features, practices, and risks - both up-front and as they moderate. Attempting to understand which sections apply and how to comply would be a huge project. Doing so correctly would require legal advice we can’t afford. The cost in time and money to implement the bureaucratic processes it demands also outstrip a hobbyist forum.
There’s also an ideological matter, that Lobsters is not a UK entity or operated in its jurisdiction. The OSA isn’t written to directly regulate the UK’s occupants, it exerts authority over non-UK maintainers of sites that UK occupants read. Even if the OSA was proportionate and reasonable, complying would encourage every jurisdiction to write similarly broad laws.
