At the request of the Open Rights Group I have written to my MP, Layla Moran, about the potential impact of the Online Safety Act on small, safe sites and services.
Dear Layla Moran,
I am a constituent of Oxford West and Abingdon.
I am writing because I am concerned that many small, safe and harmless websites, and services are closing down in the UK, because of the duties, risk assessments and threats of fines and even imprisonment contained in the Online Safety Act.
Even a small personal blog, with user comments, must comply with the new rules.
The Act comes into force on 17 March 2025. The Secretary of State, as I understand it, can change the rules very quickly to exempt small websites, under Section 220 of the Act. They could extend the onboarding period, while working out how to ensure small websites, and services do not have to close down.
Overseas websites are also likely to block access to the UK, if they understand the risks.
This could include many services which are designed as safe spaces for friendly conversation, like many Mastodon social media sites. These serve the LGBTQ+ community, for example, to keep users safe from bullying and hate speech.
Yet they may block the UK because of Online Safety compliance risks.
This will impact me personally as I have maintained a blog, B2fxxx: Random thoughts on law, the internet and society, available at https://b2fxxx.blogspot.com/ for over 20 years. I have written more than 4700 blogposts in that time on a wide range of technology policy issues, including, for example, copies of submissions I have made to UK government, EU and other consultations. The Online Safety Act means I have to consider shutting down the blog and deleting all of those writings.
The Online Safety Act is meant to keep people safe, not to shut down safe websites.
Please make Peter Kyle the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology aware of these problems and ask for a response.
More information:
Yours sincerely,
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2461213-hundreds-of-small-websites-may-shut-down-due-to-uks-online-safety-act/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/12/17/hundreds-of-websites-to-shut-down-under-chilling-internet/
https://onlinesafetyact.co.uk/in_memoriam/Ray Corrigan
