Hi All,
Some sad news, but it has become apparent in order to safeguard the longevity of this site, there are no options left other than to cease allowing people from the United Kingdom to access Lemmy.zip.
Just to reassure everyone else right at the start - this ONLY affects users from the UK accessing Lemmy.zip. There is no effect on everyone else, and nothing in your Lemmy experience will change.
Due to the implementation of the Online Safety Act, we will be restricting access to Lemmy.zip to UK users starting 15th February 2025 —one week from today.
Why is this happening?
Lemmy.zip is hosted in Finland, and we have always strived to operate with respect for privacy and in line with all applicable laws. However, the UK’s Online Safety Act presents significant legal and operational challenges for small, independent fediverse sites, just like this one. The Act’s vague and overbearing requirements, combined with the potential for disproportionate and extreme fines, force us to make this decision to protect both the site and its users.
This law impacts a wide range of content with vague or conflicting definitions, and as a volunteer-run site, we cannot ensure full compliance. We do not wish to compromise your privacy or force you to verify your identity through intrusive age checks, which is the only method allowed under the Act. Therefore, we have no choice but to block access from the UK.
This won’t impact on federation, nor accessing the communities from an instance that tries to comply with (or ignores) the Act. Obviously if you’re from any other country in the world that isn’t the UK, this won’t apply to you at all.
If this affects you, then you are able to export your data (subscriptions etc) from your profile settings, and import them on to another instance (Feddit.uk is a good shout for brits!)
Unfortunately this is also brought about by my personal circumstances as the site owner - I’m not in a position to just ignore the Act like many are. Complying with the act would mean we would either have to implement Age Verification for all users to access the site, or we would have to disable NSFW entirely, which means communities that use NSFW tags for spoilers or content warnings also wouldn’t be accessible.
For those curious, UK users will instead be directed to this page when they try access the site.
This has been a really hard decision to make, and I fear many more fediverse sites that are somehow linked to the UK will need to take this step in order to protect themselves.
If this is overturned by the courts in the UK, then the block will be removed as soon as possible. I have my fingers crossed.
Happy to answer any questions in the comments.
Demigodrick.
Thanks for taking the time, very informative :)
I suppose a lot of it comes down to how nsfw is handled. If there are no means to access it on the home instance, then what you’re doing is probably A-OK.
That’s assuming the filter is locked on and any communities that fall into (or are likely to) the target categories are prevented from forming or expunged where they already exist. No need for invasive methods to verify age if there’s nothing to verify for.
The only problem I can see would be other federated instances that may feed poorly filtered or flat out unfiltered/untagged nsfw into yours. I imagine that’s going to be a decent chunk of the risk assessment, given that federation with others is the main point of lemmy as a whole.
It was the decision of the original Admin but it has made life easier (as in the CSAM spam attacks - we don’t need to figure out if it’s real or not, if it’s porn, it’s gone) and will make complying with the OSA simpler. I suspect there’s a way to navigate those waters but I am focused on our own needs to get this boxed off and then I’ll have a ponder on that topic. We’ve been discussing this with DGR for a while now and that is the main hurdle we’ve struggled with.
It’s like porn spam - it gets flagged up quickly and dealt with. One bonus of federation is that if it is removed from the home instance it is gone for us too, so it often gets sorted before we even realise there’s a problem.
The OSA document we’ll post is 50% risk assessment, 50% mitigation - the law accepts that, in spite of your best efforts, shit happens, the more important thing is what processes and systems are in place to deal with it quickly and efficiently when it does.