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.
Yes - wtf indeed.
The whole thing is insane. If it was targeted just at platforms like Meta or X, I’d totally get it (and maybe even agree with parts of it).
The fact it is a blanket provision and affects even single user mastodon instances, or 93 year old Betty’s gardening tips forum, in the same way as Facebook and Instagram, tells you a lot about the idiots/morons at OFCOM/UK Gov who put this together.
If 93 year old Betty’s gardening forum doesn’t currently have all the paperwork in place right now, btw, she’s liable for that fine.
That’s how stupid this all is, and why I’m nope-ing out of it.
Yeah. It’s like they went out of their way to make every part of it as backwards as they could manage.
The part about making it illegal to moderate political content makes me wonder if some aspects of this have roots in trying to disable efforts to combat foreign interference in the UK’s elections.
I think some of it is actually OK on a macro scale, and stuff like trying to stop interference might have been sensible if thought out well. But the scope is too large, the guidance too broad, and the language used by OFCOM too threatening to those trying to learn. The burden on one person to comply is insane - it takes a team of lawyers just to read and decipher the 1000+ pages of guidance.
If they’d just realised a little while ago that their scope was way off and redefined who this applies to, there might have been more of a chance of complying.
Well… maybe, I have no idea, I just heard of all of this today. But “£18 million or 10%, whichever is HIGHER” is hard for me to read as any way but malicious.