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.

  • SwizzleStickEnglish
    3·
    3 days ago

    Solid.

    Lots of thought clearly already gone into it and I hope you do well.

    I like my home here, nsfw and all, but I’ll still likely end up making an alt over on feddit.uk as per the invite way up there. Linked by bio both ways as per your rules ofc.

    That’s it, there’s no more question marks and you can have your peace now 😅

    • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝@feddit.ukEnglish
      3·
      2 days ago

      Lots of thought clearly already gone into it

      And that’s the key to the legislation. Small sites need only read the summary documents then run through the online tools, what it is designed to do, at least for us, is to make us think about our systems and processes, then tighten things up (we needed more contact email addresses) and more explicitly state what you are doing.

      The bulk of the legislation is aimed at the large social media firms to make sure they look after their users - TikTok is currently being sued by British parents because the algorithm seems to have promoted a dangerous challenge that killed their kids (the OSA gets a mention in some news articles about it).