#4: Update from Ofcom webinar
Includes videos of the webinar, outlines a couple of major outstanding issues relating to Mastodon and proportionate enforcement, and suggests what ofcom might do next.
Hello!
Thanks to everyone who came along to the webinar on 12 Feb, and thanks particularly to Ali Hall from Ofcom for presenting and to the Digital Poverty Alliance for lending us their Zoom.
More than 200 people signed up to attend the webinar and it was a very constructive session that flagged a number of outstanding issues for low-risk community sites.
This newsletter:
points to some useful resources
summarises why small low-risk communities are important to support
flags some ongoing issues
has links to the videos of the webinar
brief update on next steps (including some suggestions for Ofcom)
Useful resources
Neil Brown’s Online Safety Act website, which includes a number of example risk assessments
Resources from Ofcom: How to comply with illegal content rules
Why this matters
Overall, the main issue is that compliance with the Online Safety Act has not really been designed for people who run small, low-risk websites on a hobby/voluntary basis. Most other stakeholders benefit from trade bodies or similar, but hobbyists who run websites in their spare time are just representing themselves and many were not aware of the new rules until very recently.
Meeting the needs of people who run hobbyist and independent sites is important because:
uncertainty about how to comply will have a chilling effect on digital skills and capabilities in the UK - if people are discouraged from making and hosting their own web sites and trying things out, it will make it even harder to attract people into the technology workforce. (For a great example of how fandoms encourage girls to learn how to code and experiment with technology, see this talk by Sasha Judd.)
many small international Web sites may stop serving the UK, creating what one correspondent called an “Internet Brexit”
unfolding political events in the US show that it is democratically extremely important to have homegrown alternatives to “big” social networks such as X and Facebook
pushing independent communities to big platforms is anti-competitive and will increase the soft power and political influence of a handful of companies in the UK (mostly, but not only Meta)
small websites like Pepys Diary and Open Benches are nice and make things better and the Web would be worse and sadder without them
One of the things we talked about on the call was the fact that it would be useful to have a coordinating body of some kind for small community sites, that could act as an intermediary. This would require funding, but it would help ensure better, more targeted communication, surface shared issues, and support website hosts and admins as they get to grips with the new rules.
The Proportionality Puzzle
Many people who were on the webinar are almost certainly at risk of worrying too much and over-complying with the new rules. However, it’s currently difficult for Ofcom to state this clearly; moreover some inconsistencies in communications from Ofcom around specific issues over the last couple of weeks made some worry that interpretation of grey areas might not be consistent, leading to heightened levels of personal risk.
It was generally agreed that it would be useful to have a clear communication and engagement campaign from Ofcom, aimed specifically at small, low-risk sites, ideally including some clear statements on enforcement and proportionality. As that is unlikely to roll out before 16 March, it would also be useful to have a statement of regulatory discretion from Ofcom, setting out an extended onboarding period for small, low-risk sites.
Als, NB, it’s worth noting that things become a lot more complex the moment a site intentionally hosts pr0n (not being coy; for the spam filters). For the purposes of this newsletter (which is already too long) that should probably remain a separate topic.
Mastodon and the Fediverse
The other stand out issue is that there is a lack of clarity on rules for Mastodon, and it appears that the implications of the OSA for Fediverse hosts have not been thoroughly worked through.
A number of Mastodon admins self-organised on the call to discuss collaborating on a general purpose risk assessment, and Neil Brown has also offered to facilitate an example risk assessment. (If you’re a Mastodon admin who would like to be put in touch with other admins, email hello@careful.industries and we’ll put you in touch.) This seems like a particularly urgent area for consideration.
Contents of the session
The raw videos of the session are now available to playback for anyone who missed them. They are, um, very raw so please don’t expect anything fancy like title cards.
Part 1 (mostly presentation) | Part 2 (mostly Q&A)
The questions discussed in the Q&A included:
1) How does Ofcom plan to ensure that compliance expectations for small, low-risk community sites remain proportionate, and what specific guidance will be provided to help these platforms identify and mitigate potential risks without placing undue burdens on their limited resources?
2) Does / how does the online safety act affect community based born digital archives which do not have an interactive (eg chat) element to them but may have a facility for users to upload materials (photograph and accompanying text)?
3)Are there any free of charge or open source tools that Ofcom recommends in order to comply with some of the requirements (eg scanning for CSAM or age verification). NB - the Internet Watch Foundation were on the call and offered to have a follow-on conversation about this if anyone would like to pursue it.
4) What advice would you give to charities and startups who are stretched for resources but worried about the impact of NonCompliance?
5) Are communities on platforms such as WhatsApp/Slack/Discord in scope?
6) What are the liabilities for Mastodon admins?
7) What policies should be in place for comments on comments?
What’s Next
I’m sending through all the questions from the Q&A and the chat to Ofcom and will share answers to those when they come through.
In the meantime, there lots more detail that needs to be worked through before 16 March. Many website hosts and admins are working hard and collaborating to understand their liability and act accordingly; it would be really useful if Ofcom could respond to this by:
announcing a discretionary extended onboarding period for sites that identify as being low-risk
clarifying some grey areas, including proportionality of enforcement
proactively engaging with small low-risk communities.
That’s all for now.
Rachel