The Coffee Shop, online safety and the Online Safety Act

[whole diary]

[grahame]

An article in The Guardian, and an item on the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page), have highlighted the Online Safety Act  over the weekend. Thank you to members who have asked whether it might relate to the Coffee Shop forum, especially in following up the article in the Guardian in which one operator of multiple small online communities with very different specialities is planning/threatening to pull the plug on her communities.

Management Summary:

The Great Western Coffee Shop Passenger Forum carries on through the updates / additions to online safety laws.  The safety of our members, guests and the wider community has always been paramount and that commitment does not change. 

More detail:

Our moderator and admin team and webmaster are reviewing the implications of the new legal position. We believe that we already meet the user safety requirements (in 17 areas) that the law is intended to address. Yes - we have read and circulate the 17 around our team. You may see minor updates in places to conform to the letter in addition to the spirit of the law.

GDPR, Cookies, Accessibility, Safety - the law as to what is and isn't allowed online and what is required of sites ans providers has changed over the years, with new jigsaw pieces coming into play in what started off as a new, and unregulated, environment. Web sites such as the Coffee Shop forum are minnows compared to the big fish that the various laws look to address, but never the less we must take them into account and act appropriately.  In some cases - and the current new legal position is a good example - the complexity and volume of information provided to meet a vast range of cases feels overwhelming, and also questions arise as to whether the new law / legal position takes away freedoms or imposes overburdening regulation.  Against that framework, here is a summary of what is required of us ...

The illegal content safety duties, and those relating to reporting and complaints, focus on keeping people safe online. It’s about making sure you have the right measures in place to protect people from harm that could take place on your service.

If you are the provider of a user-to-user service, it means you will need to:
* take proportionate steps to prevent your users encountering illegal content
* mitigate and manage the risk of offences taking place through your service
* mitigate and manage the risks identified in your illegal content risk assessment
* swiftly remove illegal content when you become aware of it, and minimise the time it is present on your service
* explain how you’ll do this in your terms of service
* allow people to easily report illegal content and operate a complaints procedure

If you are the provider of a search service, it means you'll need to:
* take proportionate steps to minimise the risk of your users encountering illegal content via search results
* mitigate and manage the risks identified in your illegal content risk assessment
* explain how you’ll do this in a publicly available statement
* allow people to easily report illegal content and operate a complaints procedure

Our systems / procedures / moderator team already do most of this.  The quoted summary says "will" but we already do. 

There are a couple of elements where - thinking "worst case" - we could add a few lines of preventative code to have the forum flag automatically something that has never happened. That is rather than occasional manual checks I have made in the past. It is worth updating the required public statements, reporting and complaint procedures all in a single obvious-to-find container (there are links on the bottom of every page anyway!)

Perhaps worth my while to add - what you will NOT see. You will not see any switch towards a more interventionist moderation as a result of these law changes. You will continue to see the Coffee Shop maintained as a safe place. And also a place where your views and thoughts remain welcome and help fertilise conversation, even if those views are not aligned with those of our team who help keep the place safe.

[grahame]

Bumping an old topic here because I was reminded of this with the news of such as "The head of the Metropolitan Police has called on the government to "change or clarify" the law following the arrest of comedian Graham Linehan over posts he made online" from The BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page).

This is so far removed from content that gets posted on the Coffee Shop that you may ask "should we even be concerned?".  Yes, we need to be, because a single incident of something that's fuzzy according to the law could be very hot water for the poster and for the forum should we fail to watch and act if someone slips up - even if (as I'm pretty sure would be the case) that slip up wasn't intentional.  But I am re-assured that the moderator and admin team, together with members letting us know of any concerns, will quickly highlight and allows us to act on anything that's at all of risk.

[grahame]

Update ... another (potential) law for the moderators and admins

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz6ed1549yvo

Tech platforms would have to remove intimate images which have been shared without consent within 48 hours, under a proposed UK^▸ (United Kingdom) law.

The government said tackling intimate image abuse should be treated with the same severity as child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and terrorist content.

Failure to abide by the rules could result in companies being fined up to 10% of their global sales or have their services blocked in the UK.

And add ...  AI, deep fakes, banning under 16s from addictive platform use ...

... ah, the changing world of moderating a platform such as the Coffee Shop.   

More - from our viewpoint - an issue of being aware. We already have mechanisms in place which mean they come to attention in the unlikely / very rare instances of things happening here.   AI is an interesting case ... to think about policies, and suggestions perhaps?

[Chris from Nailsea]

I'm posting here in full support of grahame's update on this particular topic.

We on the administrator / moderator team (and we are very much a team, of volunteers!) do keep a close eye on everything that is posted here on the Coffee Shop forum, as it can be read by any viewer - members and guests.

In the past, after discussion 'behind the scenes', we have very occasionally invited a member to reconsider something they have posted. Such rare interventions have generally been accepted without rancour, avoiding the need for the team to take any further action.

This is just to reassure our members that we wouldn't let any of you get into trouble over something posted, perhaps 'in the heat of the moment', without being given the opportunity to reconsider.

CfN^▸ (Chris from Nailsea, an administrator on this forum). 

[ChrisB]

hopefully, 'intimate' would mean an image of that ilk would be unlikely to be posted on this forum. Steam engine innards might be the exception

And then you still have to prove 'without consent'.....from whom, the subject or photographer?

[JayMac]

Steam engine innards might be the exception

Phwoaarrr!!! Look at the steam chest on that!

[Chris from Nailsea]

A fine pair of cylinders.

[grahame]

It is part of my - role - to be the ultimate arbiter, though I can't recall ever having done so without support from the team.     

Yes, there ARE legal limits and we "must" not allow anything beyond that limit to stay beyond a reasonable time after it's posted; call that a red zone post.   There are also very, very occasional posts which I describe as "yellow" zone - legally allowed but outside the terms of the forum agreement, or common decency and politeness, and we get those changed too.   Then there's the green zone for all the other posts.

The yellow zone is hugely useful as it means we can ask for (or in extreme cases force) removal of dubious content without having to be legal gurus to know if things are actually legal. 

Edit - spelling correction and colouring.

[PrestburyRoad]

Personally I enjoy I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue, including its high threshold for what is allowed on the radio.  Whereas for this more sober forum and its written format I would prefer a considerably lower threshold - I have a mental image of my former maiden aunts.

[Oxonhutch]

Personally I loved the Goon Show and all its ilk, supported by a cast of wartime squaddies that used squaddy humour well known to their listener peers, but totally over the heads of the wartime officer corps that ran the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page), and policed its content. No wonder they were wildly popular.

[johnneyw]

Personally I enjoy I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue, including its high threshold for what is allowed on the radio.

I'm still waited for them to do a game of "Train Carriage or Bedroom".

[grahame]

An article in The Guardian, and an item on the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page), have highlighted the Online Safety Act  over the weekend. Thank you to members who have asked whether it might relate to the Coffee Shop forum, especially in following up the article in the Guardian in which one operator of multiple small online communities with very different specialities is planning/threatening to pull the plug on their communities.

Management Summary:

The Great Western Coffee Shop Passenger Forum carries on through the updates / additions to online safety laws.  The safety of our members, guests and the wider community has always been paramount and that commitment does not change. 

Current headlines concern a government plan to ban under 16s from Social Media.  Whether the Coffee Shop is, or is not, social media is an interesting question.  I have seeded a discussion in our moderator's area so that we are aware of what's going on; it may be peripheral to us, but we should be aware.  I cannot recall any young age related issues for at least a decade, but never the less it needs to be on our radar even if the conclusion is that we're good as we are.