UK Online Safety Act 2023

The Online Safety Act 2023 is a United Kingdom legislation regulating online media. Passed in 2023, it is scheduled to take effect on 2025-03-17.^{[Ofcom source?]}

Sites changing operations

Geoblocking users

• Lobsters announced sometime around 2025-01-06 their plans to geoblock UK users via IP addresses on 2025-03-16: https://lobste.rs/s/ukosa1/uk_users_lobsters_needs_your_help_with^{[IA•Wcite•.today•MemWeb]}
• Haiku announced on 2025-01-16 their forums will be geoblocking users from the UK via IP addresses "before March 16th, 2025" (2025-03-16): https://discuss.haiku-os.org/t/notice-georestriction-of-the-uk/16267/8^{[IA•Wcite•.today•MemWeb]}
• lemmy.zip, a federated community site, announced on 2025-02-08 the site will be geoblocking users from the UK effective 2025-02-16: https://lemmy.zip/post/31644782^{[IA•Wcite•.today•MemWeb]}. Impacted users are presented with the following page: https://uk.lemmy.zip/^{[IA•Wcite•.today•MemWeb]}
• repo.or.cz, a public Git repository hoster, started blocking UK users on 2025-07-29: https://repo.or.cz/uk-blocked.html^{[IA•Wcite•.today•MemWeb]}, https://c.im/@repo_or_cz/114938889981940985^{[IA•Wcite•.today•MemWeb]}

Content removal/closure

• LFGSS and Microcosm, hosting a few hundred communities, announced on 2024-12-16 that they will be shutting down on 2025-03-16: https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/401475/^{[IA•Wcite•.today•MemWeb]}
• Ready to Go forum, announced on 2025-03-25 "the end is nigh". As of 2025-03-25, the original announcement URL is no longer available, but forum content is available with recent posts. Original announcement URLhttps://www.readytogo.net/smb/threads/the-end-of-the-forum-is-nigh.1646227/^{[IA•Wcite•.today•MemWeb]}
• GamingOnLinux shut down the forums abruptly on 2024-12-18, though read-only access to existing content was restored for archival purposes on request shortly thereafter: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/forum/topic/6463/^{[IA•Wcite•.today•MemWeb]}
• https://tbs.social/@thisisrjg/113844024503274325^{[IA•Wcite•.today•MemWeb]}
• HEXUS Forums announced on 2025-01-29 that all data except for comments on news and reviews (without username associations) will be deleted on 2025-03-01: https://forums.hexus.net/hexus-news/426608-looks-like-end-hexus-forums.html^{[IA•Wcite•.today•MemWeb]}
• Charlbury in the Cotswolds announced on 2025-02-19 they are shutting down their Debate forum board: https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/401475/^{[IA•Wcite•.today•MemWeb]}
• Mastodon instance furry.energy announced on 2025-01-16 the server will be shut down on 2025-03-16: https://furry.energy/^{[IA•Wcite•.today•MemWeb]}
• The Green Living Forum announced on 2025-01-20 they are closing the forum on 2025-03-15: https://www.thegreenlivingforum.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=114519^{[IA•Wcite•.today•MemWeb]}. Users were directed to Camelot-forum: https://camelot-forum.co.uk/phpBB3/index.php?sid=22bed8b83307bd9241d6465efa327893^{[IA•Wcite•.today•MemWeb]}
• Urban Dead announced sometime around 2025-03-03 their game will cease operations on 2025-03-14 and the game's wiki will be set to read-only on that same day: https://urbandead.com/shutdown.html^{[IA•Wcite•.today•MemWeb]}. Website wiki: https://wiki.urbandead.com/index.php/Main_Page^{[IA•Wcite•.today•MemWeb]}
• The Chaos Engine forum announced on 2024-12-21 the forum will be taken offline and content removed on 2024-03-16. A second invite-only form has been set up at https://tce2.org/^{[IA•Wcite•.today•MemWeb]}. A Discord was established at https://discord.com/invite/MeeFx3hndt^{[IA•Wcite•.today•MemWeb]}. The original announcement may only be viewed by logging in, however previews of forum posts are open to the public: https://thechaosengine.com/index.php?threads/forum-shutdown-16th-march-2025.80387/^{[IA•Wcite•.today•MemWeb]}
• The Angels Forum announced on 2025-01-06 that they will close on 2025-02-28: https://theangels.co.uk/2025/01/closing-the-angels-forum-28th-feb/^{[IA•Wcite•.today•MemWeb]}
• Mastodon instance awscommunity.social announced on 2025-01-10 the server will close on 2025-02-28. As of 2025-03-25 the instance is no longer available. Original announcement URL: https://awscommunity.social/@Ric_/113803857188109600^{[IA•Wcite•.today•MemWeb]}
• The mIRC forums^{[IA•Wcite•.today•MemWeb]} disabled private messages on 2025-03-31: https://i.ibb.co/B2Y1rD1z/Untitled.png^{[IA•Wcite•.today•MemWeb]}

Other measures

• An Ada programing language forum announced on 2025-01-02 user private messaging capabilities will be disabled and image posts will require approval before posting: https://forum.ada-lang.io/t/moderation-changes-and-new-regulations/1673^{[IA•Wcite•.today•MemWeb]}
• Charles Stross announced on his blog on 2024-12-21 that the blog will continue, but comments will be "closed for good" effective 2025-03-14. Further updates on the announcement post suggest a possible exception allowing comments to remain open, but nothing has been decided: https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2024/12/storm-cloud-approaching-rapidl.html^{[IA•Wcite•.today•MemWeb]}
• The Hamster Forum^{[IA•Wcite•.today•MemWeb]} announced on 2025-03-14 that it would close two days later^{[IA•Wcite•.today•MemWeb]}. It re-opened two months later^{[IA•Wcite•.today•MemWeb]} (with old content seemingly intact) and remains online as of 2025-08-02.
• Miraheze announced on 2025-07-28 that functionality relating to private user-to-user communications^{[IA•Wcite•.today•MemWeb]} are disabled, including Special:EmailUser and two extensions.

Other lists of announcements

• https://onlinesafetyact.co.uk/in_memoriam/^{[IA•Wcite•.today•MemWeb]}
• https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43152154^{[IA•Wcite•.today•MemWeb]}

Official resources

• https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/online-safety-act-explainer/online-safety-act-explainer^{[IA•Wcite•.today•MemWeb]}
• https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-content/important-dates-for-online-safety-compliance/^{[IA•Wcite•.today•MemWeb]}
• https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-content/roadmap-to-regulation/^{[IA•Wcite•.today•MemWeb]}