[dsign]

Just a reminder that this kind of user-to-user interaction feature makes your website a "social network" according to UK regulation (and Mississippi's, and more jurisdictions coming soon), and therefore you must get copies of government ID of your users so that you can deny them access if they are underage, and rattle them to the police if you suspect they are committing thought crime by sending certain fruits. Obey the law.

[andai]

I made a little multiplayer arcade game last year. I added a chat feature with TTS. About an hour after launch it was just the n word over and over again. (Also zalgo text, which somehow strained the browser more than a video game!)

I removed the chat feature.

At any rate, getting banned by OFCOM is starting to sound like a badge of honor these days.

[dudefeliciano]

how are these laws enforced outside of the UK and Mississippi?

[pharrington]

Agree, with caveat - Obey the law, unless that law is made by a tyrant!

[ronsor]

Do those laws even apply to P2P apps without central servers?

[shakna]

Yes. Its defined without a technical requirement - just legal ones.

Each host will carry a legal responsibility for both what they push, and what they pull.

[drawfloat]

They do, but unlike what the OP claims, you do not need to age verify your site just because you added a social element. If the purpose is not to distribute pornography/other age restricted materials and you are able to moderate the site (ie: are not facebook scale), this is not required.

The law sucks but the misinformation around it is getting out of hand.

[koolala]

So if a site is completely p2p, it's illegal because it is unmoderatable?

[drawfloat]

No. If you are operating a p2p video chat site that is accessed by minors and you have no way for users to block or report content, then you are indeed going to face issues.

If a user is downloading a Linux image via bit torrent, or using WebRTC data channels to synchronise many clients using a p2p mechanism, what is the risk that needs age restricting?

This is what I meant, the OP is factually incorrect that just adding P2P technology to a service means it must age gate.

[ronsor]

And if so, is BitTorrent also completely illegal now, even if there's no piracy? IPFS? I2P? Tor?

[drawfloat]

This is factually untrue and either venting or wilfully ignorant of the actual law.

[dsign]

Hm? Have you taken a look at the law?

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/50/section/12

What's even "harmful content to minors"? Even if it were restricted only to pornography--which is not--I wouldn't count with being able to "moderate" all the ways users can draw penises.

The act regulates "user-to-user" services:

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/50/section/3

> In this Act “user-to-user service” means an internet service by means of which content that is generated directly on the service by a user of the service, or uploaded to or shared on the service by a user of the service, may be encountered by another user, or other users, of the service.

The legal text is dense but there is some analysis here:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/09/uk-online-safety-bill-...

And some news about Reddit: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/08/americans-be-warned-le...

[drawfloat]

Ofcom has a clear guide on how harmful to minors is defined. It is even clearly referenced in your own links:

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/documents/cons...

Your own links also reference the fact that moderation of content by platforms will allow them to comply with the law.

I don’t like this law and not here to defend its existence. But it is factually untrue just adding this would mean you also need to age verify users.

Case in point (which is not a rare use case), I use webrtc signalling to establish data connections in a multiplayer online game. Why would that require age verification when users are unable to send random content to one another?