Announcement Disabling Direct Messages in the forums

[CParsons]

A rule that makes it impossible for people to have private conversations?
I very much doubt that.



You're legally required to make it impossible for people to keep personal information between themselves?
LoL

Feel free to look it up yourself. It carries all the same / similar verbiage to the UK implementation.

Commission publishes guidelines on the protection of minors

On 14 July 2025, the Commission has published its guidelines on the protection of minors under the DSA to ensure a safe online experience for children and young people.

digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu

 

[RedheadDane]

Feel free to look it up yourself.

Does the law also requires that Messenger gets shut down?
Or that phones can no longer send texts?
Same thing as private messages through an online forum.

 

[CParsons]

Does the law also requires that Messenger gets shut down?
Or that phones can no longer send texts?
Same thing as private messages through an online forum.

Meta / Insagram are already under investigation for potential violations and the guidance has been revamped to account for that.

Commission opens formal proceedings against Meta under the Digital Services Act related to the protection of minors on Facebook and Instagram

Today, the Commission has opened formal proceedings to assess whether Meta, the provider of Facebook and Instagram, may have breached the Digital Services Act (DSA) in areas linked to the protection of minors.

ec.europa.eu

If you dislike it, register your dislike with your Government. Going back and forth with me over a legal change doesn't change the laws.

 

[Netserk]

Does the law also requires that Messenger gets shut down?
Or that phones can no longer send texts?
Same thing as private messages through an online forum.

While many of us who know you well can easily tolerate your more aspie-typical behaviour, it can be rather bothersome to repeatedly ask questions in that manner without making any effort to seek answers to them on your own.

Normally, I'd recommend asking an LLM first, but I suppose that you are rather sceptical of their output?

 

[RedheadDane]

Meta / Insagram are already under investigation for potential violations and the guidance has been revamped to account for that.

Commission opens formal proceedings against Meta under the Digital Services Act related to the protection of minors on Facebook and Instagram

Today, the Commission has opened formal proceedings to assess whether Meta, the provider of Facebook and Instagram, may have breached the Digital Services Act (DSA) in areas linked to the protection of minors.

ec.europa.eu

If you dislike it, register your dislike with your Government.

What guidance?
Something about requiring proof that people signing up are over a certain age? Something you can just do as well...

What government?

And that still doesn't change the fact that one of the primary functions of a phone is to send text messages.

Sorry, I'm just opposed to illogical rules.

 

[Tim Cahill]

Hahaha I thought it was just us lot who were getting completely screwed over but it turns out everyone else is going to have to suffer it too. Great stuff, that makes me feel much better.

My 8 year old nephew told me you can use random IDs found on google by the way, took that little workaround approximately 5 minutes to hit the playgrounds of England, nice one lads good legislation.

 

[RedheadDane]

While many of us who know you well can easily tolerate your more aspie-typical behaviour, it can be rather bothersome to repeatedly ask questions in that manner without making any effort to seek answers to them on your own.

Normally, I'd recommend asking an LLM first, but I suppose that you are rather sceptical of their output?

The people who are the reason a problem is occurring should be the ones responsible for providing answers.
Why are you even letting the admins off the hook by doing their job?

What's an LLM? Some kind of AI BS?

 

[CParsons]

The people who are the reason a problem is occurring should be the ones responsible for providing answers.
Why are you even letting the admins off the hook by doing their job?

What's an LLM? Some kind of AI BS?

You've been provided answers and the reasoning. You just didn't like them or agree with them. Which is perfectly fine. However, it's not going to change the laws.

 

[RedheadDane]

You've been provided answers and the reasoning. You just didn't like them or agree with them. Which is perfectly fine if you disagree. However, it's not going to change the laws.

Anyway, guess we'll just all have to continue with those silly off-shoot conversations within the threads rather than taking them to PM/DM.

 

[Armchair Cyclist]

Anyway, guess we'll just all have to continue with those silly off-shoot conversations within the threads rather than taking them to PM/DM.

Watch the Coffee and a small Danish thread grow exponentially...

 

[RedheadDane]

Watch the Coffee and a small Danish thread grow exponentially...

Or the State of the Forum about those instances where we might need drugs to deal with the rules...
I'm guessing we aren't allowed to post outside The Clinic if we're on drugs?

Or maybe The Dot needs a revival.

 

[Sciatic]

Although I am a moderator, I do not speak on behalf of the admins, and although I have known this for a couple of days, I had no say and no more explanation than any of the rest of you.

To draw an assumption from this article, the forum has no means of age verification, and therefore must act as though any or all members might be U-18, and is operating on that basis. I very much doubt that any of us are of such tender years: I also understand the publishers being cautious in the face of potential penalties of 10% of turnover.

What are the new UK online safety rules and how will age checks on adult content be enforced?

From 25 July websites and apps will be required to protect children by filtering out harmful content and verifying ages

www.theguardian.com

It can’t be all members underage because some folks have been members since 2010 and were able to read and write (in a 2nd language to boot) so some must be 18 or older

 

[Sciatic]

Watch the Coffee and a small Danish thread grow exponentially...

Someone could start a Wanted to say this in a DM but can’t anymore thread

 

[E_F_]

The following message is for @Sciatic's eyes only:

Spoiler

Surely this is part of the solution, right? We can rest assured that no one will ever abuse our trust by reading private messages, just because they can!

 

[RedheadDane]

I'd like to apologise for my behaviour yesterday. I understand that you (the Admins) don't actually want to do something this silly, but are forced by circumstances aka the British Government.
However this claim (that I alread, less politely, called out yesterday):

Direct messages have primarily always been to moderators or admin, so we don't anticipate this having a substantial impact on the forum.

Is just factually wrong. Dunno why anyone would get into their heads that it's primarily to moderators or admin...

 

[noob]

I get why, but that's disappointing. Has there ever been thought of creating a Discord server for Cyclingnews instead of the forum?

I wan't both! But a discord server is a solution to the DM problems, no?

(I miss the mIRC days of my life but that's sure a bit old school 🤣)

 

[noob]

I am actually completely devastated as I DM almost as much as I post on the forum. I use it as a chat.

Race threads are certainly good for chat format.

On the other hand I prefer forum format with DM because they have that slight higher bar before posting than a chat has.

 

[Ripper]

Dang! Now I can't message @RedheadDane to tell her how awesome she is!

Edit: Noob is cool too!

 

[MKnott]

I'd like to apologise for my behaviour yesterday. I understand that you (the Admins) don't actually want to do something this silly, but are forced by circumstances aka the British Government.
However this claim (that I alread, less politely, called out yesterday):



Is just factually wrong. Dunno why anyone would get into their heads that it's primarily to moderators or admin...

We know that DM's mainly go to administrators mainly because that's the key use case for them. There are not that many DM's by volume being sent, we can see it on the back end and it's the easiest way to guarantee compliance without making larger changes. There are more DM's sent here than other sites, so technically you're right, but it doesn't change things because even those numbers are a magnitude less than public posts and more DM's is not a reason to keep them unfortunately - quite the opposite.

It has also always been possible to see user DM's, but we do not use that functionality because it needs some setup, we could trust that users use it correctly and as such has never been considered or explored. That would have been another alternative where we scrape DM's to make sure there is no illegality to keep us in compliance, but I have serious qualms about setting anything like that up.

I want to add that we've been accidentally looped into DM's from people trying to find ways around this and if people keep that up we'll have no choice but to permanently ban accounts because it's out of our hands. There's no fighting the power here, because there is no real choice on our part - if you're in the UK and disagree with the legislation letting your local MP know is the best move you have.

We're honestly not doing this to cause pain. I personally don't care that people message one another, and I trust you - I do because I know the demographics of forums.

The problem is the legislation is so broad that it means we have to account for situations imagined by people who don't understand forums and if there is a chance of us being in breach of legislation then we would have to make even more significant changes. This change limits that.

The alternative is looking into other systems like age gating and that's restrictive for everyone. Until recently it looked like we would be fine, but the one thing adding risk for us was DM's and we looked at the actual uses on a daily basis and the numbers made it the best option.

 

[RedheadDane]

We know that DM's mainly go to administrators mainly because that's the key use case for them.

Who told you that? The previous admins?
And even if they might have intended for it to be the key use for DMs, that doesn't mean it's the actual main use for them.
Or... are you looking at some statistics, and noticing that people - especially in bursts at specific points of the year - are sending a lot of DMs to Armchair Cyclists?
In that case, remember that the majority of those have nothing to do with his duty as Moderator, but rather his much more important duty as the Game Master of a million CQ game - and one PCS-based game.

 

[Berniece]

The alternative is looking into other systems like age gating and that's restrictive for everyone. Until recently it looked like we would be fine, but the one thing adding risk for us was DM's and we looked at the actual uses on a daily basis and the numbers made it the best option.

How strict does this need to be? Is it like an alcoholic beverage website where you just need to give your birthday? Why not do that? Or you think you might lose members over it?

 

[MKnott]

Who told you that? The previous admins?
And even if they might have intended for it to be the key use for DMs, that doesn't mean it's the actual main use for them.
Or... are you looking at some statistics, and noticing that people - especially in bursts at specific points of the year - are sending a lot of DMs to Armchair Cyclists?
In that case, remember that the majority of those have nothing to do with his duty as Moderator, but rather his much more important duty as the Game Master of a million CQ game - and one PCS-based game.

I understand you're upset, but you're not really making any sense if you read my post.

...technically you're right, but it doesn't change things because even those numbers are a magnitude less than public posts and more DM's is not a reason to keep them unfortunately - quite the opposite.

You have already apologised for getting wound up, I get it, but my team and myself didn't eagerly enforce this by any stretch. You're mad at the wrong people and for the wrong reason.

There's an average of 25-50 a day with occasional spikes. It sucks that we have to do this, but this is about the law and the volume unfortunately not the impact.

How strict does this need to be? Is it like an alcoholic beverage website where you just need to give your birthday? Why not do that? Or you think you might lose members over it?

You'd have to provide your ID and we would have to use an age verification service. If it was just based on the honour system then we would do that, but age verification in this case is about providing actual proof of age through a third party. That's still not off the table by the way, our risk assessment doesn't call for it and I don't believe we need to use it but the law is very vague and open to interpretation.

It was my hope that we could avoid any major changes, unfortunately the risk levels with private messages have no boundaries. I do not agree with this, that is not my personal opinion and we would likely have to remove DM's regardless but the hope is by doing this we don't have to make any other changes to your experience.

 

[Tricycle Rider]

I understand you're upset, but you're not really making any sense if you read my post.

...technically you're right, but it doesn't change things because even those numbers are a magnitude less than public posts and more DM's is not a reason to keep them unfortunately - quite the opposite.

You have already apologised for getting wound up, I get it, but my team and myself didn't eagerly enforce this by any stretch. You're mad at the wrong people and for the wrong reason.

There's an average of 25-50 a day with occasional spikes. It sucks that we have to do this, but this is about the law and the volume unfortunately not the impact.



You'd have to provide your ID and we would have to use an age verification service. If it was just based on the honour system then we would do that, but age verification in this case is about providing actual proof of age through a third party. That's still not off the table by the way, our risk assessment doesn't call for it and I don't believe we need to use it but the law is very vague and open to interpretation.

It was my hope that we could avoid any major changes, unfortunately the risk levels with private messages have no boundaries. I do not agree with this, that is not my personal opinion and we would likely have to remove DM's regardless but the hope is by doing this we don't have to make any other changes to your experience.

What other changes are possibly on the table?

 

[noob]

Forum formats with DM is a godsend for autistics like myself so I'm excessively sad.

As someone who uses DM in the exact opposite of how the state of England assumes it is used; "hi this is my real identity, if the forum goes down you can find me at this and that account" where my identity is proven beyond any doubt whatsoever" it's so ironic.

I can prove my identity to an admin in an instant. Would that allow me to still DM with others who has proven their identities?

 

[kingjr]

Forum formats with DM is a godsend for autistics like myself so I'm excessively sad.

As someone who uses DM in the exact opposite of how the state of England assumes it is used; "hi this is my real identity, if the forum goes down you can find me at this and that account" where my identity is proven beyond any doubt whatsoever" it's so ironic.

I can prove my identity to an admin in an instant. Would that allow me to still DM with others who has proven their identities?

That's what I was wondering, too.