No compliance mutual for small community-run online services under the Online Safety Act

When OSA illegal-content duties began (March 2025), roughly 300 small volunteer-run forums exited or migrated to Big Tech platforms; at least 22 confirmed closures per tech lawyer Neil Brown's tracker; LFGSS/Microcosm shut and only partially returned. Ofcom offers a small-services hub and revamped compliance guide, but every volunteer admin (including operators of Matrix homeservers and Fediverse instances, who are in scope) must individually produce risk assessments with no shared legal defence, insurance product, or template compliance stack. Open Rights Group campaigns on the issue but provides no operational compliance service. A December 2025 Westminster Hall debate on repeal aired the burden without resolution; the categorisation register lands July 2026.

Community self-hosting is the entry point to the whole sovereignty stack. If running a forum or homeserver is legally hazardous for volunteers, UK online community life centralises onto US platforms by default, the opposite of the Act's intent and of digital sovereignty.

A compliance co-operative ('OSA mutual') offering model risk assessments, shared moderation tooling, a legal helpline and group insurance for community services, paired with a statutory proportionality carve-out for low-risk community services at the next OSA review.

// Build now: First artefact: model OSA risk-assessment pack plus mutual formation; statutory proportionality carve-out is the later state-led end-state.

Illegal-content duties are already forcing volunteer forums to close, a co-operative fix is well understood, nobody provides it, and a July 2026 categorisation deadline pressures action now.