Update index.md

Author: tavviv

src/content/posts/uk_geoblock_for_act/index.md

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+---
+title: Unfortunate Geoblock for UK Users
+seo_title: UK Geoblock for Online Safety Act
+summary: Notice of restriction for UK users due to the new online safety act coming into effect on the 25th of July, 2025.
+slug: website_announcement
+author: Tav
+date: 2025-07-24
 
+project types:
+    - Announcements
+---
+
+# Temporary Access Restriction for UK Users Due to New Online Act
+
+I dislike doing unexpected announcements. However, there is a situation for UK users as there is a new Online Safety Act we will need to comply by the 25th of this month. This caught us off-guard and we only discovered it ourselves when other AI websites wrote their respective announcements in the last few days. Due to the nature of the Act, and the legal complexity behind it, we will be **temporarily restricting access to the website for UK users** until we figure what is the best approach to deal with this.
+
+The UK region includes England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. When users from this region attempt to use the site, they will receive a custom error page displaying what is going on. We will like to keep this as temporary as possible.
+
+# Further Context
+To read more about this Act. The information can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/online-safety-act-explainer/online-safety-act-explainer
+
+To summarise this, it is the UK government's attempt to create a more safe environment for their underaged and adult citizens. However, the proposed implementation is overreaching and requires any services that deals with user interactions, or posting content, to have strict compliance requirements. This applies to any services even outside the UK as long as they have UK users. 
+
+Some compliance being:
+- Age vertification systems that requires actual biometric ID checks
+- Legal team to audit and assess the amount of risk all content on the site has
+- Increased moderation policies that needs to comply with the UK specific guidelines
+
+Attempting to meet these demands from the UK government is frankly not possible and we are investigating if there are ways for us to be exempted from this so UK users can still have access to the site. This will take time that we unfortunately do not have. 
+
+We are going off the schedule located here: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-content/important-dates-for-online-safety-compliance
+
+<img width="2038" height="1580" alt="Screenshot 2025-07-23 213356" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/0f959d0f-2708-44e9-a576-bbb989f557da"/>
+
+# What happens if we ignore this?
+Fines. And if possible, if we are particularly negligiable, jail time. Ofcom, the body responsible for enforcing this Act, can put the team behind a service under criminal liability. The punishment can happen randomly at anytime by Ofcom. Getting into legal issues now, or in the future, will be a potential deathblow to PygmalionAI so I would like to avoid that situation from happening. Even if temporarily, UK users have to deal with restrictions.