hey everyone, shep here.

this one hurts to write

so we have to block uk access to janitorai starting july 24th (England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland). yeah, just 4 days notice. i know that is terrible timing and im genuinely sorry about that.

why we are in this mess

we have been trying to wrap our heads around the UK’s online safety act. and honestly? i completely botched understanding what this thing actually requires.

when it first passed, i thought “okay, some new content moderation rules, we can handle that.” turns out i was dead wrong. this is not just content moderation - it is a complete regulatory framework that assumes every platform is a tech giant.

the requirements are insane:

• legal risk assessments that cost more than our entire monthly budget
• biometric id verification systems (reddit is implementing persona for this which costs $1.5 per person)
• constant legal review of thousands of pages of guidelines that keep changing

the penalties include fines up to £18 million plus personal criminal liability for me and our team. like, actual jail time if ofcom decides we screwed up.

the timing disaster

we have been drowning in legal documents trying to figure this out. the main law is 250+ pages, the guidance from ofcom is over 3,000 pages, and its all written in the most confusing legal language possible.

i kept thinking we would find some reasonable compliance path, or that there would be exemptions for smaller platforms. nope. if you have uk users and any form of user interaction, you get the full regulatory treatment.

by the time we realized compliance was actually impossible for a team our size, we were already down to days before the deadline.

this is just broken policy

the uk government talks about wanting to be a tech innovation hub while simultaneously making it impossible for any platform smaller than google to serve uk users. it is completely backwards.

they have created a system where only the biggest tech companies can afford compliance, which is probably the opposite of what they wanted to achieve. right????

what this means for you

starting july 24th at 11:59pm utc, if you are accessing janitorai from the uk (England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland), you will hit a block page.

this really sucks. our uk community has been amazing since day one and losing you guys feels awful. but we literally cannot risk our team facing criminal charges over regulatory compliance.

the bigger picture

we are not unique here. lots of innovative platforms are going to make the same choice because the alternative is bankruptcy or prison.

the uk is basically creating a digital iron curtain around itself, cutting off citizens from global innovation. it is wild to watch in real time.

if you are as frustrated about this as we are, there is a petition asking parliament to reconsider this mess: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/722903

sorry for the short notice everyone. this whole situation has been a nightmare to navigate.

and in the future once we have subs out i see a path forward with meeting their requirements some day. we are actively exploring compliance options including implementing id checks for minors and other verification systems. this block is temporary while we figure out the right approach - we are not giving up on the uk market.

update: clearing up some misinformation

quick clarification because i have seen some wild takes floating around discord: uk users cannot be jailed for using janitorai. that is complete nonsense.

the online safety act only applies to service providers (that is us), not users. the criminal liability and fines are only for the people running the platform, not anyone using it.

also, we are only blocking uk ip addresses. your janitor accounts will not be deleted if you are a uk resident. the site will simply be inaccessible from uk ip addresses. if people find other methods to access the site, that is entirely on them - there are no legal consequences for users.

just wanted to make that crystal clear so people stop panicking about getting arrested for chatting with bots.

-shep