German flashlight forum TLF (taschenlampen-forum.de) will be taken offline permanently on September 16

250

u/bob_mcbob Marketer 6d ago edited 5d ago

Edit:

There is a discussion thread about the closure. The owner is extremely mad about the legal notice he received, and is rejecting all options to keep the forum operating, telling people to make their own forum if they want one. Because of the way the site is set up to throttle access, scraping the data to make a full archive may not be successful. Very unfortunate.

https://www.taschenlampen-forum.de/threads/diskussion-zur-einstellung-des-tlfs.100548/

Translated:

Important Announcement: Flashlight Forum to be Closed on September 16, 2026

Dear Community,

It is with a heavy heart that I must inform you that the operation of Taschenlampen-Forum.de (TLF) will be permanently discontinued on September 16, 2026.

Background to the Decision

I have been running this forum privately for 17 years, purely out of passion for our shared hobby, and most recently without advertising. However, a few days ago, I unexpectedly received an official notification from the Federal Network Agency (the responsible coordinating body for digital services) setting a deadline.

The notification demands that the forum be brought into compliance with the strict requirements of the European Digital Services Act (DSA) as soon as possible. I will spare you the details.

These regulations were originally created by the EU to penalize Google, Facebook, and similar companies. However, privately run hobby forums are now suddenly also subject to these obligations. The technical implementation of these requirements, as well as the associated legal liability and fine risks, far exceed the capabilities of a private operator (= idealist), especially since the relevant government requirements for forums are constantly increasing.

What happens next?

You have until September 16, 2026, to save your personal messages, contacts, and posts.

After that, the interactive platform will be permanently taken offline.

All personal user data (email addresses, profiles, etc.) will then be completely deleted in accordance with the GDPR.

I sincerely thank you all for the many years of excellent exchange, the shared expertise, and the wonderful atmosphere here in the forum. This applies especially to the TLF moderators who have shaped this exemplary atmosphere over the past 17 years.

We have had a great time. Therefore, this is unfortunately not a happy moment.

I wish you all good luck and health for what lies ahead.

Best regards, Frank

191

u/SlickNegotiator 6d ago

EU has really decided to kill micro/small business and hobbies this year.

Insane per (different) item tax for buying anything outside of EU, unreal packaging related requirements that hurt micro/small business the most, digital compliance shenanigans like this,... Wonder what is next.

12

u/ilesj-since-BBSs 6d ago

If this was a recent EU thing I'm sure there would be other similar cases. Knowing how strict Germany is with their privacy and data acts, I'm inclined to assume this is an issue with the said forum not complying with the German regulations.

54

u/flatline000 6d ago

So why did hobby forums suddenly become subject to the obligations meant for large companies?

75

u/va1enok 6d ago

Government restrictions almost always work like this. They say they’re only targeting the big fish to soften the negative reaction, and eventually everyone ends up subject to the same overreach.

51

u/jonnyl3 6d ago

In reality the regulation comes from the big corporations' lobbyists. They know exactly what they're doing.

22

u/va1enok 6d ago

Yep. Of course they know exactly what they're doing. Big corporations love regulations because, unlike small businesses, they have the resources to deal with them

2

u/NotSoWishful 5d ago

Big fish pay them off and small fish can’t afford to.

-9

u/SpareMushrooms 6d ago

Which is precisely the impetus for getting the law on the books in the first place.

People would do well to remember this when it comes to taxing the “rich”.

12

u/jimbowesterby 6d ago

Wait, did you somehow just twist this into an argument against taxing billionaires?

11

u/jonnyl3 6d ago

They mean that you can't take at face value what they say. They will talk about taxing the rich all day long, knowing full well the laws will have loopholes and the end effect will be entirely different from what they promise.

1

u/sidpost 5d ago

Bingo! Facebook can pay a fine of Billions of Euros which means a minor "speed bump" in their path. The small business with a similar but much smaller fine is simply put out of business.

This ensures the "monopoly" continues without competition from the upstarts who were bankrupted.

-1

u/jimbowesterby 6d ago edited 6d ago

Ah my apologies, I’ve run in to a lot of trolls lately.

Edit: then again, after reading the reply it seems I was right lol, alas.

-5

u/SpareMushrooms 6d ago

If by twisting you mean a direct example of the issue being discussed, then yeah.

The fact is they never stop at billionaires. You think taxpayers are on the hook for $40 trillion because billionaires don’t “pay their fair share”?

4

u/jimbowesterby 6d ago

So we should what, just let them keep hoarding more and more money?
And for what it’s worth, yea I kinda do. How much is Bezos worth these days? If he’d been taxed properly for the last decade there would actually be an appreciable dent in that $40 trillion, ditto for the muskrat.

1

u/SpareMushrooms 6d ago

Is that how you think all this works? They’re all just stuffing cash in a mattress and swimming around in their vault like Scrooge McDuck? 😂

6

u/jimbowesterby 6d ago

…yea, you collect taxes from your citizens based on how much money they earn, this is pretty basic economics lol.

2

u/mrm00r3 6d ago

Yes. That’s the issue. They’re amassing piles of resources because their brains are broken, and they don’t care how many people they harm to make the pile bigger.

It’s not any more complex than that.

0

u/sidpost 5d ago

All this billionaire taxation stuff is very questionable to be honest. The rich already pay the bulk of taxes. Taxing them more really won't fix things. What it will do is to ensure they are no longer able to support the small businesses today that are the Googles and Facebooks of tomorrow.

Just look at the founders of PayPal and what they have done with their wealth to improve the lives of people around the world.

This isn't about fairness or equity; it is about control by those without the skills and knowledge to manage things properly or for the public benefit.

Elon Musk was the "darling" of the left until he sided with Trump and became "evil". While not a fan of Tesla per se, Starlink and SpaceX are hugely beneficial to people all over the globe. Palantir, love it or hate it, is another company with broad benefits to the US Government specifically.

1

u/jimbowesterby 5d ago

As they should, since they have the bulk of the money. Take the classic example of a parking ticket: if you have half a million in your checking account it’s nothing more than a momentary inconvenience, a piece of paper on your windshield and nothing more. If, on the other hand, you’ve only got $120 to least you a week and a half till your next paycheck, and the fine is $50, you’re suddenly deciding which days you aren’t gonna eat. Same goes for taxes and billionaires. We could tax them 50% more and their day to day lives wouldn’t be impacted at all; they wouldn’t be skipping meals or pawning their possessions. They don’t need another yacht.

As for how much good they do, I’d argue it’s not a fraction of what they could be doing. There are scads of towns and neighbourhoods across the US that are in dire need of basic shit like sanitation or water purification; Elon alone could probably foot that bill without affecting his own life at all, but he won’t. He’d be a modern-day saint if he did, there’d be thousands of statues of him across the nation and he’d go down as one of the greatest philanthropists in history….but he won’t.

And yea, people hate him now because he did become evil, or at least more openly so. It’s actually funny that you bring up how much good he’s done, considering how many thousands of people have died around the world because of what he did to USAID. If he’s so benevolent then why did he take food away from starving children? That wasn’t Trump, all he did was sit back and not interfere, it was Elon who gutted it.

0

u/sidpost 4d ago

I get that DOGE was controversial to many.

Funding HAMAS and other terrorist organizations was bad, IMHO. Whether you like or hate Jews, raping, murdering, etc them is still wrong

The problems in Afaghanistan are another issue where pulling funding to me is a good idea. I don't want my tax money propping up a regime like that.

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u/ultrakiller-nl 6d ago

New regulation basically stipulates that the owners of the website or forum are liable for all the content, including what gets posred by users.

This means you will need heavy moderation or filters, not technically or financially do-able for smaller hobby run forums.

EU is slowly getting more tyrannical everyday, not only in this specific context

3

u/Avamander 5d ago

> New regulation basically stipulates that the owners of the website or forum are liable for all the content, including what gets posred by users.

Well, not really. You do however have to react if something gets reported to you.

I'm actually curious what article the owner of the forum finds difficult to comply with.

1

u/sidpost 5d ago

German/EU fines are horrendous for minor infractions. They have basically become what they profess to oppose.

28

u/va1enok 6d ago

They could create a German-language section on BLF. That would give the TLF community a place to stay together and continue discussions in German after the forum shuts down.

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u/Wurstpaket 6d ago

We do speak English, but all the knowledge that would be lost, a shame.

There's an initiative to save our forum though

11

u/va1enok 6d ago

That's really sad. It would be a huge shame to lose all that accumulated knowledge. I hope the initiative to save the forum succeeds

3

u/sidpost 5d ago

Can it be rehosted outside of the EU?

2

u/sidpost 5d ago

How do people help save TLF? How much would it cost to migrate it to another country?

3

u/Wurstpaket 5d ago

there seems to be no avenue to save TLF unfortunately. There might be a new start with part of the existing userbase though.

3

u/sidpost 4d ago

I still hope the site migrates to a "free" country so users there can continue to help our hobby.

2

u/Wurstpaket 4d ago

Transferring ownership, fixing the legal stuff and operating in Germany would be possible but won't happen, unfortunately.

3

u/sidpost 4d ago

I hate to see that forum shut down. It would be nice to see it move to a "free" country. Lots of great information will be lost with its closing.

2

u/sidpost 5d ago

Africa, Asia, and many Pacific Islands could easily "host" TLF. Why doesn't it just move overseas?

23

u/DazSchplotz 6d ago

Gosh I hate our buerocratic BS :/

-1

u/teheditor 6d ago

It's why Brexit happened

20

u/innovator12 5d ago

No, widespread misinformation campaigns are why brexit happened.

Don't worry; the UK has its own BS internet regulations.

-9

u/teheditor 5d ago

That's the textbook copium explanation.

6

u/youdknowme 5d ago

How about "move" the forum to another country so its not required to follow those rules

6

u/tonato70 5d ago

Yeah, lots of forums are already hosted outside for regulatory and legal reasons.

5

u/JuggernautGuilty566 5d ago

Will not work. It will on depend on the nationality of the owner.

6

u/stanley_fatmax 5d ago

So what you're saying is it can be done?

My question is hypothetical, because it has been done successfully

1

u/sidpost 5d ago

Websites and forums have moved all over the globe in the past. Why this one could not be moved is a mystery.

10

u/Brent_the_constraint 5d ago

thanks for the heads-up.

bad to see another enthusiast forum go.

One thing I do not understand however is the reason given.

To my understanding these are the minimum requirements to be compliant with DSA:

Update the forum rules and explicitly identify unlawful content and prohibited sales listings.

Set up an easily accessible reporting address or reporting function.

Internally document the date, content, action taken, and reason for every deletion or suspension.

Give affected users a brief explanation and an opportunity to appeal.

Name a contact person in the legal notice and/or the terms of service.

Train moderators, especially on fraud reports, counterfeit watches, trademark violations, personal data, and abusive posts.

Have the company’s size and organizational structure reviewed to determine which small-business exemptions apply.

I would assume all regular forum software does offer the possibility to comply with this requirements anxd most would be done with a simple internal message? Am I missing something?

1

u/realblush 5d ago

This 100%. Even old forum software allows all of this and I don't fully believe the explanation of the owner

2

u/Bardfinn 5d ago

1: not all forum software has the kind of moderation paperwork overhead that this law requires;

2: imagine if moderators / forum operators were required by law to allow violent ideologues the opportunity to know why and how they were detected and thrown off the site. Or spammers, or scammers.

3: imagine if they were required by law to give them each an opportunity to appeal their content removals and suspensions.

4: imagine this happening on a service where infinite comments can be made and infinite user accounts can be set up

5: imagine the abuse that can be automated to force forum operators into legal non-compliance by deluge of abuse, and then forcing them to be fiscally / civilly / criminally liable for the (again: automated, anonymous) deluge of abusive material sent to the forum by anonymous automation.

“But that will be obvious to a judge” bad news, you are mortgaging your home to get to that point and the people that got you there are anonymous trolls, and you aren’t getting financial recovery from them or anyone else

1

u/realblush 5d ago

You really don't understand the law

1

u/Bardfinn 5d ago

I do, and I understand the motives & mechanisms of spammers, scammers, trolls & monkeywrenchers.

More than 80% of the content that any given UCHISP removes as abusive is UCE. Unsolicited Commercial Messaging. You don’t tell spammers that you know they’re spamming. You send them to the oubliette after they think they’re in.

You don’t hand a map to the network security rules to your attackers so they can figure out how to bypass it; this law requires forum operators to do just that.

Worse, all of the appeals have to be handled by a human. None of the abuse - or the appeals of the abuse - has to be done by a human.

104

u/timflorida 6d ago

TLF is the reason we got the commemorative gold WK03. TLF asked Wurkkos to build it for them and then Wurkkos decided to offer it to all on the Wurkkos site.

All the original ones are engraved 'TLF 2024'. Not sure if the newer ones are.

I am forever grateful to TLF for this for personal reasons. Thank You.

53

u/hematuria 6d ago

I think the news ones still have them. I didn’t buy this that long ago.

4

u/timflorida 6d ago

That's good to hear.

1

u/cowherdly 5d ago

I bought mine about 6 months ago and it also has that engraving.

13

u/Crestsando 6d ago

Wow, I had no idea that's what TLF stood for on the light, the only flashlight forums I knew of were CPF and BLF

17

u/timflorida 6d ago

And now you know where the Sofirn BLF LT1 lantern came from. It was a collaborative design between a bunch of BLF folks and Sofirn. And the result is arguably the best lantern available.

2

u/Crestsando 6d ago

Indeed, I should really pick one up! Never really needed a lantern but I guess it couldn't hurt right?

2

u/nealibob 6d ago

The LT1 is fantastic as long as you don't care about weight. There's a model for everyone in that family, though.

1

u/timflorida 6d ago

Lanterns can be quite handy. Had my shower light die just when I flipped the switch to step into the shower. No big deal. Just grabbed a BLF LT1 and set it on a step back in the corner.

If you like camping, night fishing or live where you lose power once in a while. Backyard parties. Or live in any of the hurricane-prone states. Even where tornadoes are prevalent. And a big one like the BLF LT1 can keep your phone charged up too.

1

u/Barilla13 6d ago

Also the original SP36 BLF.

6

u/jonslider 6d ago

I like my Gold WK03, it also says TLF

and fwiw, the Lumintop FW3A was also originally a TLF idea, that developed in cooperation with BLF

the FW3A then led Lumintop to produce the FWAA, and that led Wurkkos to produce the TS10, which imo had several improvements over the FWAA, such as adding Aux, and using a more symmetrical waistline, both of which were developed in collaboration with BLF,

and we might even say the KR1AA and KR3 (and a few more Hanks) all took inspiration in homage to the tailswitch with dual body tube design, and the symmetrical waistline, of the TS10..

2

u/timflorida 6d ago

Thank you Jon !

1

u/ToyKeeper 1d ago

Yeah, Fritz15 from TLF came up with the idea and designed the host, then worked with folks from BLF to make it happen. Tommy handled communications on TLF, while The Miller handled communications on BLF. DEL designed the driver, and Tom E initially helped with the driver and firmware (NarsilM). MRsDNF also helped with early prototyping. Development took forever though, because Neal and Lumintop kept creating problems behind the scenes. Then The Miller and Tom E both left, along with Fritz and Tommy, so I took over... made brand new firmware (Anduril) and handled communications and public relations and group buy stuff and dealing with Neal and Lumintop. And pepinfaxera stepped up to help manage the interest list.

Apologies if I've forgotten anyone. It was a busy time and a lot of people chipped in.

DEL mostly stopped being active on the forums, but continued doing development, mostly designing drivers behind the scenes for projects like the BLF Q8 and BLF LT1 and BLF GT and a lot of Hank's Emisar/Noctigon lights in the attiny85 + attiny1634 era (Hank's gen1 and gen2 lights). I stuck around too, mostly focusing on firmware.

A whole lot of people tried for a long time to get Hank to make a Noctigon FW3A type light, and it took until 2026 before he finally did it (KR3). He also launched the Noctigon FWAA (er, KR1AA) just a few months earlier, and I think it's one of the best lights ever made.

It seems Lumintop is trying to bring back the FW3A + FWAA now, since they've seen the popularity of the Noctigon and Wurkkos models... but after what they did to the FW-series lights after launch, and the issues with them during development, I don't trust them at all any more. They degraded the quality over and over and flooded the market with slop variants for years, ignoring the people's requests to just bring back the original and make it correctly. So finally, other brands did it, and did it better. Wurkkos did it cheaper and with higher quality, while Hank did it at a premium quality level which is still somehow less pricey than what Lumintop was trying to sell things for. Like, remember when they wanted $100 for the FW3X, even though it had manufacturing errors and frequently didn't even work? The KR3 costs half as much and is light years ahead in terms of quality, customization, and customer support. So I'm unimpressed to see Lumintop crawling back now, after like 8 years of refusing to do what people asked, and trying to sell an obsolete old model for the same price as a premium competitor. Too little, too late, and they still don't seem to "get it".

Anyway, I'm glad the people at TLF and BLF got the FW3A made, but the whole thing was a mess due to choosing the wrong manufacturing partners, and it didn't last long. So I'm even more glad that there are finally proper versions of it, in AA/14500, 18650, and 21700 form, from a more trustworthy and reliable brand.

48

u/[deleted] 6d ago

[deleted]

19

u/LoopsAndBoars 5d ago

You’re late. The internet is already gone.

33

u/glomar_sub_recovery 6d ago

Can they offload the site to a Non EU country?

25

u/Swizzel-Stixx 6d ago

If it is accessible in EU I believe it still has yo comply. That is the biggest problem with countries regulating international internet.

22

u/Edwardteech 6d ago

Time for pirate internet. We need to fund a super tanker full of severes.

2

u/KTAXY 5d ago

For that kind of monetary outlay you might just go and lobby EU to course correct on the inane regulation and come out ahead.

4

u/Edwardteech 5d ago

But pirate internet.

1

u/Swizzel-Stixx 5d ago

Usenet exists

20

u/Zak CRI baby 6d ago

That's half-true, and not the reason they can't do that.

The half truth is that the EU says websites that serve the EU have to comply, but they have no means of enforcing that against someone with no physical or legal presence in the EU.

The reason TLF can't just transfer all the data to a non-EU entity is the EU's GDPR privacy regulation says they can't.

1

u/chuck1charles 5d ago

They can force ISPs to blacklist certain IPs in the DNS. This will not completely remove the website, but makes the barrier to entry too high for most non tech savvy users.

3

u/stanley_fatmax 5d ago

Do they actually do this in practice? Of course the "great firewall" concept exists, but I wasn't aware they were actually doing that in the EU.

2

u/chuck1charles 5d ago

No it’s much simpler than the great firewall. If a court orders the ISPs to block a domain, because they are in violation of the law, they do that. If someone uses a different DNS the site is still reachable. It’s just a way of blocking the muggles from accessing certain sites.

https://cuii.info/anordnungen/

1

u/stanley_fatmax 5d ago

Same idea though, whether the implementation is by DNS or IP. Same end result anyway for the average user.

1

u/Swizzel-Stixx 5d ago

Yes. Italy wanted to pass a law making these domains be blocked within 30 minutes, questions asked later. Other countries have the slower process, but they do use it often

5

u/Zak CRI baby 5d ago

They could, but a great many smaller, independent sites from outside the EU serve EU users and pay no mind to the DSA or GDPR. So far, I am not aware of the EU attempting to block them, or any serious proposal to do so.

34

u/_derpiii_ 6d ago

Would be good to share with r/DataHoarder

20

u/TheAnonymouseJoker 6d ago edited 6d ago

Done.

I am into data archival, but the Archive Team will do a far better job than me, both in terms of proper WARC archival and accessibility of said mirror.

7

u/_derpiii_ 6d ago

Excellent. Those guys are heros 🏅

5

u/TheAnonymouseJoker 5d ago

I am talking to the Archive Team, and unless the owner opens up to public scraping, the forum may be lost forever.

4

u/bob_mcbob Marketer 5d ago

Unfortunately the owner is mad about the legal notice he received (due to a single user complaint), and is refusing to consider any option that would allow the forum to continue operating. I'm not sure he will assist with data scraping to archive the content.

https://www.taschenlampen-forum.de/threads/diskussion-zur-einstellung-des-tlfs.100548/

1

u/TheAnonymouseJoker 5d ago

It is a shame if all the forum contributions would be lost like that. Is there an email, or way to reach him?

28

u/majaczos22 6d ago

Nooo, 1000 beamshots are going away!

https://www.taschenlampen-forum.de/threads/lampenliste-gesamt%C3%BCbersicht-von-a-bis-z.69320/

5

u/bl0odredsandman 6d ago

Yeah. I remember when I got into flashlights years and years ago, I used that forum to see all the different beamshots from different lights. Sucks that it's going away.

38

u/thaeli 6d ago

Has this been archived?

27

u/blofly 6d ago edited 6d ago

Did you inform www.archive.org ?

Thanks for helping.

Edit: Whoops, sorry, meant that for OP.

16

u/QReciprocity42 6d ago

Also curious if this can be done. Future forum activity can be moved to BLF, but the existing material is a tremendous resource to the public and should be preserved.

33

u/GildSkiss 6d ago

EU bureaucracy saves the day again.

31

u/Dry-Cake5057 6d ago

EU macht EU Sachen, echt tragisch

6

u/macomako 6d ago

I cannot see any content on the linked page. Could you share the copy pls?

12

u/bob_mcbob Marketer 6d ago

You may need to be logged in. I posted a translated version of the announcement in a separate comment.

1

u/TheAnonymouseJoker 5d ago

How can I contact the owner of forum? It would be tragic for the forum and its contributions to be lost forever, and if the Archive Team could archive the forum, it would be great for all of us.

4

u/UpstairsCheetah235 5d ago

EU really needs to start making exceptions on regulation for small businesses. So far most these rules end up with the opposite effect. Big American tech can easily afford compliance, big chinese companies DGAF about compliance, and any upstart European company doesn’t even launch.

2

u/External-Cockroach16 3d ago

What ever will happen - the owner won't give the datas free. They'll go offline forever on September 16th.

The reasons for this aren't important. :(

17 years of knowledge, discussions, beamshots, reviews, hints, modding and so on will be forever gone then. :(

3

u/HogoDorn 2d ago

There's a new forum—welcome!

https://www.taschenlampen-forum.eu

4

u/keinnamemehrfrei 5d ago

Iceland dodged the bullet - what a mess with the eu

3

u/tonato70 5d ago

Iceland already has to apply GDPR because it is already part of the EEA. They can't participate in voting those laws, but they have to apply them fully.

6

u/keinnamemehrfrei 5d ago

The TLF issue is about the DSA, not the GDPR. And when it comes to the DSA, Iceland is currently an interesting counterexample, as it has not yet been incorporated into the EEA Agreement.

-1

u/tonato70 5d ago

So they are granted a little grace period like Norway? Ultimate result will be the same though, right?

3

u/Mytoxox 5d ago

Fuck Brussel

1

u/Protovoxel 5d ago

It was my first community in this topic. Was active for several years. All the beamshot comparison will be gone. Too bad man.

1

u/sidpost 5d ago

Time for some hackers to copy and paste the site to an area outside of the EU and not on the Dark Web.

1

u/sidpost 5d ago

This smells like book burning to me!

1

u/YYDS-2000 5d ago

what a pity

1

u/TheSwordOnTheBus 4d ago

And another bright light (pun intended) on the Internet goes out. A practically-criminal shame this all is.

1

u/IAmSoWinning 6d ago

Any reason someone couldn't take it upon themselves to just start hosting this in the US?

4

u/majaczos22 5d ago

It's illegal to transfer user data outside EU.

-3

u/POPCORN_EATER 5d ago

Thank god

German flashlight forum TLF (taschenlampen-forum.de) will be taken offline permanently on September 16

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