Comment by chippiewill

16 days ago

I'm skeptical this goes anywhere legally speaking.

The categorisation regulations are a statutory instrument rather than primary legislation, so they _are_ open to judicial review. But the Wikimedia foundation haven't presented an argument as to why the regulations are unlawful, just an argument for why they disagree with them.

It should be noted that even if they succeed (which seems a long shot), this wouldn't affect the main thrust of the Online Safety Act which _is_ primary legislation and includes the bit making the rounds about adult content being locked behind age verification.

42 comments

chippiewill

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graemep  16 days ago

The problem with the focus being on porn behind age verification as the main effect, is that it ignores all the other effects. Closing community forums and wikis. Uncertainty about blog comments.

It is actually (as noted in many previous discussion about the Online Safety Act) pushing people to using big tech platforms, because they can no longer afford the compliance cost and risk of running their own.

  • ekianjo  16 days ago

    > pushing people to using big tech platforms

    so big tech platforms will cheerfully embrace it. as expected, major players love regulations.

  • hnlmorg  15 days ago

    Those sort of sites already had better moderation than big tech because they’d have their own smaller team of volunteer moderators.

    I suspect any smaller site that claims the Online Safety Act was a reason they closed, needed to close due to other complications. For example an art site that features occasional (or more) artistic nudes. Stuff that normal people wouldn’t consider mature content but the site maintainers wouldn’t want to take the risk on.

    Either way, whether I’m right or wrong here, I still think the Online Safety Act is grotesque piece of legislation.

    • graemep  15 days ago

      I think the impact is a lot worse than that. There are still compliance costs especially for volunteer run sites. Ofcom says these are negligible, because they its unlikely to be more than "a few thousand pounds". Then there are the risks if something goes wrong if you have not incorporated.

      HN has already has discussed things like the cycling forum that hit down. lobste.rs considered blocking UK IPs. I was considering setting up a forum to replace/complement FB groups I help admin (home education related). This is enough to put me off as I do not want the hassle and risk of dealing with it.

      I think what you are missing is that this does not just cover things like porn videos and photos. That is what has been emphasised by the media, but it covers a lot of harmful content: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/50/section/62

      It took a fair amount of legal analysis to establish blog comments are OK (and its not clear whether off topic ones are). Links to that and other things here: https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/06/uk_online_safety_act_...

      5 replies →

  • mytailorisrich  15 days ago

    I am very skeptical that the Online Safety Act forces community forums and wikis to close. By and large the Act forces forums to have strong moderation and perhaps manual checks before publishing files and pictures uploaded by users, and that's about it.

    Likewise, I suspect that most geoblocks are out of misplaced fear not actual analysis.

    • ijk  15 days ago

      It has caused many community forums to close, past tense.

      Many cited the uncertainty about what is actually required, the potential high cost of compliance, the danger of failing to correctly follow the rules they're not certain about, and the lack of governmental clarity as significant aspects of their decision to close.

      The fear may be misplaced, but the UK government has failed to convince people of that.

      2 replies →

    • freeone3000  15 days ago

      “Strong moderation” and “manual checks” and pro-active age verification are exactly the burdens that would prevent someone from running a small community forum.

      6 replies →

pjc50  16 days ago

More detail: https://medium.com/wikimedia-policy/wikipedias-nonprofit-hos...

It seems to be a fairly standard judicial review: if OFCOM(?) class them as "category 1", they are under a very serious burden, so they want the categorization decision reviewed in court.

  • karel-3d  15 days ago

    I think it will be very hard to write a definition that excludes wikipedia and includes (and I am quoting the article) "many of the services UK society is actually concerned about, like misogynistic hate websites".

    Very interested how this goes.

ZiiS  16 days ago

I can't see any language in the statutory instrument suggesting anyone had any intention of applying it to Wikimedia? The most likely outcome is the court will reassure them of that. This might help other people running similar websites by citing the case rather than having to pay for all the experts but isn't going to magically stop it applying to Meta as intended.

Quarrel  15 days ago

I'm not sure what you're basing that on?

Have the court filings become available?

Of course, the random PR in the OP isn't going to go through their barrister's arguments.

While I agree that the main thrust of the legislation won't be affected either way, the regulatory framework really matters for this sort of thing.

Plus, win or lose, this will shine a light on some the stupidity of the legislation. Lots of random Wikipedia articles would offend the puritans.