Comment by thomastjeffery
1 day ago
Yet this looks nothing like their reaction to SOPA and PIPA. They even explicitly state that Wikimedia is not against the legislation on the whole.
> The Wikimedia Foundation shares the UK government’s commitment to promoting online environments where everyone can safely participate. The organization is not bringing a general challenge to the OSA as a whole, nor to the existence of the Category 1 duties themselves. Rather, the legal challenge focuses solely on the new Categorisation Regulations that risk imposing Category 1 duties (the OSA’s most stringent obligations) on Wikipedia.
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I personally find it rather frustrating that Wikimedia is suddenly so willing to bend over for fascists. Where did their conscience go?
> Where did their conscience go?
Aaron Swartz is no longer with us.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz#Opposition_to_the...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz#Death
The old generation of idealists grew up and we raised no one to replace them. I know because I'm in that emotionally and ideologically stunted generation.
Why did they raise no one to replace them?
A lot of 1990s tech optimists thought that people with awful opinions were the unfortunate victims of a lack of access to books and education; and the strict gatekeeping of broadcast media by the powerful.
This new multi-media technology was going to give everyone on the planet access to a complete free university education, thousands of books, and would prevent the likes of Chinese state-run media suppressing knowledge about Tienanmen Square.
And after they receive this marvellous free education, all the communists and nazis and religious nutjobs will realise they were wrong and we were right. We won't need any censorship though, in our enlightenment-style marketplace of ideas, rational argument is all that's needed to send bad ideas packing, and the educated audience will have no trouble seeing through fallacies and trickery.
Also the greater education will mean everyone can get better jobs and make more money, and with this trade with China we're just ramping up they'll see our brilliant democratic system, and peacefully adopt it. The recently fallen Soviet Union is of course going to do the same, and it's going to go really well. We'll all live happily ever after.
This Bill Clinton chap has a federal budget surplus, now we're not spending all that money on the cold war, so we'll get that national debt paid off in no time too.
You may be able to figure out why this particular brand of optimism isn't so fashionable these days.
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Economic infantilisation and the new productised and externalised way of being brought upon by social media. We were an autopilot society that thought it had no need to restate values or keep innovating. The things that used to matter like community bonds and values dont matter literally because we cant see them in an instagram post and they may as well not exist-
plus the media and public sphere dysfunction we see through the fact that we haven't seen any new celebrities or public intellectuals elected in the past 10 years, telling people ideas don't get you anywhere.
This will only get worse as we are at the end of progression of this culture and cultural consensus has split between educated legacy media and uneducated young new media which develops its own often incorrect assumptions about the world- like about mental illness assumptions. It's cultural ouroboros- we're destroying parts of ourselves because they've grown too different. We need a new way forward and a new culture of contentment that champions the human.
If you've been paying attention to the subtext in news stories for the past couple of years you may have some idea why this is happening.
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>I personally find it rather frustrating that Wikimedia is suddenly so willing to bend over for fascists. Where did their conscience go?
I absolutely abhor the "Kids these days" sort of argument, but it does seem the case that we lowered the barrier of entry sufficiently in the tech sector that people who simply dont give a shit, or actively want to harm our values, now outnumber us greatly.
What has happened previously was we would rally around corporations and institutions that would generally work in our best interests. But the people driving those social goods in those entities are now the villains.
Not to mention all the mergers and acquisitions.
In Australia, during the internet filter debate, we had both a not for profit entity spending money on advertising, but also decently sized ISP's like iiNet working publicly against the problem. The not for profit was funded by industry, something that never happened again. And iiNet is now owned by TPG who also used to have a social conscience but have been hammered into the dust by the (completely non technical, and completely asinine bane of the internets existence and literal satan) ACCC and have no fight left in them for anything. When Teoh leaves or sells TPG, it will probably never fight a good fight ever again.
Its the same everywhere. We cant expect people to fight for freedom when the legislation just gets renamed and relaunched again after the next crisis comes out in the media. We lost internet filtration after christchurch, for absolutely no justifiable reason. And we lost the Access and Assistance fight despite having half the global tech industry tell our government to suck eggs.
The only real solution is to prep the next generation to fight back as best as possible, to help them ignore the doomsayers and help the right humans into the right places to deal with this shit.
> we lowered the barrier of entry sufficiently in the tech sector that people who simply dont give a shit, or actively want to harm our values, now outnumber us greatly.
I don't think it's a matter of number but activity. There are numerous ways that entities with no morals can make huge amounts of money by exploiting people online (via weaknesses in human psychology adapted for hunting on a savannah), both children and adults. It's hard to make money doing the opposite.
Hey hey hey.. hold on, wait a minuet. What did you just say about the ACCC. Those guys make sure we have good warranties and cracking down on scams. They are the good guys protecting us from the scammers and cooperate greed.
They also worked tirelessly at the behest of the largest 4 ISPs to ensure that the NBN would be as expensive and anti competitive as possible.
"suddenly"? Wikipedia has always supported fascist initiatives
I share your general frustration, but as an unabashed Wikimedia glazer, I have some potential answers:
1. They lost this legal challenge, so perhaps their UK lawyers (barristers?) knew that much broader claim would be even less likely to work and advised them against it. Just because they didn't challenge the overall law in court doesn't mean they wouldn't challenge it in a political sense.
2. The Protests against SOPA and PIPA[1] were in response to overreach by capitalists, and as such drew support from many capitalists with opposing interests (e.g. Google, Craigslist, Flickr, Reddit, Tumblr, Twitter, Wordpress, etc.). Certainly Reddit et al have similar general concerns with having to implement ID systems as they did about policing content for IP violations, but the biggest impact will be on minors, which AFAIK are far from the most popular advertising demo. Certainly some adult users will be put off by the hassle and/or insult, but how many, and for how long?
3. Wikimedia is a US-based organization, and the two major organizers of the 2012 protests--Fight for the Future[2] and the Electronic Frontier Foundation[3]--are US-focused as well. The EFF does have a blog post about these UK laws, but AFAICT no history of bringing legal and/or protest action there. This dovetails nicely with the previous point, while we're at it: the US spends $300B on digital ads every year, whereas the UK only spends $40B[4]. The per-capita spends are closer ($870/p v. $567/p), but the fact remains: the US is the lifeblood of these companies in a way that the UK is not.
4. More fundamentally, I strongly suspect that "big business is trying to ruin the internet by hoarding their property" is an easier sell for the average voter than "big government is trying to ruin the internet by protecting children from adult content". We can call it fascism all we like, but at the end of the day, people do seem concerned about children accessing adult content. IMHO YouTube brainrot content farms are a much bigger threat to children than porn, but I'm not a parent.
The final point is perhaps weakened by the ongoing AI debates, where there's suddenly a ton of support for the "we're protecting artists!" arguments employed in 2012. Still, I think the general shape of things is clear: Wikimedia stood in solidarity with many others in 2012, and now stands relatively alone.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_SOPA_and_PIPA
[2] https://www.fightforthefuture.org/
[3] https://www.eff.org/pages/legal-cases
[4] https://www.salehoo.com/learn/digital-ad-spend-by-country
> Just because they didn't challenge the overall law in court doesn't mean they wouldn't challenge it in a political sense.
That's my point, though. This is the perfect opportunity to do so, and they aren't doing it. Instead, they are picking the smallest possible battle they can. That decision alone makes waves.
> Certainly Reddit et al have similar general concerns with having to implement ID systems as they did about policing content for IP violations, but the biggest impact will be on minors.
That's ridiculous. ID systems endanger everyone, particularly the adults who participate. This issue isn't isolated from capitalism. These ID systems must be implemented and managed by corporations, whose greatest incentive is to collect and monetize data.
> We can call it fascism all we like, but at the end of the day, people do seem concerned about children accessing adult content.
The think-of-the-children argument is the oldest trick in the book. You are seriously asking me to take it at face value? No thank you.
> More fundamentally, I strongly suspect that "big business is trying to ruin the internet by hoarding their property" is an easier sell for the average voter than "big government is trying to ruin the internet by protecting children from adult content".
If people really are blind to the change that has happened right in front of them, then we should be spelling it out at every opportunity. This is my biggest concern with how Wikimedia is behaving: they are in a significant position politically, and are abdicating this crucial responsibility.
Some of it is probably about the scope of UK judicial review. Acts of Parliament are absolutely exempt from being struck down. The closest you can get is a "declaration of incompatibility" that a bill is incapable of being read in such a way as complying with the European Convention on Human Rights. If at all possible the courts will gloss and/or interpret hard to come up with a compliant reading. And an incompatibility declaration just suggests Parliament looks again: it doesn't invalidate a law by itself.
Executive acts, on the other hand, can be annulled or overturned reasonably straightforwardly, and this includes the regulations that flesh out the details of Acts of Parliament (which are executive instruments even when they need Parliamentary approval).
In short, judicial review is a practical remedy for a particular decision. "These regulations may unreasonably burden my speech" is potentially justiciable. "This Act could be used to do grave evil" isn't. If an act can be implemented in a Convention compatible way then the courts will assume it will until shown otherwise.
The consequences can look something like the report of this judgement. Yes, it looks like the regulations could harm Wikipedia in ways that might not be Convention compatible. But because interpretation and enforcement is in the hands of Ofcom, it's not yet clear. If they are, Wikipedia have been (essentially) invited to come back. But the regulations are not void ab inito.
Thanks for the detailed answers! Again, I share at least some of your underlying concern, and don't want that to be overshadowed. That said, some responses:
It looks like they've written three articles "strongly" opposing the "tremendous threat" posed by this bill: two when it was being considered[1,2] and another after it passed[3]. Yes, these articles are focused on the impact of the bill on Wikimedia's projects, but I think that's clearly a rhetorical strategy to garner some credibility from the notoriously-stuffy UK legislature. "Foreign nonprofit thinks your bill is bad in general" isn't exactly a position of authority to speak from (if you're thinking like a politician).
More recently, they've proposed the "Wikipedia test" to the public and to lawmakers (such as at the 2024 UN General Assembly[6]) that pretty clearly implicates this bill. The test reads as such: Before passing regulations, legislators should ask themselves whether their proposed laws would make it easier or harder for people to read, contribute to, and/or trust a project like Wikipedia.
I was more making a point about why social media companies aren't involved than justifying that choice for them on a moral level. I suspect you have stronger beliefs than I about the relative danger of your name being tied to (small subsets of-)your online activity, but regardless, Wikimedia agrees, writing in 2023 that the bill "only protects a select group of individuals, while likely exposing others to restrictions of their human rights, such as the right to privacy and freedom of expression."
It's still a valid argument. Again I wasn't really endorsing any position there, but I do think that in general the government should try to protect children. The only way I could imagine you disagreeing with that broad mandate is if you're a strong libertarian in general?
This, I think, is the fundamental disagreement: I just don't see them as being in that significant of a position. Given today's news I wouldn't be surprised to see them throw up a banner on the Wikipedia homepage and/or do a solo one-day blackout reminiscient of 2012, but even those drastic measures are pretty small beans.
The real nuclear option--blocking the UK from accessing Wikimedia sites--would certainly garner some attention, but it would cost them greatly in terms of good will, energy, and raw output from their (presumably quite significant) UK editor base. And when would it end? If the UK government chooses to ignore them, wouldn't it feel weird for Wikipedia to be blocked for years in the UK but remain accessible in brutal autocracies worldwide?
In the end, this feels like a job for UK voters, not international encyclopedias. I appreciate the solidarity they've shown already, but implying that they are weak for "abdicating [their] crucial responsibility" seems like a step too far.
...IMHO. As a wikimedia glazer ;)
[1] March 2022: https://medium.com/wikimedia-policy/early-impressions-of-the...
[2] November 2022: https://medium.com/wikimedia-policy/deep-dive-the-united-kin...
[3] May 2023: https://diff.wikimedia.org/2023/05/11/good-intentions-bad-ef...
[4] June 2023: https://medium.com/freely-sharing-the-sum-of-all-knowledge/p...
[5] September 2023: https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2023/09/19/wikimedia-fo...
[6] September 2024 & June 2025: https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2025/06/27/the-wikipedi... // https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2025/06/27/the-wikipedi...
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Three links from manifestly right-wing organisations decrying the lack of free speech on the left are not exactly convincing.
Linking from right-wing organizations does not make the facts presented in the articles less true… you should critique the content of the articles, not their origin.
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Pretty telling what speech on the left and the right looks like.
For the left, it's:
> Eugene Debs, for example, was sentenced to 10 years in prison under the Espionage Act after he spoke at a rally for peaceful workers telling them they were “fit for something better than slavery and cannon fodder”... Likewise, in 1919, Schenck v. U.S., the Supreme Court upheld the conviction of a Socialist Party member after he sent anti-war leaflets to men across the country.
For the right, it's:
> It will not defend the First Amendment rights of pro-life pregnancy centers [...to trick desparate women into receiving useless propaganda instead of the medical care they were seeking] or small religious businesses [...to deny service based on rank bigotry]. It no longer defends religious freedom [...to deny adoptions to LGBT couples[1], to fire employees for receiving or abetting an abortion[2], and to perjure yourself in a senate hearing about your intention to make legal rulings on the basis of religion[3]], although it once did. And in a leaked internal memo, the ACLU takes the position that free speech denigrating “marginalized groups” should not be defended.
If you're ever in a position to write "marginalized groups" in scare-quotes, perhaps that should be a wakeup call...
P.S. It doesn't help that your links are to 1) a libertarian thinktank founded to oppose the New Deal, 2) the Heritage Foundation and 3) an opinion piece by Alan Dershowitz. The first is extremely biased, and the latter two are just plain bad-faith.
[1] https://www.lgbtmap.org/kids-pay-the-price
[2] https://laist.com/shows/take-two/heres-the-last-of-the-bills...
[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/feinstein-the-...
The next time somebody says the phrase "Fire in a crowded theater" to support free speech restrictions, remind them that this phrase comes from Schenck vs US (argued 1919), which was about whether you have the right to distribute antiwar pamphlets.
At issue was whether antiwar speech can constitutionally be punished as espionage, which can be a capital crime under US law, punishable by death.
Whether you're allowed to to speak in ways that Congress considers too close to 'creating a clear and present danger of a significant evil that Congress has power to prevent'. Whether you could criminalize speech deemed disloyal or detrimental to the war effort.
Woodrow Wilson was the 28th president of the United States, serving from 1913 to 1921, and among other things, his administration dramatically expanded the precedential authority of the federal government in authoritarian directions, particularly with regards to things like surveillance and censorship. The Sedition Act of 1918 "broadened the scope of prohibited speech to include any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the U.S. government, flag, or military", and the Espionage Act of 1917 "made it illegal to interfere with the military, obstruct recruitment, or convey information that could harm the U.S. or aid its enemies. "
It took the Warren and Burger courts of the 60's/70's to reel this back in and re-establish many of the Constitutional rights you were taught about. It's unclear whether the pendulum will swing back the other way precedentially, but doubtless Trump would prefer carte blanche to target dissidents.
Neither the left or the right wants anything. People inside each group do. This is an important distinction that pundits love to invert.
I have a very hard time taking any of your sources seriously, particularly when it comes to any categorization of "the left".
FEE is a conservative libertarian think tank. Heritage Foundation is the most infamous conservative think tank. Alan Dershowitz is most famous for defending Harvey Weinstein, Donald Trump, and Jeffrey Epstein, and decided to leave the Democratic party as soon as it showed signs of becoming a bit less Zionist.
These are prime examples of pundits who love to frame the "the left" as a singular cohesive boogeyman. You may not intentionally be picking on the left, but the sources you have cited make a living picking on a version of "the left" that they invented.
Then I recommend you have a look at the polling numbers on free speech presented here: https://www.natesilver.net/p/free-speech-is-in-trouble
I am so much not willing to listen to what heritage specifically has to say on the topic. Could you pick less hypocritical and less eager to lie resources to "definitely not pick up on left totally both side"? Heritage foundation literally where Project 2025 was created and published.
Also, I definitely love the track record of "the measure of free speech is your willingness to defend nazi and never use words to support the left":
> To be sure, the ACLU will still occasionally take a high profile case involving a Nazi or Klan member who has been denied freedom of speech, though there are now some on the board who would oppose supporting such right-wing extremists. But the core mission of the ACLU — and its financial priority — is to promote its left-wing agenda in litigation, in public commentary and, now, in elections. If you want to know the reason for this shift, [...]
Yeah, their litmus test is always willingness to defend nazi AND not have left like opinions. If you are aligned with right wing specifically, you are fine. Just dont you dare to have left like opinions. Total neutral.
Sure, here are some liberal leaning sources saying things you might not like if you believe these things, including vile things said by extremist groups, should be censored:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/06/us/aclu-free-speech.html
https://archive.is/TpU8Q
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/may/31/how-the-resurge...
Please note: I 100% abhor white supremacy and any kind of racism. But you can and should defend the right to free speech without agreeing with that speech.
We need to support the speech of all groups we detest - baby eaters, satanists, polygamists, racists, sexists, murderers, capitalists, Marxists, televangelists, etc. - in order to champion free speech for all. Once that freedom disappears, it won't come back. Then the systems of censorship and oppression will be used against us.
I'm LGBT. I know what it was like to grow up when my "lifestyle" was taboo. I know how easily and quickly society can change. I don't want to ever have my freedom removed or to be put into a box.
If you're uneasy about this, remember that freedom of speech does not mean freedom from judgement. If you say something disgusting, you'll lose credibility and business from most people. Crowds already effectively censor. But we don't need the government or public squares becoming thought police and building automated systems to muzzle and detain us. Once those systems get built, we're done for.
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I’m so tired of this false divide. Its the wealthy vs the rest of us.
I don’t want to go right or left. I want to move forward and leave this stupid, stupid mess behind.