Comment by mytailorisrich
1 day ago
This is about the duties of a "category 1 service" under the Online Safety Act. Wikipedia is one mostly because of their size, I believe. These duties are quite onerous, and over the top (someone might say that the government is seeing adults are real "snowflakes" these days):
Large user-to-user services, known as Category 1 services, will be required to offer adult users tools which, if they choose to use, will give them greater control over the kinds of content they see and who they engage with online.
Adult users of such services will be able to verify their identity and access tools which enable them to reduce the likelihood that they see content from non-verified users and prevent non-verified users from interacting with their content. This will help stop anonymous trolls from contacting them.
Following the publication of guidance by Ofcom, Category 1 services will also need to proactively offer adult users optional tools, at the first opportunity, to help them reduce the likelihood that they will encounter certain types of legal content. These categories of content are set out in the Act and include content that does not meet a criminal threshold but encourages, promotes or provides instructions for suicide, self-harm or eating disorders. These tools also apply to abusive or hate content including where such content is racist, antisemitic, homophobic, or misogynist. The tools must be effective and easy to access. [1]
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/online-safety-act...
Only editors engage with each other on Wikipedia, right? Can they just ban sign up and edits by/from the UK?
Conducting risk assessments and impact assessments regularly. Providing transparency reports and cooperating fully with Ofcom.
This is the sort of regulatory compliance that has stifled European businesses for decades. Useless overhead.