> The government told the BBC it welcomed the High Court's judgment, "which will help us continue our work implementing the Online Safety Act to create a safer online world for everyone".
Demonstrably false. It creates a safer online world for some.
> In particular the foundation is concerned the extra duties required - if Wikipedia was classed as Category 1 - would mean it would have to verify the identity of its contributors, undermining their privacy and safety.
Some of the articles, which contain factual information, are damning for the UK government. It lists, for example, political scandals [1] [2]. Or information regarding hot topics such as immigration [3], information that the UK government want to strictly control (abstracting away from whether this is rightfully or wrongfully).
I can tell you what will (and has already) happened as a result:
1. People will use VPNs and any other available methods to avoid restrictions placed on them.
2. The next government will take great delight in removing this law as an easy win.
3. The likelihood of a British constitution is increasing, which would somewhat bind future parliaments.
The law was passed by the previous government and everyone assumed the next government would take great delight in reversing it.
I wouldn’t be so sure that any next government (which, by the way, there is still a non zero chance could be Labour) will necessarily reverse this. Maybe Reform would tweak the topics, but I’m not convinced any party can be totally trusted to reverse this.
Every single Labour politician who voted on this bill voted against it.
Peter Kyle was one such MP, and now he's making statements like:
> I see that Nigel Farage is already saying that he’s going to overturn these laws. So you know, we have people out there who are extreme pornographers, peddling hate, peddling violence. Nigel Farage is on their side.
It's maddening. The worst part is that they've somehow put me in the position of defending Nigel Farage.
> The law was passed by the previous government and everyone assumed the next government would take great delight in reversing it.
Unless a law is a mortal threat to the current party in power, it will not be repelled. Even so most likely they will try to wash it down instead of actually abolishing it.
If the current government reversed it, the 'oh think of the children' angle from the Tories/Reform against them would be relentless. I cant say they have been amazing at messaging as it is.
> I wouldn’t be so sure that any next government will necessarily reverse this.
Agreed. I think the supposed justifications for mass population-wide online surveillance, restrictions and de-anonymization are so strong most political parties in western democracies go along with what surveillance agencies push for once they get in power. Even in the U.S. where free speech & personal privacy rights are constitutionally and culturally stronger, both major parties are virtually identical in what they actually permit the surveillance state to do once they get in office (despite sometimes talking differently while campaigning).
The reason is that the surveillance state has gotten extremely good at presenting scary scenarios and examples of supposed "disaster averted because we could spy on everyone", or the alternative, "bad thing happened because we couldn't spy on everyone" to politicians in non-public briefings. They keep these presentations secret from public and press scrutiny by claiming it's necessary to keep "sources and methods" secret from adversaries. Of course, this is ridiculous because adversary spy agencies are certainly already aware of the broad capabilities of our electronic surveillance - it's their job after all and they do the same things to their own populations. The intelligence community rarely briefs politicians on individual operations or the exact details of the sources and methods which adversarial intelligence agencies would care about anyway. The vast majority of these secret briefings could be public without revealing anything of real value to major adversaries. At most it would only confirm we're doing the things adversaries already assume we're doing (and already take steps to counter). The real reason they hide the politician briefings from the public is because voters would be creeped out by the pervasive surveillance and domain experts would call bullshit on the incomplete facts and fallacious reasoning used to justify it to politicians.
Even if a politician sincerely intended to preserve privacy and freedom before getting in office, they aren't domain experts and when confronted with seemingly overwhelming (but secret) evidence of preventing "big bad" presented unanimously by intelligence community experts, the majority of elected officials go along. If that's not enough for the anti-privacy agencies (intel & law enforcement) to get what they want, there's always the "think of the children" arguments. It's the rare politician who's clear-thinking and principled enough to apply appropriate skepticism and measured nuance when faced with horrendous examples of child porn and abuse which the law enforcement/intelligence agency lobby has ready in ample supply and deploys behind closed doors for maximum effect. The anti-privacy lobby has figured out how to hack representative democracy to circumvent protections and because it's done away from public scrutiny, there's currently no way to stop them and it's only going to keep getting worse. IMHO, it's a disaster and even in the U.S. (where I am) it's only slightly better than the UK, Australia, EU and elsewhere.
The types of quotes get bandied about all the time, but I don't think they are accurate.
Politicians don't want to reduce their power, but politicians != governments. Lots of scary stuff actually empowers the civil service more than it empowers politicians. The main way politicians loose power is also not by the nature of the job changing, but by loosing elections.
They do if they are libertarian governments. Although it's popular to pretend they don't exist, there are plenty of examples of governments reducing their power over history. The American government is a good example of this having originally bound itself by a constitution that limits its own power. And Britain has in the past gone through deregulatory phases and shrunk the state.
Unfortunately at this time Britain doesn't really have a viable libertarian party. Reform is primarily focused on immigration, and the conservatives have largely withered on the vine becoming merely another center left party. So it's really very unclear if there are any parties that would in fact roll this back, although Nigel Farage is saying they would. His weakness is that he is not always terribly focused on recruiting people ideologically aligned to himself or even spelling out what exactly his ideology is. This is the same problem that the conservatives had and it can lead to back benches that are not on board with what needs to be done. Farage himself though is highly reasonable and always has been.
> 2. The next government will take great delight in removing this law as an easy win.
This is way too optimistic. Maybe they'll make it as a campaign promise but in all likelihood they'll be happy to have it without being blamed directly and the law will stay unless people put up enough of a stink that it's clear the alternative would be violent revolution.
Increasing government control over the population is not a partisan issue.
Wikipedia's not perfect, but its transparency and edit history make it a lot less susceptible to the kinds of anonymous abuse this law is supposedly targeting
> 3. The likelihood of a British constitution is increasing, which would somewhat bind future parliaments.
It would be an extraordinary amount of work for a government that can barely keep up with the fires of its own making let alone the many the world is imposing upon them. Along with that, watching the horse trading going on over every change they make - I don't see how they ever get a meaningful final text over the line.
It's not a mainstream political priority at all to my knowledge, so I'm mostly curious why you disagree!
They should just do the same thing many governments the world over have done - adopt a version of the US constitution. Easy, clean, and only massively ironic.
>> The government told the BBC it welcomed the High Court's judgment, "which will help us continue our work implementing the Online Safety Act to create a safer online world for everyone".
>Demonstrably false. It creates a safer online world for some.
Someone else said it, but oneconspiracy theory is that the UK is doing this to instill more "internet" literacy in their population (given that they'll go out of their way to do the free internet). I doubt that is the case, but that's a better cope for many than a dystopian government.
Why does this increase the likelihood of a (written I assume) constitution? I remember I saw a thing about David Cameron talking about wanting one. I think he also created a Supreme Court. I read into it and it seemed like there was no real reason for either a written constitution or a Supreme Court. Both of those things were popularized by the US's government so maybe that points to why.
None of what you said is true. The Judicial Committee of the House of Lords was renamed the Supreme Court and moved to a different building (but otherwise essentially unchanged) in 2005 under Tony Blair's Labour government.
The thieves no longer have to hack servers in order to obtain sensitive data, they can just set up an age-check company and lure businesses with attractive fees.
> People will use VPNs and any other available methods to avoid restrictions placed on them
Yeah, its hilarious if you watch or listen to BBC output you would think VPNs don't exist the way the BBC promote it as some sort of amazing new "think of the children" protection.
> 3. The likelihood of a British constitution is increasing, which would somewhat bind future parliaments.
As an repetition of and an aside to all those pointing out that there is a constitution, what may find gaining some momentum after this are calls for a Bill of Rights, something England used to have[1].
A British constitution makes no sense, power is delegated from the king not from the member states like in the US or Canada. The only way the UK could end up with a constitution that's meaningful and not performative would be after a civil war.
We already have a constitution. It just isn't a written constitution:
> The United Kingdom constitution is composed of the laws and rules
that create the institutions of the state, regulate the relationships
between those institutions, or regulate the relationship between the
state and the individual.
These laws and rules are not codified in a single, written document.
Source for that quote is parliamentary: https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/commons-com... - a publication from 2015 which considered and proposed a written constitution. But other definitions include unwritten things like customs and conventions. For example:
> It is often noted that the UK does not have a ‘written’ or ‘codified’ constitution. It is true that most countries have a document with special legal status that contains some of the key features of their constitution. This text is usually upheld by the courts and cannot be changed except through an especially demanding process. The UK, however, does not possess a single constitutional document of this nature. Nevertheless, it does have a constitution. The UK’s constitution is spread across a number of places. This dispersal can make it more difficult to identify and understand. It is found in places including some specific Acts of Parliament; particular understandings of how the system should operate (known as constitutional conventions); and various decisions made by judges that help determine how the system works.
One of the most interesting things about this legislation is where it comes from.
Primarily it was drafted and lobbied for by William Perrin OBE and Prof Lorna Woods at Carnegie UK[1], billed as an “independent foundation”.
William Perrin is also the founder of Ofcom. So he’s been using the foundation’s money to lobby for the expansion of his unelected quango.
It has also been suggested that one of the largest beneficiaries of this law, an age verification company called Yoti, also has financial ties to Carnegie UK.
It’s difficult to verify that because Yoti is privately held and its backers are secret.
It’s not as if anyone was surprised that teenagers can get round age blocks in seconds so there’s something going on and it stinks.
> It has also been suggested that one of the largest beneficiaries of this law, an age verification company called Yoti, also has financial ties to Carnegie UK.
> Ludicrous to call William Perrin “the founder” of Ofcom or refer to it as “his” quango
From his own Carnegie UK webpage linked above:
> William was instrumental in creating Ofcom, reforming the regulatory regimes of several sectors and kicking off the UK government’s interest in open data.
William was awarded an OBE for his highly influential work at Carnegie UK with Prof Lorna Woods that underpinned the UK government’s approach to regulating online services.
How is he not a founder of Ofcom?
That’s not a conspiracy theory, that’s just a verifiable statement of fact.
Or is it the use of the word founder you object to? If you prefer, “was instrumental in setting up and is closely related to the running of Ofcom”.
> If Ofcom permissibly determines that Wikipedia is a Category 1 service, and if the practical effect of that is that Wikipedia cannot continue to operate, the Secretary of State may be obliged to consider whether to amend the regulations or to exempt categories of service from the Act. In doing so, he would have to act compatibly with the Convention. Any failure to do so could also be subject to further challenge. Such a challenge would not be prevented by the outcome of this claim.
Basically, DENIED, DENIED, DENIED. Ofcom can keep the loaded gun pointed in Wikipedia's face, forever, and make as many threats as it likes. Only if it pulls the trigger does Wikipedia have a case.
Wikipedia should voluntarily remove itself from the UK entirely. No visitors, no editors.
> Wikipedia should voluntarily remove itself from the UK entirely. No visitors, no editors.
No, it should remove servers, employees and legal presence from the UK. It's not their job to block UK people from accessing it just because the UK regime want them to. Let the regime censors actually put an effort to block them. Let them make a Great Firewall of the UK, why make it easy for them?
Because, as someone living in the UK, the only way people here are going to realise what's going on and apply meaningful pressure to the government is if these organisations force us to. And because once they've given up on one country, they'll give up on the rest just as easily.
If they don't geoblock UK visitors then every person known to be involved with the operation of wikipedia potentially becomes an international fugitive and if they ever land on UK soil (or perhaps even Commonwealth soil), they could be jailed.
They don't need to make anything - that capability has been there for years. It was mostly used to block sites with IIoC, but they also blocked access to various piracy related sites and things like that.
IANAL, but international law precedent has allowed countries to prosecute web services for providing services to a country where that service is illegal. A French NGO successfully sued Yahoo! for selling Nazi memorabilia, a crime in France, despite Yahoo! being a US company [0], and this was upheld by US courts.
I generally agreed but this depends entirely on the US's willingness to cooperate with UK authorities. This would be the DOJ, FTC, etc. I dont think it would go straight the judiciary although someone can correct me on that if I'm wrong.
This is the part that gets me intrigued. It's quite difficult to parse, having so many conditionals... ifs, mays, woulds, "subject to further challenge", etc
It doesn't seem (to me) as definitive as some claim.
Hopefully, this ambiguous language opens the door for further challenges that may provide case law against the draconian Online Safety Act.
But this is how the law works? Even in the USA, the Supreme Court doesn't act on hypotheticals. They wait until someone brings an actual case.
Ofcom haven't ruled Wikipedia is Category 1. They haven't announced the intention to rule it Category 1. The Category 1 rules are not yet in effect and aren't even finalised. They aren't pointing any gun.
Wikipedia have a case that they shouldn't be Category 1 if that happens. But they went fishing in advance (or to use an alternative metaphor, they got out over their skis).
What else is the court to do but give a reassurance that the process will absolutely be amenable to review if the hypothetical circumstance comes to pass? That is what the section you are quoted says.
First, it's a statutory instrument that ministers will amend if it has unintended, severe consequences.
Second, the rules in question have not been written yet and they are being written in conjunction with industry (which will include Wikipedia). Because Ofcom is an industry self-regulation body.
I remember an example where the UK Government decided it's OK to rip CDs you own (no, really, it wasn't legal until then), and codified that in law. The parasites that run the UK Music trade organisation appealed and found that the UK had not sufficiently consulted them before deciding to make the law.
So - ripping is completely illegal in the UK. Always has been, always will be. Never rip a CD, not even once. Keep paying all your fucking money to the UK Music member corporations and never think you own anything, not even once.
But it illustrates that the UK's law-making is subject to judicial review, and government cannot make laws or regulations without consulting those affected by them how much of a hardship it constitutes to them. The judge here is merely saying we haven't seen the harm yet, and Ofcom can keep threatening indefinitely to cause harm, Wikipedia only have a case when they do cause harm. By contrast, passing the law making CD ripping legal, UK Music argued, using an absolute load of bollocks they made up, that it immediately caused them harm.
Wikipedia has been introduced as the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Anyone can publish problematic material or false information. But it's also Wikipedia's greatest strength that it has been so open to basically everyone and that gave us a wide range of really good articles that rivaled the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Wikipedia is a product of the free internet. It is a product of a world that many politicians still don't understand. But those politicians still make laws that do not make sense, because they believe that something has to be done against those information crimes. And they also do it to score brownie points with their conservative voting base.
The internet has it's problems, no doubt about that. But what these laws do is to throw the baby out with the bath water. Actually, the water probably stays in, because it's not like those laws solve anything.
Attributing the actions being taken by the UK (and much of the EU) to a lack of understanding is a quite generous interpretation. That may have been true a generation ago, but it's not now.
Many of us think that they understand a free internet very well, specifically the threats it places on their uses (and abuses) of power, and that the laws are quite well designed to curtail that. The UK currently, without identity verification, arrests 30 people per day for things they say online.
I’ll add to this, no politician is on your side unless it means getting your vote to keep them in power. It’s hard to be an actual good person and get too far up in politics, especially in today’s environment.
So, yes, I believe they both want tracking to exist, because they both benefit massively from it.
Wikipedia has been introduced as the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Anyone can publish problematic material or false information.
But the top articles are always perma-locked and under curation. Considering how much traffic those articles receive relative to the more esoteric articles, the surface area of vandalizable articles that a user is exposed to is relatively low. Also to that end, vandalism has a low effort-to-impact ratio.
n=1 I’ve used Wikipedia for many years with no immediately noticeable false information. And of course all the “citation needed” marks are there. I trust Wikipedia to be correct, I expect it to be correct, and Wikipedia has earned my trust. Maybe I don’t read it enough to see any vandalism.
Compared to LLMs, it’s extremely striking to see the relative trust / faith people have in it. It’s pretty sad to see how little the average person values truth and correctness in these systems, how untrusted Wikipedia is to some, and how overly-trusted LLMs are in producing factually correct information to others.
> And they also do it to score brownie points with their conservative voting base.
Care to remind me what side of the political spectrum was desperately trying to silence all health-related discourse that did not match the government's agenda just a few years ago?
By "conservative" I mean less digitally-minded people who are typically older. You have these people on the left, in the center and on the right along the classical political axis.
Wikimedia should block UK access. That will get the attention of media and popularity contest politicians might change their mind.
Remember the "Repeal the Online Safety Act" petition? It has gotten over half a million signatures and the response from the government was a loud "no".
> The Government has no plans to repeal the Online Safety Act, and is working closely with Ofcom to implement the Act as quickly and effectively as possible to enable UK users to benefit from its protections.
Those petitions aren't really worth anything - governments have ignored ones with over six million signatures before.
And they also ignored this one a few years back that had just under 700,000 signatures to "make verified ID a requirement for opening a social media account":
Ironically, the primary reason they gave for rejecting it was:
> However, restricting all users’ right to anonymity, by introducing compulsory user verification for social media, could disproportionately impact users who rely on anonymity to protect their identity. These users include young people exploring their gender or sexual identity, whistleblowers, journalists’ sources and victims of abuse. Introducing a new legal requirement, whereby only verified users can access social media, would force these users to disclose their identity and increase a risk of harm to their personal safety.
The other point is that recent polls suggest the British public are overwhelmingly in support of this legislation [0], which is not reflected in most of the narrative we see online. Whether they support how it has been implemented is a different matter, but the desire to do something is clear.
I wish that we didn't always have to phrase things like this. Yes, it's true that the aforementioned folks may likely have more of a need for anonymity than I do as someone who isn't a member of any protected class; but that doesn't mean I don't have a legitimate right to it too. And, if this is the way we phrase things, when a government is in power that doesn't care about this (i.e. the present American regieme), the argument no longer has any power.
We shouldn't have to hide behind our more vulnerable peers in order to have reasonable rights for online free speech and unfettered anonymous communication. It is a weak argument made by weak people who aren't brave enough to simply say, "F** you, stop spying on everyone, you haven't solved anything with the powers you have and there's no reason to believe it improves by shoving us all into a panopticon".
Totalitarian neoliberalism sucks; your protest petition with six million signatures is filed as a Jira ticket and closed as WONTFIX, you can't get anyone on the phone to complain at, everyone in power is disposable and replaceable with another stooge who will do the same thing as their predecessor. Go ahead and march in the streets, the government and media will just declare your protest invalid and make the other half of the population hate you on demand.
It's quite right that petitions are (mostly) ignored in Parliamentary matters, IMHO.
MPs are elected to Parliament, they get input from their constituents. Bills are debated, revised, voted on multiple times. There are consultations and input from a board range of view points.
A petition is in effect trying to shout over all that process from the street outside.
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.
---
I personally find it rather frustrating that Wikimedia is suddenly so willing to bend over for fascists. Where did their conscience go?
IANAL, but I assume this could open Wikimedia leadership to charges of contempt and eventually lead to needing to avoid visiting the UK or other extraditing countries and potentially pave the way for asset seizures. You generally don't want to antagonize world power governments.
As ridiculous or absurd as this idea might seem, it's probably the most succinct and likely effective response to this kind of situation. The UK is betting the rest of the world doesn't reciprocate.
No, they should block with a very visible message, tailored to the british public. I know what that status message means, you know it, but the general public doesn't. They need the black page with big letters they used before with sopa/pipa/etc.
I wish all non-UK entities which may be affected by this law just dropped the UK. But unfortunately it seems they have too much money invested in not doing that.
But I'm sure even if that happened, the public consensus would just be "good riddance".
This after the gaffe with the postal services, we are going to see some innocent folks being branded.
In general, I think we need a shift in society to say "yea, screw those kids". We don't put 20km/h limits everywhere because there's a non-zero chance that we might kill a kid. Its the cost of doing business.
Having privacy MEANS that it is difficult to catch bad people. That is just the price. Just swallow it and live with it.
Problem with Wikipedia specifically going all-in on a UK block is, due to the licence, there's nothing to stop someone circumventing the block to make a OSA-compliant Britipedia mirror with minimal effort.
Problem is that all that most people want out of Wikipedia is ingested in LLMs and for unfathomable reasons people now go to those first already. So the general public might not even notice Wikipedia being inaccessible.
1) There are multiple posters on this site, they sometimes have contradictory opinions.
2) Lots of people like it when a company does an obviously good thing, and dislike it when a company does an obviously bad thing. I guess you’ve made a happy discovery: it turns out the underlying principle was something about what the companies were trying to accomplish, rather than some reflexive “American companies are bad” silliness.
Not to dismiss bee_rider's sibling comment, like at all, but: Wikimedia's nature and purpose might be distinguished from your generic "American" tech "company".
> Wikimedia should block UK access. That will get the attention of media and popularity contest politicians might change their mind.
It is a gamble. If people increasingly get their “encyclopedic” information via AI, then it might make almost no noise and then the govt will have even more leverage.
In the recent ChatGPT 5 launch presentation, ChatGPT 5 answered a question about how airplane wings produce uplift incorrectly, despite the corresponding Wikipedia page providing the correct explanation and pointing out ChatGPT’s explanation as a common misconception.
AI chatbots are only capable of outputting “vibe knowledge”.
Wikipedia is a moving target. Content today is not the content of yesterday or tomorrow. This is like saying all knowledge that humanity can gain has already been accomplished.
My personal test usage of AI is it will try to bull shit an answer even when you giving known bad questions with content that contradicts each other. Until AI can say there is no answer to bull shit questions it is not truly a viable product because the end user might not know they have a bull shit question and will accept a bull shit answer. AI at it's present state pushed to the masses is just an expensive miss-information bot.
Also, AI that is not open from bottom to top with all training and rules publicly published is just a black box. That black box is just like Volkswagen emissions scandal waiting to happen. AI provider can create rules that override the actual answer with their desired answer which is not only a fallacy. They can also be designed to financially support their own company directly or third party product and services paying them. A question about "diapers" might always push and use the products by "Procter & Gamble".
Despite having consumed all of Wikipedia, it still can't accurately answer many questions so I don't think it's relevance or value has waned. AI has not got anywhere near becoming an encyclopedia and it never will whilst it can't say I don't know something (which Wikipedia can do) and filter the fact from the fiction, which Wikipedia does uses volunteers.
> Wikimedia should block UK access. That will get the attention of media and popularity contest politicians might change their mind.
Or they could respect the democratic decisions of the countries they do business in?
I'm quite critical of the implementation of this legislation but the idea of an American company throwing their weight around trying to influence policy decisions in the UK gives me the ick.
Fair enough if the regulations mean they just don't want to do business there but please don't block access to try and strong arm the elected government of another nation.
Well, that would be tricky, since Wikipedia is not a business, and is nor is it specifically American. (Other than a foundation in the US that runs the servers) . There are Wikipedias in many of the world's languages!
If the UK effectively bans public wikis above a certain size (even if by accident), then it is the law of the land that Wikipedia is banned. Or at least the english wikipedia, which is indeed very large. And if it is banned, then it must block access for the uk, under those conditions. Depending on the exact rules, possibly the uk could make do with the Swahili wikipedia?
That said, the problem here is that it is a public wiki of a certain size. One option might be for Wikipedia to implement quotas for the UK, so that they don't fall under category 1 rules.
Another option would be to talk with Ofcon and get things sorted that way.
You call it strong arming, I call it malicious compliance. Wikipedia hosts images, it "may contain pornographic material". Make anyone trying to search up a top 5 website see it before their eyes on how this isn't just a way to affect pornhub.
>respect the democratic decisions
Let the peope have a say in the going ons instead of lying to get elected, and maybe we can call it democratic again.
Or they should not do business in them. To me this means block access. If you don't then they're supposed to block access to you anyway so who is strong arming who?
> Or they could respect the democratic decisions of the countries they do business in?
Well, the OSA was put into law by the Tories in 2023. The democratic decision of the UK was that they resoundingly rejected what the Tories were doing in the landslide win for Labour in the 2024 GE. I'd quite like UKGOV to respect the democratic decisions of the country and if they won't, I'm quite happy for other people to push back via the courts, public opinion, etc.
> Or they could respect the democratic decisions of the countries they do business in?
They do that by staying out of such countries. Many US companies don't want to work with EU GDPR and just block all european IPs, wikipedia has full right to leave UK. They are under no obligations to provide service to them in the same was as pornhub is under no obligation to provide services in eg. a country that would require them to disclose IP addresses of all viewers of gay porn, etc.
Saying that it was a democratic decision without people actually being asked if they want that (referendum) is just weaseling out instead of directly pointing out that it's a bad policy that very few brits actually wanted. Somehow no one uses the same words when eg. trump does something (tarifs, defunding, etc.), no one is talking about democratic decisions of americans then.
Wikipedia has the full right to say "nope, we're not playing that game" and pulling out, even if an actual majority of brits want that.
Is it "democratic" when both parties agree on everything of substance and elections don't change anything no matter who wins? Because that's how "democracy" has worked in the UK for at least as long as I've been alive.
Also, no-one asked for this bill, both parties support it, it received basically no debate or scrutiny and was presented as a fait accompli. Where's the democracy exactly?
The correct time for major service providers to shift their weight and start pulling out of any jurisdiction necessary to get their point across has already come and gone. The second best time would be as soon as possible.
Unfortunately, the Internet world we live in today isn't the one I grew up in, so I'm sure things will just go according to plan. Apparently a majority of Britons polled support these rules, even though a (smaller) majority of Britons also believe they are ineffective at their goals[1]. I think that really says a lot about what people really want here, and it would be hard to believe anyone without a serious dent in their head really though this had anything at all to do with protecting children. People will do literally anything to protect children, so as long as it only inconveniences and infringes on the rights of the rest of society. They don't even have to believe it will work.
And so maybe we will finally burn the house to roast the pig.
I remember my mother watching a news segment on TV about the subject of online identity verification several months ago, and she commented that she supported it because "kids shouldn't be looking at these things." I asked her if she believed it's a parents responsibility to parent their children and block childrens' access to unsavory things, or if she felt it might be dangerous to tie a persons legal identity to what they do on the internet, and her face kind of glazed over and she said "no?"
The average person is not thinking about the ways in which legislation can be abused, or in how it oversteps its "stated purpose", or how it can lead to unintended consequences. I remember the news segment saying something to the tune of "new legislation aims to prevent children from viewing pornography", which is a deliberately misinformative take on these kinds of legislation.
The current political atmosphere of the western world is edging towards technofascism at an alarming rate - correlating online activities to real-world identities (more than they already are via the advertisement death cult (read: industry)) is dangerous. A persons political beliefs, national status, health status, personal associations, interests, activities, etc. are all potential means of persecution. Eventually, the western world will see (more) TLAs knocking on doors and asking for papers and stepping inside homes. They're going to forensically analyse computers belonging to average people (which government agencies are already doing at border checkpoints in the US) to weed out political dissidents or people targetted for persecution.
Things are going to get exponentially worse for everyone, and nobody is trying to stop it because the average person is uninformed, uninterested, and - worst of all - an absolute fucking idiot.
I think this is actually a better place to draw the line than the EU’s Digital Services Act, for example. It's just the UK. Blacking out service for EU would be a more bitter pill to swallow.
In Russia there is a plan to make special SIM cards for children, that would not allow registration in social networks. Isn't it better than UK legislation?
The whole idea that every site or app must do verification is stupid. It would be much easier and better to do verification at the store when buying a laptop, a phone or a SIM card. The verification status can be burned in firmware memory, and the device would allow only using sites and apps from the white list. In this case website operators and app developers wouldn't need to do anything and carry no expenses. This approach is simpler and superior to what UK does. If Apple or Microsoft refuse to implement restricted functionality for non-verified devices, they can be banned and replaced by alternative vendors complying with this proposal. It is much easier to force Apple and Microsoft - two rich companies - to implement children protection measures than thousands of website operators and app developers.
Rare case of Russian doing something more honestly. Implementing it as a device flag sent to websites, and making it easy to set for the device of any minor, is an elegant and unintrusive solution.
If you get w3.org and major browser and os vendors in on it, it simply becomes a legally enforced an universal parental control without much drawbacks.
But that would not permit the complete tracking of identity of all individuals in a country with their ptivate Internet activity and political stance.
And that's a massive loss to the true purpose of any law pretending to protect children; Just like the multiple attempts to outlaw encryption or scan all private or messages.
In case with Windows laptop, the verification proof might be for example, a digitally signed serial number of the motherboard (and the OS is itself signed to prevent tampering). While it's possible to work around this, an average kid or adult is unlikely to do it. And in case with a phone there is almost zero chance to hack it.
I don't understand your comment, the government knows which sites you visit anyway because it can see the SNI field in HTTPS traffic.
The main point is that the verification is done on the device. The device has a digitally signed flag, saying whether it is owned by an adult user or not. And the OS on the device without the flag allows using only safe apps and websites sending a "Safe: yes" HTTP header. User doesn't need to send your ID to random companies, doesn't need to verify at every website, and website operators and app developers do not need do anything and do not need to do verification - they are banned from unverified devices by default. It is better for everyone.
Also, as I understand the main point of the Act is to allow removing the content the government doesn't like in a prompt manner, for which my proposal is not helpful at all.
Coming back to London for a spell having lived abroad, I see speech supporting a non violent protest group banned, and find my myself firing up a VPN to avoid dragnet data collection.
Terrorism Act 2000 and 2006
Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006
Investigator Powers Act 2016
Online Safety Act 2023
There has been a raft of legislation both permitting and mandating digital monitoring while increasingly prohibiting types of speech. Many of these laws with overly broad definitions and large amounts of discretion.
I think the better option is wikipedia to pull all operations out of the UK that might be there and NOT block UK IP addresses. Stand up for the British people, thumb their nose at the British government. Let the UK put up a "Great Firewall of Great Britain" so the British people understand how close their government is flirting with fascism, while they still have time to remove the fascist leaning politicians.
For the record, I'm not actually against age verification for certain content. But it would have to be:
1) private - anonymous (don't know who is requesting access) and unlinkable (don't know if the same user makes repeated requests or is the same user on other services).
2) widely available and extremely easy to register and integrate.
The current situation is that it's not easy, or private, or cheap to integrate. And the measures they say they will accept are trivially easy to bypass - so what's the point?
I worked in a startup that satisfied point 1 back in 2015. The widely available bit didn't come off though when we ran out of runway.
China is doing great. Not saying the UK will do well, just that authoritarian regimes can be successful as states although not great for the commoners.
Leaving the market never works - in Russia, once another Western site or app gets blocked, several local competitors instantly pop out. That's how the market works, there are always people hungry for money.
It would shield them from legal liability which is more than nothing.
That is the primary reason to ban UK visitors.
They do seem to be considering banning only users after the 7 millionth - 1 visitor every month to avoid being classified as category 1 instead. That would let them avoid some of the most onerous parts of the OSA that would require stripping anonymity from editors and censoring whatever Ofcom says is "misinformation" and "disinformation."
The UK is spearheading this charge, but if they are successful it will have paved the way for many more governments to embrace these policies. How this plays out is important for people living in every western country.
The US has been implementing similar bans sporadically as well. It's being done on a state-by-state basis due to the limited federal power structure of our government making it more difficult for minority power groups like fascists to push legislation.
I do believe the social factors leading to support for these bans are quite a bit different, but the core minds behind them are of the same creed.
I'm really confused about what would realistically happen if Wikimedia just decided to ignore those regulations.
They have surely ignored demands to censor Wikipedia in more authoritarian countries. What makes the UK different? Extradition treaties? Do they even apply here?
I have the same confusion about Signal's willingness to leave Europe if chat control is imposed[1], while still providing anti-censorship tools for countries like Iran and China. What makes the European laws they're unwilling to respect different from the Iranian laws they're unwilling to respect?
> They have surely ignored demands to censor Wikipedia in more authoritarian countries. What makes the UK different? Extradition treaties? Do they even apply here?
The UK has the authority to arrest them (anyone who owns a website) if they ever set foot in the UK if they feel they either haven't censored it adequately enough or refuse to do so.
It's one of the reasons why Civitai geoblocked the country.
Yes, there are unilateral policies and treaties that let the US and the UK collaborate in legal action (going through US institutions to judge them), some of them referenced in https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal/Legal_Policies -- a keyword might be letters rogatory
Wikimedia also seems to have a presence in the UK https://wikimedia.org.uk/ that presumably would be affected.
In most cases they might have enough pull to get folks blacklisted by payment processors, but wikimedia in particular might win that one.
- Employees become accountable for their company's actions
- Wikimedia could be blocked
- Other kinds of sanctions (e.g. financial ones) could be levied somehow
In practice what will likely happen is Wikimedia will comply: either by blocking the UK entirely, making adjustments to be compliant with UK legislation (e.g. by making their sites read-only for UK-users - probably the most extreme outcome that's likely to occur), or the as-yet unannounced Ofcom regulations they've preemptively appealed actually won't apply to Wikimedia anyway (or will be very light touch).
Having moved out of the uk many years ago, being banned from there, may not be such a bad thing.
The worst thing is, people will vote out the labour government, and the tory bastards (who will say they are 'the party of freedom) will tell the country "Well, it wasnt us".
.... so far it is. Current politicians are certainly working at the state level to stop anonymous internet usage. Currently limited to pr0n sites, but you can bet that's just the first notch of increased heat on that poor frog in the cooking pot
The whole idea that the UK government, or anyone, can distinguish between "worthy" and "unworthy" exceptions is absurd in itself. The fact that they recognize there are exceptions blows a hole in the whole thing.
The OSA is already written such that only very large sites are potentially caught by the most onerous rules (at least 7 million MAU for Category 1; at least 3 million MAU for Category 2B). Smaller sites are automatically exempted.
This isn't to say that the OSA is a universally good thing, or that smaller sites won't be affected by it. However, this request for judicial review wasn't looking to carve out any special cases for specific large sites in favour of smaller sites.
No, they're not. I don't know why people keep repeating this "7 million active users limit" idea, it's nowhere to be found in the actual rules. Tiny forums have already had to close because they didn't want to deal with the legal risk:
Quite. Sites that have resources and influence will be fine - they can either comply with the rules or will be given soft exemptions. It's small and new communities that will suffer.
I was just vacationing in the UK last week and ran into this ridiculous thing trying to browse (entirely non-pornographic, fwiw) Reddit threads. Which I opted not to read rather than going through the hassle and privacy breach.
Also got to experience the full force of the cookie law, which I hadn't realized I was only seeing a fraction of here in Canada.
Cheap VPNs are only a temporary solution. I doubt that the EU and the UK will abstain from following China's and Russia's example in slowly locking down means of anonymization / obfuscation.
Much of it comes from GDPR law which was passed prior to brexit. After brexit, the UK kept most of the regulation under the "UK GDPR", meaning it does apply in the UK as well.
I don't understand why Wikipedia would fall under Category 1. Am I looking at the wrong thing, or does the definition in 3.(1) not require the service to use an algorithmic recommendation system (which Wikipedia does not do)?
> Definition of content recommender systems: Having any “algorithm” on the site that “affects” what content someone might “encounter”, is seemingly enough to qualify popular websites for Category 1. As written, this could even cover tools that are used to combat harmful content. We, and many other stakeholders, have failed to convince UK rulemakers to clarify that features that help keep services free of bad content — like the New Pages Feed used by Wikipedia article reviewers—should not trigger Category 1 status. Other rarely-used features, like Wikipedia’s Translation Recommendations, are also at risk.
> Content forwarding or sharing functionality: If a popular app or website also has content “forwarding or sharing” features, its chances of ending up in Category 1 are dramatically increased. The Regulations fail to define what they mean by “forwarding or sharing functionality”: features on Wikipedia (like the one allowing users to choose Wikipedia’s daily “Featured Picture”) could be caught.
I agree, it does seem odd. They do promote bits of their content on the main page, I assume with an algorithm, but it's hardly like a social media feed.
Adding to what others said, they can just let UK block Wikipedia, but as a foundation that tries to share knowledge I think they're obliged to try avoid that. So they're doing just that right now, by challenging the law.
Post reads: "Periodic reminder that Wikipedia has a squillion times more money than they need to operate the actual website, and all marginal donations go to the fake paper-shuffling NGO that attached itself to the organization for the purpose of feeding on donations from rubes."
Quoted post reads: "I have no interest in giving Wikipedia money to blow on fake jobs for ovecredentialed paper-pushers, but if the banner said “Jimmy Wales created Wikipedia and he’d like to buy a yacht” then I’d pull out my wallet immediately."
Long-time WP contributor and apologist here. I still think Wikipedia does more good than bad (for all its sins), is the greatest collaborative human work of our time, and there is some merit to the idea of having a giant pile of money to be able to fight government-scale battles like this one. But the story of the bureaucrats settling in and leeching donations at scale is basically accurate.
I've contributed content to Wikipedia and broadly agree with the sentiment. Users are guilted into thinking donations go towards the cost of serving the encyclopedia, which is not really where the money goes.
“Wikipedia is one of the best resources humanity has ever produced” and “The Wikimedia Foundation spends money frivolously while soliciting donations with messages that make users think their money is going towards the project they actually care about” are not statements which are incompatible with each other.
Wikimedia does by and large an OK job (the endowment they set up in particular was a great move), but it’s incredibly bloated in ways that should be curtailed before it gets worse. It’s reasonable to want better for a resource as important as Wikipedia.
Correct, it is especially of note given the publicity of Wikimedias funding and balances.
There is a million more greedy companies than Wikimedia, there is also other places that could use your money though, i.e Internet Archive, which is always desperate for donations.
To me, that judgment reads like a fairly strong warning to Ofcom. The outcome section makes it clear that although the request for judicial review has been refused at present, that refusal is predicated on the fact that Ofcom has currently not ruled that Wikipedia is a Category 1 service. If Ofcom were to rule that Wikipedia is a C1 service, the Wikimedia foundation would have grounds to request a review again -- and, between the lines, that request might well succeed.
So, is Wikipedia really a Category 1 service? From https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukdsi/2025/9780348267174, it seems to come down to whether Wikipedia is a site which uses a "content recommender system", where that term is defined as:
> a system, used by the provider of a regulated user-to-user service in respect of the user-to-user part of that service, that uses algorithms which by means of machine learning or other techniques determines, or otherwise affects, the way in which regulated user-generated content of a user, whether alone or with other content, may be encountered by other users of the service
There's plenty of flexibility in that definition for Ofcom to interpret "content recommender system" in a way that catches Facebook without catching Wikipedia. For instance, Ofcom could simply take the viewpoint that any content recommendation that Wikipedia engages in is not "in respect of the user-to-user part of that service."
After today's judgement, and perhaps even before, my own bet is that this is exactly the route Ofcom will take.
If Ofcom permissibly determines that Wikipedia is a Category 1 service, and if the practical effect of that is that Wikipedia cannot continue to operate, the Secretary of
State may be obliged to consider whether to amend the regulations or to exempt categories of service from the Act. In doing so, he would have to act compatibly with
the Convention. Any failure to do so could also be subject to further challenge. Such a challenge would not be prevented by the outcome of this claim.
Seems pretty logical.
Again I think people outside of the UK perceive Ofcom to be a censor with a ban hammer. It's an industry self-regulation authority -- backed by penalties, yes, but it favours self-regulation. And the implementation is a modifiable statutory instrument specifically so that issues like this can be addressed.
In a perfect world would this all be handled with parental oversight and on-device controls? Yeah, maybe. But on-device parental controls are such a total mess, and devices available so readily, that UK PAYG mobile phone companies have already felt compelled (before the law changed) to block adult content by default.
ETA: I am rate-limited so I will just add that I am in the UK too. Not that this is relevant to the discussion. There is no serious UK consensus for overturning this law; the only party that claims that as a position does not even have the support of the majority of its members. I do not observe this law to be censorship, because as an adult I can see what I want to see, I just have to prove I am an adult. Which is how it used to work with top shelf magazines (so I am told! ;-) )
I suppose it's not really the done thing to say this, but if you disagree with me, say something, don't just downvote.
> The government told the BBC it welcomed the High Court's judgment, "which will help us continue our work implementing the Online Safety Act to create a safer online world for everyone".
Suppression of information is not safety, it’s control.
At least wikipedia has an out in the legislation by disabling content recommendation engines for UK users, this includes:
1. “You may be interested in…” search suggestions on the Wikipedia interface—these are algorithmic, content-based recommendations.
2. Editor suggestion tools that propose pages to edit, based on prior activity. Academic systems helping newcomers with article recommendations also qualify.
Most links within articles—like “See also” sections or hyperlinks—are static and curated by editors, not algorithmically chosen per user. That means they do not meet the recommender system definition.
The legislation text for reference:
"Category 1 threshold conditions
3.—(1) The Category 1 threshold conditions(10) are met by a regulated user-to-user service where, in respect of the user-to-user part of that service, it—
(a)(i)has an average number of monthly active United Kingdom users that exceeds 34 million, and
(ii)uses a content recommender system, or
(b)(i)has an average number of monthly active United Kingdom users that exceeds 7 million,
(ii)uses a content recommender system, and
(iii)provides a functionality for users to forward or share regulated user-generated content(11) on the service with other users of that service.
(2) In paragraph (1), a “content recommender system” means a system, used by the provider of a regulated user-to-user service in respect of the user-to-user part of that service, that uses algorithms which by means of machine learning or other techniques determines, or otherwise affects, the way in which regulated user-generated content of a user, whether alone or with other content, may be encountered by other users of the service.
"
Shameful that Wikipedia are using this as another big yellow box "We need your money or we will have to shut down" message (and if anyone's not already aware, they really, really don't need to be doing this - they are not in any kind of financial struggle).
To all of the commenters recommending that Wikipedia block UK visitors: This is incredibly short-sighted in the age of LLMs, where Wikipedia does not need to exist in a country in order for the benefit of its existence to be felt. Such a move would likely just drive people to obtain dubious regurgitations of Wikipedia’s (freely available) content via their favorite LLM chatbot, in my opinion.
US should slap travel bans on UK politicians travelling to Disney parks and similar in Florida with their families. And/or with their older children visiting NYC. The combined pressure of the wives and their children, will knock sense in their thick skulls quickly. In the sense of - being stupid is not cost free. Atm it's cost free for them, and costly for me.
US is not exactly desirable location for tourism right now.
And like, appeal of of florida Disneyland as a dream place to go to was never all that huge abroad. The Disney cult/dream is more of an American thing.
Don't worry guys, the UK government is protecting the "children" against access to knowledge, you know, the thing that got humans kicked out of the Gardens of Eden.
Who would've thought the government would confirm that access to knowledge is a threat to their power?
Somehow this rhymes with the US's "War on Drugs", and it makes me very afraid:
Similarities I see:
* In the years leading up to government action, a mass hysteria was well cultivated in the media (evil drug users committing abhorrent crimes).
* When launched, the public was overwhelmingly in favor of it (In 1971, 48% of the public said drugs were a serious problem in their community [1]).
That's where we are now. THEN:
* It got worse for decades (By 1986, 56% of Americans said that the government spent "too little" money fighting drugs [1]).
* Following many years of lobbying, some rights are slowly restored. (NORML and other groups fighting for legal medical, then recreational use; mushrooms are legal in few places, etc).
* It's still going on today. (Over 100,000 people currently serving prison sentences for drug-related offenses [2]).
While I am very much opposed to the OSA, if you were going that way it somehow makes a little more sense to verify the identity of wikipedia editors than those of random social media users.
9 our of 10 online businesses will simply ban English users altogether. Which will be good for England as it will allow it to develop local competition without global multinationals' boot on their necks.
Did anyone think at this point, on this trajectory that any British court would have struck this down?
It reminds me of whatever the process is that keeps people in abusive relationships rationalizing how things will be fine now because their abuser promised to stop abusing them for the 100th time.
Our current model of the mind would consider it a delusion, a mental illness.
Considering the past few years and the abuses by government that follow the Biderman’s Chart of Coercion, it seems rather clear that humanity finds itself in a dungeon of the aristocracy once again; sadly enough, due to its own choices and actions.
Just leaving this here, in case things really start going south and people realize they need to stack up on knowledge supplies (note: I am not affiliated with them, I just think that Wikipedia, among other resources, is too valuable to let it fall through the cracks):
> When there is No Internet, there is Kiwix
Access vital information anywhere. Use our apps for offline reading on the go or the Hotspot in every place you want to call home. Ideal for remote areas, emergencies, or independent knowledge access.
Can we just cut off the UK from the Internet? I don't think they deserve it at this point. Tier 1 ISPs could block access to the Internet for the cuck island and nothing of value would be lost.
I'm confused.. can't they appeal High Court decisions (since the UKSC was formed after the government didn't like the High Court's decisions in the Diego Garcia thing)? [1]
Is Wikimedia Foundation a UK entity? Otherwise why should it concern itself with some country's regulation? USA does not have a global jurisdiction. But it has global leverages.
It has UK based editors and users. Employees of the foundation surely travel to the UK. They take donations from UK users. Their network peers with UK based ISPs.
They have enough touch points with the UK that complying not complying with UK law could cause significant problem.
Now is the best time to remember: if there's something you value online, download it. There's no problem with downloading the entirety of wikipedia, and it's actually pretty easy and light to do so. Get your favorite songs, movies, etc. too ASAP
From about ten years ago, ISPs were required to block web sites which were unsuitable for children by default. Any ISP's customer (the person paying for internet access, who would therefore be over 18) could ask for the block to be removed. Requiring individual web sites to block access was unnecessary if the intention was to prevent children accessing those sites.
My understanding is that the default "block" just worked through the ISP's DNS servers. So that only works if the parents know to restrict the ability of their kids to change their DNS servers on their local devices (which is not set up by default) and the kids don't know how to get around it.
I'm no longer convinced that nothing popular will be shut down, assuming that includes voluntarily withdrawing from the UK market. A couple of days ago, this popped up:
> The Science Department, which oversees the legislation, told companies they could face fines if they failed to uphold free speech rules.
> A spokesman said: “As well as legal duties to keep children safe, the very same law places clear and unequivocal duties on platforms to protect freedom of expression.
> “Failure to meet either obligation can lead to severe penalties, including fines of up to 10 per cent of global revenue or £18m, whichever is greater.
They seem to be putting social media platforms between a rock and a hard place, particularly as political debate in the UK is starting to heat up somewhat. I suppose the best to hope for at this point is that fines for infringing free expression never materialize.
That won’t help them build a profile on you though and then, through the help of AI determine if you’re a threat because you’ve been displaying a pattern of looking at things you shouldn’t be.
What I hate most about this latest push is that people in their 30s are trying to convince us all that blocking children's access to porn and such is the issue. As if most people don't agree with that in the abstract.
Not only people in their 30s, but it's who I see making a fuss about it. Presumably because they are now parents of children newly reaching this age.
They are completely ignoring that they are entering a debate that's been going on for longer than they have been alive, and are just arguing from a source of "common sense" gut feelings. They are literally a third of a century behind on this issue, but it doesn't stop them talking about it.
They are incompetent on this issue (nothing bad about that. I'm incompetent in most things), but they are also stupid because they don't let that incompetence stop them.
They are too incompetent to understand that they just did the equivalent of entering a room full of mathematicians with a collective thousands of years of math knowledge, and saying "how about just making 2+2=5? You could make 2+2=4, so you smart people should be able to do it". How do you even start with someone this ignorant? They don't even understand what math is.
"Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" — "I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."
UK Online Safety Act has a much bigger scope than porn.
In fact you've picked probably the least offensive, which is not to say uncontroversial, part of the law to argue with. Its illegal to distribute porn to minors just like its illegal to let underage people gamble on your poker app.
Yet people in factor of age verification laws for porn still have concerns with this because it's just a totally open-ended backdoor into content moderation across the internet.
I wish I could agree with you, but this is not how things work. My experience says that if there's enough people wishing for 2+2 to equal 5, that will become the socially accepted standard, and the whole society will get organized around 2+2=5. Will it be less efficient? Yes. Will people care? No.
They are clueless to whatever an internet protocol is. Effectively, if it uses the "internet" and you interface with it from a device, it is subject to the ruling.
And if i were a lawyer i'd use the legal system - specifically i'd start by challenging OSA on the undue burden grounds for say BitTorrent - bringing in some experts, etc.. If not successful - such ruling would effectively prohibit all unauthenticated network activity - would make the cost of OSA clear to the public. If successful, i'd show that the same content OSA worried about - like p.rn - is widely available on BitTorrent, and thus having limitations for HTTP while not for BitTorrent is capricious or something like this.
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]
If the incessant banner ads said, "Hello, this is a special plea from Jimmy Wales, get in, we're saving the Brits from themselves", then maybe I'd actually donate.
Right - in terms of liability there is nothing the UK can do to them if they aren't operating there. Up to the UK to block them with the Great British Firewall if they still aren't happy.
Having said that, if Wikipedia geo blocked the UK it would send a powerful message to everyone living here.
Going to be downvoted, but I support the move to make Wikimedia (and other websites that distribute user-generated content) to verify identities of their users (editors). It is ok to be responsible for what you're posting. We are living in the age of global irresponsibility.
And it doesn't mean Wikimedia must make the identities public. Same as any other website -- real identity to be provided only to authorities following a court order.
Also, there's a ton of bots and paid agents working full-time to shift political opinions to their political agenda.
Parliamentary democracy has proven absolutely useless in defending alienable rights like freedom of speech.
I have been trying to think what sort of system is ideal to replace them. I think there has to be some kind of strong constitution that guarantees aforementioned rights. But I also think it's instructive to look at America wrt how that can go awry - ie their constitution is routinely ignored, and a lot of the political decision making is done by fifth columnists lobbying for a foreign nation.
Regardless, we need to start having these conversations. It's not a matter of getting different people into Westminster. Westminster is illegitimate. Let's think about what's next and how we can get there peacefully.
I am not surprised. Every time I mention the draconian laws around digital speech when flying into london, hackernews historically said I was being ridiculous.
The UK has some of the oddest laws I have seen from a western nation.
If wikipedia can show the Jimmy Wales banners, then sure it can go for the throat of some politicians.
It allready collects few hubdred million per year, spends like 10 on wikipedia itself and rest goes for political projects. They could do something useful for once.
(On a side note: all those money and they dont use it to track the cliques / country level actors across admins...)
There are too many Big Tech bootlickers on YCombinator who enabled this. All of a sudden, they get to act surprised and morally superior. I guess this is who the gatekeepers let in, people who publicly seem moral but when push comes to shove they will always act evil.
Of course it did. This is all completely arbitrary and the powers that be will do what they want and this is what you asked for, nay, begged for during covid.
At what point is is time to put this very real island on a virtual island and just block all traffic that seems to be coming from there? Maybe they're right and all their meddling will really make the internet better, in which case I hope they enjoy their own private improved internet very much while I enjoy my inferior one in which I am not forced to aid materially in the government's surveillance of me.
Here in Canada there is Bill S-210 Protecting Young Persons from Exposure to Pornography Act aka "think of the children".
I don't think the politicians thought of or could conceive of the technological requirements needed if this passes. It's just a knee-jerk bill sponsored by self-professed Conservative Senator Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne. Conservatives of the CPC party in Canada are much farther right of center more evangelical religious than the old Progressive Conservatives PCs were.
Note that Senators in Canada are not like US Senators.
> The government's lawyers argued that ministers had considered whether Wikipedia should be exempt from the regulations but had reasonably rejected the idea.
It's funny, I'm coming up on my citizenship application and I sure as fuck won't ever be voting for Labour. I would rather create my own party and fail then vote for them (or conservatives or Reform). It's amazing how accurate The Thick Of It is.
It's disappointing that their argument was more "exempt up" and less "this is an unworkable law".
Not sure what comes next but wikipedia blocking UK followed by perhaps a study or two about harm done to the economy may be a good start to get the morons in charge to see the light
This whole saga tells me that nobody in UK gov knows wtf their doing on anything online. (This act was introduced under conservatives and passed under liberals)
I was mostly familiar with laws that required porn companies to verify their user's age. That is a lot more targeted and less offensive than UK Online Safety Act Regulations IMO. I mean it's already illegal to distribute porn to minors - that's just requiring them to enforce it at the expense of porn watcher's anonymity. Whereas the UK Online Safety Act is more like a backdoor for content moderation across the internet.
> The government told the BBC it welcomed the High Court's judgment, "which will help us continue our work implementing the Online Safety Act to create a safer online world for everyone".
Demonstrably false. It creates a safer online world for some.
> In particular the foundation is concerned the extra duties required - if Wikipedia was classed as Category 1 - would mean it would have to verify the identity of its contributors, undermining their privacy and safety.
Some of the articles, which contain factual information, are damning for the UK government. It lists, for example, political scandals [1] [2]. Or information regarding hot topics such as immigration [3], information that the UK government want to strictly control (abstracting away from whether this is rightfully or wrongfully).
I can tell you what will (and has already) happened as a result:
1. People will use VPNs and any other available methods to avoid restrictions placed on them.
2. The next government will take great delight in removing this law as an easy win.
3. The likelihood of a British constitution is increasing, which would somewhat bind future parliaments.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_scandals_in_...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Labour_Party_(UK)_sca...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_immigration_to_the_Unit...
The law was passed by the previous government and everyone assumed the next government would take great delight in reversing it.
I wouldn’t be so sure that any next government (which, by the way, there is still a non zero chance could be Labour) will necessarily reverse this. Maybe Reform would tweak the topics, but I’m not convinced any party can be totally trusted to reverse this.
Every single Labour politician who voted on this bill voted against it.
Peter Kyle was one such MP, and now he's making statements like:
> I see that Nigel Farage is already saying that he’s going to overturn these laws. So you know, we have people out there who are extreme pornographers, peddling hate, peddling violence. Nigel Farage is on their side.
It's maddening. The worst part is that they've somehow put me in the position of defending Nigel Farage.
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They voted against it because they thought it was not strong enough [1].
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jan/01/labour-pl...
> The law was passed by the previous government and everyone assumed the next government would take great delight in reversing it.
Unless a law is a mortal threat to the current party in power, it will not be repelled. Even so most likely they will try to wash it down instead of actually abolishing it.
Governments do seem to hate weakening their power over the population.
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What? I can't imagine anybody who was paying attention through any of this would have expected that Starmer's Labour would reverse this...
If the current government reversed it, the 'oh think of the children' angle from the Tories/Reform against them would be relentless. I cant say they have been amazing at messaging as it is.
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> I wouldn’t be so sure that any next government will necessarily reverse this.
Agreed. I think the supposed justifications for mass population-wide online surveillance, restrictions and de-anonymization are so strong most political parties in western democracies go along with what surveillance agencies push for once they get in power. Even in the U.S. where free speech & personal privacy rights are constitutionally and culturally stronger, both major parties are virtually identical in what they actually permit the surveillance state to do once they get in office (despite sometimes talking differently while campaigning).
The reason is that the surveillance state has gotten extremely good at presenting scary scenarios and examples of supposed "disaster averted because we could spy on everyone", or the alternative, "bad thing happened because we couldn't spy on everyone" to politicians in non-public briefings. They keep these presentations secret from public and press scrutiny by claiming it's necessary to keep "sources and methods" secret from adversaries. Of course, this is ridiculous because adversary spy agencies are certainly already aware of the broad capabilities of our electronic surveillance - it's their job after all and they do the same things to their own populations. The intelligence community rarely briefs politicians on individual operations or the exact details of the sources and methods which adversarial intelligence agencies would care about anyway. The vast majority of these secret briefings could be public without revealing anything of real value to major adversaries. At most it would only confirm we're doing the things adversaries already assume we're doing (and already take steps to counter). The real reason they hide the politician briefings from the public is because voters would be creeped out by the pervasive surveillance and domain experts would call bullshit on the incomplete facts and fallacious reasoning used to justify it to politicians.
Even if a politician sincerely intended to preserve privacy and freedom before getting in office, they aren't domain experts and when confronted with seemingly overwhelming (but secret) evidence of preventing "big bad" presented unanimously by intelligence community experts, the majority of elected officials go along. If that's not enough for the anti-privacy agencies (intel & law enforcement) to get what they want, there's always the "think of the children" arguments. It's the rare politician who's clear-thinking and principled enough to apply appropriate skepticism and measured nuance when faced with horrendous examples of child porn and abuse which the law enforcement/intelligence agency lobby has ready in ample supply and deploys behind closed doors for maximum effect. The anti-privacy lobby has figured out how to hack representative democracy to circumvent protections and because it's done away from public scrutiny, there's currently no way to stop them and it's only going to keep getting worse. IMHO, it's a disaster and even in the U.S. (where I am) it's only slightly better than the UK, Australia, EU and elsewhere.
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>2. The next government will take great delight in removing this law as an easy win.
As a rule of thumb, governments don't take actions which reduce their power.
The types of quotes get bandied about all the time, but I don't think they are accurate.
Politicians don't want to reduce their power, but politicians != governments. Lots of scary stuff actually empowers the civil service more than it empowers politicians. The main way politicians loose power is also not by the nature of the job changing, but by loosing elections.
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They do if they are libertarian governments. Although it's popular to pretend they don't exist, there are plenty of examples of governments reducing their power over history. The American government is a good example of this having originally bound itself by a constitution that limits its own power. And Britain has in the past gone through deregulatory phases and shrunk the state.
Unfortunately at this time Britain doesn't really have a viable libertarian party. Reform is primarily focused on immigration, and the conservatives have largely withered on the vine becoming merely another center left party. So it's really very unclear if there are any parties that would in fact roll this back, although Nigel Farage is saying they would. His weakness is that he is not always terribly focused on recruiting people ideologically aligned to himself or even spelling out what exactly his ideology is. This is the same problem that the conservatives had and it can lead to back benches that are not on board with what needs to be done. Farage himself though is highly reasonable and always has been.
This isn’t power until it scope creeps into surveillance, to protect the poor kids obviously.
> 2. The next government will take great delight in removing this law as an easy win.
This is way too optimistic. Maybe they'll make it as a campaign promise but in all likelihood they'll be happy to have it without being blamed directly and the law will stay unless people put up enough of a stink that it's clear the alternative would be violent revolution.
Increasing government control over the population is not a partisan issue.
Wikipedia's not perfect, but its transparency and edit history make it a lot less susceptible to the kinds of anonymous abuse this law is supposedly targeting
> 3. The likelihood of a British constitution is increasing, which would somewhat bind future parliaments.
It would be an extraordinary amount of work for a government that can barely keep up with the fires of its own making let alone the many the world is imposing upon them. Along with that, watching the horse trading going on over every change they make - I don't see how they ever get a meaningful final text over the line.
It's not a mainstream political priority at all to my knowledge, so I'm mostly curious why you disagree!
They should just do the same thing many governments the world over have done - adopt a version of the US constitution. Easy, clean, and only massively ironic.
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>> The government told the BBC it welcomed the High Court's judgment, "which will help us continue our work implementing the Online Safety Act to create a safer online world for everyone".
>Demonstrably false. It creates a safer online world for some.
Does it even do that?
Someone else said it, but oneconspiracy theory is that the UK is doing this to instill more "internet" literacy in their population (given that they'll go out of their way to do the free internet). I doubt that is the case, but that's a better cope for many than a dystopian government.
Why does this increase the likelihood of a (written I assume) constitution? I remember I saw a thing about David Cameron talking about wanting one. I think he also created a Supreme Court. I read into it and it seemed like there was no real reason for either a written constitution or a Supreme Court. Both of those things were popularized by the US's government so maybe that points to why.
None of what you said is true. The Judicial Committee of the House of Lords was renamed the Supreme Court and moved to a different building (but otherwise essentially unchanged) in 2005 under Tony Blair's Labour government.
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> It creates a safer online world for some.
The thieves no longer have to hack servers in order to obtain sensitive data, they can just set up an age-check company and lure businesses with attractive fees.
In that sense it is safer (for criminals).
> People will use VPNs and any other available methods to avoid restrictions placed on them
Yeah, its hilarious if you watch or listen to BBC output you would think VPNs don't exist the way the BBC promote it as some sort of amazing new "think of the children" protection.
> 3. The likelihood of a British constitution is increasing, which would somewhat bind future parliaments.
As an repetition of and an aside to all those pointing out that there is a constitution, what may find gaining some momentum after this are calls for a Bill of Rights, something England used to have[1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_Rights_1689
The Bill of Rights was never repealed, so there’s no “used to” about it.
What do you mean, the UK always had a constitution! </S>
A British constitution makes no sense, power is delegated from the king not from the member states like in the US or Canada. The only way the UK could end up with a constitution that's meaningful and not performative would be after a civil war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kin...
It may not make sense to you, but they've been arguing constitutional law there for hundreds of years.
Plenty of monarchies also have modern single-document constitutions, like Norway, Spain and Thailand.
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We already have a constitution. It just isn't a written constitution:
> The United Kingdom constitution is composed of the laws and rules that create the institutions of the state, regulate the relationships between those institutions, or regulate the relationship between the state and the individual. These laws and rules are not codified in a single, written document.
Source for that quote is parliamentary: https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/commons-com... - a publication from 2015 which considered and proposed a written constitution. But other definitions include unwritten things like customs and conventions. For example:
> It is often noted that the UK does not have a ‘written’ or ‘codified’ constitution. It is true that most countries have a document with special legal status that contains some of the key features of their constitution. This text is usually upheld by the courts and cannot be changed except through an especially demanding process. The UK, however, does not possess a single constitutional document of this nature. Nevertheless, it does have a constitution. The UK’s constitution is spread across a number of places. This dispersal can make it more difficult to identify and understand. It is found in places including some specific Acts of Parliament; particular understandings of how the system should operate (known as constitutional conventions); and various decisions made by judges that help determine how the system works.
https://consoc.org.uk/the-constitution-explained/the-uk-cons...
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It is the British monarchy that is performative, not their democracy.
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You mean like a civil war between the Crown and Parliament?
Reboot doesn't mean improvement.
One of the most interesting things about this legislation is where it comes from.
Primarily it was drafted and lobbied for by William Perrin OBE and Prof Lorna Woods at Carnegie UK[1], billed as an “independent foundation”.
William Perrin is also the founder of Ofcom. So he’s been using the foundation’s money to lobby for the expansion of his unelected quango.
It has also been suggested that one of the largest beneficiaries of this law, an age verification company called Yoti, also has financial ties to Carnegie UK.
It’s difficult to verify that because Yoti is privately held and its backers are secret.
It’s not as if anyone was surprised that teenagers can get round age blocks in seconds so there’s something going on and it stinks.
1. https://carnegieuk.org/team/william-perrin-obe/
Another source to back up the first claim https://carnegieuk.org/blog/online-safety-and-carnegie-uk/
I would like to see much more thorough journalism on the origin of these laws
> It’s difficult to verify that because Yoti is privately held and its backers are secret.
You can see some of these things on Companies House. This is Yoti Holding Ltd., but you'd have to look at its subsidiaries, too:
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c...
(I'm not defending Yoti/similar, just mentioning in case you weren't aware of CH)
> It has also been suggested that one of the largest beneficiaries of this law, an age verification company called Yoti, also has financial ties to Carnegie UK.
Do you have any sources for this?
Ludicrous to call William Perrin “the founder” of Ofcom or refer to it as “his” quango.
Passive voice, evidence free conspiracy nonsense that flatters HN biases? Updoots to the left!
> Ludicrous to call William Perrin “the founder” of Ofcom or refer to it as “his” quango
From his own Carnegie UK webpage linked above:
> William was instrumental in creating Ofcom, reforming the regulatory regimes of several sectors and kicking off the UK government’s interest in open data.
William was awarded an OBE for his highly influential work at Carnegie UK with Prof Lorna Woods that underpinned the UK government’s approach to regulating online services.
How is he not a founder of Ofcom?
That’s not a conspiracy theory, that’s just a verifiable statement of fact.
Or is it the use of the word founder you object to? If you prefer, “was instrumental in setting up and is closely related to the running of Ofcom”.
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> If Ofcom permissibly determines that Wikipedia is a Category 1 service, and if the practical effect of that is that Wikipedia cannot continue to operate, the Secretary of State may be obliged to consider whether to amend the regulations or to exempt categories of service from the Act. In doing so, he would have to act compatibly with the Convention. Any failure to do so could also be subject to further challenge. Such a challenge would not be prevented by the outcome of this claim.
Basically, DENIED, DENIED, DENIED. Ofcom can keep the loaded gun pointed in Wikipedia's face, forever, and make as many threats as it likes. Only if it pulls the trigger does Wikipedia have a case.
Wikipedia should voluntarily remove itself from the UK entirely. No visitors, no editors.
> Wikipedia should voluntarily remove itself from the UK entirely. No visitors, no editors.
No, it should remove servers, employees and legal presence from the UK. It's not their job to block UK people from accessing it just because the UK regime want them to. Let the regime censors actually put an effort to block them. Let them make a Great Firewall of the UK, why make it easy for them?
Because, as someone living in the UK, the only way people here are going to realise what's going on and apply meaningful pressure to the government is if these organisations force us to. And because once they've given up on one country, they'll give up on the rest just as easily.
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If they don't geoblock UK visitors then every person known to be involved with the operation of wikipedia potentially becomes an international fugitive and if they ever land on UK soil (or perhaps even Commonwealth soil), they could be jailed.
Not a fun way to live.
It's a lot harder to uproot people than servers.
https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Staff
They don't need to make anything - that capability has been there for years. It was mostly used to block sites with IIoC, but they also blocked access to various piracy related sites and things like that.
IANAL, but international law precedent has allowed countries to prosecute web services for providing services to a country where that service is illegal. A French NGO successfully sued Yahoo! for selling Nazi memorabilia, a crime in France, despite Yahoo! being a US company [0], and this was upheld by US courts.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LICRA_v._Yahoo!
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I generally agreed but this depends entirely on the US's willingness to cooperate with UK authorities. This would be the DOJ, FTC, etc. I dont think it would go straight the judiciary although someone can correct me on that if I'm wrong.
This is the part that gets me intrigued. It's quite difficult to parse, having so many conditionals... ifs, mays, woulds, "subject to further challenge", etc
It doesn't seem (to me) as definitive as some claim.
Hopefully, this ambiguous language opens the door for further challenges that may provide case law against the draconian Online Safety Act.
Pulling Wikipedia out of the UK would make a statement, but it'd also hand the government an easy win, I think
But this is how the law works? Even in the USA, the Supreme Court doesn't act on hypotheticals. They wait until someone brings an actual case.
Ofcom haven't ruled Wikipedia is Category 1. They haven't announced the intention to rule it Category 1. The Category 1 rules are not yet in effect and aren't even finalised. They aren't pointing any gun.
Wikipedia have a case that they shouldn't be Category 1 if that happens. But they went fishing in advance (or to use an alternative metaphor, they got out over their skis).
What else is the court to do but give a reassurance that the process will absolutely be amenable to review if the hypothetical circumstance comes to pass? That is what the section you are quoted says.
First, it's a statutory instrument that ministers will amend if it has unintended, severe consequences.
Second, the rules in question have not been written yet and they are being written in conjunction with industry (which will include Wikipedia). Because Ofcom is an industry self-regulation body.
That's not how lawmaking works in the UK.
I remember an example where the UK Government decided it's OK to rip CDs you own (no, really, it wasn't legal until then), and codified that in law. The parasites that run the UK Music trade organisation appealed and found that the UK had not sufficiently consulted them before deciding to make the law.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-33566933
So - ripping is completely illegal in the UK. Always has been, always will be. Never rip a CD, not even once. Keep paying all your fucking money to the UK Music member corporations and never think you own anything, not even once.
But it illustrates that the UK's law-making is subject to judicial review, and government cannot make laws or regulations without consulting those affected by them how much of a hardship it constitutes to them. The judge here is merely saying we haven't seen the harm yet, and Ofcom can keep threatening indefinitely to cause harm, Wikipedia only have a case when they do cause harm. By contrast, passing the law making CD ripping legal, UK Music argued, using an absolute load of bollocks they made up, that it immediately caused them harm.
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A lot of what you are posting is not true. Take for instance your claim that "Ofcom is an industry self-regulation body"
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>Even in the USA, the Supreme Court doesn't act on hypotheticals.
Yes. To rephrase it, they cannot act until it's already too late, and the damage has already been done.And we wonder why things are so broken.
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Wikipedia has been introduced as the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Anyone can publish problematic material or false information. But it's also Wikipedia's greatest strength that it has been so open to basically everyone and that gave us a wide range of really good articles that rivaled the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Wikipedia is a product of the free internet. It is a product of a world that many politicians still don't understand. But those politicians still make laws that do not make sense, because they believe that something has to be done against those information crimes. And they also do it to score brownie points with their conservative voting base.
The internet has it's problems, no doubt about that. But what these laws do is to throw the baby out with the bath water. Actually, the water probably stays in, because it's not like those laws solve anything.
Attributing the actions being taken by the UK (and much of the EU) to a lack of understanding is a quite generous interpretation. That may have been true a generation ago, but it's not now.
Many of us think that they understand a free internet very well, specifically the threats it places on their uses (and abuses) of power, and that the laws are quite well designed to curtail that. The UK currently, without identity verification, arrests 30 people per day for things they say online.
I feel that the left and the right are tag teaming on this topic. Both sides want to track who says what on the internet for their own purposes.
I’ll add to this, no politician is on your side unless it means getting your vote to keep them in power. It’s hard to be an actual good person and get too far up in politics, especially in today’s environment.
So, yes, I believe they both want tracking to exist, because they both benefit massively from it.
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At the moments at least, it's Labour who are defending this law and implementing it, and Reform who are against it. So very much not a tag team.
I think it is a bit simpler than that.
People don't like their worldview challenged, no matter their ideology.
Politicians exploit this by offering ways to "help", but at the cost of transferring more power away from the people.
> world that many politicians still don't understand. But those politicians still make laws that do not make sense,
Nah, politicians understand it, they just understand it differently than us do - and they make laws in accordance to that understanding.
Don't give them the same excuse you give to children, they are adults.
Wikipedia has been introduced as the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Anyone can publish problematic material or false information.
But the top articles are always perma-locked and under curation. Considering how much traffic those articles receive relative to the more esoteric articles, the surface area of vandalizable articles that a user is exposed to is relatively low. Also to that end, vandalism has a low effort-to-impact ratio.
n=1 I’ve used Wikipedia for many years with no immediately noticeable false information. And of course all the “citation needed” marks are there. I trust Wikipedia to be correct, I expect it to be correct, and Wikipedia has earned my trust. Maybe I don’t read it enough to see any vandalism.
Compared to LLMs, it’s extremely striking to see the relative trust / faith people have in it. It’s pretty sad to see how little the average person values truth and correctness in these systems, how untrusted Wikipedia is to some, and how overly-trusted LLMs are in producing factually correct information to others.
> And they also do it to score brownie points with their conservative voting base.
Care to remind me what side of the political spectrum was desperately trying to silence all health-related discourse that did not match the government's agenda just a few years ago?
By "conservative" I mean less digitally-minded people who are typically older. You have these people on the left, in the center and on the right along the classical political axis.
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Wikimedia should block UK access. That will get the attention of media and popularity contest politicians might change their mind.
Remember the "Repeal the Online Safety Act" petition? It has gotten over half a million signatures and the response from the government was a loud "no".
> The Government has no plans to repeal the Online Safety Act, and is working closely with Ofcom to implement the Act as quickly and effectively as possible to enable UK users to benefit from its protections.
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/722903
Those petitions aren't really worth anything - governments have ignored ones with over six million signatures before.
And they also ignored this one a few years back that had just under 700,000 signatures to "make verified ID a requirement for opening a social media account":
https://petition.parliament.uk/archived/petitions/575833
Ironically, the primary reason they gave for rejecting it was:
> However, restricting all users’ right to anonymity, by introducing compulsory user verification for social media, could disproportionately impact users who rely on anonymity to protect their identity. These users include young people exploring their gender or sexual identity, whistleblowers, journalists’ sources and victims of abuse. Introducing a new legal requirement, whereby only verified users can access social media, would force these users to disclose their identity and increase a risk of harm to their personal safety.
The other point is that recent polls suggest the British public are overwhelmingly in support of this legislation [0], which is not reflected in most of the narrative we see online. Whether they support how it has been implemented is a different matter, but the desire to do something is clear.
[0] https://yougov.co.uk/topics/society/survey-results/daily/202...
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>These users include young people exploring their gender or sexual identity
And who would they need to hide from?
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I wish that we didn't always have to phrase things like this. Yes, it's true that the aforementioned folks may likely have more of a need for anonymity than I do as someone who isn't a member of any protected class; but that doesn't mean I don't have a legitimate right to it too. And, if this is the way we phrase things, when a government is in power that doesn't care about this (i.e. the present American regieme), the argument no longer has any power.
We shouldn't have to hide behind our more vulnerable peers in order to have reasonable rights for online free speech and unfettered anonymous communication. It is a weak argument made by weak people who aren't brave enough to simply say, "F** you, stop spying on everyone, you haven't solved anything with the powers you have and there's no reason to believe it improves by shoving us all into a panopticon".
Totalitarian neoliberalism sucks; your protest petition with six million signatures is filed as a Jira ticket and closed as WONTFIX, you can't get anyone on the phone to complain at, everyone in power is disposable and replaceable with another stooge who will do the same thing as their predecessor. Go ahead and march in the streets, the government and media will just declare your protest invalid and make the other half of the population hate you on demand.
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It's quite right that petitions are (mostly) ignored in Parliamentary matters, IMHO.
MPs are elected to Parliament, they get input from their constituents. Bills are debated, revised, voted on multiple times. There are consultations and input from a board range of view points.
A petition is in effect trying to shout over all that process from the street outside.
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They did do that once,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative
That was part of a widespread protest against proposed bipartisan internet legislation in America.
On that occassion, it was very effective at getting the American government to back down.
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.
---
I personally find it rather frustrating that Wikimedia is suddenly so willing to bend over for fascists. Where did their conscience go?
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Possibly naive question, why should Wikimedia do anything at all? Do they have a legal presence in the UK?
If not, why not just say "we aren't a UK based organization so we have no obligations under this law"
Let the UK block Wikipedia.
IANAL, but I assume this could open Wikimedia leadership to charges of contempt and eventually lead to needing to avoid visiting the UK or other extraditing countries and potentially pave the way for asset seizures. You generally don't want to antagonize world power governments.
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If Wikimedia blocks access from UK it has control over response page and can write there accurate description of the reasons why access is blocked.
As ridiculous or absurd as this idea might seem, it's probably the most succinct and likely effective response to this kind of situation. The UK is betting the rest of the world doesn't reciprocate.
Not ridiculous, the only way to stop injustice is to fight.
Yes. HTTP 451 "Unavailable For Legal Reasons" was made for this moment.
No, they should block with a very visible message, tailored to the british public. I know what that status message means, you know it, but the general public doesn't. They need the black page with big letters they used before with sopa/pipa/etc.
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I wish all non-UK entities which may be affected by this law just dropped the UK. But unfortunately it seems they have too much money invested in not doing that.
But I'm sure even if that happened, the public consensus would just be "good riddance".
This is an absolutely bizarre country to live in.
This after the gaffe with the postal services, we are going to see some innocent folks being branded.
In general, I think we need a shift in society to say "yea, screw those kids". We don't put 20km/h limits everywhere because there's a non-zero chance that we might kill a kid. Its the cost of doing business.
Having privacy MEANS that it is difficult to catch bad people. That is just the price. Just swallow it and live with it.
> "yea, screw those kids".
Well, at the very least, the American government is already aiming for that
Problem with Wikipedia specifically going all-in on a UK block is, due to the licence, there's nothing to stop someone circumventing the block to make a OSA-compliant Britipedia mirror with minimal effort.
Except the effort and money needed to be OSA compliant. As the whole enwiki is permissively licensed everyone is welcome to do it though.
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And Wikipedia continues on without having to worry about UK regulations. What's the downside for Wikipedia?
Does WP do this anywhere else?
I wonder what happens if they simply don't comply. Will the UK at any point ask ISPs to ban Wikipedia?
I think just getting blocked is no big deal, but they'll probably get fined as well, that is the problem
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Probably, my understanding is theyve already implemented IP blocking to other sites.
they should indeed. The rest of the world should not have to suffer for draconian & fascist laws in the UK
Problem is that all that most people want out of Wikipedia is ingested in LLMs and for unfathomable reasons people now go to those first already. So the general public might not even notice Wikipedia being inaccessible.
I thought people here didn’t like when American companies tried to strongarm democratic governments abroad?
1) There are multiple posters on this site, they sometimes have contradictory opinions.
2) Lots of people like it when a company does an obviously good thing, and dislike it when a company does an obviously bad thing. I guess you’ve made a happy discovery: it turns out the underlying principle was something about what the companies were trying to accomplish, rather than some reflexive “American companies are bad” silliness.
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Not to dismiss bee_rider's sibling comment, like at all, but: Wikimedia's nature and purpose might be distinguished from your generic "American" tech "company".
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There is more than one poster on this site; it's safe to assume there's more than one opinion.
It turns out reductionism is stupid and people have different opinions
> Wikimedia should block UK access. That will get the attention of media and popularity contest politicians might change their mind.
It is a gamble. If people increasingly get their “encyclopedic” information via AI, then it might make almost no noise and then the govt will have even more leverage.
I commented basically the same and also got down voted. Do people just down vote comments that make them sad?
In the age of AI chatbots having consumed all of Wikipedia, its relevance has waned. So I don't think they have the same pull as they did before.
In the recent ChatGPT 5 launch presentation, ChatGPT 5 answered a question about how airplane wings produce uplift incorrectly, despite the corresponding Wikipedia page providing the correct explanation and pointing out ChatGPT’s explanation as a common misconception.
AI chatbots are only capable of outputting “vibe knowledge”.
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Wikipedia is a moving target. Content today is not the content of yesterday or tomorrow. This is like saying all knowledge that humanity can gain has already been accomplished.
My personal test usage of AI is it will try to bull shit an answer even when you giving known bad questions with content that contradicts each other. Until AI can say there is no answer to bull shit questions it is not truly a viable product because the end user might not know they have a bull shit question and will accept a bull shit answer. AI at it's present state pushed to the masses is just an expensive miss-information bot.
Also, AI that is not open from bottom to top with all training and rules publicly published is just a black box. That black box is just like Volkswagen emissions scandal waiting to happen. AI provider can create rules that override the actual answer with their desired answer which is not only a fallacy. They can also be designed to financially support their own company directly or third party product and services paying them. A question about "diapers" might always push and use the products by "Procter & Gamble".
Its relevance has absolutely not waned, more relevant than ever. Models need continuous retraining to keep up to date with new information right?
Despite having consumed all of Wikipedia, it still can't accurately answer many questions so I don't think it's relevance or value has waned. AI has not got anywhere near becoming an encyclopedia and it never will whilst it can't say I don't know something (which Wikipedia can do) and filter the fact from the fiction, which Wikipedia does uses volunteers.
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Besides the fact that LLMs still make up stuff?
Yea great, make everyone even dumber by forcing them to use AI slop
> Wikimedia should block UK access. That will get the attention of media and popularity contest politicians might change their mind.
Or they could respect the democratic decisions of the countries they do business in?
I'm quite critical of the implementation of this legislation but the idea of an American company throwing their weight around trying to influence policy decisions in the UK gives me the ick.
Fair enough if the regulations mean they just don't want to do business there but please don't block access to try and strong arm the elected government of another nation.
Well, that would be tricky, since Wikipedia is not a business, and is nor is it specifically American. (Other than a foundation in the US that runs the servers) . There are Wikipedias in many of the world's languages!
If the UK effectively bans public wikis above a certain size (even if by accident), then it is the law of the land that Wikipedia is banned. Or at least the english wikipedia, which is indeed very large. And if it is banned, then it must block access for the uk, under those conditions. Depending on the exact rules, possibly the uk could make do with the Swahili wikipedia?
That said, the problem here is that it is a public wiki of a certain size. One option might be for Wikipedia to implement quotas for the UK, so that they don't fall under category 1 rules.
Another option would be to talk with Ofcon and get things sorted that way.
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> Or they could respect the democratic decisions of the countries they do business in?
Blocking, making it clear why your blocking and that you will continue to block until it changes is respecting the decision.
You call it strong arming, I call it malicious compliance. Wikipedia hosts images, it "may contain pornographic material". Make anyone trying to search up a top 5 website see it before their eyes on how this isn't just a way to affect pornhub.
>respect the democratic decisions
Let the peope have a say in the going ons instead of lying to get elected, and maybe we can call it democratic again.
Or they should not do business in them. To me this means block access. If you don't then they're supposed to block access to you anyway so who is strong arming who?
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> Or they could respect the democratic decisions of the countries they do business in?
Well, the OSA was put into law by the Tories in 2023. The democratic decision of the UK was that they resoundingly rejected what the Tories were doing in the landslide win for Labour in the 2024 GE. I'd quite like UKGOV to respect the democratic decisions of the country and if they won't, I'm quite happy for other people to push back via the courts, public opinion, etc.
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> Or they could respect
Blocking is respecting the law!
> Or they could respect the democratic decisions of the countries they do business in?
In what way would blocking access from the UK be not respecting the law?
Also, that won't necessarily do anything. Russia forked wikipedia into Ruwiki after the invasion of Ukraine and it worked out for them.
> Or they could respect the democratic decisions of the countries they do business in?
They do that by staying out of such countries. Many US companies don't want to work with EU GDPR and just block all european IPs, wikipedia has full right to leave UK. They are under no obligations to provide service to them in the same was as pornhub is under no obligation to provide services in eg. a country that would require them to disclose IP addresses of all viewers of gay porn, etc.
Saying that it was a democratic decision without people actually being asked if they want that (referendum) is just weaseling out instead of directly pointing out that it's a bad policy that very few brits actually wanted. Somehow no one uses the same words when eg. trump does something (tarifs, defunding, etc.), no one is talking about democratic decisions of americans then.
Wikipedia has the full right to say "nope, we're not playing that game" and pulling out, even if an actual majority of brits want that.
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Is it "democratic" when both parties agree on everything of substance and elections don't change anything no matter who wins? Because that's how "democracy" has worked in the UK for at least as long as I've been alive.
Also, no-one asked for this bill, both parties support it, it received basically no debate or scrutiny and was presented as a fait accompli. Where's the democracy exactly?
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The correct time for major service providers to shift their weight and start pulling out of any jurisdiction necessary to get their point across has already come and gone. The second best time would be as soon as possible.
Unfortunately, the Internet world we live in today isn't the one I grew up in, so I'm sure things will just go according to plan. Apparently a majority of Britons polled support these rules, even though a (smaller) majority of Britons also believe they are ineffective at their goals[1]. I think that really says a lot about what people really want here, and it would be hard to believe anyone without a serious dent in their head really though this had anything at all to do with protecting children. People will do literally anything to protect children, so as long as it only inconveniences and infringes on the rights of the rest of society. They don't even have to believe it will work.
And so maybe we will finally burn the house to roast the pig.
[1]: https://yougov.co.uk/technology/articles/52693-how-have-brit...
I remember my mother watching a news segment on TV about the subject of online identity verification several months ago, and she commented that she supported it because "kids shouldn't be looking at these things." I asked her if she believed it's a parents responsibility to parent their children and block childrens' access to unsavory things, or if she felt it might be dangerous to tie a persons legal identity to what they do on the internet, and her face kind of glazed over and she said "no?"
The average person is not thinking about the ways in which legislation can be abused, or in how it oversteps its "stated purpose", or how it can lead to unintended consequences. I remember the news segment saying something to the tune of "new legislation aims to prevent children from viewing pornography", which is a deliberately misinformative take on these kinds of legislation.
The current political atmosphere of the western world is edging towards technofascism at an alarming rate - correlating online activities to real-world identities (more than they already are via the advertisement death cult (read: industry)) is dangerous. A persons political beliefs, national status, health status, personal associations, interests, activities, etc. are all potential means of persecution. Eventually, the western world will see (more) TLAs knocking on doors and asking for papers and stepping inside homes. They're going to forensically analyse computers belonging to average people (which government agencies are already doing at border checkpoints in the US) to weed out political dissidents or people targetted for persecution.
Things are going to get exponentially worse for everyone, and nobody is trying to stop it because the average person is uninformed, uninterested, and - worst of all - an absolute fucking idiot.
I think this is actually a better place to draw the line than the EU’s Digital Services Act, for example. It's just the UK. Blacking out service for EU would be a more bitter pill to swallow.
This is how we should have stopped the cookie banners
In Russia there is a plan to make special SIM cards for children, that would not allow registration in social networks. Isn't it better than UK legislation?
The whole idea that every site or app must do verification is stupid. It would be much easier and better to do verification at the store when buying a laptop, a phone or a SIM card. The verification status can be burned in firmware memory, and the device would allow only using sites and apps from the white list. In this case website operators and app developers wouldn't need to do anything and carry no expenses. This approach is simpler and superior to what UK does. If Apple or Microsoft refuse to implement restricted functionality for non-verified devices, they can be banned and replaced by alternative vendors complying with this proposal. It is much easier to force Apple and Microsoft - two rich companies - to implement children protection measures than thousands of website operators and app developers.
Rare case of Russian doing something more honestly. Implementing it as a device flag sent to websites, and making it easy to set for the device of any minor, is an elegant and unintrusive solution.
If you get w3.org and major browser and os vendors in on it, it simply becomes a legally enforced an universal parental control without much drawbacks.
But that would not permit the complete tracking of identity of all individuals in a country with their ptivate Internet activity and political stance.
And that's a massive loss to the true purpose of any law pretending to protect children; Just like the multiple attempts to outlaw encryption or scan all private or messages.
That solution reminds me of the evil bit. However, if someone has the skills or resources to unset the bit, they likely are allowed to anyway.
https://archive.org/details/rfc3514
In case with Windows laptop, the verification proof might be for example, a digitally signed serial number of the motherboard (and the OS is itself signed to prevent tampering). While it's possible to work around this, an average kid or adult is unlikely to do it. And in case with a phone there is almost zero chance to hack it.
The UK legislation extends beyond cellular access, as I'm sure Russia's does as well.
> Isn't it better than UK legislation?
Not at all, because SIM cards are bound to your real identity. So the government knows exactly which websites you visit.
I don't understand your comment, the government knows which sites you visit anyway because it can see the SNI field in HTTPS traffic.
The main point is that the verification is done on the device. The device has a digitally signed flag, saying whether it is owned by an adult user or not. And the OS on the device without the flag allows using only safe apps and websites sending a "Safe: yes" HTTP header. User doesn't need to send your ID to random companies, doesn't need to verify at every website, and website operators and app developers do not need do anything and do not need to do verification - they are banned from unverified devices by default. It is better for everyone.
Also, as I understand the main point of the Act is to allow removing the content the government doesn't like in a prompt manner, for which my proposal is not helpful at all.
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Coming back to London for a spell having lived abroad, I see speech supporting a non violent protest group banned, and find my myself firing up a VPN to avoid dragnet data collection.
Terrorism Act 2000 and 2006 Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 Investigator Powers Act 2016 Online Safety Act 2023
There has been a raft of legislation both permitting and mandating digital monitoring while increasingly prohibiting types of speech. Many of these laws with overly broad definitions and large amounts of discretion.
The Online Safety Act is a hideous piece of legislation. I hope Wikipedia block the UK.
(I am a UK citizen).
I think the better option is wikipedia to pull all operations out of the UK that might be there and NOT block UK IP addresses. Stand up for the British people, thumb their nose at the British government. Let the UK put up a "Great Firewall of Great Britain" so the British people understand how close their government is flirting with fascism, while they still have time to remove the fascist leaning politicians.
Act like an authoritarian regime, get treated like other authoritarian regimes.
For the record, I'm not actually against age verification for certain content. But it would have to be:
1) private - anonymous (don't know who is requesting access) and unlinkable (don't know if the same user makes repeated requests or is the same user on other services).
2) widely available and extremely easy to register and integrate.
The current situation is that it's not easy, or private, or cheap to integrate. And the measures they say they will accept are trivially easy to bypass - so what's the point?
I worked in a startup that satisfied point 1 back in 2015. The widely available bit didn't come off though when we ran out of runway.
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China is doing great. Not saying the UK will do well, just that authoritarian regimes can be successful as states although not great for the commoners.
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Leaving the market never works - in Russia, once another Western site or app gets blocked, several local competitors instantly pop out. That's how the market works, there are always people hungry for money.
The Russian market is artificially distorted.
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Then let them? And the UK gets a dogshit ripoff Wikipedia. Authoritarian supporters suffer, that's the hard lesson people need to understand.
This costs Wikipedia nothing - they are not funded by ads. And, in exchange, they don't get sued or any of their employees arrested.
if they block the UK, 20 UK specific copies will spring up overnight
it will achieve absolutely nothing, except to destroy their "market share"
It would shield them from legal liability which is more than nothing.
That is the primary reason to ban UK visitors.
They do seem to be considering banning only users after the 7 millionth - 1 visitor every month to avoid being classified as category 1 instead. That would let them avoid some of the most onerous parts of the OSA that would require stripping anonymity from editors and censoring whatever Ofcom says is "misinformation" and "disinformation."
Won't users just go to AI summaries ?
The UK is spearheading this charge, but if they are successful it will have paved the way for many more governments to embrace these policies. How this plays out is important for people living in every western country.
The US has been implementing similar bans sporadically as well. It's being done on a state-by-state basis due to the limited federal power structure of our government making it more difficult for minority power groups like fascists to push legislation.
I do believe the social factors leading to support for these bans are quite a bit different, but the core minds behind them are of the same creed.
I'm really confused about what would realistically happen if Wikimedia just decided to ignore those regulations.
They have surely ignored demands to censor Wikipedia in more authoritarian countries. What makes the UK different? Extradition treaties? Do they even apply here?
I have the same confusion about Signal's willingness to leave Europe if chat control is imposed[1], while still providing anti-censorship tools for countries like Iran and China. What makes the European laws they're unwilling to respect different from the Iranian laws they're unwilling to respect?
> They have surely ignored demands to censor Wikipedia in more authoritarian countries. What makes the UK different? Extradition treaties? Do they even apply here?
The UK has the authority to arrest them (anyone who owns a website) if they ever set foot in the UK if they feel they either haven't censored it adequately enough or refuse to do so.
It's one of the reasons why Civitai geoblocked the country.
Yes, there are unilateral policies and treaties that let the US and the UK collaborate in legal action (going through US institutions to judge them), some of them referenced in https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal/Legal_Policies -- a keyword might be letters rogatory
Wikimedia also seems to have a presence in the UK https://wikimedia.org.uk/ that presumably would be affected.
In most cases they might have enough pull to get folks blacklisted by payment processors, but wikimedia in particular might win that one.
A variety of things could happen:
- Employees become accountable for their company's actions - Wikimedia could be blocked - Other kinds of sanctions (e.g. financial ones) could be levied somehow
In practice what will likely happen is Wikimedia will comply: either by blocking the UK entirely, making adjustments to be compliant with UK legislation (e.g. by making their sites read-only for UK-users - probably the most extreme outcome that's likely to occur), or the as-yet unannounced Ofcom regulations they've preemptively appealed actually won't apply to Wikimedia anyway (or will be very light touch).
What if they simply don’t pay any sanctions?
They might ban the CEO and employees from entering their country or arrest them when they travel.
Having moved out of the uk many years ago, being banned from there, may not be such a bad thing.
The worst thing is, people will vote out the labour government, and the tory bastards (who will say they are 'the party of freedom) will tell the country "Well, it wasnt us".
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They don't apply. Delivering this kind of thing is obviously allowed in the US, so there's presumably no mutual criminality.
.... so far it is. Current politicians are certainly working at the state level to stop anonymous internet usage. Currently limited to pr0n sites, but you can bet that's just the first notch of increased heat on that poor frog in the cooking pot
Kind of funny after the authors of the law complained service providers were interpreting it overzealously.
No, if Wikipedia falls under it anything meaningful does. You have once again failed to understand the internet.
Many sites were overzealously interpreting it.
The difficulty of compliance depends on both how big the size is and the kind of site it is. Many small site overlooked both of those factors.
The underlying issue remains unaddressed if only Wikipedia-scale sites of “significant value” get special exemption.
The whole idea that the UK government, or anyone, can distinguish between "worthy" and "unworthy" exceptions is absurd in itself. The fact that they recognize there are exceptions blows a hole in the whole thing.
The OSA is already written such that only very large sites are potentially caught by the most onerous rules (at least 7 million MAU for Category 1; at least 3 million MAU for Category 2B). Smaller sites are automatically exempted.
This isn't to say that the OSA is a universally good thing, or that smaller sites won't be affected by it. However, this request for judicial review wasn't looking to carve out any special cases for specific large sites in favour of smaller sites.
>Smaller sites are automatically exempted.
No, they're not. I don't know why people keep repeating this "7 million active users limit" idea, it's nowhere to be found in the actual rules. Tiny forums have already had to close because they didn't want to deal with the legal risk:
https://onlinesafetyact.co.uk/in_memoriam/
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Quite. Sites that have resources and influence will be fine - they can either comply with the rules or will be given soft exemptions. It's small and new communities that will suffer.
I was just vacationing in the UK last week and ran into this ridiculous thing trying to browse (entirely non-pornographic, fwiw) Reddit threads. Which I opted not to read rather than going through the hassle and privacy breach.
Also got to experience the full force of the cookie law, which I hadn't realized I was only seeing a fraction of here in Canada.
Why not just get a cheap VPN for traveling or set up tailscale to your home router?
Cheap VPNs are only a temporary solution. I doubt that the EU and the UK will abstain from following China's and Russia's example in slowly locking down means of anonymization / obfuscation.
Because it was only a few days. If I'd been there longer I would have.
The cookie law is not in UK but in EU, no?
Much of it comes from GDPR law which was passed prior to brexit. After brexit, the UK kept most of the regulation under the "UK GDPR", meaning it does apply in the UK as well.
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I don't understand why Wikipedia would fall under Category 1. Am I looking at the wrong thing, or does the definition in 3.(1) not require the service to use an algorithmic recommendation system (which Wikipedia does not do)?
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukdsi/2025/9780348267174
I'm not sure if this Wikipedia's official policy but at https://medium.com/wikimedia-policy/wikipedias-nonprofit-hos... they do say:
> Definition of content recommender systems: Having any “algorithm” on the site that “affects” what content someone might “encounter”, is seemingly enough to qualify popular websites for Category 1. As written, this could even cover tools that are used to combat harmful content. We, and many other stakeholders, have failed to convince UK rulemakers to clarify that features that help keep services free of bad content — like the New Pages Feed used by Wikipedia article reviewers—should not trigger Category 1 status. Other rarely-used features, like Wikipedia’s Translation Recommendations, are also at risk.
> Content forwarding or sharing functionality: If a popular app or website also has content “forwarding or sharing” features, its chances of ending up in Category 1 are dramatically increased. The Regulations fail to define what they mean by “forwarding or sharing functionality”: features on Wikipedia (like the one allowing users to choose Wikipedia’s daily “Featured Picture”) could be caught.
"Content forwarding or sharing functionality" seems like it would cover any website with a URL.
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As I understand it, they refer to some of the moderation tools and the likes, which are not part of the typical Wikipedia experience.
Everybody including the judges seem to agree this is dumb but it's the current law.
I agree, it does seem odd. They do promote bits of their content on the main page, I assume with an algorithm, but it's hardly like a social media feed.
Last time I checked, many many years ago, the front page was just an ordinary wiki page like any other, and its content was manually added.
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Because laws are not interpreted in a logical way. Especially the laws with a 'safety' aspects.
The random article button uses algorithms to decide what content to show to the user.
Wikipedia is based in San Francisco. Why can't they just tell the UK to pound sand?
Adding to what others said, they can just let UK block Wikipedia, but as a foundation that tries to share knowledge I think they're obliged to try avoid that. So they're doing just that right now, by challenging the law.
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They presumably have editors in the UK, foundation members who live or work or travel there
they would at least want to block the UK from accessing it first?
Because some of Wikipedia's editors are based in the UK.
On a slightly related note, has anyone else noticed an increase in social media attacks on Wikipedia, kind of like this? https://x.com/benlandautaylor/status/1954276775560966156
Post reads: "Periodic reminder that Wikipedia has a squillion times more money than they need to operate the actual website, and all marginal donations go to the fake paper-shuffling NGO that attached itself to the organization for the purpose of feeding on donations from rubes."
Quoted post reads: "I have no interest in giving Wikipedia money to blow on fake jobs for ovecredentialed paper-pushers, but if the banner said “Jimmy Wales created Wikipedia and he’d like to buy a yacht” then I’d pull out my wallet immediately."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...
Long-time WP contributor and apologist here. I still think Wikipedia does more good than bad (for all its sins), is the greatest collaborative human work of our time, and there is some merit to the idea of having a giant pile of money to be able to fight government-scale battles like this one. But the story of the bureaucrats settling in and leeching donations at scale is basically accurate.
I've contributed content to Wikipedia and broadly agree with the sentiment. Users are guilted into thinking donations go towards the cost of serving the encyclopedia, which is not really where the money goes.
I happened to come across some of this recently and after an independent review, decided to stop donating to them.
There’s just no way to donate to just Wikipedia (to specially only the server costs or upkeep) but ignore whatever else the organization is up to.
Same story with Mozilla, there’s no way to donate to just the development of Firefox.
It’s all good though, there’s loads of other charities that I can donate to.
Donating to your local chapter might still work! (It's what I do at least)
“Wikipedia is one of the best resources humanity has ever produced” and “The Wikimedia Foundation spends money frivolously while soliciting donations with messages that make users think their money is going towards the project they actually care about” are not statements which are incompatible with each other.
Wikimedia does by and large an OK job (the endowment they set up in particular was a great move), but it’s incredibly bloated in ways that should be curtailed before it gets worse. It’s reasonable to want better for a resource as important as Wikipedia.
We don’t want another Mozilla.
This has been a criticism for a decade or more
Correct, it is especially of note given the publicity of Wikimedias funding and balances.
There is a million more greedy companies than Wikimedia, there is also other places that could use your money though, i.e Internet Archive, which is always desperate for donations.
More HN comments here,
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44721403 ("Wikimedia Foundation Challenges UK Online Safety Act Regulations (wikimediafoundation.org)"—189 comments)
Worth noting that was before the High Court's further judgments today, and the article has been updated. The full judgment is here: https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Wikimedi...
To me, that judgment reads like a fairly strong warning to Ofcom. The outcome section makes it clear that although the request for judicial review has been refused at present, that refusal is predicated on the fact that Ofcom has currently not ruled that Wikipedia is a Category 1 service. If Ofcom were to rule that Wikipedia is a C1 service, the Wikimedia foundation would have grounds to request a review again -- and, between the lines, that request might well succeed.
So, is Wikipedia really a Category 1 service? From https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukdsi/2025/9780348267174, it seems to come down to whether Wikipedia is a site which uses a "content recommender system", where that term is defined as:
> a system, used by the provider of a regulated user-to-user service in respect of the user-to-user part of that service, that uses algorithms which by means of machine learning or other techniques determines, or otherwise affects, the way in which regulated user-generated content of a user, whether alone or with other content, may be encountered by other users of the service
There's plenty of flexibility in that definition for Ofcom to interpret "content recommender system" in a way that catches Facebook without catching Wikipedia. For instance, Ofcom could simply take the viewpoint that any content recommendation that Wikipedia engages in is not "in respect of the user-to-user part of that service."
After today's judgement, and perhaps even before, my own bet is that this is exactly the route Ofcom will take.
If Ofcom permissibly determines that Wikipedia is a Category 1 service, and if the practical effect of that is that Wikipedia cannot continue to operate, the Secretary of State may be obliged to consider whether to amend the regulations or to exempt categories of service from the Act. In doing so, he would have to act compatibly with the Convention. Any failure to do so could also be subject to further challenge. Such a challenge would not be prevented by the outcome of this claim.
Seems pretty logical.
Again I think people outside of the UK perceive Ofcom to be a censor with a ban hammer. It's an industry self-regulation authority -- backed by penalties, yes, but it favours self-regulation. And the implementation is a modifiable statutory instrument specifically so that issues like this can be addressed.
In a perfect world would this all be handled with parental oversight and on-device controls? Yeah, maybe. But on-device parental controls are such a total mess, and devices available so readily, that UK PAYG mobile phone companies have already felt compelled (before the law changed) to block adult content by default.
ETA: I am rate-limited so I will just add that I am in the UK too. Not that this is relevant to the discussion. There is no serious UK consensus for overturning this law; the only party that claims that as a position does not even have the support of the majority of its members. I do not observe this law to be censorship, because as an adult I can see what I want to see, I just have to prove I am an adult. Which is how it used to work with top shelf magazines (so I am told! ;-) )
I suppose it's not really the done thing to say this, but if you disagree with me, say something, don't just downvote.
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> The government told the BBC it welcomed the High Court's judgment, "which will help us continue our work implementing the Online Safety Act to create a safer online world for everyone".
Suppression of information is not safety, it’s control.
At least wikipedia has an out in the legislation by disabling content recommendation engines for UK users, this includes:
1. “You may be interested in…” search suggestions on the Wikipedia interface—these are algorithmic, content-based recommendations.
2. Editor suggestion tools that propose pages to edit, based on prior activity. Academic systems helping newcomers with article recommendations also qualify.
Most links within articles—like “See also” sections or hyperlinks—are static and curated by editors, not algorithmically chosen per user. That means they do not meet the recommender system definition.
The legislation text for reference:
"Category 1 threshold conditions 3.—(1) The Category 1 threshold conditions(10) are met by a regulated user-to-user service where, in respect of the user-to-user part of that service, it—
(a)(i)has an average number of monthly active United Kingdom users that exceeds 34 million, and
(ii)uses a content recommender system, or
(b)(i)has an average number of monthly active United Kingdom users that exceeds 7 million,
(ii)uses a content recommender system, and
(iii)provides a functionality for users to forward or share regulated user-generated content(11) on the service with other users of that service.
(2) In paragraph (1), a “content recommender system” means a system, used by the provider of a regulated user-to-user service in respect of the user-to-user part of that service, that uses algorithms which by means of machine learning or other techniques determines, or otherwise affects, the way in which regulated user-generated content of a user, whether alone or with other content, may be encountered by other users of the service. "
Category 1 means you have some additional duties, but it is not necessary to e.g. be obliged to verify your users' age.
Shameful that Wikipedia are using this as another big yellow box "We need your money or we will have to shut down" message (and if anyone's not already aware, they really, really don't need to be doing this - they are not in any kind of financial struggle).
iirc wikipedia has a company that hosts the site and has more than enough funding to survive
To all of the commenters recommending that Wikipedia block UK visitors: This is incredibly short-sighted in the age of LLMs, where Wikipedia does not need to exist in a country in order for the benefit of its existence to be felt. Such a move would likely just drive people to obtain dubious regurgitations of Wikipedia’s (freely available) content via their favorite LLM chatbot, in my opinion.
Option 1: enabling "dubious regurgitations of information"
Option 2: enabling draconian abuse of power, violation of privacy, and mass surveillance
How is the state of the art as far as blocking LLMs from accessing a site?
Feels like a classic case of a law written with "big social media" in mind accidentally scooping up something that clearly isn't in the same category
US should slap travel bans on UK politicians travelling to Disney parks and similar in Florida with their families. And/or with their older children visiting NYC. The combined pressure of the wives and their children, will knock sense in their thick skulls quickly. In the sense of - being stupid is not cost free. Atm it's cost free for them, and costly for me.
The US is moving in the same direction.
US is not exactly desirable location for tourism right now.
And like, appeal of of florida Disneyland as a dream place to go to was never all that huge abroad. The Disney cult/dream is more of an American thing.
Don't worry guys, the UK government is protecting the "children" against access to knowledge, you know, the thing that got humans kicked out of the Gardens of Eden.
Who would've thought the government would confirm that access to knowledge is a threat to their power?
Somehow this rhymes with the US's "War on Drugs", and it makes me very afraid:
Similarities I see:
* In the years leading up to government action, a mass hysteria was well cultivated in the media (evil drug users committing abhorrent crimes).
* When launched, the public was overwhelmingly in favor of it (In 1971, 48% of the public said drugs were a serious problem in their community [1]).
That's where we are now. THEN:
* It got worse for decades (By 1986, 56% of Americans said that the government spent "too little" money fighting drugs [1]).
* Following many years of lobbying, some rights are slowly restored. (NORML and other groups fighting for legal medical, then recreational use; mushrooms are legal in few places, etc).
* It's still going on today. (Over 100,000 people currently serving prison sentences for drug-related offenses [2]).
[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/6331/decades-drug-use-data-from...
[2] https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2025.html
While I am very much opposed to the OSA, if you were going that way it somehow makes a little more sense to verify the identity of wikipedia editors than those of random social media users.
Wikipedia loses court challenge
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/society-equity/wikipe...
9 our of 10 online businesses will simply ban English users altogether. Which will be good for England as it will allow it to develop local competition without global multinationals' boot on their necks.
Did anyone think at this point, on this trajectory that any British court would have struck this down?
It reminds me of whatever the process is that keeps people in abusive relationships rationalizing how things will be fine now because their abuser promised to stop abusing them for the 100th time.
Our current model of the mind would consider it a delusion, a mental illness.
Considering the past few years and the abuses by government that follow the Biderman’s Chart of Coercion, it seems rather clear that humanity finds itself in a dungeon of the aristocracy once again; sadly enough, due to its own choices and actions.
[dead]
Just leaving this here, in case things really start going south and people realize they need to stack up on knowledge supplies (note: I am not affiliated with them, I just think that Wikipedia, among other resources, is too valuable to let it fall through the cracks):
> When there is No Internet, there is Kiwix Access vital information anywhere. Use our apps for offline reading on the go or the Hotspot in every place you want to call home. Ideal for remote areas, emergencies, or independent knowledge access.
https://kiwix.org/en/
Can we just cut off the UK from the Internet? I don't think they deserve it at this point. Tier 1 ISPs could block access to the Internet for the cuck island and nothing of value would be lost.
Wouldn’t think this kind of law could ever have popular vote. Could anyone that support this law explain why they think it is good?
I'm confused.. can't they appeal High Court decisions (since the UKSC was formed after the government didn't like the High Court's decisions in the Diego Garcia thing)? [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_the_United_Ki...
Is Wikimedia Foundation a UK entity? Otherwise why should it concern itself with some country's regulation? USA does not have a global jurisdiction. But it has global leverages.
It has UK based editors and users. Employees of the foundation surely travel to the UK. They take donations from UK users. Their network peers with UK based ISPs.
They have enough touch points with the UK that complying not complying with UK law could cause significant problem.
Block the UK. Ridiculous behavior.
Now is the best time to remember: if there's something you value online, download it. There's no problem with downloading the entirety of wikipedia, and it's actually pretty easy and light to do so. Get your favorite songs, movies, etc. too ASAP
If the UK orders a Wikipedia block to its ISPs, it would be a good thing, to raise public awareness of the OSA. Wikipedia should do nothing and wait.
From about ten years ago, ISPs were required to block web sites which were unsuitable for children by default. Any ISP's customer (the person paying for internet access, who would therefore be over 18) could ask for the block to be removed. Requiring individual web sites to block access was unnecessary if the intention was to prevent children accessing those sites.
My understanding is that the default "block" just worked through the ISP's DNS servers. So that only works if the parents know to restrict the ability of their kids to change their DNS servers on their local devices (which is not set up by default) and the kids don't know how to get around it.
>Requiring individual web sites to block access was unnecessary if the intention was to prevent children accessing those sites.
Hmm. So Reddit, Youtube, etc. would be blocked by ISPs by default?
Which is why they will not do it. Nothing popular will be blocked or shut down.
I'm no longer convinced that nothing popular will be shut down, assuming that includes voluntarily withdrawing from the UK market. A couple of days ago, this popped up:
> The Science Department, which oversees the legislation, told companies they could face fines if they failed to uphold free speech rules.
> A spokesman said: “As well as legal duties to keep children safe, the very same law places clear and unequivocal duties on platforms to protect freedom of expression.
> “Failure to meet either obligation can lead to severe penalties, including fines of up to 10 per cent of global revenue or £18m, whichever is greater.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/08/09/social-media...
They seem to be putting social media platforms between a rock and a hard place, particularly as political debate in the UK is starting to heat up somewhat. I suppose the best to hope for at this point is that fines for infringing free expression never materialize.
Porn is popular!
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An honest question - which devices can be used for secure communication if phones get government-borked for "children/foreign interference" purposes?
an unborked phone
To me the online safety act is a latency tax and nothing more. Sucks for others though. I feel bad for them, it’s not right.
What's a latency tax?
Wild. People compelled by law to produce id before accessing an online encyclopaedia. Shouldn't we be encouraging good behaviours like learning?
That won’t help them build a profile on you though and then, through the help of AI determine if you’re a threat because you’ve been displaying a pattern of looking at things you shouldn’t be.
What are the consequences of simply disregarding the UK ruling? Does Wikipedia have British employees, offices, or financial assets?
Okay but what if I want zero safety
Can I have zero safety if I choose that?
If UK really believes in their ideology then they just need to copy China and implement the China Firewall™ for the UK.
FYI, Wikimedia Foundation just wants a carve out/exception to be able to opt out of category 1 duties.
How would they collect fines in this scenario?
To be clear I totally agree with you. But they are playing a game.
What I hate most about this latest push is that people in their 30s are trying to convince us all that blocking children's access to porn and such is the issue. As if most people don't agree with that in the abstract.
Not only people in their 30s, but it's who I see making a fuss about it. Presumably because they are now parents of children newly reaching this age.
They are completely ignoring that they are entering a debate that's been going on for longer than they have been alive, and are just arguing from a source of "common sense" gut feelings. They are literally a third of a century behind on this issue, but it doesn't stop them talking about it.
They are incompetent on this issue (nothing bad about that. I'm incompetent in most things), but they are also stupid because they don't let that incompetence stop them.
They are too incompetent to understand that they just did the equivalent of entering a room full of mathematicians with a collective thousands of years of math knowledge, and saying "how about just making 2+2=5? You could make 2+2=4, so you smart people should be able to do it". How do you even start with someone this ignorant? They don't even understand what math is.
"Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" — "I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."
UK Online Safety Act has a much bigger scope than porn.
In fact you've picked probably the least offensive, which is not to say uncontroversial, part of the law to argue with. Its illegal to distribute porn to minors just like its illegal to let underage people gamble on your poker app.
Yet people in factor of age verification laws for porn still have concerns with this because it's just a totally open-ended backdoor into content moderation across the internet.
I wish I could agree with you, but this is not how things work. My experience says that if there's enough people wishing for 2+2 to equal 5, that will become the socially accepted standard, and the whole society will get organized around 2+2=5. Will it be less efficient? Yes. Will people care? No.
Does Online Safety Act covers only HTTP? I mean does it cover say bittorrent? Or any outgoing TCP connection?
As if this is even a consideration in the law.
They are clueless to whatever an internet protocol is. Effectively, if it uses the "internet" and you interface with it from a device, it is subject to the ruling.
And if i were a lawyer i'd use the legal system - specifically i'd start by challenging OSA on the undue burden grounds for say BitTorrent - bringing in some experts, etc.. If not successful - such ruling would effectively prohibit all unauthenticated network activity - would make the cost of OSA clear to the public. If successful, i'd show that the same content OSA worried about - like p.rn - is widely available on BitTorrent, and thus having limitations for HTTP while not for BitTorrent is capricious or something like this.
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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.
Isn't the lesson here that every website should just block UK access?
Could it be that the massive Wikipedia war chest of money can actually be used for something now?
If the incessant banner ads said, "Hello, this is a special plea from Jimmy Wales, get in, we're saving the Brits from themselves", then maybe I'd actually donate.
Wikipedia ought to block edits from the UK. Giving in to fascism emboldens it.
I wonder why Wikipedia does not ban access from the UK due to this ruling ? I think doing that will get them an exemption rather quickly.
Do they even need to? Seems like they can just eliminate all the jobs in the UK and let the ISPs ban them when the time comes.
Right - in terms of liability there is nothing the UK can do to them if they aren't operating there. Up to the UK to block them with the Great British Firewall if they still aren't happy.
Having said that, if Wikipedia geo blocked the UK it would send a powerful message to everyone living here.
My read of the article is that it's still an ongoing legal battle, even after this one judgement.
So maybe yes, but maybe no, depending on how things pan out in subsequent rulings?
I don't think any movement like that has worked yet.
>I think doing that will get them an exemption rather quickly.
Some of us prefer civilization, though.
Going to be downvoted, but I support the move to make Wikimedia (and other websites that distribute user-generated content) to verify identities of their users (editors). It is ok to be responsible for what you're posting. We are living in the age of global irresponsibility.
And it doesn't mean Wikimedia must make the identities public. Same as any other website -- real identity to be provided only to authorities following a court order.
Also, there's a ton of bots and paid agents working full-time to shift political opinions to their political agenda.
Think your position through and try to determine if there is any possibility of unintended consequences.
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
That's a quote from Benjamin Franklin about a taxation dispute, and he was making a pro-Government statement.
Parliamentary democracy has proven absolutely useless in defending alienable rights like freedom of speech.
I have been trying to think what sort of system is ideal to replace them. I think there has to be some kind of strong constitution that guarantees aforementioned rights. But I also think it's instructive to look at America wrt how that can go awry - ie their constitution is routinely ignored, and a lot of the political decision making is done by fifth columnists lobbying for a foreign nation.
Regardless, we need to start having these conversations. It's not a matter of getting different people into Westminster. Westminster is illegitimate. Let's think about what's next and how we can get there peacefully.
I am not surprised. Every time I mention the draconian laws around digital speech when flying into london, hackernews historically said I was being ridiculous.
The UK has some of the oddest laws I have seen from a western nation.
Just turn off Wikipedia for the UK until it gets fixed.
Just ignore the law, what are they going to do about it? Block Wikipedia in the UK?
Wikipedia is so bad at simplest PR.
It should close itself before elections to burn the politicians that try to screw it.
It's a dangerous game to play, spending credibility to influence stuff.
Not that it's unthinkable or anything, but my impression is that people are not quite aware that it ain't free.
If wikipedia can show the Jimmy Wales banners, then sure it can go for the throat of some politicians.
It allready collects few hubdred million per year, spends like 10 on wikipedia itself and rest goes for political projects. They could do something useful for once.
(On a side note: all those money and they dont use it to track the cliques / country level actors across admins...)
It's a shame both sides can't lose
So, theoretically, this would have revealed the identity of one of the biggest trolls in Wikipedia history: BrownHairedGirl.
There are too many Big Tech bootlickers on YCombinator who enabled this. All of a sudden, they get to act surprised and morally superior. I guess this is who the gatekeepers let in, people who publicly seem moral but when push comes to shove they will always act evil.
How exactly did "Big Tech bootlickers on YCombinator" enable the UK's parliament to enact authoritarian censorship laws? Pray tell.
Of course it did. This is all completely arbitrary and the powers that be will do what they want and this is what you asked for, nay, begged for during covid.
At what point is is time to put this very real island on a virtual island and just block all traffic that seems to be coming from there? Maybe they're right and all their meddling will really make the internet better, in which case I hope they enjoy their own private improved internet very much while I enjoy my inferior one in which I am not forced to aid materially in the government's surveillance of me.
[dupe] Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44863487
i run a pretty large wiki, few mill users a month, and will be ignoring these laws. i'm from the US for reference.
Were it my decision to make... I'd ban the UK. If they wants to live in the dark ages, let them.
Maybe this is good. On balance, perhaps Wikipedia has become too important a cultural asset for anonymous editors.
Here in Canada there is Bill S-210 Protecting Young Persons from Exposure to Pornography Act aka "think of the children".
I don't think the politicians thought of or could conceive of the technological requirements needed if this passes. It's just a knee-jerk bill sponsored by self-professed Conservative Senator Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne. Conservatives of the CPC party in Canada are much farther right of center more evangelical religious than the old Progressive Conservatives PCs were.
Note that Senators in Canada are not like US Senators.
> The government's lawyers argued that ministers had considered whether Wikipedia should be exempt from the regulations but had reasonably rejected the idea.
It's funny, I'm coming up on my citizenship application and I sure as fuck won't ever be voting for Labour. I would rather create my own party and fail then vote for them (or conservatives or Reform). It's amazing how accurate The Thick Of It is.
It's disappointing that their argument was more "exempt up" and less "this is an unworkable law".
Not sure what comes next but wikipedia blocking UK followed by perhaps a study or two about harm done to the economy may be a good start to get the morons in charge to see the light
This whole saga tells me that nobody in UK gov knows wtf their doing on anything online. (This act was introduced under conservatives and passed under liberals)
It's an interesting thing but I think their specific concerns are somewhat overcooked.
As another commenter pointed out in the earlier thread: > 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.Kim_Bruning
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exasperaited
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varispeed
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Ofcom's SI could simply be modified to exclude research texts, and it could even be modified to exclude Wikipedia specifically; there's no obvious problem with that considering its scale and importance.
If you go through Ofcom's checker:
> And it could even be modified to exclude Wikipedia specifically;
That's certainly a potential workaround. But carve outs often mean that similar communities become hard to create!
I don't doubt that. But again, it is secondary legislation. It's highly amenable to ministerial and parliamentary scrutiny, and it will be amended.
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Also creates system for brown envelopes, so only well connected to the establishment could get an exemption.
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All US companies should boycott the UK in solidarity. See how fast the regulators walk back the bill.
We can't even get American companies to take a stand against authoritarianism in their own country.
why would they? This is great for the large media corps:
- Increases barrier to entry for smaller competitors
- Reliable user data (age, race, who knows what else) derived from video age verification
Anecdote:
My mom recently visited Spain. The process of buying a local SIM card was as follows:
• Show your US passport at a major local cellular provider’s store (Movistar) to have its number associated with the SIM.
• During SIM activation, open a browser page that accesses the phone’s camera.
• Scan the first page of your passport.
• Point the selfie camera at your face, then close your eyes and smile when prompted.
> then close your eyes and smile when prompted
I was about to ask about this, but then I realized it must so that you can't just point it at a photo of someone.
The UK law is significantly less stringent and better thought out than equivalent age verification laws already in place in a bunch of US states....
I think those age verification laws don't target as many sites though, right? not Wikipedia at least
Ah yes, what about the US.
Which law are you talking about by the way?
I was mostly familiar with laws that required porn companies to verify their user's age. That is a lot more targeted and less offensive than UK Online Safety Act Regulations IMO. I mean it's already illegal to distribute porn to minors - that's just requiring them to enforce it at the expense of porn watcher's anonymity. Whereas the UK Online Safety Act is more like a backdoor for content moderation across the internet.
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The debate(s) here is (are) premature.