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.
> 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 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.
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.
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 think UK OSA in its current state is bad, but I also think Wikipedia losing this case is good.
Here is Wikipedia's original case:
> 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.
They were asking for special carve-out just for Wikipedia. This was not some principled stance.
Now that they they lost the challenge, they might have to block visitors from UK, which will bring bigger awareness to how bad the current implementation of UK OSA is.
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.
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 Online Safety Act is a hideous piece of legislation. I hope Wikipedia block the UK.
(I am a UK citizen).
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?
The decision upholding the Online Safety Act verification rules against Wikipedia’s challenge overlooks practical and proportionality concerns. Wikipedia operates with minimal commercial infrastructure, relies on volunteers and does not require age-restricted content verification for its core encyclopaedia. The law’s blanket requirement for platforms to implement age verification fails to distinguish between services with high-risk harmful material and those providing general reference. That is a regulatory overreach that imposes compliance burdens without measurable safety gains. The ruling also discounts the privacy risks of verification schemes, which can create centralised databases vulnerable to misuse or breach. This is not a hypothetical threat; data leaks from verification providers are well documented. A risk-based approach would focus enforcement on platforms with demonstrated harm while exempting low-risk educational resources. Treating all online services identically undercuts the intended aim of child protection and diverts resources from genuine problem areas.
The underlying issue remains unaddressed if only Wikipedia-scale sites of “significant value” get special exemption.
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.
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."
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.
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 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)?
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...
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. "
More HN comments here,
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44721403 ("Wikimedia Foundation Challenges UK Online Safety Act Regulations (wikimediafoundation.org)"—189 comments)
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."
> 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.
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.
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.
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).
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...
Could it be that the massive Wikipedia war chest of money can actually be used for something now?
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.
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.
Does Online Safety Act covers only HTTP? I mean does it cover say bittorrent? Or any outgoing TCP connection?
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.
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.
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
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.
Okay but what if I want zero safety
Can I have zero safety if I choose that?
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.
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...
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?
What are the consequences of simply disregarding the UK ruling? Does Wikipedia have British employees, offices, or financial assets?
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
Wikipedia loses court challenge
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/society-equity/wikipe...
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.
Wikipedia is so bad at simplest PR.
It should close itself before elections to burn the politicians that try to screw it.
Block the UK. Ridiculous behavior.
Does Wikipedia/Wikimedia have any facilities in the UK? I assume it does have some paid employees based there.
How would/could the UK enforce this law against WP/WM if they simply didn't obey it?
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.
Wikipedia ought to block edits from the UK. Giving in to fascism emboldens it.
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.
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.
There's an HTTP status for these kind of situations: 451 - unavailable for legal reasons.
If a government decides to dismantle the net - let them see what that means.
An honest question - which devices can be used for secure communication if phones get government-borked for "children/foreign interference" purposes?
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.
[dupe] Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44863487
Just turn off Wikipedia for the UK until it gets fixed.
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.
So, theoretically, this would have revealed the identity of one of the biggest trolls in Wikipedia history: BrownHairedGirl.
i run a pretty large wiki, few mill users a month, and will be ignoring these laws. i'm from the US for reference.
It was decided this will happen and no one can do anything against it.
Everything else is just theater.
Were it my decision to make... I'd ban the UK. If they wants to live in the dark ages, let them.
This regulatory challenge reveals how policy changes can create new cybersecurity , from identity verification risks to operational security gaps, underscoring the importance of holistic vulnerability management that addresses both technical and regulatory security risks.
Just ignore the law, what are they going to do about it? Block Wikipedia in the UK?
It's an interesting thing but I think their specific concerns are somewhat overcooked.
As another commenter pointed out in the earlier thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44721712
> 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.
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:
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-c...
The answers are 1) yes, 2) yes, 3) no, 4) probably "No, but...", 5) no, 6) no.
But the answer to getting out of the problem entirely might be to change the answer to question 6 -- that is, register Wikipedia as an education provider in the UK (since it is already used in that capacity).
I mean Wikipedia have actually exhibited at BETT, the main educational tech show here; Jimmy Wales did a keynote.
Isn't the lesson here that every website should just block UK access?
Decisions need to be made by juries and not judges...
Freedom is in decline around the planet
It's a shame both sides can't lose
Wild. People compelled by law to produce id before accessing an online encyclopaedia. Shouldn't we be encouraging good behaviours like learning?
> 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.
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.
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?
I n
The debate(s) here is (are) premature.
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.
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.
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)
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All US companies should boycott the UK in solidarity. See how fast the regulators walk back the bill.
> 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...