No one asked for this. Don’t blame parents. This is the government using the Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse to restrict your personal freedoms.
Wikimedia Foundation Challenges UK Online Safety Act Regulations
151–160 of 192 posts
Re: Wikimedia Foundation Challenges UK Online Safety Act Regulations
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with the focus being on porn behind age verification as the main effect, is that it ignores all the other effects. Closing community forums and wikis. Uncertainty about blog comments. It is actually (as noted in many previous discussion about the Online Safety Act) pushing people to using big tech platforms, because they can no longer afford the compliance cost and risk of running their own.
Those sort of sites already had better moderation than big tech because they’d have their own smaller team of volunteer moderators. I suspect any smaller site that claims the Online Safety Act was a reason they closed, needed to close due to other complications. For example an art site that features occasional (or more) artistic nudes. Stuff that normal people wouldn’t consider mature content but the site maintainers…
I think the impact is a lot worse than that. There are still compliance costs especially for volunteer run sites. Ofcom says these are negligible, because they its unlikely to be more than "a few thousand pounds". Then there are the risks if something goes wrong if you have not incorporated.
HN has already has discussed things like the cycling forum that hit down. lobste.rs considered blocking UK IPs. I was considering setting up a forum to replace/complement FB groups I help admin (home education related). This is enough to put me off as I do not want the hassle and risk of dealing with it.
I think what you are missing is that this does not just cover things like porn videos and photos. That is what has been emphasised by the media, but it covers a lot of harmful content: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/50/section/62
It took a fair amount of legal analysis to establish blog comments are OK (and its not clear whether off topic ones are). Links to that and other things here: https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/06/uk_online_safety_act_...
Re: Wikimedia Foundation Challenges UK Online Safety Act Regulations
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't see any language in the statutory instrument suggesting anyone had any intention of applying it to Wikimedia? The most likely outcome is the court will reassure them of that. This might help other people running similar websites by citing the case rather than having to pay for all the experts but isn't going to magically stop it applying to Meta as intended.
Wikimedia hosts what UK puritans consider pornographic content. A lot of it. Often in high quality and with a permissible license. I would link to relevant meta pages but I want to be able travel through LHR.
Musea of fine arts also host what puritans could consider 'pornographic content'. I believe 'Birth of Venus' is the standard go-to example.
Re: Wikimedia Foundation Challenges UK Online Safety Act Regulations
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's what blows my mind anytime I hear someone complain about all the vile content on the internet today and that we need to protect children. What about "be a parent" is so impossible to do today? Every device and OS has parental controls for a reason. Yeah they aren't perfect but they will prevent 99% of the content from getting to your kids.
It does feel like the online environment is pretty adversarial and hard for parents to deal with. In particular, it seems hard to pick and choose something reasonable. It doesn’t seem totally unreasonable to want some kind of state action to help represent the many parents and encourage creating better reasonable options. Lots of things that feel relatively common online feel like they would be very alien and weird s…
I agree with you but my emotional reaction is similar to the parent comment because many of these parents vote for the party of "stop big government regulations" and "stop government censorship" while also advocating in general for personal responsibility.
So I'm actually against this because I hate the indirect hypocrisy. I want to teach a lesson to Republicans about using overly generalized principals as a political stance.
Re: Wikimedia Foundation Challenges UK Online Safety Act Regulations
#155Why can't these measures be handled via parental control? Children are using mobiles and tablets almost exclusively, both major providers of which supply tools for parental administration. Content filtering is already facilitated by existing parental control. Mobile browsers could be made to issue a header if the user is under a certain age. Mobile apps could have access to a flag. Parents should be responsible for p…
There's a cognitive dissonance to the opposition to this:
a) Content controls don't work, what are the government thinking? b) This is parents' problem, they should use content controls.
Individual action doesn't work because it only takes one kid in the class who doesn't have parental controls then everyone loses. There's also obvious workarounds such as VPNs and a teenager walking into a pawn shop with £50 for a second hand smartphone without parental controls.
It also makes no sense that parents can't be bothered to turn on parental controls yet can be bothered to run a national grassroots campaign for this stuff (see e.g. http://smartphonefreechildhood.org)
See also- I Had a Helicopter Mom. I Found Pornhub Anyway: https://www.thefp.com/p/why-are-our-fourth-graders-on-pornhu... 8-year old watches violent porn on friend’s iPad: https://www.thesun.co.uk/fabulous/32857335/son-watched-viole...
Although your idea of an OS-level age flag is also being pushed by the Anxious Generation's Jonathan Haidt, so definitely has merit/traction as an alternative.
Re: Wikimedia Foundation Challenges UK Online Safety Act Regulations
#156Why can't these measures be handled via parental control? Children are using mobiles and tablets almost exclusively, both major providers of which supply tools for parental administration. Content filtering is already facilitated by existing parental control. Mobile browsers could be made to issue a header if the user is under a certain age. Mobile apps could have access to a flag. Parents should be responsible for p…
That's how it should work but you will find that a majority of parents cba rearing their children so they want the state to do it for them. And this extends to so many things in life that the authoritarian grip is only going to get tighter with time.
"but you will find that a majority of parents cba rearing their children so they want the state to do it for them"
This is normal and what public education is for. Teaching online safety and sex ed should be considered no different than teaching history
Re: Wikimedia Foundation Challenges UK Online Safety Act Regulations
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those sort of sites already had better moderation than big tech because they’d have their own smaller team of volunteer moderators. I suspect any smaller site that claims the Online Safety Act was a reason they closed, needed to close due to other complications. For example an art site that features occasional (or more) artistic nudes. Stuff that normal people wouldn’t consider mature content but the site maintainers…
I think the impact is a lot worse than that. There are still compliance costs especially for volunteer run sites. Ofcom says these are negligible, because they its unlikely to be more than "a few thousand pounds". Then there are the risks if something goes wrong if you have not incorporated. HN has already has discussed things like the cycling forum that hit down. lobste.rs considered blocking UK IPs. I was consideri…
Some good points. And I do agree with your general opinion of this law. Albeit not all of specific points you've made:
> I think the impact is a lot worse than that. There are still compliance costs especially for volunteer run sites. Ofcom says these are negligible, because they its unlikely to be more than "a few thousand pounds". Then there are the risks if something goes wrong if you have not incorporated.
What are these "compliance costs"? There's no forms that need to be completed. Sites don't have to register themselves. For smaller sites, the cost is just what I described: the time and effort of volunteer moderators who already moderate the site. If they're already removing adult content, then there's no extra work for them.
> HN has already has discussed things like the cycling forum that hit down. lobste.rs considered blocking UK IPs. I was considering setting up a forum to replace/complement FB groups I help admin (home education related). This is enough to put me off as I do not want the hassle and risk of dealing with it.
None of this proves your point though. It just proves that some sites are worried about potential overreach. It's an understandable concern but it a different problem to the one the GP was describing in that it doesn't actually make it any harder for smaller forums in any tangible way. Unless you called "spooked" a tangible cost (I do not).
> I think what you are missing is that this does not just cover things like porn videos and photos.
I didn't miss that. But you're right to raise that nonetheless.
There's definitely a grey area that is going to concern a lot of people but no site is going to be punished for mild, or occasional "breaches". What the government are trying to police is the stuff that's clearly inappropriate for under-18s. The UK (and EU in general) tends to pass laws that can be a little vague in definition and trust the police and courts to uphold "the spirit of the law". A little like how US laws can be defined by past cases and their judgments. This ambiguity will scare American sites because it's not how American law works. But the UK system does _generally_ work well. We do have instances where such laws are abused but they're infrequent enough to make national news and subsequently get dropped because of the embarrassment it brings to their department.
That all said, I'm really not trying to defend this particular law. The Online Safety Act is definitely a _bad_ law and I don't personally know of anyone in the UK (outside of politicians) who actually agrees with it.
Re: Wikimedia Foundation Challenges UK Online Safety Act Regulations
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
Literally more then a decade ago. Also they didn't mix it together with fundraiser.
Nobody suggested mixing it with a fundraiser. Just that the protest should use the same annoying banner elements that the fundraisers do.
Sorry, you're right, i misread the original post i was responding to.
Re: Wikimedia Foundation Challenges UK Online Safety Act Regulations
#159Why can't these measures be handled via parental control? Children are using mobiles and tablets almost exclusively, both major providers of which supply tools for parental administration. Content filtering is already facilitated by existing parental control. Mobile browsers could be made to issue a header if the user is under a certain age. Mobile apps could have access to a flag. Parents should be responsible for p…
That's how it should work but you will find that a majority of parents cba rearing their children so they want the state to do it for them. And this extends to so many things in life that the authoritarian grip is only going to get tighter with time.
To be fair, it is because the state makes it difficult for them to rear children.
Long working hours and both parents working full time means they do not have the time or the energy. Then you have the state offering help, and encouraging parents to drop them off at school first thing for breakfast club, and then keep them there for after school activities.
Re: Wikimedia Foundation Challenges UK Online Safety Act Regulations
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hate the Online Safety Act as much as the next person, but: - Labour have made no plans to ban VPNs. - One MP wanted to add a clause for a government review into the impact of VPNs on the bill after 6 months, with no direction on what that would mean. - I have no idea if this clause actually got added, but it'd make sense. If you're going to introduce a stupid law you should at least plan to review if the stupid la…
> clause for a government review into the impact of VPNs on the bill after 6 months thats government speak for deciding to do something about the VPN problem. because there is no way a commission will not find a good reason to ban VPNs when you reach that point, because you could argue they help avoid UK restrictions.
That's paranoia speak. You can express that anxiety without falsely stating it as fact.