Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act • Hacker News Board

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#211

Post by johnnyanmac » Mon, Aug 11, 2025, 6:34 PM UTC

mytailorisrich wrote: post #112

entuno wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

You vote for someone who says "I will create more jobs"

They instead propose a bill that will cut jobs

There's deliberation, but a lot of other people want to cut jobs

Is you shouting "hey, that is not what I voted for!" yelling and disrupting process, or calling out the fact that you were lied to and your representative is in fact not representing you?

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#212

Post by netsharc » Mon, Aug 11, 2025, 6:36 PM UTC

integralid wrote: post #201

oconnore wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wikipedia's "gone black" before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_SOPA_and_PIPA..., IMO blocking access to the whole of UK would've been a big move that could've been effective.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#213

Post by filoleg » Mon, Aug 11, 2025, 6:38 PM UTC

graemep wrote: post #16

corndoge wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Porn is popular!

True, but its not going to get blocked. AFAIK all the big porn sites are happily implementing age verification. Why not? Its an excuse to gather data, to increase numbers of registered users or some other form of tracking, and to raise a barrier to entry to smaller competitors. Other aspects of the OSA have similar effects on other types of sites such as forums vs social media.

> AFAIK all the big porn sites are happily implementing age verification

I don’t know what you had in mind by “big porn sites”, but the biggest one I know of (Pornhub) is not doing that.

They decided to voluntarily withdraw from the US markets where age verification became required (TX, GA, etc.), and wrote a pretty good blog post explaining their rationale (which revolved around the idea that letting third parties to just receive and process ID documents just so that users could watch porn was both not secure at all and absurd).

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#214

Post by johnnyanmac » Mon, Aug 11, 2025, 6:38 PM UTC

AlecSchueler wrote: post #133

nickslaughter02 wrote: post #10

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 eff…

> 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…

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.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#215

Post by Kim_Bruning » Mon, Aug 11, 2025, 6:41 PM UTC

exasperaited wrote: post #14

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I get the feeling that that's why Wikimedia UK is taking this particular course.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#216

Post by johnnyanmac » Mon, Aug 11, 2025, 6:42 PM UTC

madeofpalk wrote: post #163

zimpenfish wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ba…

That's not how democracy works. When there's a change in government they don't just abandon all laws the previous one passed. The current government is more than able to use their democratic mandate to appeal or change the law.

>When there's a change in government they don't just abandon all laws the previous one passed.

Tell that to the US please.

>The current government is more than able to use their democratic mandate to appeal or change the law. °

Yes, but they probably a won't without a lot of push back. Here's the push back

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#217

Post by nemomarx » Mon, Aug 11, 2025, 6:43 PM UTC

MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #209

slaymaker1907 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. A…

there's some irony that the EU is set to have a fairly anonymous solution like next year. they could have waited or tried to use similar tech for this, in theory

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#218

Post by johnnyanmac » Mon, Aug 11, 2025, 6:43 PM UTC

AlecSchueler wrote: post #190

arrowsmith wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say anything prescriptive, I'm just disputing your use of the word "democratic".

For all it's issues I think you would be hard pressed to argue that the United Kingdom isn't a democracy in the common sense of the term.

For all it's issues, it's practically bad faith to argue that the UK is a democracy in the spirit of the term. I believe that's how the EU works with law?

Oh yeah, they left that.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#219

Post by _Algernon_ » Mon, Aug 11, 2025, 6:44 PM UTC

ndriscoll wrote: post #158

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

The random article button uses algorithms to decide what content to show to the user.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#220

Post by johnnyanmac » Mon, Aug 11, 2025, 6:45 PM UTC

OhioMan2943 wrote: post #52

thomastjeffery wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. R…

The old generation of idealists grew up and we raised no one to replace them. I know because I'm in that emotionally and ideologically stunted generation.

Why did they raise no one to replace them?