Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act • Hacker News Board

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#251

Post by _9ptr » Mon, Aug 11, 2025, 7:45 PM UTC

Henchman21 wrote: post #124

tjwebbnorfolk wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whether they support how it has been implemented is a different matter, but the desire to do something is clear. Isn't this the whole story of government policy? The stated policy so rarely actually leads to the hoped-for result.

That’s because the bedrock principle on which modern government is based is… drum roll Lie whenever it’s convenient because the public are children anyway and won’t or can’t understand. Through this lens many things make more sense. They’re comfortable with lying because there are zero repercussions for lying.

They are not only children, but also goldfish who forget everything after 5 minutes

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#252

Post by FredPret » Mon, Aug 11, 2025, 7:47 PM UTC

catlikesshrimp wrote: post #239

slaymaker1907 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Act like an authoritarian regime, get treated like other authoritarian regimes.

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.

China only started doing great when they relaxed their ultra-centralized economic rules a little bit in the 1990s.

Read business books and news from the 80's - 90's, and they almost never mention China - it's all Germany, UK, Japan, USA. The stats tell the same story - China spent half a century going nowhere fast.

After liberalizing their economy, China spent the 90's quietly growing, and only started making real waves in the news around 2000.

All this to say that economic authoritarianism has never worked and there's no reason to suppose that the social kind is going to fare any better for anyone either.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#253

Post by MattPalmer1086 » Mon, Aug 11, 2025, 7:47 PM UTC

tehwebguy wrote: post #170

jmclnx wrote: post #134

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.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#254

Post by betaby » Mon, Aug 11, 2025, 7:48 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…

> Or they could respect

Blocking is respecting the law!

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#255

Post by HPsquared » Mon, Aug 11, 2025, 7:52 PM UTC

catlikesshrimp wrote: post #239

slaymaker1907 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Act like an authoritarian regime, get treated like other authoritarian regimes.

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.

Success of authoritarian regimes depends on the competence (and alignment) of the leadership. Not something we have much of here.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#256

Post by MattPalmer1086 » Mon, Aug 11, 2025, 7:56 PM UTC

fmbb wrote: post #246

mathiaspoint wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is the British monarchy that is performative, not their democracy.

Ironically, while I am absolutely not a monarchist, it provides a kind of stability to British democracy, because it mostly transcends party politics, unlike other presidential systems.

Indeed, the founding fathers of the US identified political parties as a threat to their republic.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#257

Post by michaelt » Mon, Aug 11, 2025, 7:56 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.

It's a good deal more complicated than that.

MPs belong to political parties - consider what happens if an MP's constituents and an MP's party disagree?

They might be allowed to vote against the government, if their vote will have no effect on the bill's passage - but if they actually stop the bill's passage? They're kicked out of the party, which will make the next election extremely difficult for them.

MPs are elected for reasonably long terms - and that means they regularly do things that weren't in their party manifesto. Nobody running for election in 2024 had a manifesto policy about 2025's strikes on Iran, after all!

That flexibility means they can simply omit the unpopular policies during the election campaign. A party could run an election campaign saying they're going to introduce a national ID card, give everyone who drinks alcohol a hard time, cut benefits, raise taxes, raise university tuition, fail to deliver on any major infrastructure projects, have doctors go on strike, and so on.

Or they can simply not put those things in their manifesto, then do them anyway. It's 100% legal, the system doing what it does.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#258

Post by speerer » Mon, Aug 11, 2025, 7:58 PM UTC

mathiaspoint wrote: post #222

bArray wrote: post #194

> 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 c…

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.

https://consoc.org.uk/the-constitution-explained/the-uk-cons...

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#259

Post by cm2012 » Mon, Aug 11, 2025, 8:00 PM UTC

abustamam wrote: post #248

cm2012 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No i awkwardly phrased it. Im saying that demographic (also the majority here on HN) loves porn more than any other demographic.

Out of curiosity, what makes you say that the majority of HN loves porn? I've seen a few random references to it but nothing that would indicate that HN loves porn any more than any other community loves porn.

It's just a statistical correlation. Who loves porn demographically?

1) Men.

2) Men age 18-40 in particular.

3) No evidence for this but in my experience tech people tend to like porn more than others for whatever reason.

So a survey of HN users would show more pro-porn respondents than a survey of the UK or the US or EU as a whole.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#260

Post by cm2012 » Mon, Aug 11, 2025, 8:01 PM UTC

TylerE wrote: post #244

cm2012 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All polling has problems like this, but YouGov has the same methodology for everything and usually gets within a margin of error of +-8. Even if they have an especially bad sample, the UK probably really does support the law. Think about how many people are less comfortable with porn than tech interested males between age 18 and 40.

Most questions you could guess a number somewhere vaguely near 50% and be right a substantial amount of the time given such massive error bars.

Thats a common fallacy because we tend to care about issues that are 50/50 or divisive. Most opinions are not divisive but thus dont get attention.