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Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

bbc.com

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Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#521

Post by onetimeusename »

milesrout wrote: post #514
onetimeusename wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, that's not accurate. The Supreme Court of the UK was established in 2009 so I was off by a year. That would have been under Gordon Brown.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#522

Post by wpm »

trhway wrote: post #474
wiredpancake wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You're allowed to say porn

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#523

Post by yupyupyups »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #402
kelipso wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, I feel like there is a cognitive dissonance somewhere in there. On one thread about social media and internet affecting young people negatively, you have people saying parents should control their kids' exposure to the internet. And in another thread about ID laws, you have people saying kids should have privacy to roam the internet.

Parents have plenty of capacity to exercise control over their children. For example, how about a law that says websites have to restrict access to pornographic content if the client's user agent sets an HTTP header indicating they don't want to see it? Now you don't have any privacy problems because the header contains no personally identifying information -- you don't even have to be under 18 to opt into it. But th…

Porn peddlers would probably pinky-promise not to disobey the user-agent and expose the kids to the content (and get them while they're young).

However, as we have already seen, asking nicely in the HTTP headers doesn't actually work, it may even help porn peddlers better target children. We also know from recorded interviews with these predetors that they don't seem to actually mind exposing kids to porn.

https://x.com/arden_young_/status/1732422651950612937

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#524

Post by callc »

jimbob45 wrote: post #229
vaylian wrote: post #182

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…

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 effo…

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.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#526

Post by 20after4 »

autoexec wrote: post #495
mrandish wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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. Those politicians who are vocal against mass surveillance tend to change their tune the moment they're in office and I doubt…

Do what we say or we might get a warrant and find that stash of CP that we installed on your hard drive. How do you even defend against planted digital evidence? It would be easy to fake and very difficult to disprove.

But when it comes to politicians and people with power, I think it's even worse than all of that. It's kind of obvious what Mr Epstein was getting up to with regard to blackmail.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#527

Post by fgfarben »

kittikitti wrote: post #394

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.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#528

Post by tailspin2019 »

Lio wrote: post #154

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 benefi…

> 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?

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#529

Post by luke727 »

deepsun wrote: post #323

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 fol…

Think your position through and try to determine if there is any possibility of unintended consequences.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#530

Post by llbbdd »

Ntrails wrote: post #270
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…

> 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 t…

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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