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Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

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Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#61

Post by protocolture »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #32
perihelions wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did do that once, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3477966 ( "Wikipedia blackout page (wikipedia.org)" (2012)) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_SOPA_and_PIPA... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative

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…

>I personally find it rather frustrating that Wikimedia is suddenly so willing to bend over for fascists. Where did their conscience go?

I absolutely abhor the "Kids these days" sort of argument, but it does seem the case that we lowered the barrier of entry sufficiently in the tech sector that people who simply dont give a shit, or actively want to harm our values, now outnumber us greatly.

What has happened previously was we would rally around corporations and institutions that would generally work in our best interests. But the people driving those social goods in those entities are now the villains.

Not to mention all the mergers and acquisitions.

In Australia, during the internet filter debate, we had both a not for profit entity spending money on advertising, but also decently sized ISP's like iiNet working publicly against the problem. The not for profit was funded by industry, something that never happened again. And iiNet is now owned by TPG who also used to have a social conscience but have been hammered into the dust by the (completely non technical, and completely asinine bane of the internets existence and literal satan) ACCC and have no fight left in them for anything. When Teoh leaves or sells TPG, it will probably never fight a good fight ever again.

Its the same everywhere. We cant expect people to fight for freedom when the legislation just gets renamed and relaunched again after the next crisis comes out in the media. We lost internet filtration after christchurch, for absolutely no justifiable reason. And we lost the Access and Assistance fight despite having half the global tech industry tell our government to suck eggs.

The only real solution is to prep the next generation to fight back as best as possible, to help them ignore the doomsayers and help the right humans into the right places to deal with this shit.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#62

Post by bbor »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #32
perihelions wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did do that once, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3477966 ( "Wikipedia blackout page (wikipedia.org)" (2012)) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_SOPA_and_PIPA... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative

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…

I share your general frustration, but as an unabashed Wikimedia glazer, I have some potential answers:

1. They lost this legal challenge, so perhaps their UK lawyers (barristers?) knew that much broader claim would be even less likely to work and advised them against it. Just because they didn't challenge the overall law in court doesn't mean they wouldn't challenge it in a political sense.

2. The Protests against SOPA and PIPA[1] were in response to overreach by capitalists, and as such drew support from many capitalists with opposing interests (e.g. Google, Craigslist, Flickr, Reddit, Tumblr, Twitter, Wordpress, etc.). Certainly Reddit et al have similar general concerns with having to implement ID systems as they did about policing content for IP violations, but the biggest impact will be on minors, which AFAIK are far from the most popular advertising demo. Certainly some adult users will be put off by the hassle and/or insult, but how many, and for how long?

3. Wikimedia is a US-based organization, and the two major organizers of the 2012 protests--Fight for the Future[2] and the Electronic Frontier Foundation[3]--are US-focused as well. The EFF does have a blog post about these UK laws, but AFAICT no history of bringing legal and/or protest action there. This dovetails nicely with the previous point, while we're at it: the US spends $300B on digital ads every year, whereas the UK only spends $40B[4]. The per-capita spends are closer ($870/p v. $567/p), but the fact remains: the US is the lifeblood of these companies in a way that the UK is not.

4. More fundamentally, I strongly suspect that "big business is trying to ruin the internet by hoarding their property" is an easier sell for the average voter than "big government is trying to ruin the internet by protecting children from adult content". We can call it fascism all we like, but at the end of the day, people do seem concerned about children accessing adult content. IMHO YouTube brainrot content farms are a much bigger threat to children than porn, but I'm not a parent.

The final point is perhaps weakened by the ongoing AI debates, where there's suddenly a ton of support for the "we're protecting artists!" arguments employed in 2012. Still, I think the general shape of things is clear: Wikimedia stood in solidarity with many others in 2012, and now stands relatively alone.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_SOPA_and_PIPA

[2] https://www.fightforthefuture.org/

[3] https://www.eff.org/pages/legal-cases

[4] https://www.salehoo.com/learn/digital-ad-spend-by-country

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#63

Post by layer8 »

briangriffinfan wrote: post #51
layer8 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the recent ChatGPT 5 launch presentation, ChatGPT 5 answered a question about how airplane wings produce uplift incorrectly, despite the corresponding Wikipedia page providing the correct explanation and pointing out ChatGPT’s explanation as a common misconception. AI chatbots are only capable of outputting “vibe knowledge”.

What is this corresponding Wikipedia page?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lift_(force)#False_explanation...

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#64

Post by thomastjeffery »

echelon wrote: post #42
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…

[flagged]

Neither the left or the right wants anything. People inside each group do. This is an important distinction that pundits love to invert.

I have a very hard time taking any of your sources seriously, particularly when it comes to any categorization of "the left".

FEE is a conservative libertarian think tank. Heritage Foundation is the most infamous conservative think tank. Alan Dershowitz is most famous for defending Harvey Weinstein, Donald Trump, and Jeffrey Epstein, and decided to leave the Democratic party as soon as it showed signs of becoming a bit less Zionist.

These are prime examples of pundits who love to frame the "the left" as a singular cohesive boogeyman. You may not intentionally be picking on the left, but the sources you have cited make a living picking on a version of "the left" that they invented.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#65

Post by yndoendo »

rawbot wrote: post #31
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…

In the age of AI chatbots having consumed all of Wikipedia, its relevance has waned. So I don't think they have the same pull as they did before.

Wikipedia is a moving target. Content today is not the content of yesterday or tomorrow. This is like saying all knowledge that humanity can gain has already been accomplished.

My personal test usage of AI is it will try to bull shit an answer even when you giving known bad questions with content that contradicts each other. Until AI can say there is no answer to bull shit questions it is not truly a viable product because the end user might not know they have a bull shit question and will accept a bull shit answer. AI at it's present state pushed to the masses is just an expensive miss-information bot.

Also, AI that is not open from bottom to top with all training and rules publicly published is just a black box. That black box is just like Volkswagen emissions scandal waiting to happen. AI provider can create rules that override the actual answer with their desired answer which is not only a fallacy. They can also be designed to financially support their own company directly or third party product and services paying them. A question about "diapers" might always push and use the products by "Procter & Gamble".

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#66

Post by Levitz »

bee_rider wrote: post #40
dkiebd wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought people here didn’t like when American companies tried to strongarm democratic governments abroad?

1) There are multiple posters on this site, they sometimes have contradictory opinions. 2) Lots of people like it when a company does an obviously good thing, and dislike it when a company does an obviously bad thing. I guess you’ve made a happy discovery: it turns out the underlying principle was something about what the companies were trying to accomplish, rather than some reflexive “American companies are bad” sil…

I'd like to add, it's fine and dandy to have the stance that huge corporations in general shouldn't throw their weight around to shape politics, that's still not the world we live in and that must be acknowledged.

Even if I'd rather have Wikipedia stay put, it does matter to me if they push for something I support as opposed to something that I'm against.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#67

Post by dylan604 »

ktallett wrote: post #53
dylan604 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't AI essentially use the concept of volunteers as well with RLHF?

Good point, it's similar to some extent. Although clearly the quality of the work that the people doing RLHF on the major LLMs is rather low in comparison with those volunteering at Wikipedia.

There were no "good" volunteers qualifier used though. Obviously, some RLHF "volunteers" are better than others just like some used by Wiki are better than others. I wonder if there's edit battles between RLHF like we've seen on Wiki?

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#68

Post by Quarrel »

amiga386 wrote: post #24
exasperaited wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this is how the law works? Even in the USA, the Supreme Court doesn't act on hypotheticals. They wait until someone brings an actual case. Ofcom haven't ruled Wikipedia is Category 1. They haven't announced the intention to rule it Category 1. The Category 1 rules are not yet in effect and aren't even finalised . They aren't pointing any gun. Wikipedia have a case that they shouldn't be Category 1 if that happens…

That's not how lawmaking works in the UK. I remember an example where the UK Government decided it's OK to rip CDs you own (no, really, it wasn't legal until then), and codified that in law. The parasites that run the UK Music trade organisation appealed and found that the UK had not sufficiently consulted them before deciding to make the law. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-33566933 So - ripping is completely il…

> government cannot make laws or regulations without consulting those affected by them how much of a hardship it constitutes to them

This is at best disingenuous.

There is no general requirement on government to consult. It is often referred to in various Acts, which are binding. There is a common law expectation that if the government has made a clear promise to consult that they have to.

But since the Glorious Revolution, parliament has proved to be supreme. It may have to be explicit in the laws it passes, but it can literally overrule itself as needed. Pesky EU human rights legislation is just a mere vote away from being destroyed.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#69

Post by Levitz »

rvba wrote: post #45

Wikipedia is so bad at simplest PR. It should close itself before elections to burn the politicians that try to screw it.

It's a dangerous game to play, spending credibility to influence stuff.

Not that it's unthinkable or anything, but my impression is that people are not quite aware that it ain't free.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#70

Post by gnfargbl »

layer8 wrote: post #8

The underlying issue remains unaddressed if only Wikipedia-scale sites of “significant value” get special exemption.

The OSA is already written such that only very large sites are potentially caught by the most onerous rules (at least 7 million MAU for Category 1; at least 3 million MAU for Category 2B). Smaller sites are automatically exempted.

This isn't to say that the OSA is a universally good thing, or that smaller sites won't be affected by it. However, this request for judicial review wasn't looking to carve out any special cases for specific large sites in favour of smaller sites.

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