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Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

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Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#641

Post by philipallstar »

globular-toast wrote: post #569
monooso wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every single Labour politician who voted on this bill voted against it. Peter Kyle was one such MP, and now he's making statements like: > I see that Nigel Farage is already saying that he’s going to overturn these laws. So you know, we have people out there who are extreme pornographers, peddling hate, peddling violence. Nigel Farage is on their side. It's maddening. The worst part is that they've somehow put me in…

They're all using it to virtue signal their hatred of child porn. It's basically religious at this point. You stray from the line and someone just shouts infidel and you get stoned to death. Unfortunately the atheism movement of a about ten years ago didn't go far enough in making people aware that religion isn't just about big men in the sky who are the same colour as you. What it actually is is a deficiency in huma…

> Some of them, like Hitchens, definitely understood this

He seemed pretty fixated on "monotheism" being a particular problem, as though two gods were fine.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#642

Post by gnfargbl »

_dain_ wrote: post #375
gnfargbl wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Smaller sites are automatically exempted. No, they're not. I don't know why people keep repeating this "7 million active users limit" idea, it's nowhere to be found in the actual rules. Tiny forums have already had to close because they didn't want to deal with the legal risk: https://onlinesafetyact.co.uk/in_memoriam/

The category thresholds are very clearly spelled out in a Statutory Instrument [1]. This is surely the "actual rules" by any definition. The thresholds are exactly as I stated.

If some smaller sites have made the individual decision that the residual parts of the OSA expose them to sufficient legal risk that they must close, that's really a matter for them. I would hope that they actually checked [2] the level of risk before taking any decision.

[1] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2025/226/contents/made

[2] https://ofcomlive.my.salesforce-sites.com/formentry/Regulati...

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#643

Post by Kim_Bruning »

isatty wrote: post #491
hliyan wrote: post #81

On a slightly related note, has anyone else noticed an increase in social media attacks on Wikipedia, kind of like this? https://x.com/benlandautaylor/status/1954276775560966156 Post reads: "Periodic reminder that Wikipedia has a squillion times more money than they need to operate the actual website, and all marginal donations go to the fake paper-shuffling NGO that attached itself to the organization for the purpos…

I happened to come across some of this recently and after an independent review, decided to stop donating to them. There’s just no way to donate to just Wikipedia (to specially only the server costs or upkeep) but ignore whatever else the organization is up to. Same story with Mozilla, there’s no way to donate to just the development of Firefox. It’s all good though, there’s loads of other charities that I can donate…

Donating to your local chapter might still work! (It's what I do at least)

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#644

Post by mrmlz »

Jolter wrote: post #585
ozim wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feels utterly demoralizing when you have to vote for lesser evil and not for someone you feel will be better for the future.

”The lesser evil” is the essence of any two-party system. Which I would somewhat facetiously classify the UK system as. Abolish ”first past the post” and introduce proportional representation now!

Sweden has more parties than two and it's the lesser evil here as well - in what world would a party perfectly align to every single thing you like?

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#645

Post by account42 »

Jolter wrote: post #585
ozim wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feels utterly demoralizing when you have to vote for lesser evil and not for someone you feel will be better for the future.

”The lesser evil” is the essence of any two-party system. Which I would somewhat facetiously classify the UK system as. Abolish ”first past the post” and introduce proportional representation now!

It's the essence of any representative democracy - you'd need as many parties as there are citizens for everyone to be able to vote for one that truly represents their views on all relevant topics.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#646

Post by 3abiton »

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…

Someone else said it, but oneconspiracy theory is that the UK is doing this to instill more "internet" literacy in their population (given that they'll go out of their way to do the free internet). I doubt that is the case, but that's a better cope for many than a dystopian government.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#647

Post by Kim_Bruning »

MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #247
kibwen wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time I checked, many many years ago, the front page was just an ordinary wiki page like any other, and its content was manually added.

Could well be manually added.

Take a look!

* https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&action=...

It's a large number of templates doing transclusions.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Transclusion

You can have snippets like this

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Today%27s_featured_a...

Which shows up on the main page under featured article, and these pages are prepared by humans Just In Time:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Today%2...

A website where everything happens in public -including all the editing- is still kind of cool and relatively unique, even in 2025!.

And most pages are a bit less complicated to handle than this. But the main page obviously gets a lot of attention.

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#648

Post by _Algernon_ »

MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #232
_Algernon_ wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add to that 3) Verifiable to a lay person that the system truly has those properties, with no possibility of suddenly being altered to no longer have those properties without it exceedingly obvious. This whole concept runs into similar issues as digital voting systems. You don't need to just be anonymous, but it must be verifiably and obviously so — even to a lay person (read your grandma with dementia who has never…

It's easy to demonstrate (3) for an age verification system - practical experience will amply demonstrate it to everyone. Voting is very different - you do need to be able to demonstrate the fairness of the process verifiably to everyone - not just crypto nerds. Age verification - well, some people might get around it, but if it generally seems to work that is good enough.

>It's easy to demonstrate (3) for an age verification system - practical experience will amply demonstrate it to everyone.

No. Absence of evidence that I am not anonymous does not constitute evidence that I am anonymous. Verifiable unlinkability is also difficult to prove.

It may be possible to create a system like this technically, but all social and economic incentives that exist are directed against it:

- An anonymous system is likely more expensive.

- The public generally does not care about privacy, until they are personally affected.

- You have no idea as a user whether the server components do what they say they are doing. Even if audited, it could change tomorrow.

- Once in place its purpose can change. Can you guarantee that the next government will not want to modify this system to make identification of dissenters, protestors or journalists easier?

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#649

Post by gpderetta »

drawfloat wrote: post #197
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…

The law was passed by the previous government and everyone assumed the next government would take great delight in reversing it. I wouldn’t be so sure that any next government (which, by the way, there is still a non zero chance could be Labour) will necessarily reverse this. Maybe Reform would tweak the topics, but I’m not convinced any party can be totally trusted to reverse this.

They voted against it because they thought it was not strong enough [1].

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jan/01/labour-pl...

Re: Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act

#650

Post by Jolter »

mrmlz wrote: post #644
Jolter wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

”The lesser evil” is the essence of any two-party system. Which I would somewhat facetiously classify the UK system as. Abolish ”first past the post” and introduce proportional representation now!

Sweden has more parties than two and it's the lesser evil here as well - in what world would a party perfectly align to every single thing you like?

It is far, far more likely that you can get most of your opinions represented in a parliament with 8 parties than one with 2 or 3.

In Sweden, in the past 50 years, people with ”new” or fringe opinions have successfully started parties, and won seats in either the national or EU parliament, on these issues:

- Christianity - Environmentalism - Racism/populism - Internet freedom/privacy - Feminism - Racism/populism, again

Most of these have had their issues adopted by larger parties through triangulation, and thus shrunk away to nothing, while others persist to this day (christianity, environmentalism, racism).

I think if you tried to start a new labor party in the UK today, you should not expect to win any seats. Likewise if you attempted what the Swedish Feminist Initiative did. But I hope I’m about to be proven wrong on the first point.

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