[HN Gopher] Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act
___________________________________________________________________
Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act
Author : phlummox
Score : 409 points
Date : 2025-08-11 16:33 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| perihelions wrote:
| More HN comments here,
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44721403 ( _" Wikimedia
| Foundation Challenges UK Online Safety Act Regulations
| (wikimediafoundation.org)"_--189 comments)
| beejiu wrote:
| Worth noting that was before the High Court's further judgments
| today, and the article has been updated. The full judgment is
| here: https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-
| content/uploads/2025/08/Wikimedi...
| exasperaited wrote:
| _If Ofcom permissibly determines that Wikipedia is a Category
| 1 service, and if the practical effect of that is that
| Wikipedia cannot continue to operate, the Secretary of State
| may be obliged to consider whether to amend the regulations
| or to exempt categories of service from the Act. In doing so,
| he would have to act compatibly with the Convention. Any
| failure to do so could also be subject to further challenge.
| Such a challenge would not be prevented by the outcome of
| this claim._
|
| Seems pretty logical.
|
| Again I think people outside of the UK perceive Ofcom to be a
| censor with a ban hammer. It's an industry self-regulation
| authority -- backed by penalties, yes, but it favours self-
| regulation. And the implementation is a modifiable statutory
| instrument specifically so that issues like this can be
| addressed.
|
| In a perfect world would this all be handled with parental
| oversight and on-device controls? Yeah, maybe. But on-device
| parental controls are such a total mess, and devices
| available so readily, that UK PAYG mobile phone companies
| have already felt compelled (before the law changed) to block
| adult content by default.
|
| ETA: I am rate-limited so I will just add that I am in the UK
| too. Not that this is relevant to the discussion. There is no
| serious UK consensus for overturning this law; the only party
| that claims that as a position does not even have the support
| of the majority of its members. I do not observe this law to
| be censorship, because as an adult I can see what I want to
| see, I just have to prove I am an adult. Which is how it used
| to work with top shelf magazines (so I am told! ;-) )
|
| I suppose it's not really the done thing to say this, but if
| you disagree with me, say something, don't just downvote.
| vidarh wrote:
| As someone _in_ the UK: Ofcom _is_ a censor, that by
| leaving these things unclear are further having a _massive_
| chilling effect that is absolutely already being felt.
|
| The issue here is not parental oversight. It's the
| massively overly broad assault on speech.
|
| The UK PAYG block is a good example of a solution that
| would have had far less severe impact if extended.
| piltdownman wrote:
| Pretty sure the PAYG block is circumvented by simply
| changing the APN in the carrier settings using freely
| available information online - that's how 3Ireland works
| and VodafoneIRL IIRC. It also had the annoying
| consequence of blocking all 'adult' sites - which
| included sites of historic interest and things like the
| internet archive.
|
| The problem with 'child safety' in the UK has almost
| nothing to do with pornographers or 'toxic' influences as
| viewed through the lense of neo-Victorian morality
| anyway.
|
| Instead, it is a societal powderkeg of gang
| indoctrination and social deprivation leading to a
| culture of drug-dealing, violent robberies, and postcode
| gang intimidation. This bill is simply a cheap and easily
| supported deflection from the dereliction of duty of
| successive governments towards the youth of the country
| since Blair.
|
| In short, it is nothing but an electoral panacea for the
| incumbent intolerant conservative voting base; moral-
| hysteria disguised as a child safety measure.
|
| This is inherently obvious when you assess the new
| vocabulary of persecution and otherness - detailing 'ASBO
| Youth', 'Chavs', 'NEETs and NEDs' and their inevitable
| progression to 'Roadmen'.
|
| The Netflix series 'Top Boy' is the Sopranos equivalent
| of how this culture operates and how children are
| indoctrinated into a life of diminished expectations in a
| way that is often inescapable given their environment and
| cultural norms around their upbringing.
|
| Even with this plethora of evidence and cultural
| consciousness, the powers that be are smugly insistent
| that removing PornHub is more important than introducing
| Social Hubs and amenities - and those that argue
| otherwise are derided as 'Saville's in the new parlance.
|
| https://www.thetimes.com/uk/technology-uk/article/online-
| saf...
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgery3eeqzxo
| nemomarx wrote:
| Normalizing those mosquito devices and trying to drive
| teenagers out of public life, banning kitchen knives in
| some attempt to keep kids from getting used to blades...
|
| the UK strategy on kids is very very strange to me. I
| can't follow the logic at all. Do they expect them to
| silently sit at home, not using the Internet, not going
| anywhere with friends, and end up well adjusted adults
| anyway?
| piltdownman wrote:
| Because these trials and tribulations are designed to
| disenfranchise the lower classes - regardless of age, the
| protected classes tend to be unimpeded by societal
| measures in the UK.
|
| If teenagers Felicity or Joshua need to purchase a knife,
| or access questionable internet content, it'll be an
| assumed part of their privilege that they'll be able to
| do so. Similarly they are unimpacted by anti-social
| behaviour orders or restrictions on their entitlement to
| exist in public spaces unmolested, as this is the
| demographic insulated by their memberships to 3rd spaces
| such as Social and Sporting clubs - a fry cry from their
| lower-class urban peers resigned to hanging around the
| Tesco carpark.
| stephen_g wrote:
| Seems like It's just too dangerous for Wikipedia or many
| others to risk though - the potential penalties in the law
| are just too huge as far as I've seen.
|
| For a lot of sites, the safe response has just been
| cautious over-blocking as far as I can see (or smaller UK-
| based services just shutting down) but you can imagine why
| Wikipedia don't want to do that.
|
| But you're right that encouraging much better parental
| controls would have been better than passing this bad law -
| I'll give you that one.
| gnfargbl wrote:
| To me, that judgment reads like a fairly strong warning to
| Ofcom. The outcome section makes it clear that although the
| request for judicial review has been refused at present, that
| refusal is predicated on the fact that Ofcom has currently
| not ruled that Wikipedia is a Category 1 service. If Ofcom
| _were_ to rule that Wikipedia is a C1 service, the Wikimedia
| foundation would have grounds to request a review again --
| and, between the lines, that request might well succeed.
|
| So, _is_ Wikipedia really a Category 1 service? From
| https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukdsi/2025/9780348267174, it
| seems to come down to whether Wikipedia is a site which uses
| a "content recommender system", where that term is defined
| as:
|
| > a system, used by the provider of a regulated user-to-user
| service in respect of the user-to-user part of that service,
| that uses algorithms which by means of machine learning or
| other techniques determines, or otherwise affects, the way in
| which regulated user-generated content of a user, whether
| alone or with other content, may be encountered by other
| users of the service
|
| There's plenty of flexibility in that definition for Ofcom to
| interpret "content recommender system" in a way that catches
| Facebook without catching Wikipedia. For instance, Ofcom
| could simply take the viewpoint that any content
| recommendation that Wikipedia engages in is not "in respect
| of the user-to-user part of that service."
|
| After today's judgement, and perhaps even before, my own bet
| is that this is exactly the route Ofcom will take.
| cft wrote:
| If the UK orders a Wikipedia block to its ISPs, it would be a
| good thing, to raise public awareness of the OSA. Wikipedia
| should do nothing and wait.
| graemep wrote:
| Which is why they will not do it. Nothing popular will be
| blocked or shut down.
| corndoge wrote:
| Porn is popular!
| graemep wrote:
| 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.
| vidarh wrote:
| Some are not, an ironically, Ofcom's website now provides
| a handy list of websites you can visit without age
| verification (in their list of companies they are
| investigating)
| IshKebab wrote:
| > Why not?
|
| Because only 10% of visitors actually do it. It _might_
| not be as bad as this because probably anyone who was
| actually going to pay for the porn would be ok with
| giving them their credit card number anyway. Bad for
| advertising income though.
| filoleg wrote:
| > 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).
| wrboyce wrote:
| I just tried to visit pornhub and was prompted to verify
| my age.
|
| > Please verify your age > > To continue, we are required
| to verify that you are 18 or older, in line with the UK
| Online Safety Act. > To view your verification options,
| please visit our Age Verification Page. As part of this
| process, you will be asked to create a new account on
| Pornhub - this will automatically create a new account on
| AllpassTrust as well. > By proceeding, you acknowledge
| and agree to Pornhub's and AllpassTrust's Privacy Notices
| and Pornhub's and AllpassTrust's Terms & Conditions.
|
| > Pornhub is dedicated to developing state-of-the-art
| security features to protect its community. Pornhub is
| fully RTA compliant, which means that devices with
| appropriately configured parental controls will block
| access to our content. We encourage all platforms in the
| adult industry to use this technology, along with all
| available safety and security protocols. We also
| recommend that all parents and guardians use technology
| to prevent their children from accessing content not
| intended for minors.
|
| > Our parental controls page explains how you can easily
| block access to this site.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Only privately though. No politician is going to admit to
| watching porn. Any campaign to save porn isn't going to
| attract many public supporters.
| DonaldFisk wrote:
| https://news.sky.com/story/neil-parish-mp-accused-of-
| watchin...
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12535038
| IshKebab wrote:
| Neither of those are relevant. One watched porn _at
| work_. Another had her husband _expense his porn_. _And_
| they were both caught rather than admitting it.
|
| We're talking about just watching porn in private,
| normally. Find me an MP that admits to that.
| graemep wrote:
| Not many people are going to say this:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7yIlGlUZac
| jadamson wrote:
| I'm no longer convinced that nothing popular will be shut
| down, assuming that includes voluntarily withdrawing from the
| UK market. A couple of days ago, this popped up:
|
| > The Science Department, which oversees the legislation,
| told companies they could face fines if they failed to uphold
| free speech rules.
|
| > A spokesman said: "As well as legal duties to keep children
| safe, the very same law places clear and unequivocal duties
| on platforms to protect freedom of expression.
|
| > "Failure to meet either obligation can lead to severe
| penalties, including fines of up to 10 per cent of global
| revenue or PS18m, whichever is greater.
|
| https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/08/09/social-
| media...
|
| They seem to be putting social media platforms between a rock
| and a hard place, particularly as political debate in the UK
| is starting to heat up somewhat. I suppose the best to hope
| for at this point is that fines for infringing free
| expression never materialize.
| DonaldFisk wrote:
| From about ten years ago, ISPs were required to block web sites
| which were unsuitable for children _by default_. Any ISP 's
| customer (the person paying for internet access, who would
| therefore be over 18) could ask for the block to be removed.
| Requiring individual web sites to block access was unnecessary
| if the intention was to prevent children accessing those sites.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| >Requiring individual web sites to block access was
| unnecessary if the intention was to prevent children
| accessing those sites.
|
| Hmm. So Reddit, Youtube, etc. would be blocked by ISPs by
| default?
| exasperaited wrote:
| It's an interesting thing but I think their _specific_ concerns
| are somewhat overcooked.
|
| As another commenter pointed out in the earlier thread:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44721712
|
| > The categorisation regulations are a statutory instrument
| rather than primary legislation, so they _are_ open to judicial
| review. But the Wikimedia foundation haven't presented an
| argument as to why the regulations are unlawful, just an argument
| for why they disagree with them.
|
| Ofcom's SI could simply be modified to exclude research texts,
| and it could even be modified to exclude Wikipedia _specifically_
| ; there's no obvious problem with that considering its scale and
| importance.
|
| If you go through Ofcom's checker:
|
| https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-c...
|
| The answers are 1) yes, 2) yes, 3) no, 4) _probably_ "No,
| but...", 5) no, 6) no.
|
| But the answer to getting out of the problem entirely might be to
| change the answer to question 6 -- that is, register Wikipedia as
| an education provider in the UK (since it is already used in that
| capacity).
|
| I mean Wikipedia have actually exhibited at BETT, the main
| educational tech show here; Jimmy Wales did a keynote.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| > 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!
| exasperaited wrote:
| 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.
| vidarh wrote:
| That is exactly the problem. It's unpredictable, and in the
| hand of a government with a serious authoritarian and pro-
| censorship attitude.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| I get the feeling that that's why Wikimedia UK is taking
| this particular course.
| varispeed wrote:
| Also creates system for brown envelopes, so only well
| connected to the establishment could get an exemption.
| layer8 wrote:
| The underlying issue remains unaddressed if only Wikipedia-scale
| sites of "significant value" get special exemption.
| sparsely wrote:
| Quite. Sites that have resources and influence will be fine -
| they can either comply with the rules or will be given soft
| exemptions. It's small and new communities that will suffer.
| gnfargbl wrote:
| 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.
| _dain_ wrote:
| _> 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/
| nonethewiser wrote:
| The whole idea that the UK government, or anyone, can
| distinguish between "worthy" and "unworthy" exceptions is
| absurd in itself. The fact that they recognize there are
| exceptions blows a hole in the whole thing.
| nickslaughter02 wrote:
| 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 effectively as possible to enable UK users to benefit from
| its protections.
|
| https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/722903
| perihelions wrote:
| 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
| GeekyBear wrote:
| That was part of a widespread protest against proposed
| bipartisan internet legislation in America.
|
| On that occassion, it was very effective at getting the
| American government to back down.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| 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. Rather, the legal
| challenge focuses solely on the new Categorisation
| Regulations that risk imposing Category 1 duties (the OSA's
| most stringent obligations) on Wikipedia.
|
| ---
|
| I personally find it rather frustrating that Wikimedia is
| suddenly so willing to bend over for fascists. Where did
| their conscience go?
| t0lo wrote:
| 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.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Why did they raise no one to replace them?
| michaelt wrote:
| A lot of 1990s tech optimists thought that people with
| awful opinions were the unfortunate victims of a lack of
| access to books and education; and the strict gatekeeping
| of broadcast media by the powerful.
|
| This new multi-media technology was going to give
| everyone on the planet access to a complete free
| university education, thousands of books, and would
| prevent the likes of Chinese state-run media suppressing
| knowledge about Tienanmen Square.
|
| And after they receive this marvellous free education,
| all the communists and nazis and religious nutjobs will
| realise they were wrong and we were right. We won't need
| any censorship though, in our enlightenment-style
| marketplace of ideas, rational argument is all that's
| needed to send bad ideas packing, and the educated
| audience will have no trouble seeing through fallacies
| and trickery.
|
| Also the greater education will mean everyone can get
| better jobs and make more money, and with this trade with
| China we're just ramping up they'll see our brilliant
| democratic system, and peacefully adopt it. The recently
| fallen Soviet Union is of course going to do the same,
| and it's going to go really well. We'll all live happily
| ever after.
|
| This Bill Clinton chap has a federal budget surplus, now
| we're not spending all that money on the cold war, so
| we'll get that national debt paid off in no time too.
|
| You may be able to figure out why this particular brand
| of optimism isn't so fashionable these days.
| righthand wrote:
| I wouldn't say that optimism and idealism are no longer
| fashionable, but instead that original optimism (however
| true) was blinded by it's own lack of knowledge. We
| should still be perusing optimist/idealist outcomes but
| not the ones from another era.
| protocolture wrote:
| >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.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| Hey hey hey.. hold on, wait a minuet. What did you just
| say about the ACCC. Those guys make sure we have good
| warranties and cracking down on scams. They are the good
| guys protecting us from the scammers and cooperate greed.
| protocolture wrote:
| They also worked tirelessly at the behest of the largest
| 4 ISPs to ensure that the NBN would be as expensive and
| anti competitive as possible.
| treyd wrote:
| > 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.
|
| I don't think it's a matter of number but activity. There
| are numerous ways that entities with no morals can make
| huge amounts of money by exploiting people online (via
| weaknesses in human psychology adapted for hunting on a
| savannah), both children and adults. It's hard to make
| money doing the opposite.
| bbor wrote:
| 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
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| > Just because they didn't challenge the overall law in
| court doesn't mean they wouldn't challenge it in a
| political sense.
|
| That's my point, though. This is the perfect opportunity
| to do so, and _they aren 't doing it_. Instead, they are
| picking the smallest possible battle they can. That
| decision alone makes waves.
|
| > 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.
|
| That's ridiculous. ID systems endanger everyone,
| particularly the adults who participate. This issue isn't
| isolated from capitalism. These ID systems must be
| implemented and managed by corporations, whose greatest
| incentive is to collect and monetize data.
|
| > We can call it fascism all we like, but at the end of
| the day, people do seem concerned about children
| accessing adult content.
|
| The think-of-the-children argument is the oldest trick in
| the book. You are seriously asking me to take it at face
| value? No thank you.
|
| > 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".
|
| If people really are blind to the change that has
| happened right in front of them, then we should be
| spelling it out at every opportunity. This is my biggest
| concern with how Wikimedia is behaving: they are in a
| significant position politically, and are abdicating this
| crucial responsibility.
| pmyteh wrote:
| Some of it is probably about the scope of UK judicial
| review. Acts of Parliament are absolutely exempt from
| being struck down. The closest you can get is a
| "declaration of incompatibility" that a bill is
| _incapable of being read in such a way_ as complying with
| the European Convention on Human Rights. If at all
| possible the courts will gloss and /or interpret hard to
| come up with a compliant reading. And an incompatibility
| declaration just suggests Parliament looks again: it
| doesn't invalidate a law by itself.
|
| Executive acts, on the other hand, can be annulled or
| overturned reasonably straightforwardly, and this
| _includes_ the regulations that flesh out the details of
| Acts of Parliament (which are executive instruments even
| when they need Parliamentary approval).
|
| In short, judicial review is a practical remedy for a
| particular decision. "These regulations may unreasonably
| burden my speech" is potentially justiciable. "This Act
| could be used to do grave evil" isn't. If an act can be
| implemented in a Convention compatible way then the
| courts will assume it will until shown otherwise.
|
| The consequences can look something like the report of
| this judgement. Yes, it looks like the regulations could
| harm Wikipedia in ways that might not be Convention
| compatible. But because interpretation and enforcement is
| in the hands of Ofcom, it's not yet clear. If they are,
| Wikipedia have been (essentially) invited to come back.
| But the regulations are not void _ab inito_.
| bbor wrote:
| Thanks for the detailed answers! Again, I share at least
| some of your underlying concern, and don't want that to
| be overshadowed. That said, some responses:
| This is the perfect opportunity to do so, and they aren't
| doing it. Instead, they are picking the smallest possible
| battle they can.
|
| It looks like they've written three articles "strongly"
| opposing the "tremendous threat" posed by this bill: two
| when it was being considered[1,2] and another after it
| passed[3]. Yes, these articles are focused on the impact
| of the bill on Wikimedia's projects, but I think that's
| clearly a rhetorical strategy to garner some credibility
| from the notoriously-stuffy UK legislature. "Foreign
| nonprofit thinks your bill is bad in general" isn't
| exactly a position of authority to speak from (if you're
| thinking like a politician).
|
| More recently, they've proposed the "Wikipedia test" to
| the public and to lawmakers (such as at the 2024 UN
| General Assembly[6]) that pretty clearly implicates this
| bill. The test reads as such: _Before passing
| regulations, legislators should ask themselves whether
| their proposed laws would make it easier or harder for
| people to read, contribute to, and /or trust a project
| like Wikipedia._ That's ridiculous. ID
| systems endanger everyone, particularly the adults who
| participate.
|
| I was more making a point about why social media
| companies aren't involved than justifying that choice for
| them on a moral level. I suspect you have stronger
| beliefs than I about the relative danger of your name
| being tied to (small subsets of-)your online activity,
| but regardless, Wikimedia agrees, writing in 2023 that
| the bill _" only protects a select group of individuals,
| while likely exposing others to restrictions of their
| human rights, such as the right to privacy and freedom of
| expression."_ The think-of-the-children
| argument is the oldest trick in the book. You are
| seriously asking me to take it at face value? No thank
| you.
|
| It's still a valid argument. Again I wasn't really
| endorsing any position there, but I do think that in
| general the government should try to protect children.
| The only way I could imagine you disagreeing with that
| broad mandate is if you're a strong libertarian in
| general? This is my biggest concern with
| how Wikimedia is behaving: they are in a significant
| position politically, and are abdicating this crucial
| responsibility.
|
| This, I think, is the fundamental disagreement: I just
| don't see them as being in that significant of a
| position. Given today's news I wouldn't be surprised to
| see them throw up a banner on the Wikipedia homepage
| and/or do a solo one-day blackout reminiscient of 2012,
| but even those drastic measures are pretty small beans.
|
| The real nuclear option--blocking the UK from accessing
| Wikimedia sites--would certainly garner some attention,
| but it would cost them greatly in terms of good will,
| energy, and raw output from their (presumably quite
| significant) UK editor base. And when would it end? If
| the UK government chooses to ignore them, wouldn't it
| feel weird for Wikipedia to be blocked for years in the
| UK but remain accessible in brutal autocracies worldwide?
|
| In the end, this feels like a job for UK voters, not
| international encyclopedias. I appreciate the solidarity
| they've shown already, but implying that they are weak
| for "abdicating [their] crucial responsibility" seems
| like a step too far.
|
| ...IMHO. As a wikimedia glazer ;)
|
| [1] March 2022: https://medium.com/wikimedia-
| policy/early-impressions-of-the...
|
| [2] November 2022: https://medium.com/wikimedia-
| policy/deep-dive-the-united-kin...
|
| [3] May 2023: https://diff.wikimedia.org/2023/05/11/good-
| intentions-bad-ef...
|
| [4] June 2023: https://medium.com/freely-sharing-the-sum-
| of-all-knowledge/p...
|
| [5] September 2023: https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/
| 2023/09/19/wikimedia-fo...
|
| [6] September 2024 & June 2025:
| https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2025/06/27/the-
| wikipedi... //
| https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2025/06/27/the-
| wikipedi...
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| > Where did their conscience go?
|
| Aaron Swartz is no longer with us.
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz#Opposition_to_
| the...
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz#Death
| rawbot wrote:
| 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.
| clutch89 wrote:
| Its relevance has absolutely not waned, more relevant than
| ever. Models need continuous retraining to keep up to date
| with new information right?
| ktallett wrote:
| Despite having consumed all of Wikipedia, it still can't
| accurately answer many questions so I don't think it's
| relevance or value has waned. AI has not got anywhere near
| becoming an encyclopedia and it never will whilst it can't
| say I don't know something (which Wikipedia can do) and
| filter the fact from the fiction, which Wikipedia does uses
| volunteers.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Doesn't AI essentially use the concept of volunteers as
| well with RLHF?
| ktallett wrote:
| 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.
| dylan604 wrote:
| 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?
| layer8 wrote:
| 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".
| briangriffinfan wrote:
| What is this corresponding Wikipedia page?
| jddj wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernoulli%27s_principle
|
| Under the Misconceptions header
| layer8 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lift_(force)#False_explanat
| ion...
| yndoendo wrote:
| 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".
| preisschild wrote:
| Besides the fact that LLMs still make up stuff?
|
| Yea great, make everyone even dumber by forcing them to use
| AI slop
| dkiebd wrote:
| I thought people here didn't like when American companies tried
| to strongarm democratic governments abroad?
| bee_rider wrote:
| 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" silliness.
| Levitz wrote:
| 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.
| eszed wrote:
| Not to dismiss bee_rider's sibling comment, like _at all_ ,
| but: Wikimedia's nature and purpose might be distinguished
| from your generic "American" tech "company".
| Nicook wrote:
| one of the good ones right
| bbor wrote:
| Well, it's a non-profit. Technically still a company, but
| that's an essential difference, to say the least!
| tinktank wrote:
| There is more than one poster on this site; it's safe to
| assume there's more than one opinion.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| It turns out reductionism is stupid and people have different
| opinions
| entuno wrote:
| 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 all users' right to anonymity, by
| introducing compulsory user verification for social media,
| could disproportionately impact users who rely on anonymity to
| protect their identity. These users include young people
| exploring their gender or sexual identity, whistleblowers,
| journalists' sources and victims of abuse. Introducing a new
| legal requirement, whereby only verified users can access
| social media, would force these users to disclose their
| identity and increase a risk of harm to their personal safety.
| phpnode wrote:
| The other point is that recent polls suggest the British
| public are _overwhelmingly_ in support of this legislation
| [0], which is not reflected in most of the narrative we see
| online. Whether they support how it has been _implemented_ is
| a different matter, but the desire to do something is clear.
|
| [0] https://yougov.co.uk/topics/society/survey-
| results/daily/202...
| __oh_es wrote:
| Odd - they also believe it wont be effective
|
| https://yougov.co.uk/topics/society/survey-
| results/daily/202...
| ta1243 wrote:
| Yes it's quite possible for people to hold both those
| views.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| The moment the Russia Ukraine war hit, the top 10 apps in
| Russia was half VPNs.
|
| As long as websites don't want to lock out any user
| without an account, and as long as vpns exist, it'll be
| hard to enforce any of this. At least for now, that's one
| line big tech won't let them cross easily.
| jacquesm wrote:
| It isn't a requirement to enforce this. All it does is to
| ensure that you will be more at risk of breaking the law
| and that little detail will show that you intended to
| evade the law so your presumption of innocence gets
| dinged: apparently you knew that what you were doing was
| wrong because you used a VPN so [insert minor offense or
| thought crime here] is now seen in a different light.
|
| Selective enforcement is _much_ more powerful as a tool
| than outright enforcement, before you know it double
| digit percentages of the populace are criminals, that
| might come in handy some day.
| type0 wrote:
| > top 10 apps in Russia was half VPNs... and as long as
| vpns exist, it'll be hard to enforce any of this.
|
| Russia found good way to enforce it, they changed the law
| and give out prison sentences for using VPNs
| codedokode wrote:
| Not yet - only for searching extremist and terrorist
| content, no matter using VPN or not. Oh, almost the same
| content that is regulated by Online Safety Act in UK.
| physarum_salad wrote:
| The curtain twitcher/nanny state impulse is pretty strong
| Ravus wrote:
| It's sadly an example of terrible leading question bias, to
| the point where I'm surprised that it even got a 22% oppose
| rate.
|
| The percentages would change dramatically were one to write
| it as, "From everything you have seen and heard, do you
| support or oppose the recent rules requiring adults to
| upload their id or a face photo before accessing any
| website that allows user to user interaction?"
|
| Both questions are factually accurate, but omit crucial
| aspects.
| andai wrote:
| Yeah. It's the "foot in the door technique." The same is
| being done with Chat Control.
|
| It's very difficult to oppose a law ostensibly designed
| to fight CSAM. But once the law passes, it'll be easily
| expanded to other things like scanning messages to
| prevent terrorism.
|
| See also:
|
| > Concern over mass migration is terrorist ideology, says
| Prevent
|
| https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/06/06/concern-
| over...
| Iulioh wrote:
| "Do you want CHILDREN to be MURDERED by RAPEISTS online
| or are you a good person?
|
| Y/N
| mcny wrote:
| No
| andy_ppp wrote:
| "When are you going to stop beating your wife?"
| scratcheee wrote:
| There's a classic yes minister skit on how dubious polls
| can be: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ahgjEjJkZks&t=45s
| kieranmaine wrote:
| This doesn't quite cover what you're looking for but I
| think a previous survey led with a question that
| mentioned uploading ID -
| https://yougov.co.uk/topics/society/survey-
| results/daily/202....
|
| I can't find the survey it's entirety, but I think the
| above question was followed by (this is based on the
| number at the end of the URL, which I'm guessing is
| quesiton order) -
| https://yougov.co.uk/topics/society/survey-
| results/daily/202...
| simonw wrote:
| Are there _any_ credible surveys on this topic that don
| 't use the term "pornographic websites" in the survey
| question?
| Lerc wrote:
| I live in a country where 91.78% of the population voted
| for a referendum that bought back hard labour in prisons.
|
| As one of the few who voted against it I have yet to
| encounter a single person who voted for it who both
| supports hard labour and realised that was in the
| question being asked.
| lazide wrote:
| Let me guess - 'do you support violent prisoners being
| given work in proportion to their crimes' or something
| similar?
| Lerc wrote:
| Oh far more deceptive than that.
|
| _" Should there be a reform of our justice system
| placing greater emphasis on the needs of victims,
| providing restitution and compensation for them and
| imposing minimum sentences and hard labour for all
| serious violent offenses?"_
|
| Now let's play tldr with the law!
|
| Luckily it was non binding and stands forever as an
| argument against binding referendums.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| If a new law mentions victims I assume they're trying to
| appeal to my emotions. The joke is on them because I am a
| robot in skin form.
| lazide wrote:
| Yeah, there are many terrible legal abortions in
| California with the referendum setup too.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I'm not really seeing the deception here since it
| specifies hard labour and says it would apply to all
| serious violent offenses. How could you vote for this and
| not know you were voting for hard labour?
| pnw wrote:
| Why do you claim the 1999 referendum reintroduced hard
| labor in NZ prisons? I've never seen anything to that
| effect. The reforms were related to bail, victims rights
| and parole.
| Lerc wrote:
| It did not reintroduce hard labour. People voted to
| reintroduce hard labour. The referendum was non binding,
| tjwebbnorfolk wrote:
| > 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.
| extraisland wrote:
| They always name it the exact opposite of what it does.
|
| If they name something the "Protect Children Act". You
| can be sure that what it does is put Children in Danger.
|
| That means that on the face of it, it is difficult for
| someone to oppose.
| Henchman21 wrote:
| 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.
| GLdRH wrote:
| They are not only children, but also goldfish who forget
| everything after 5 minutes
| extraisland wrote:
| People constantly cite this poll as it is proof that
| British people want this.
|
| You cannot trust the YouGov polling. It is flawed.
|
| > Despite the sophisticated methodology, the main drawback
| faced by YouGov, Ashcroft, and other UK pollsters is their
| recruitment strategy: pollsters generally recruit potential
| respondents via self-selected internet panels. _The
| American Association of Public Opinion Research cautions
| that pollsters should avoid gathering panels like this
| because they can be unrepresentative of the electorate as a
| whole. The British Polling Council's inquiry into the
| industry's 2015 failings raised similar concerns._ Trying
| to deal with these sample biases is one of the motivations
| behind YouGov and Ashcroft's adoption of the modelling
| strategies discussed above.
|
| https://theconversation.com/its-sophisticated-but-can-you-
| be...
|
| Even if the aforementioned problems didn't exist with the
| polling. It has been known for quite a while that how you
| ask a question changes the results. The question you linked
| was the following.
|
| > From everything you have seen and heard, do you support
| or oppose the recent rules requiring age verification to
| access websites that may contain pornographic material?
|
| Most people would think "age verification to view
| pornography". They won't think about all the other things
| that maybe caught in that net.
| cm2012 wrote:
| 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.
| extraisland wrote:
| > All polling has problems like this, but YouGov has the
| same methodology for everything and usually gets within a
| margin of error of +-8.
|
| The way the very question was asked is a problem in
| itself. It is flawed and will lead to particular result.
|
| > if they have an especially bad sample, the UK probably
| really does support the law
|
| The issue is that the public often doesn't understand the
| scope of the law. Those that do are _almost_ always
| opposed to it.
|
| > Think about how many people are less comfortable with
| porn than tech interested males between age 18 and 40.
|
| It isn't about the pornography. This is why conversations
| about this are frustrating.
|
| I am worried about the surveillance aspect of it. I go
| online because I am pseudo-anonymous and I can speak more
| frankly to people about things that I care about to
| people who share similar concerns.
|
| I don't like how the law came into place, the scope of
| the law, the privacy concerns and what the law does _in
| practice_.
|
| Even if you don't buy any of that. There is a whole slew
| of other issues with it. Especially identity theft.
| lazide wrote:
| Of course - control the question, and you guarantee the
| answers.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >Think about how many people are less comfortable with
| porn than tech interested males between age 18 and 40
|
| Are you suggesting that techies do not have any sexual
| appetite? That runs counter to many stereotypes I've
| encountered
| cm2012 wrote:
| No i awkwardly phrased it. Im saying that demographic
| (also the majority here on HN) loves porn more than any
| other demographic.
| abustamam wrote:
| 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.
| cm2012 wrote:
| 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.
| msgodel wrote:
| In a number of recent polls in English speaking countries
| young men have been one of the strongest _anti-porn_
| demographics actually. I think HN being tech adjacent
| with the history and practical reality of how the
| internet works along with being more libertarian (or at
| least liberal) is going to bias that more than the gender
| distribution.
| UnreachableCode wrote:
| Tech people? I have met utter goons obsessed with porn
| that barely understand how their phone actually works.
| extraisland wrote:
| He is trying to cast the illusion that anyone that
| doesn't believe the YouGov polling on here (e.g. me) is
| suffering from cognitive bias.
|
| While that is possible, it doesn't negate the fact I have
| good reasons to be suspicious of polling organisations
| such as YouGov.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _I have good reasons to be suspicious of polling
| organisations such as YouGov_
|
| You have secret reasons to suspect _all_ polling?
|
| If that is the case, and where suspicious means
| automatically rejecting anything that doesn't agree with
| your vibes, then yes, that is a deep and flawed bias and
| statistical illiteracy.
| extraisland wrote:
| It isn't about something not agreeing with my vibes. I
| don't appreciate when people put words in my mouth. I
| never said all. I obviously meant some.
|
| Firstly in my original post I stated why I don't believe
| YouGov to be accurate. It isn't just me that has an issue
| with thier polling.
|
| Secondly, It is well known that many people are swayed by
| peer pressure and/or what is perceived to be popular.
| Therefore if you can manipulate polling to show something
| is popular, then it can sway people that are more
| influenced by peer pressure/on the fence.
|
| Often in advertising they will site a stat about customer
| satisfaction. In the small print it will state the sample
| size or the methodology and it is often hilariously
| unrepresentative. Obviously they are relying on people
| not reading the fine print and being statistically
| illiterate.
|
| Politicians, governments and corporations have been using
| various tactics throughout the 20th and 21st century to
| sway public opinion, both home and abroad to their
| favour.
|
| This issue has divisive for years and has historically
| had a huge amount of push back. You can see this in the
| surge of VPN downloads (which is a form of protest
| against these laws), the popularity of content covering
| this issue.
| throwaway2489 wrote:
| Are you against any kind of content restriction
| whatsoever or just porn?
| tech2 wrote:
| They may not be against content restriction, instead they
| may be against removal of user privacy or anonymity. If
| the proof of age thing was some kind of zero knowledge
| proof such that the age verifying group has no knowledge
| of what you're accessing, and the site you're accessing
| has no knowledge of you as an individual (beyond tells
| like IP address etc.) then perhaps they'd be more open to
| it?
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| There isn't any technology that can prevent sharing of
| age verification with third parties without tying your
| uses to your identity. To unmask someone in order to
| uncover sharing, you would require the ability to do it
| in general, which is incompatible with privacy/anonymity.
| extraisland wrote:
| I am generally against content restrictions. I am
| actually OK with restrictions on pornography.
|
| However that isn't the issue.
|
| It is quite obvious to me that they wish to end online
| anonymity.
|
| Additionally, the UK government has engaged in some form
| of political censorship throughout my lifetime.
|
| I believe that this is the precursor before massive
| political censorship.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > If that is the case, and where suspicious means
| automatically rejecting anything that doesn't agree with
| your vibes, then yes, that is a deep and flawed bias and
| statistical illiteracy.
|
| What if you're suspicious of all polling regardless of
| whether it agrees with your preferences or not?
|
| It's well-understood that leading questions and phrasing
| will get you any response to a poll that you want. That
| being the case, what good are any of them? They're only
| telling you something about how the issue was put rather
| than anything about the true preferences of the
| population.
| lupusreal wrote:
| He didn't say the majority of HN loves porn. He said that
| male demographic likes porn more than any other, and that
| demographic is the majority of HN. It doesn't logically
| follow that the majority of HN supports porn.
|
| Fake statistics just to illustrate the difference. Males
| 18-40 support porn at 60%, which is higher than any other
| demographic. HN is 60% males 18-40. With these numbers,
| 36% of HN is males 18-40 who support porn, and if all
| other demographics on HN oppose it, then those 36% are
| the minority.
|
| (By the way, I have no idea what the real numbers are,
| and don't really care. I'm just responding to an evident
| confusion about what was actually said.)
| throwaway2489 wrote:
| There is a couple of threads of people asking for help
| with porn addiction, you will find that the responses are
| in a funny way much like potheads, plenty of denialism.
|
| Also, if you post anything critical of porn; you get
| downvoted with little exceptions. Try it, if the topic
| ever comes up, say something critical and your comment
| gets flagged and removed.
|
| HN has a massive demographic overlap with problematic
| pornography consumers.
| TylerE wrote:
| 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.
| cm2012 wrote:
| 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.
| Metricon wrote:
| It seems like some things always remain the same:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ZZJXw4MTA
| quotemstr wrote:
| There is a Yes, {Prime Minister,Minister} for every
| occasion in tech.
| password321 wrote:
| A good reminder that certain circles are just the vocal
| minority and under the surface society is mostly just NPCs.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Not a great lesson to take here.
|
| 1. Policy by default will always be planned and
| implemented by a minority. As well as those who comment
| to policy, or online.
|
| 2. You'll have some 20-30% of people who will say yes to
| anything if you phrase it the right way.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| As always, the devil is in the details. Very careful
| wording:
|
| >do you support or oppose the recent rules requiring age
| verification to access websites that may contain
| pornographic material?
|
| "may" is doing the heavy lifting. Any website that hosts
| image "may" contain pornograohic content. So they don't
| associate this with "I need id to watch YouTube" it's "I
| need ID to watch pornhub". Even though this affects both.
|
| On top of that, the question was focused on peon to begin
| with. This block was focused more generally on social
| media. The popular ones of which do not allow pornography.
|
| Rephrase the question to "do you agree with requiring ID
| submission to access Facebook" and I'd love to see how that
| impacts responses.
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| "Why yes I do either support or oppose those rules.
| Thanks for asking."
| matt-p wrote:
| Ok and how about if it was phrased;
|
| "Are you in favour of requiring ages verification for
| Wikipedia and other websites"
|
| "Are you in favour of uploading your ID card and selfie
| each time you visit a site that might contain porn"
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| 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.
| Henchman21 wrote:
| Is it quite right that the public gets ignored all the
| time?
|
| How do you force your representatives to actually represent
| their constituents?
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| I have just described how the public drives the
| democratic process to ensure everyone gets a voice, not
| just whoever shouts the loudest. That's the opposite of
| ignoring the public.
| matt-p wrote:
| If the public truly drove the democratic process we'd
| have proportional representation or something other than
| the current system.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| 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?
| michaelt wrote:
| 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.
| pram wrote:
| Yeah who do these peasants think they are?
| mikestorrent wrote:
| I wish that we didn't always have to phrase things like this.
| Yes, it's true that the aforementioned folks may likely have
| more of a need for anonymity than I do as someone who isn't a
| member of any protected class; but that doesn't mean I don't
| have a legitimate right to it too. And, if this is the way we
| phrase things, when a government is in power that doesn't
| care about this (i.e. the present American regieme), the
| argument no longer has any power.
|
| We shouldn't have to hide behind our more vulnerable peers in
| order to have reasonable rights for online free speech and
| unfettered anonymous communication. It is a weak argument
| made by weak people who aren't brave enough to simply say,
| "F** you, stop spying on everyone, you haven't solved
| anything with the powers you have and there's no reason to
| believe it improves by shoving us all into a panopticon".
|
| Totalitarian neoliberalism sucks; your protest petition with
| six million signatures is filed as a Jira ticket and closed
| as WONTFIX, you can't get anyone on the phone to complain at,
| everyone in power is disposable and replaceable with another
| stooge who will do the same thing as their predecessor. Go
| ahead and march in the streets, the government and media will
| just declare your protest invalid and make the other half of
| the population hate you on demand.
| anthk wrote:
| Every totalitarian regime sucks, be it corporate, religious
| or socialistic.
| yupyupyups wrote:
| >These users include young people exploring their gender or
| sexual identity
|
| And who would they need to hide from?
| matt-p wrote:
| School bullys, parents, friends, community members, church
| leaders and many others I imagine. The idea was that it
| would have your real name and it was verified by your ID.
| yupyupyups wrote:
| >parents
|
| You do understand that there are creeps out there
| grooming children, right? Parents definitely do need to
| have oversight over their own kids.
|
| Children should absolutely not have privacy on the
| internet.
|
| The ID requirement is terrible, but saying that children
| need privacy to explore their sexuality on the internet
| is very problematic.
|
| If this is the position the UK government holds then that
| brings into question their desire to protect children
| online in the first place.
| matt-p wrote:
| I do, of course. It's just worth considering that not
| every parent is how you or I might like or imagine them
| to be.
|
| For some children their parents finding out they're gay
| would cause a great deal of real world physical or
| phycological harm. It's a really tricky thing to
| navigate, but aside from saying 'no children should be
| allowed access to the internet unsupervised' it gets
| really difficult.
| kelipso wrote:
| 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.
| watwut wrote:
| To be fair, those are not actually in opposition. Because
| they dont believe parents can actually do it.
|
| They just want to throw responsibility and blame on
| parents, so that government dont restrict porn access.
| Parents are just a tool and scapegoats.
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| From people who would harm them?
|
| Oh you're that anti-games, anti-porn guy, best to ignore
| anything you say.
| yupyupyups wrote:
| I'm not anti-games.
|
| >From people who would harm them?
|
| Like who? I really hope you don't mean the kids' parents.
| ndr wrote:
| Does WP do this anywhere else?
|
| I wonder what happens if they simply don't comply. Will the UK
| at any point ask ISPs to ban Wikipedia?
| Perz1val wrote:
| I think just getting blocked is no big deal, but they'll
| probably get fined as well, that is the problem
| kylec wrote:
| What mechanism does the UK government have to extract fines
| from Wikipedia?
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Probably, my understanding is theyve already implemented IP
| blocking to other sites.
| parasense wrote:
| As ridiculous or absurd as this idea might seem, it's probably
| the most succinct and likely effective response to this kind of
| situation. The UK is betting the rest of the world doesn't
| reciprocate.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Not ridiculous, the only way to stop injustice is to fight.
| willtemperley wrote:
| Yes. HTTP 451 "Unavailable For Legal Reasons" was made for this
| moment.
| NitpickLawyer wrote:
| No, they should block with a very visible message, tailored
| to the british public. I know what that status message means,
| you know it, but the general public doesn't. They need the
| black page with big letters they used before with
| sopa/pipa/etc.
| Mogzol wrote:
| You can return a 451 error with a descriptive page, same as
| how sites have custom 404 pages
| bravesoul2 wrote:
| We need new 6xx codes. "Requests that are fine, need no
| redirection and have no errors but are blocked because of
| politics, overbearing laws or regime"
| willglynn wrote:
| For example, "An HTTP Status Code to Report Legal
| Obstacles":
|
| https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7725
| marcosdumay wrote:
| That's what 451 means.
|
| It's "user error, you are trying to access the site from
| some dystopian society that prohibits it".
| bravesoul2 wrote:
| Yeah but I want to know if I should submit, protest or
| revolt. I need more codes :)
| Mogzol wrote:
| 451 is such a good reference though, other codes just
| wouldn't be the same :(
| owisd wrote:
| Problem with Wikipedia specifically going all-in on a UK block
| is, due to the licence, there's nothing to stop someone
| circumventing the block to make a OSA-compliant Britipedia
| mirror with minimal effort.
| saati wrote:
| Except the effort and money needed to be OSA compliant. As
| the whole enwiki is permissively licensed everyone is welcome
| to do it though.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| > 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 if the regulations mean they just don't want to do
| business there but please don't block access to try and strong
| arm the elected government of another nation.
| dizlexic wrote:
| Or they should not do business in them. To me this means
| block access. If you don't then they're supposed to block
| access to you anyway so who is strong arming who?
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| As I said in my first comment: if it makes doing business
| in the UK unpalatable then they are of course free to halt
| their operations. I was specifically responding to the
| suggestion above that they should do so as a bargaining
| move to force the government's hand.
| ahtcx wrote:
| The Wikimedia Foundation isn't "doing business" in the
| UK, they're a nonprofit. Their mission statement is "to
| empower and engage people around the world to collect and
| develop educational content under a free license or in
| the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and
| globally."
|
| Part of fulfilling that mission is opposing laws that
| restrict free knowledge and open access, so why should
| they not use their huge presence as a bargaining tool?
| Doing so directly aligns with their purpose.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| Is it "democratic" when both parties agree on everything of
| substance and elections don't change anything no matter who
| wins? Because that's how "democracy" has worked in the UK for
| at least as long as I've been alive.
|
| Also, no-one asked for this bill, both parties support it, it
| received basically no debate or scrutiny and was presented as
| a fait accompli. Where's the democracy exactly?
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| There are any number of criticisms I would happily join you
| in directing at the British parliamentaey system but I
| don't think relying on American businesses to pressure the
| government would actually be the win for democracy you seem
| to suggest?
| arrowsmith wrote:
| I didn't say anything prescriptive, I'm just disputing
| your use of the word "democratic".
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| 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.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| 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.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| I have no idea what this means.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Representives not representing their constituents makes
| democracy a sham. If you think representatives as of late
| are acting in good faith, I question yours.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > 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 back via the courts,
| public opinion, etc.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| The bill had broad cross party support and passed without
| opposition from the Labour party.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| 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.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >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. deg
|
| Yes, but they probably a won't without a lot of push
| back. Here's the push back
| arrowsmith wrote:
| The Tories' loss had nothing to do with what anybody
| thought of the OSA, a bill which most people hadn't heard
| of until last week.
|
| But you already knew that.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| And which was supported by Labour.
| mhurron wrote:
| > Or they could respect the democratic decisions of the
| countries they do business in?
|
| Blocking, making it clear why your blocking and that you will
| continue to block until it changes is respecting the
| decision.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| Well, that would be tricky, since Wikipedia is not a
| business, and is nor is it specifically American. (Other than
| a foundation in the US that runs the servers) . There are
| Wikipedias in many of the world's languages!
|
| If the UK effectively bans public wikis above a certain size
| (even if by accident), then it is the law of the land that
| Wikipedia is banned. Or at least the english wikipedia, which
| is indeed very large. And if it is banned, then it must block
| access for the uk, under those conditions. Depending on the
| exact rules, possibly the uk could make do with the Swahili
| wikipedia?
|
| That said, the problem here is that it is a public wiki of a
| certain size. One option might be for Wikipedia to implement
| quotas for the UK, so that they don't fall under category 1
| rules.
|
| Another option would be to talk with Ofcon and get things
| sorted that way.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| By Wikipedia I meant the foundation of course. I'm not sure
| localisation automatically makes them a multinational
| entity. Windows is available in Chinese but we both
| understand that Microsoft is not a Chinese company.
|
| It is fair to say it's not a business, but essentially
| there's no difference to my feeling that private entities
| from other countries shouldn't be throwing their weight
| around in local democracy.
|
| Do you feel that Wikipedia today is banned through the
| letter of the law? If so why is there a question of it
| continuing to operate there?
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| The Wikimedia Foundation is not in charge of the
| Wikipedias per se (though as always, once you have a
| central organization, it starts stretching its tentacles)
| .
|
| Wikipedias are not merely localized versions of each
| other, they're truly independent.
|
| If you happen to know two languages and want to quickly
| rack up edits (if that's your sport), arbitraging
| knowledge between two Wikipedias is one way to go.
|
| Wikipedia is not throwing their weight around. They are
| merely pointing out that the law happens to make their
| operating model illegal, and surely that can't be the
| intent. If they are illegal, they cannot operate. Is
| "very well, we disagree, but if you truly insist, we
| shall obey the law and leave" throwing your weight
| around?
|
| And yes, I get the impression that the UK's letter of the
| law could lead to a categorization with rules that (a)
| Wikipedia simply cannot comply with, and still be a
| Wikipedia. So in that case Wikipedia would be effectively
| banned.
|
| But we're not there yet. Hence the use of proper legal
| channels, including this court case. Ofcom is expected to
| make their first categorizations this summer, so this is
| timely.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| It's the foundation who are involved in this court action
| and who is the topic of this thread. The code uploaded to
| GitHub wouldn't change the geographic basis of Microsoft
| either...
|
| But that said I want to be clear that I have no issue
| with the Foundation's current actions or position in the
| court system. I was responding only very specifically to
| the suggestion above that they "should" block Wikipedia
| access immediately in order to force the hand off the
| British government.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| I agree that wikipedia going dark in the uk would -as
| yet- be premature at this juncture.
| skeaker wrote:
| > Do you feel that Wikipedia today is banned through the
| letter of the law? If so why is there a question of it
| continuing to operate there?
|
| This isn't so much up to feeling as it is up to
| interpretation of the law. If there isn't a good way for
| Wikipedia to hide parts of itself and the law requires
| that it does, then it is effectively banned by the letter
| of the law.
|
| The question of it continuing to operate exists because
| it is an obvious good to society that the law is yet to
| act on shutting down themselves. Right now it continues
| to exist in the UK despite being illegal due to the good
| will (or incompetence if you're not feeling generous) of
| the UK government.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> Do you feel that Wikipedia today is banned through the
| letter of the law?_
|
| Wikipedia is certainly large enough, in terms of traffic.
| And as anyone can edit it, it would seem to be a user-to-
| user service, making it a Category 1 provider, equivalent
| to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Youtube.
|
| And their wiki page about 'breasts' certainly shows
| photographs of female nipples. Their pages on penises are
| likewise illustrated. They also have pages about suicide
| and self-harm.
|
| Wikipedia is also a website we could reasonably expect
| children to access.
|
| And Wikipedia _did_ lobby the government, before the act
| was passed, to make it clear they _weren 't_ subject to
| it, which the government opted not to do.
|
| So it would certainly appear they are subject to it.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| 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.
| sureglymop wrote:
| Also, that won't necessarily do anything. Russia forked
| wikipedia into Ruwiki after the invasion of Ukraine and it
| worked out for them.
| betaby wrote:
| > Or they could respect
|
| Blocking is respecting the law!
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| > Or they could respect the democratic decisions of the
| countries they do business in?
|
| They do that by staying out of such countries. Many US
| companies don't want to work with EU GDPR and just block all
| european IPs, wikipedia has full right to leave UK. They are
| under no obligations to provide service to them in the same
| was as pornhub is under no obligation to provide services in
| eg. a country that would require them to disclose IP
| addresses of all viewers of gay porn, etc.
|
| Saying that it was a democratic decision without people
| actually being asked if they want that (referendum) is just
| weaseling out instead of directly pointing out that it's a
| bad policy that very few brits actually wanted. Somehow no
| one uses the same words when eg. trump does something
| (tarifs, defunding, etc.), no one is talking about democratic
| decisions of americans then.
|
| Wikipedia has the full right to say "nope, we're not playing
| that game" and pulling out, even if an actual majority of
| brits want that.
| xnyan wrote:
| > Or they could respect the democratic decisions of the
| countries they do business in?
|
| In what way would blocking access from the UK be not
| respecting the law?
| anon-3988 wrote:
| This after the gaffe with the postal services, we are going to
| see some innocent folks being branded.
|
| In general, I think we need a shift in society to say "yea,
| screw those kids". We don't put 20km/h limits everywhere
| because there's a non-zero chance that we might kill a kid. Its
| the cost of doing business.
|
| Having privacy MEANS that it is difficult to catch bad people.
| That is just the price. Just swallow it and live with it.
| Arch-TK wrote:
| I wish all non-UK entities which may be affected by this law
| just dropped the UK. But unfortunately it seems they have too
| much money invested in not doing that.
|
| But I'm sure even if that happened, the public consensus would
| just be "good riddance".
|
| This is an absolutely bizarre country to live in.
| panzi wrote:
| Problem is that all that most people want out of Wikipedia is
| ingested in LLMs and for unfathomable reasons people now go to
| those first already. So the general public might not even
| notice Wikipedia being inaccessible.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > Wikimedia should block UK access. That will get the attention
| of media and popularity contest politicians might change their
| mind.
|
| It is a gamble. If people increasingly get their "encyclopedic"
| information via AI, then it might make almost no noise and then
| the govt will have even more leverage.
| profmonocle wrote:
| Possibly naive question, why should Wikimedia do anything at
| all? Do they have a legal presence in the UK?
|
| If not, why not just say "we aren't a UK based organization so
| we have no obligations under this law"
|
| Let the UK block Wikipedia.
| gundmc wrote:
| IANAL, but I assume this could open Wikimedia leadership to
| charges of contempt and eventually lead to needing to avoid
| visiting the UK or other extraditing countries and
| potentially pave the way for asset seizures. You generally
| don't want to antagonize world power governments.
| Self-Perfection wrote:
| If Wikimedia blocks access from UK it has control over
| response page and can write there accurate description of the
| reasons why access is blocked.
| amiga386 wrote:
| > If Ofcom permissibly determines that Wikipedia is a Category 1
| service, and if the practical effect of that is that Wikipedia
| cannot continue to operate, the Secretary of State may be obliged
| to consider whether to amend the regulations or to exempt
| categories of service from the Act. In doing so, he would have to
| act compatibly with the Convention. Any failure to do so could
| also be subject to further challenge. Such a challenge would not
| be prevented by the outcome of this claim.
|
| Basically, DENIED, DENIED, DENIED. Ofcom can keep the loaded gun
| pointed in Wikipedia's face, forever, and make as many threats as
| it likes. Only if it pulls the trigger does Wikipedia have a
| case.
|
| Wikipedia should voluntarily remove itself from the UK entirely.
| No visitors, no editors.
| exasperaited wrote:
| 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. But they went fishing in advance (or to use an
| alternative metaphor, they got out over their skis).
|
| What else is the court to do but give a reassurance that the
| process will absolutely be amenable to review if the
| hypothetical circumstance comes to pass? That is what the
| section you are quoted says.
|
| First, it's a statutory instrument that ministers _will_ amend
| if it has unintended, severe consequences.
|
| Second, the rules in question have not been written yet and
| they are being written in conjunction with industry (which will
| include Wikipedia). Because Ofcom is an industry self-
| regulation body.
| amiga386 wrote:
| 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 illegal in the UK. Always has
| been, always will be. Never rip a CD, not even once. Keep
| paying all your fucking money to the UK Music member
| corporations and never think you own anything, not even once.
|
| But it illustrates that the UK's law-making is subject to
| judicial review, and government cannot make laws or
| regulations without consulting those affected by them how
| much of a hardship it constitutes to them. The judge here is
| merely saying we haven't seen the harm _yet_ , and Ofcom can
| keep threatening indefinitely to cause harm, Wikipedia only
| have a case when they _do_ cause harm. By contrast, passing
| the law making CD ripping legal, UK Music argued, using an
| absolute load of bollocks they made up, that it immediately
| caused them harm.
| jadamson wrote:
| It's not that simple. The law the BBC article is referring
| to[1] was a regulation, i.e. secondary legislation, passed
| by resolution. Had it been primary legislation, the courts
| wouldn't have been able to overturn it (Parliament is
| sovereign).
|
| [1] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukdsi/2014/9780111112700
| Quarrel wrote:
| > 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.
| chippiewill wrote:
| > But it illustrates that the UK's law-making is subject to
| judicial review
|
| This is misleading. Actual primary legislation isn't
| subject to judicial review. The only exception to that is a
| Judge can declare legislation incompatible with the ECHR -
| but even then that doesn't actually nullify the law, it
| only tells the government/parliament they need to fix it.
|
| The bit that is subject to review is _secondary_
| legislation, which is more of an executive action than
| lawmaking. It's mostly a historical quirk that statutory
| instruments count as legislation in the UK.
| flipbrad wrote:
| A lot of what you are posting is not true. Take for instance
| your claim that "Ofcom is an industry self-regulation body"
| exasperaited wrote:
| Ofcom is a _government-approved_ industry regulator,
| strictly speaking.
|
| It is what in the UK gets called a Quango. A quasi-non-
| government-organisation.
|
| It is not a government body. It is not under direct
| ministerial control.
|
| It gets some funds from government (but mostly through fees
| levied on industry):
|
| https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7c8eec40f0
| b...
|
| But it operates within industry as the industry's
| regulator, and its approach has always been to operate that
| way (just as the other Of- quangos do).
|
| Here is what appears to be their own take on it.
|
| https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/documents/con
| s...
|
| This seems pretty consistent with what I said -- it is
| essentially a self-regulation body, promoting self-
| regulation but backed by statutory powers/penalties.
|
| Now what else is untrue?
|
| ETA: rate-limited so I am not able to properly respond to
| the below. Bye for now.
| handelaar wrote:
| Your claim that Ofcom is in any way a "self-regulation
| body" is untrue. And frankly also a _straight-up insane_
| thing to say, sorry.
|
| Ofcom was created by the UK government for the sole
| purpose of enforcing laws passed by the UK government
| [and sometimes interpreting those laws]. It acts on
| behalf of the State at all times, and is not empowered to
| do otherwise under any circumstances EVER.
|
| You appear to be confused about what being a "quango"
| actually means in this case. "Quasi-NGO" means that while
| it appears to be a non-governmental organisation, it is
| _not one_. Ofcom 's at arm's length because the majority
| of its daily legal obligations are closer to judicial
| than administrative, and it is UK custom (rightly) to not
| put judicial functions inside government departments.
| Quarrel wrote:
| While you're correct about Ofcom, the real distinction
| isn't really to the objective, but to the classification
| of its employees.
|
| Ofcom, Gambling Commission, and the rest of the quangos
| are independent statutory bodies, and (this is a big
| distinction!) their employees are not civil servants.
|
| Quangos include judicial tribunals and places like the
| BBC, or the Committee on Climate Change- it is a broad
| umbrella.
| timthorn wrote:
| Quasi-autonomous, to be completely accurate. They consult
| regularly with the industry and ministers but the Office
| of Communications Act established Ofcom to be independent
| of both Government and industry. They're accountable to
| Parliament.
| miroljub wrote:
| > Wikipedia should voluntarily remove itself from the UK
| entirely. No visitors, no editors.
|
| No, it should remove servers, employees and legal presence from
| the UK. It's not their job to block UK people from accessing it
| just because the UK regime want them to. Let the regime censors
| actually put an effort to block them. Let them make a Great
| Firewall of the UK, why make it easy for them?
| amenhotep wrote:
| Because, as someone living in the UK, the only way people
| here are going to realise what's going on and apply
| meaningful pressure to the government is if these
| organisations force us to. And because once they've given up
| on one country, they'll give up on the rest just as easily.
| freedomben wrote:
| Is there backlash for this sort of thing? When they did
| their blackout thing some years back, a lot of people who
| were sympathetic to the cause were also highly annoyed at
| the disruption to their workflows, to the point that if it
| had gone on much longer it might have backfired on Wiki.
| I've seen similar affects with protesters blocking roads
| and such. I always wonder if it's just a small minority or
| if it happens more widespread
| righthand wrote:
| What would the backlash possibly be? Someone in the UK
| starting their own censored Wikipedia would be a good
| thing in the long and short run.
|
| Backlash but positive backlash.
| notpushkin wrote:
| > Someone in the UK starting their own censored Wikipedia
| would be a good thing in the long and short run.
|
| I'm seeing that playing out with a Russian Wikipedia
| (forked as Ruwiki and heavily edited to be in line with
| Kremlin propaganda), and I don't like it one bit. There's
| not much you can do as it's free/open content, but it
| still sucks.
| Tadpole9181 wrote:
| Backlash? What are they gonna do - not look at the
| Wikipedia they don't have access to?
|
| It's not funded by ads or anything, this literally is
| _easier_ and _cheaper_ for them, and Britain loses an
| enormous trove of knowledge.
| contravariant wrote:
| Sure, but letting the UK government block wikipedia makes
| things _much_ clearer for everyone.
| entuno wrote:
| They don't need to make anything - that capability has been
| there for years. It was mostly used to block sites with IIoC,
| but they also blocked access to various piracy related sites
| and things like that.
| bdcravens wrote:
| It's a lot harder to uproot people than servers.
|
| https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Staff
| nonethewiser wrote:
| I generally agreed but this depends entirely on the US's
| willingness to cooperate with UK authorities. This would be
| the DOJ, FTC, etc. I dont think it would go straight the
| judiciary although someone can correct me on that if I'm
| wrong.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| If they don't geoblock UK visitors then every person known to
| be involved with the operation of wikipedia potentially
| becomes an international fugitive and if they ever land on UK
| soil (or perhaps even Commonwealth soil), they could be
| jailed.
|
| Not a fun way to live.
| pcrh wrote:
| This is the part that gets me intrigued. It's quite difficult
| to parse, having so many conditionals... ifs, mays, woulds,
| "subject to further challenge", etc
|
| It doesn't seem (to me) as definitive as some claim.
|
| _Hopefully_ , this ambiguous language opens the door for
| further challenges that may provide case law against the
| draconian Online Safety Act.
| andiareso wrote:
| All US companies should boycott the UK in solidarity. See how
| fast the regulators walk back the bill.
| cft wrote:
| why would they? This is great for the large media corps:
|
| - Increases barrier to entry for smaller competitors
|
| - Reliable user data (age, race, who knows what else) derived
| from video age verification
|
| Anecdote:
|
| My mom recently visited Spain. The process of buying a local
| SIM card was as follows:
|
| * Show your US passport at a major local cellular provider's
| store (Movistar) to have its number associated with the SIM.
|
| * During SIM activation, open a browser page that accesses the
| phone's camera.
|
| * Scan the first page of your passport.
|
| * Point the selfie camera at your face, then close your eyes
| and smile when prompted.
| joemi wrote:
| > then close your eyes and smile when prompted
|
| I was about to ask about this, but then I realized it must so
| that you can't just point it at a photo of someone.
| crimsoneer wrote:
| The UK law is significantly less stringent and better thought
| out than equivalent age verification laws already in place in a
| bunch of US states....
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Ah yes, what about the US.
|
| Which law are you talking about by the way?
|
| I was mostly familiar with laws that required porn companies
| to verify their user's age. That is a lot more targeted and
| less offensive than UK Online Safety Act Regulations IMO. I
| mean it's already illegal to distribute porn to minors -
| that's just requiring them to enforce it at the expense of
| porn watcher's anonymity. Whereas the UK Online Safety Act is
| more like a backdoor for content moderation across the
| internet.
| ectospheno wrote:
| The online safety act being a more well thought out step on
| this slippery slope doesn't mean it isn't leading to the
| same horrible end. We are just rearranging deck chairs on
| the titanic.
| nemomarx wrote:
| I think those age verification laws don't target as many
| sites though, right? not Wikipedia at least
| platevoltage wrote:
| We can't even get American companies to take a stand against
| authoritarianism in their own country.
| rvba wrote:
| Wikipedia is so bad at simplest PR.
|
| It should close itself before elections to burn the politicians
| that try to screw it.
| Levitz wrote:
| 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.
| rvba wrote:
| If wikipedia can show the Jimmy Wales banners, then sure it
| can go for the throat of some politicians.
|
| It allready collects few hubdred million per year, spends
| like 10 on wikipedia itself and rest goes for political
| projects. They could do something useful for once.
|
| (On a side note: all those money and they dont use it to
| track the cliques / country level actors across admins...)
| tux1968 wrote:
| The UK is spearheading this charge, but if they are successful it
| will have paved the way for many more governments to embrace
| these policies. How this plays out is important for people living
| in every western country.
| devmor wrote:
| The US has been implementing similar bans sporadically as well.
| It's being done on a state-by-state basis due to the limited
| federal power structure of our government making it more
| difficult for minority power groups like fascists to push
| legislation.
|
| I do believe the social factors leading to support for these
| bans are quite a bit different, but the core minds behind them
| are of the same creed.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Could it be that the massive Wikipedia war chest of money can
| actually be used for something now?
| arduanika wrote:
| If the incessant banner ads said, "Hello, this is a special
| plea from Jimmy Wales, get in, we're saving the Brits from
| themselves", then maybe I'd actually donate.
| acka wrote:
| Just leaving this here, in case things really start going south
| and people realize they need to stack up on knowledge supplies
| (note: I am not affiliated with them, I just think that
| Wikipedia, among other resources, is too valuable to let it fall
| through the cracks):
|
| > When there is No Internet, there is Kiwix Access vital
| information anywhere. Use our apps for offline reading on the go
| or the Hotspot in every place you want to call home. Ideal for
| remote areas, emergencies, or independent knowledge access.
|
| https://kiwix.org/en/
| hliyan wrote:
| 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 purpose of
| feeding on donations from rubes."
|
| Quoted post reads: "I have no interest in giving Wikipedia money
| to blow on fake jobs for ovecredentialed paper-pushers, but if
| the banner said "Jimmy Wales created Wikipedia and he'd like to
| buy a yacht" then I'd pull out my wallet immediately."
| trenchpilgrim wrote:
| I've contributed content to Wikipedia and broadly agree with
| the sentiment. Users are guilted into thinking donations go
| towards the cost of serving the encyclopedia, which is not
| really where the money goes.
| daedrdev wrote:
| This has been a criticism for a decade or more
| emberfiend wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...
|
| Long-time WP contributor and apologist here. I still think
| Wikipedia does more good than bad (for all its sins), is the
| greatest collaborative human work of our time, and there is
| some merit to the idea of having a giant pile of money to be
| able to fight government-scale battles like this one. But the
| story of the bureaucrats settling in and leeching donations at
| scale is basically accurate.
| miki123211 wrote:
| I'm really confused about what would realistically happen if
| Wikimedia just decided to ignore those regulations.
|
| They have surely ignored demands to censor Wikipedia in more
| authoritarian countries. What makes the UK different? Extradition
| treaties? Do they even apply here?
|
| I have the same confusion about Signal's willingness to leave
| Europe if chat control is imposed[1], while still providing anti-
| censorship tools for countries like Iran and China. What makes
| the European laws they're unwilling to respect different from the
| Iranian laws they're unwilling to respect?
| AlgebraFox wrote:
| They might ban the CEO and employees from entering their
| country or arrest them when they travel.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| Having moved out of the uk many years ago, being banned from
| there, may not be such a bad thing.
|
| The worst thing is, people will vote out the labour
| government, and the tory bastards (who will say they are 'the
| party of freedom) will tell the country "Well, it wasnt us".
| vizzier wrote:
| Its worth noting of course, that this is Tory law which was
| given a grace period before implementation. Labour have
| chosen to continue its implementation and not repeal it.
| chippiewill wrote:
| A variety of things could happen:
|
| - Employees become accountable for their company's actions -
| Wikimedia could be blocked - Other kinds of sanctions (e.g.
| financial ones) could be levied somehow
|
| In practice what will likely happen is Wikimedia will comply:
| either by blocking the UK entirely, making adjustments to be
| compliant with UK legislation (e.g. by making their sites read-
| only for UK-users - probably the most extreme outcome that's
| likely to occur), or the as-yet unannounced Ofcom regulations
| they've preemptively appealed actually won't apply to Wikimedia
| anyway (or will be very light touch).
| deadbabe wrote:
| What if they simply don't pay any sanctions?
| impossiblefork wrote:
| They don't apply. Delivering this kind of thing is obviously
| allowed in the US, so there's presumably no mutual criminality.
| Jigsy wrote:
| > They have surely ignored demands to censor Wikipedia in more
| authoritarian countries. What makes the UK different?
| Extradition treaties? Do they even apply here?
|
| The UK has the authority to arrest them (anyone who owns a
| website) if they ever set foot in the UK if they feel they
| either haven't censored it adequately enough or refuse to do
| so.
|
| It's one of the reasons why Civitai geoblocked the country.
| knorker wrote:
| What I hate most about this latest push is that people in their
| 30s are trying to convince us all that blocking children's access
| to porn and such is the issue. As if most people don't agree with
| that in the abstract.
|
| Not only people in their 30s, but it's who I see making a fuss
| about it. Presumably because they are now parents of children
| newly reaching this age.
|
| They are completely ignoring that they are entering a debate
| that's been going on for longer than they have been alive, and
| are just arguing from a source of "common sense" gut feelings.
| They are literally a third of a century behind on this issue, but
| it doesn't stop them talking about it.
|
| They are incompetent on this issue (nothing bad about that. I'm
| incompetent in most things), but they are also _stupid_ because
| they don 't let that incompetence stop them.
|
| They are too incompetent to understand that they just did the
| equivalent of entering a room full of mathematicians with a
| collective thousands of years of math knowledge, and saying "how
| about just making 2+2=5? You could make 2+2=4, so you smart
| people should be able to do it". How do you even start with
| someone this ignorant? They don't even understand what math _is_.
|
| "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures,
| will the right answers come out?" -- "I am not able rightly to
| apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such
| a question."
| anal_reactor wrote:
| I wish I could agree with you, but this is not how things work.
| My experience says that if there's enough people wishing for
| 2+2 to equal 5, that will become the socially accepted
| standard, and the whole society will get organized around
| 2+2=5. Will it be less efficient? Yes. Will people care? No.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| UK Online Safety Act has a much bigger scope than porn.
|
| In fact you've picked probably the least offensive, which is
| not to say uncontroversial, part of the law to argue with. Its
| illegal to distribute porn to minors just like its illegal to
| let underage people gamble on your poker app.
|
| Yet people in factor of age verification laws for porn still
| have concerns with this because it's just a totally open-ended
| backdoor into content moderation across the internet.
| throw7 wrote:
| If UK really believes in their ideology then they just need to
| copy China and implement the China Firewall(tm) for the UK.
|
| FYI, Wikimedia Foundation just wants a carve out/exception to be
| able to opt out of category 1 duties.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| How would they collect fines in this scenario?
|
| To be clear I totally agree with you. But they are playing a
| game.
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| Wikipedia loses court challenge
|
| https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/society-equity/wikipe...
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| This is about the duties of a "category 1 service" under the
| Online Safety Act. Wikipedia is one mostly because of their size,
| I believe. These duties are quite onerous, and over the top
| (someone might say that the government is seeing adults are real
| "snowflakes" these days):
|
| _Large user-to-user services, known as Category 1 services, will
| be required to offer adult users tools which, if they choose to
| use, will give them greater control over the kinds of content
| they see and who they engage with online.
|
| Adult users of such services will be able to verify their
| identity and access tools which enable them to reduce the
| likelihood that they see content from non-verified users and
| prevent non-verified users from interacting with their content.
| This will help stop anonymous trolls from contacting them.
|
| Following the publication of guidance by Ofcom, Category 1
| services will also need to proactively offer adult users optional
| tools, at the first opportunity, to help them reduce the
| likelihood that they will encounter certain types of legal
| content. These categories of content are set out in the Act and
| include content that does not meet a criminal threshold but
| encourages, promotes or provides instructions for suicide, self-
| harm or eating disorders. These tools also apply to abusive or
| hate content including where such content is racist, antisemitic,
| homophobic, or misogynist. The tools must be effective and easy
| to access._ [1]
|
| [1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/online-safety-
| act...
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Conducting risk assessments and impact assessments regularly.
| Providing transparency reports and cooperating fully with
| Ofcom.
|
| This is the sort of regulatory compliance that has stifled
| European businesses for decades. Useless overhead.
| fluidcruft wrote:
| Only editors engage with each other on Wikipedia, right? Can
| they just ban sign up and edits by/from the UK?
| jchw wrote:
| The correct time for major service providers to shift their
| weight and start pulling out of any jurisdiction necessary to get
| their point across has already come and gone. The second best
| time would be as soon as possible.
|
| Unfortunately, the Internet world we live in today isn't the one
| I grew up in, so I'm sure things will just go according to plan.
| Apparently a majority of Britons polled _support_ these rules,
| even though a (smaller) majority of Britons also believe they are
| ineffective at their goals[1]. I think that really says a lot
| about what people _really_ want here, and it would be hard to
| believe anyone without a serious dent in their head really though
| this had anything at all to do with protecting children. People
| will do literally anything to protect children, so as long as it
| only inconveniences and infringes on the rights of the rest of
| society. They don 't even have to believe it will work.
|
| And so maybe we will finally burn the house to roast the pig.
|
| [1]: https://yougov.co.uk/technology/articles/52693-how-have-
| brit...
| nonethewiser wrote:
| I think this is actually a better place to draw the line than
| the EU's Digital Services Act, for example. It's just the UK.
| Blacking out service for EU would be a more bitter pill to
| swallow.
| zkmon wrote:
| Is Wikimedia Foundation a UK entity? Otherwise why should it
| concern itself with some country's regulation? USA does not have
| a global jurisdiction. But it has global leverages.
| advisedwang wrote:
| It has UK based editors and users. Employees of the foundation
| surely travel to the UK. They take donations from UK users.
| Their network peers with UK based ISPs.
|
| They have enough touch points with the UK that complying not
| complying with UK law could cause significant problem.
| jmclnx wrote:
| 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.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| 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.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| 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.
| dmoy wrote:
| My read of the article is that it's still an ongoing legal
| battle, even after this one judgement.
|
| So maybe yes, but maybe no, depending on how things pan out in
| subsequent rulings?
| coryrc wrote:
| I don't think any movement like that has worked yet.
| moralestapia wrote:
| >I think doing that will get them an exemption rather quickly.
|
| Some of us prefer civilization, though.
| Lio wrote:
| 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 beneficiaries
| of this law, an age verification company called Yoti, also has
| financial ties to Carnegie UK.
|
| It's difficult to verify that because Yoti is privately held and
| its backers are secret.
|
| It's not as if anyone was surprised that teenagers can get round
| age blocks in seconds so there's something going on and it
| stinks.
|
| 1. https://carnegieuk.org/team/william-perrin-obe/
| albertgoeswoof wrote:
| Another source to back up the first claim
| https://carnegieuk.org/blog/online-safety-and-carnegie-uk/
|
| I would like to see much more thorough journalism on the origin
| of these laws
| ndriscoll wrote:
| 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
| betaby wrote:
| Because laws are not interpreted in a logical way. Especially
| the laws with a 'safety' aspects.
| buzer wrote:
| I'm not sure if this Wikipedia's official policy but at
| https://medium.com/wikimedia-policy/wikipedias-nonprofit-hos...
| they do say:
|
| > Definition of content recommender systems: Having any
| "algorithm" on the site that "affects" what content someone
| might "encounter", is seemingly enough to qualify popular
| websites for Category 1. As written, this could even cover
| tools that are used to combat harmful content. We, and many
| other stakeholders, have failed to convince UK rulemakers to
| clarify that features that help keep services free of bad
| content -- like the New Pages Feed used by Wikipedia article
| reviewers--should not trigger Category 1 status. Other rarely-
| used features, like Wikipedia's Translation Recommendations,
| are also at risk.
|
| > Content forwarding or sharing functionality: If a popular app
| or website also has content "forwarding or sharing" features,
| its chances of ending up in Category 1 are dramatically
| increased. The Regulations fail to define what they mean by
| "forwarding or sharing functionality": features on Wikipedia
| (like the one allowing users to choose Wikipedia's daily
| "Featured Picture") could be caught.
| Sephr wrote:
| "Content forwarding or sharing functionality" seems like it
| would cover any website with a URL.
| miohtama wrote:
| So it means every website is Category 1. How convenient.
| oconnore wrote:
| Wikipedia is based in San Francisco. Why can't they just tell
| the UK to pound sand?
| drivingmenuts wrote:
| Because some of Wikipedia's editors are based in the UK.
| nemomarx wrote:
| They presumably have editors in the UK, foundation members
| who live or work or travel there
|
| they would at least want to block the UK from accessing it
| first?
| integralid wrote:
| 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.
| netsharc wrote:
| Wikipedia's "gone black" before: https://en.wikipedia.org/w
| iki/Protests_against_SOPA_and_PIPA..., IMO blocking access
| to the whole of UK would've been a big move that could've
| been effective.
| riffraff wrote:
| As I understand it, they refer to some of the moderation tools
| and the likes, which are not part of the typical Wikipedia
| experience.
|
| Everybody including the judges seem to agree this is dumb but
| it's the current law.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| I agree, it does seem odd. They do promote bits of their
| content on the main page, I assume with an algorithm, but it's
| hardly like a social media feed.
| kibwen wrote:
| 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.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| Could well be manually added.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| The random article button uses algorithms to decide what
| content to show to the user.
| josefritzishere wrote:
| Were it my decision to make... I'd ban the UK. If they wants to
| live in the dark ages, let them.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| The Online Safety Act is a hideous piece of legislation. I hope
| Wikipedia block the UK.
|
| (I am a UK citizen).
| slaymaker1907 wrote:
| Act like an authoritarian regime, get treated like other
| authoritarian regimes.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| 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. And the measures they say they will
| accept are trivially easy to bypass - so what's the point?
|
| I worked in a startup that satisfied point 1 back in 2015.
| The widely available bit didn't come off though when we ran
| out of runway.
| nemomarx wrote:
| 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
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| Interesting - do you have a link to it?
| nemomarx wrote:
| https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-
| policy/priorities-...
|
| It's anonymous to the sites or companies you use it with
| and not to the government, but that would still be more
| robust than the uks checks so far. it's only end of 26
| though, I thought it was at the end of this year instead.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| And that really shows the difference in how the EU
| operates Vs the UK.
|
| They see a general need which the market cannot easily
| satisfy on its own - it needs standardisation to be cheap
| and interoperable, and it needs an identity backed by a
| trusted authority. So they establish a framework and
| legislation to make that possible.
|
| The UK instead just states it's illegal not to do it, but
| without any private and not-trivially bypassed services
| available.
|
| Proactive vs reactive.
|
| It is often said that legislation tends to lag behind
| technology. At last, the UK is beating the world by
| legislating ahead of it!
| flipbrad wrote:
| This is about the Category 1 duties arriving by 2027, not
| this year's tranche of rules (such as age gating).
| uyzstvqs wrote:
| Important to note: Their anonymous solution is reported
| to be temporary until their digital ID system is
| released[1], which does not offer that same anonymity,
| but rather functions as a server-side OpenID-based
| authentication system.[2] While you can share only your
| age with an online service, it still creates an
| authorization token, which appears to remain persistent
| until manually removed by the user in the eID app. This
| would give the host of that authentication system (EU
| and/or governments) the ability to see which services you
| have shared data with, as well as a token linked to your
| account/session at that service. There is also no
| guarantee that removing an authorization will actually
| delete all that data in a non-recoverable way from the
| authentication system's servers.
|
| [1] https://itdaily.com/news/security/eu-temporary-app-
| age-verif...
|
| [2] https://openid.net/specs/openid-4-verifiable-
| presentations-1...
| nemomarx wrote:
| Good catch, that does seem a lot worse. :/
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| 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 touched a
| computer in her life). It must be impossible to make
| changes to the system that remove these properties without
| users immediately notice.
|
| The only reason why paper identification has close to
| anonymous properties is the fallibility of human memory.
| You won't make a computer with those properties.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| 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.
| codedokode wrote:
| Age verification should be done at the point of buying a
| laptop or a SIM card, the same way as when you buy alcohol.
| And there would be no need to send your ID to a company so
| that it ends up on the black market eventually.
| catlikesshrimp wrote:
| 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.
| FredPret wrote:
| 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.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Success of authoritarian regimes depends on the competence
| (and alignment) of the leadership. Not something we have
| much of here.
| codedokode wrote:
| Leaving the market never works - in Russia, once another
| Western site or app gets blocked, several local competitors
| instantly pop out. That's how the market works, there are
| always people hungry for money.
| ronsor wrote:
| The Russian market is artificially distorted.
| codedokode wrote:
| China has the same story - all Western companies are
| successfully replaced with no issues (except for CPU and
| GPU vendors).
| Tadpole9181 wrote:
| Then let them? And the UK gets a dogshit ripoff Wikipedia.
| Authoritarian supporters suffer, that's the hard lesson
| people need to understand.
|
| This costs Wikipedia nothing - they are not funded by ads.
| And, in exchange, they don't get sued or any of their
| employees arrested.
| asah wrote:
| Won't users just go to AI summaries ?
| mathiaspoint wrote:
| Kind of funny after the authors of the law complained service
| providers were interpreting it overzealously.
|
| No, if Wikipedia falls under it anything meaningful does. You
| have once again failed to understand the internet.
| vaylian wrote:
| 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 don't understand. But those
| politicians still make laws that do not make sense, because they
| believe that something has to be done against those information
| crimes. And they also do it to score brownie points with their
| conservative voting base.
|
| The internet has it's problems, no doubt about that. But what
| these laws do is to throw the baby out with the bath water.
| Actually, the water probably stays in, because it's not like
| those laws solve anything.
| RobKohr wrote:
| I feel that the left and the right are tag teaming on this
| topic. Both sides want to track who says what on the internet
| for their own purposes.
| taraindara wrote:
| I'll add to this, no politician is on your side unless it
| means getting your vote to keep them in power. It's hard to
| be an actual good person and get too far up in politics,
| especially in today's environment.
|
| So, yes, I believe they both want tracking to exist, because
| they both benefit massively from it.
| yndoendo wrote:
| I would add, some politicians are on your side on select
| matters, most are not.
|
| Sad thing is people ignore a politician's actions and keep
| applying Yes or No to their marketing statements. They use
| social engineering wording just to get votes and then they
| will ignore that standing to support their own action of
| legislation crafting and voting.
|
| By block and limiting access to information, such as
| Wikipedia, they are advocating for a dumb populous. Irony
| is that in order to have a strong national security, an
| educated populous is needed. They are the ones see beyond
| the easily deployed social engineering tactics and are
| better at filtering out misinformation.
| bakugo wrote:
| > And they also do it to score brownie points with their
| conservative voting base.
|
| Care to remind me what side of the political spectrum was
| desperately trying to silence all health-related discourse that
| did not match the government's agenda just a few years ago?
| vaylian wrote:
| By "conservative" I mean less digitally-minded people who are
| typically older. You have these people on the left, in the
| center and on the right along the classical political axis.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| _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 effort-to-impact
| ratio.
| simplyluke wrote:
| Attributing the actions being taken by the UK (and much of the
| EU) to a lack of understanding is a quite generous
| interpretation. That may have been true a generation ago, but
| it's not now.
|
| Many of us think that they understand a free internet very
| well, specifically the threats it places on their uses (and
| abuses) of power, and that the laws are quite well designed to
| curtail that. The UK currently, without identity verification,
| arrests 30 people per day for things they say online.
| p3rls wrote:
| i run a pretty large wiki, few mill users a month, and will be
| ignoring these laws. i'm from the US for reference.
| bArray wrote:
| > 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 contributors,
| undermining their privacy and safety.
|
| Some of the articles, which contain factual information, are
| damning for the UK government. It lists, for example, political
| scandals [1] [2]. Or information regarding hot topics such as
| immigration [3], information that the UK government want to
| strictly control (abstracting away from whether this is
| rightfully or wrongfully).
|
| I can tell you what will (and has already) happened as a result:
|
| 1. People will use VPNs and any other available methods to avoid
| restrictions placed on them.
|
| 2. The next government will take great delight in removing this
| law as an easy win.
|
| 3. The likelihood of a British constitution is increasing, which
| would somewhat bind future parliaments.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_scandals_in_...
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Labour_Party_(UK)_sca...
|
| [3]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_immigration_to_the_Unit...
| drawfloat wrote:
| 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.
| adamm255 wrote:
| If the current government reversed it, the 'oh think of the
| children' angle from the Tories/Reform against them would be
| relentless. I cant say they have been amazing at messaging as
| it is.
| mrandish wrote:
| > 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 and culturally
| stronger, both major parties are virtually identical in what
| they actually permit the surveillance state to do once they
| get in office (despite sometimes talking differently while
| campaigning).
|
| 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. They
| keep these presentations secret from public and press
| scrutiny by claiming it's necessary to keep "sources and
| methods" secret from adversaries. Of course, this is
| ridiculous because adversary spy agencies are certainly
| already aware of the broad capabilities of our electronic
| surveillance - it's their job after all and they do the same
| things to their own populations. The intelligence community
| rarely briefs politicians on individual operations or the
| exact details of the sources and methods which adversarial
| intelligence agencies would care about anyway. The vast
| majority of these secret briefings could be public without
| revealing anything of real value to major adversaries. At
| most it would only confirm we're doing the things adversaries
| already assume we're doing (and already take steps to
| counter). The real reason they hide the politician briefings
| from the public is because voters would be creeped out by the
| pervasive surveillance and domain experts would call bullshit
| on the incomplete facts and fallacious reasoning used to
| justify it to politicians.
|
| Even if a politician sincerely intended to preserve privacy
| and freedom before getting in office, they aren't domain
| experts and when confronted with seemingly overwhelming (but
| secret) evidence of preventing "big bad" presented
| unanimously by intelligence community experts, the majority
| of elected officials go along. If that's not enough for the
| anti-privacy agencies (intel & law enforcement) to get what
| they want, there's always the "think of the children"
| arguments. It's the rare politician who's clear-thinking and
| principled enough to apply appropriate skepticism and
| measured nuance when faced with horrendous examples of child
| porn and abuse which the law enforcement/intelligence agency
| lobby has ready in ample supply and deploys behind closed
| doors for maximum effect. The anti-privacy lobby has figured
| out how to hack representative democracy to circumvent
| protections and because it's done away from public scrutiny,
| there's currently no way to stop them and it's only going to
| keep getting worse. IMHO, it's a disaster and even in the
| U.S. (where I am) it's only slightly better than the UK,
| Australia, EU and elsewhere.
| mathiaspoint wrote:
| 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.
| catlikesshrimp wrote:
| Reboot doesn't mean improvement.
| Y_Y wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kin.
| ..
|
| It may not make sense to you, but they've been arguing
| constitutional law there for hundreds of years.
|
| Plenty of monarchies also have modern single-document
| constitutions, like Norway, Spain and Thailand.
| fmbb wrote:
| It is the British monarchy that is performative, not their
| democracy.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| 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.
| zdragnar wrote:
| And yet, there were defacto political parties in the
| delightfully misnamed federalist and anti-federalists. It
| was this divide that led to the first political parties.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| Oh, they cannot be avoided really, except by a system
| where party allegiance cannot influence the choice (like
| hereditary power).
| mathiaspoint wrote:
| Arrow's theorem would cause them to emerge even then.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _this divide that led to the first political parties_
|
| Maybe in Britain. Parties were definitely a thing going
| back to Roman politics.
| speerer wrote:
| 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...
| mathiaspoint wrote:
| Right of course every state has a "constitution" but the
| contemporary connotation of the word means an enforceable
| law that meaningfully constrains the state's power.
| wasabi991011 wrote:
| The Bill of Rights or the Habeus Corpus meaningfully
| constrains the states power, and are cited in court
| proceedings.
|
| Just because it isn't 1 document like in the US, it
| doesn't mean it's not a constitution.
|
| I think what you mean by "contemporary connotation" with
| "American connotation".
| varispeed wrote:
| > It creates a safer online world for some.
|
| The thieves no longer have to hack servers in order to obtain
| sensitive data, they can just set up an age-check company and
| lure businesses with attractive fees.
|
| In that sense it is safer (for criminals).
| Ntrails wrote:
| > 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 the line.
|
| It's not a mainstream political priority at all to my
| knowledge, so I'm mostly curious why you disagree!
| OtherShrezzing wrote:
| >2. The next government will take great delight in removing
| this law as an easy win.
|
| As a rule of thumb, governments don't take actions which reduce
| their power.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| Wikipedia ought to block edits from the UK. Giving in to fascism
| emboldens it.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe] Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44863487
| ljosifov wrote:
| US should slap travel bans on UK politicians travelling to Disney
| parks and similar in Florida with their families. And/or with
| their older children visiting NYC. The combined pressure of the
| wives and their children, will knock sense in their thick skulls
| quickly. In the sense of - being stupid is not cost free. Atm
| it's cost free for them, and costly for me.
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| The US is moving in the same direction.
| watwut wrote:
| US is not exactly desirable location for tourism right now.
|
| And like, appeal of of florida Disneyland as a dream place to
| go to was never all that huge abroad. The Disney cult/dream is
| more of an American thing.
| kersplody wrote:
| At least wikipedia has an out in the legislation by disabling
| content recommendation engines for UK users, this includes:
|
| 1. "You may be interested in..." search suggestions on the
| Wikipedia interface--these are algorithmic, content-based
| recommendations.
|
| 2. Editor suggestion tools that propose pages to edit, based on
| prior activity. Academic systems helping newcomers with article
| recommendations also qualify.
|
| Most links within articles--like "See also" sections or
| hyperlinks--are static and curated by editors, not
| algorithmically chosen per user. That means they do not meet the
| recommender system definition.
|
| The legislation text for reference:
|
| "Category 1 threshold conditions 3.--(1) The Category 1 threshold
| conditions(10) are met by a regulated user-to-user service where,
| in respect of the user-to-user part of that service, it--
|
| (a)(i)has an average number of monthly active United Kingdom
| users that exceeds 34 million, and
|
| (ii)uses a content recommender system, or
|
| (b)(i)has an average number of monthly active United Kingdom
| users that exceeds 7 million,
|
| (ii)uses a content recommender system, and
|
| (iii)provides a functionality for users to forward or share
| regulated user-generated content(11) on the service with other
| users of that service.
|
| (2) In paragraph (1), a "content recommender system" means a
| system, used by the provider of a regulated user-to-user service
| in respect of the user-to-user part of that service, that uses
| algorithms which by means of machine learning or other techniques
| determines, or otherwise affects, the way in which regulated
| user-generated content of a user, whether alone or with other
| content, may be encountered by other users of the service. "
| oytis wrote:
| Category 1 means you have some additional duties, but it is not
| necessary to e.g. be obliged to verify your users' age.
| ratelimitsteve wrote:
| At what point is is time to put this very real island on a
| virtual island and just block all traffic that seems to be coming
| from there? Maybe they're right and all their meddling will
| really make the internet better, in which case I hope they enjoy
| their own private improved internet very much while I enjoy my
| inferior one in which I am not forced to aid materially in the
| government's surveillance of me.
| outside1234 wrote:
| Just turn off Wikipedia for the UK until it gets fixed.
| mvieira38 wrote:
| Now is the best time to remember: if there's something you value
| online, download it. There's no problem with downloading the
| entirety of wikipedia, and it's actually pretty easy and light to
| do so. Get your favorite songs, movies, etc. too ASAP
| nomilk wrote:
| Wild. People compelled by law to produce id before accessing an
| online encyclopaedia. Shouldn't we be _encouraging_ good
| behaviours like learning?
| tempestn wrote:
| I was just vacationing in the UK last week and ran into this
| ridiculous thing trying to browse (entirely non-pornographic,
| fwiw) Reddit threads. Which I opted not to read rather than going
| through the hassle and privacy breach.
|
| Also got to experience the full force of the cookie law, which I
| hadn't realized I was only seeing a fraction of here in Canada.
| karel-3d wrote:
| The cookie law is not in UK but in EU, no?
| lpribis wrote:
| Much of it comes from GDPR law which was passed prior to
| brexit. After brexit, the UK kept most of the regulation
| under the "UK GDPR", meaning it does apply in the UK as well.
| vsgherzi wrote:
| Block the UK. Ridiculous behavior.
| throwpoaster wrote:
| Maybe this is good. On balance, perhaps Wikipedia has become too
| important a cultural asset for anonymous editors.
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| I am not surprised. Every time I mention the draconian laws
| around digital speech when flying into london, hackernews
| historically said I was being ridiculous.
|
| The UK has some of the oddest laws I have seen from a western
| nation.
| deepsun wrote:
| 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 following a court order.
|
| Also, there's a ton of bots and paid agents working full-time to
| shift political opinions to their political agenda.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| Isn't the lesson here that every website should just block UK
| access?
| vandahm wrote:
| What are the consequences of simply disregarding the UK ruling?
| Does Wikipedia have British employees, offices, or financial
| assets?
| codedokode wrote:
| In Russia there is a plan to make special SIM cards for children,
| that would not allow registration in social networks. Isn't it
| better than UK legislation?
|
| The whole idea that every site or app must do verification is
| stupid. It would be much easier and better to do verification at
| the store when buying a laptop, a phone or a SIM card. The
| verification status can be burned in firmware memory, and the
| device would allow only using sites and apps from the white list.
| In this case website operators and app developers wouldn't need
| to do anything and carry no expenses. This approach is simpler
| and superior to what UK does. If Apple or Microsoft refuse to
| implement restricted functionality for non-verified devices, they
| can be banned and replaced by alternative vendors complying with
| this proposal. It is much easier to force Apple and Microsoft -
| two rich companies - to implement children protection measures
| than thousands of website operators and app developers.
| preisschild wrote:
| > Isn't it better than UK legislation?
|
| Not at all, because SIM cards are bound to your real identity.
| So the government knows exactly which websites you visit.
| codedokode wrote:
| I don't understand your comment, the government knows which
| sites you visit anyway because it can see the SNI field in
| HTTPS traffic.
|
| The main point is that the verification is done on the
| device. The device has a digitally signed flag, saying
| whether it is owned by an adult user or not. And the OS on
| the device without the flag allows using only safe apps and
| websites sending a "Safe: yes" HTTP header. User doesn't need
| to send your ID to random companies, doesn't need to verify
| at every website, and website operators and app developers do
| not need do anything and do not need to do verification -
| they are banned from unverified devices by default. It is
| better for everyone.
|
| Also, as I understand the main point of the Act is to allow
| removing the content the government doesn't like in a prompt
| manner, for which my proposal is not helpful at all.
| zamadatix wrote:
| The UK legislation extends beyond cellular access, as I'm sure
| Russia's does as well.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Parliamentary democracy has proven absolutely useless in
| defending alienable rights like freedom of speech.
|
| I have been trying to think what sort of system is ideal to
| replace them. I think there has to be some kind of strong
| constitution that guarantees aforementioned rights. But I also
| think it's instructive to look at America wrt how that can go
| awry - ie their constitution is routinely ignored, and a lot of
| the political decision making is done by fifth columnists
| lobbying for a foreign nation.
|
| Regardless, we need to start having these conversations. It's not
| a matter of getting different people into Westminster.
| Westminster is illegitimate. Let's think about what's next and
| how we can get there peacefully.
| storus wrote:
| An honest question - which devices can be used for secure
| communication if phones get government-borked for
| "children/foreign interference" purposes?
| 867-5309 wrote:
| an unborked phone
| isaacremuant wrote:
| Of course it did. This is all completely arbitrary and the powers
| that be will do what they want and this is what you asked for,
| nay, begged for during covid.
| twothreeone wrote:
| I'm confused.. can't they appeal High Court decisions (since the
| UKSC was formed after the government didn't like the High Court's
| decisions in the Diego Garcia thing)? [1]
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_the_United_Ki...
| idorosen wrote:
| To all of the commenters recommending that Wikipedia block UK
| visitors: This is incredibly short-sighted in the age of LLMs,
| where Wikipedia does not need to exist in a country in order for
| the benefit of its existence to be felt. Such a move would likely
| just drive people to obtain dubious regurgitations of Wikipedia's
| (freely available) content via their favorite LLM chatbot, in my
| opinion.
| bovermyer wrote:
| How is the state of the art as far as blocking LLMs from
| accessing a site?
| trhway wrote:
| Does Online Safety Act covers only HTTP? I mean does it cover say
| bittorrent? Or any outgoing TCP connection?
| cobbzilla wrote:
| Somehow this rhymes with the US's "War on Drugs", and it makes me
| very afraid:
|
| Similarities I see:
|
| * In the years leading up to government action, a mass hysteria
| was well cultivated in the media (evil drug users committing
| abhorrent crimes).
|
| * When launched, the public was overwhelmingly in favor of it (In
| 1971, 48% of the public said drugs were a serious problem in
| their community [1]).
|
| That's where we are now. THEN:
|
| * It got worse for decades (By 1986, 56% of Americans said that
| the government spent "too little" money fighting drugs [1]).
|
| * Following many years of lobbying, _some_ rights are slowly
| restored. (NORML and other groups fighting for legal medical,
| then recreational use; mushrooms are legal in few places, etc).
|
| * It's still going on today. (Over 100,000 people currently
| serving prison sentences for drug-related offenses [2]).
|
| [1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/6331/decades-drug-use-data-
| from...
|
| [2] https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2025.html
| kittikitti wrote:
| 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.
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