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Wikimedia Foundation Challenges UK Online Safety Act Regulations
- IlikeKitties 1y agoAll this is of course bullshit. The only response that would have a chance of succeeding would have been if most websites collectively just blocked everyone from the UK. Imagine if 60-70% of the internet just stopped working for UK People. The law would be toppled tomorrow. Every Company that implemented any compliance is a traitor to the free internet and should be treated as such.
- lukan 1y ago"Every Company that implemented any compliance is a traitor to the free internet and should be treated as such." What would be the punishment for that?
- IlikeKitties 1y ago> What would be the punishment for that? On a legal level? None. On a personal level? Don't give them money or your business. Avoid them completely or ensure you use ad blockers on their sites and throw away accounts if necessary. Do not contribute to their content. In short: you take whatever they give you, and you give nothing in return.
- blitzar 1y agoVote with your feet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_voting
- Swinx43 1y agoI live in the UK. Please for the love of all that is sweet and holy DO THIS! The only way our politicians will learn is if the public outcry is so fierce it makes them fear for their jobs. A UK internet blockade might just get this going.
- IlikeKitties 1y agoThe issue here is that the internet is dominated by large companies that have a huge incentive to use this as a way to ensure regulatory capture of the free internet.
- drcongo 1y agoI'm not following the logic, how would this work?
- IlikeKitties 1y agoTake Reddit as an example: Reddit became big after Digg fucked up their mainpage and has replaced most hobby forums and discussions on the internet. A competitor to it would have to implement a lot of compliance stuff like age verification and that would be very expensive, making it harder for a competitor to be bootstrapped. That's why Reddit has an incentive to support such regulation, even if it costs them a lot. Once implemented, competition becomes harder and harder.
- drcongo 1y agoAaah, got you, thanks. I'd incorrectly assumed "this" in your original post meant Wikimedia's challenge, rather than the OSA itself.
- VikingMiner 1y agoThe large tech companies benefited immensely from relative few regulations in the 2000-2010s. Once they are established, they are happy to comply with regulations which will make it more difficult for competitor to even exist since complying with regulations is often prohibitively expensive for new player. It is known colloquially as "Pulling up the ladder behind you". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27m_alright,_Jack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27m_alright,_Jack
- blitzar 1y agoThe UK is the perfect target - globally relevant enough to make the news, small enough that its a financial rounding error. Take action, carry through with the threat and if your product actually matters - attitudes can change globally. While the law would not be toppled tomorrow, the companies of the internet need to stop being so desperate for small scraps of money and eyeballs. The internet might be free if companies instead of trying to skirt laws and regulations just operated where they are welcome. Good for the internet but bad for the VCs so it wont happen.
- graemep 1y agoMost websites, for most people, are big tech. Big tech loves this regulation because imposing compliance costs reduces competition.
- ajsnigrutin 1y agoThe problem is, that both pornhub and facebook also love underage (well, too young) users, because those users will stay there. Cutting off UK for a few weeks won't cause that much damage but might help them in the long run.
- wizzwizz4 1y agoThese laws don't cause any problems for PornHub or Facebook. People are moving from independent forums to Facebook.
- xnorswap 1y agoThis law could be brought down overnight by Meta if they introduced age-control for WhatsApp and suddenly people couldn't message their own children. But of course Meta carved out their own exception in the law, so this law benefits Meta at the cost of alternatives.
- captainbland 1y agoI think that's kind of the joke as well, because WhatsApp (being totally unmoderated and opaque) is probably the exact place you'd want to enact age controls, especially in groups. It's like the government thought long and hard about how to make the restrictions the most inconvenient and with the largest number of gaps in the approach.
- hermitcrab 1y ago>Every Company that implemented any compliance is a traitor to the free internet and should be treated as such. Companies can be fined £18 million pounds or 10% of revenue, whichever is greater. If you feel like being the first test case, be my guest.
- IlikeKitties 1y agoAll companies could easily just block UK Users instead.
- hermitcrab 1y agoThey could. But it is the world's 6th largest economy.
- jonathantf2 1y agoI'm surprised they haven't deployed a big banner à la Jimmy Wales begging for donations to UK users re this law yet
- bawolff 1y agoI think most Wikimedia users would consider it inapropriate to mix fundraising and public policy initiatives.
- weberer 1y agoThey previously did a 24 hour blackout to protest SOPA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_SOPA_and_PIPA#Wikimedia_community https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_SOPA_and_PIPA...
- bawolff 1y agoLiterally more then a decade ago. Also they didn't mix it together with fundraiser.
- mminer237 1y agoI believe public policy initiatives are already Wikimedia's second-biggest expenses, after salaries, so I don't see how that would be much more different than usual fundraising except for making it more transparent.
- chippiewill 1y agoI'm skeptical this goes anywhere legally speaking. 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. It should be noted that even if they succeed (which seems a long shot), this wouldn't affect the main thrust of the Online Safety Act which _is_ primary legislation and includes the bit making the rounds about adult content being locked behind age verification.
- ZiiS 1y agoI can't see any language in the statutory instrument suggesting anyone had any intention of applying it to Wikimedia? The most likely outcome is the court will reassure them of that. This might help other people running similar websites by citing the case rather than having to pay for all the experts but isn't going to magically stop it applying to Meta as intended.
- lysace 1y agoWikimedia hosts what UK puritans consider pornographic content. A lot of it. Often in high quality and with a permissible license. I would link to relevant meta pages but I want to be able travel through LHR.
- miohtama 1y agoA kid can go to Wikipedia and read https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex
- Symbiote 1y agoThey can also go to the library and read the encyclopedia.
- mrweasel 1y agoTo be fair, Wikimedia/Wikipedia also hosts a full copy of "Debbie Does Dallas" does to a fluke of copyright. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debbie_Does_Dallas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debbie_Does_Dallas
- cubefox 1y agoThe headline seems a little misleading. From the article: > 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.
- ChrisKnott 1y agoIs Wikipedia actually Category 1? Seems to require an algorithmic feed to be Category 1 - https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukdsi/2025/9780348267174 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukdsi/2025/9780348267174
- codedokode 1y agoHow is "algorithmic feed" related to safety? Or is it, along with seemingly arbitrary numbers like 7 or 34 millions, a way to target a specific platform for those who are afraid to spell the name explicitly?
- ChrisKnott 1y agoOne of the main motivations for this law was pro-suicide and pro-anorexia content being pushed to teenage girls. In particular Molly Russell's death received a lot of press coverage and public outrage at tech companies. The coroner's report basically said Instagram killed her. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Molly_Russell https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Molly_Russell Of course if you get your news from HN then the motivation is actually something to do with limiting discussion of immigration or being dystopian just because. But yes, if they could just name Instagram and TikTok they probably would.
- philipwhiuk 1y agoIs search results 'an algorithmic feed'.
- perihelions 1y agoThis is full of contradictions and both-sides-of-the-mouth speech. You can't coherently argue for an "open internet" "for everyone", and simultaneously plead exceptionalism for your own website, due its special virtues[0]. An "open internet" for websites with sterling reputations is a closed internet. It's an internet where censorship segregates the desirable from undesirable; where websites must plead their case to the state, "please let me exist, for this reason: ..." That's not what "open" means! And moreover: WF's special pleading is[1], paraphrased, "because we already strongly moderate in exactly the ways this government wants, so there's no need to regulate *us* in particular". That's capitulation; or, they were never really adverse in the first place. Wikimedia's counsel is of course pleading Wikimedia's own interests[2]. Their interests are not the same as the public's interest. Don't confuse ourselves: if you are not a centimillionaire entity with sacks full of lawyers, you are not Wikimedia Foundation's peer group. [0] ("It’s the only top-ten website operated by a non-profit and one of the highest-quality datasets used in training Large Language Models (LLMs)"—to the extent anyone parses that as virtuous) [1] ("These volunteers set and enforce policies to ensure that information on the platform is fact-based, neutral, and attributed to reliable sources.") [2] ("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.")
- Towaway69 1y agoThis is a fine sentiment, could you also please provide an alternative approach? The law has passed, Wikipedia has to enforce that law but don’t wish to because of privacy concerns. What should Wikimedia now do? Give up? Ignore the laws of the UK? Shutdown in the UK? What exactly are the options for wikimedia?
- perihelions 1y ago> "This is a fine sentiment, could you also please provide an alternative approach?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3477966 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3477966 ("Wikipedia blackout page (wikipedia.org)" (2012)) Wikimedia weren't always a giant ambulating pile of cash; they used to be activists. Long ago.
- Havoc 1y agoThey should just block all UK gov IPs in protest
- kypro 1y agoAs a Brit, ultimately I think this is the only thing that's going to get through to the government and public.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- sealeck 1y agoIt may well come to that (and the fact that Wikipedia ends up being banned in the UK will potentially bring people to their senses).
- exasperaited 1y ago[flagged]
- master-lincoln 1y agoI think you both have a point. Why not block foreign access to your internet service if the laws of that foreign country are nothing you want to be concerned with? It might be a bit disruptive in the beginning, but in the long run I think we all benefit from that. It increases the chance of politicians to realize their over-boarding decisions by having public pressure from previous users of those services and it increases the likelihood of local competitors of those services opening.
- exasperaited 1y agoThe point I am making is that everyone in the USA is somehow absolutely certain that Britain is a hell-hole of authoritarianism because of this law, and yet 25 US states have enacted laws which are in some cases basically lunatic porn censorship (whereas our OSA is not) and HN just ignores it because the Brits, eh? The fabric of the USA is being ripped apart by a kleptocratic authoritarian fascist-at-least-wannabe government that makes the most extreme country in the EU (Hungary) look exactly like a trial run, and you guys are worried about the Brits implementing a relatively measured law that affects fewer people than all those US porn laws combined. HN's weird little "no politics" bubble encourages you all to think that it is outrageous that US companies should be held accountable to the laws of the countries in which you trade [0], while your president is, for example, imposing actually illegal tariffs on Brazil, abusing a power you won't take away from him, because they insist on prosecuting Bolsonaro under their own laws for something he did within their country. Yes: we made a law you don't like. It's a stupid law. It's still a fairly measured, stupid law compared to the ones your states are passing and your own supreme court thinks are A-OK, or the silly one in France, or whatever. Collectively you should maybe stop fretting about the UK while your country is reverting to quasi-monarchy. [0] and yes, you are trading here if you serve porn to UK customers. This is the same standard as the US Supreme Court-approved Texas anti-porn law applies.
- noodlesUK 1y agoI don't like the OSA and associated regulations as much as the next person -- I think we could have gotten a long way by saying you need to include a X-Age-Rating in http responses and calling it a day. The law itself is incoherently long and it's very difficult to know what duties you have. However, I don't see what the legal basis of Wikimedia's challenge is. The OSA is primary legislation, so can't be challenged except under the HRA, which I don't really see working. The regulations are secondary regulation and are more open to challenge, but it's not clear what the basis of the challenge is. Are they saying the regulations are outside the scope of the statutory authority (doubtful)? You can't really challenge law or regulation in the UK on the basis of "I don't like it".
- gorgoiler 1y agoX-Age-Rating would only work if the server could be sure of the jurisdictions under which the recipient was bound. To continue the thought experiment though: another implementation would be to list up to N tags that best describe the content being served. You could base these on various agreed tagging systems such as UN ISIC tagging (6010 Broadcasting Pop Music) or UDC, the successor to the Dewey Decimal System (657 Accountancy, 797 Water Sports etc.) The more popular sites could just grandfather in their own tag zoologies. A cartoon song about wind surfing: X-Content-Tags: ISIC:6010 UDC:797 YouTube:KidsTV It’s then up to the recipient’s device to warn them of incoming illegal-in-your-state content.
- rwmj 1y agoThere actually was a proposal/standard for this back in the day: https://www.w3.org/PICS/ https://www.w3.org/PICS/
- pjc50 1y agoThe twitter API used to have a "illegal in France or Germany" field, which was used for known Nazi content.
- IshKebab 1y ago> X-Age-Rating would only work if the server could be sure of the jurisdictions under which the recipient was bound. That's no different to the current legislation.
- braiamp 1y ago> 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. Guys, this right here is Wikipedia standing. It is that under the current law, Wikipedia would fall under cat 1 rules, even if by the law own admission it should not.
- miohtama 1y agoIn related news, the Labour party is already considering banning VPNs. We almost got like two days of Online Safety Act in effect. https://www.gbnews.com/politics/labour-ban-vpn-online-safety-act https://www.gbnews.com/politics/labour-ban-vpn-online-safety...
- ozlikethewizard 1y agoI hate the Online Safety Act as much as the next person, but: - Labour have made no plans to ban VPNs. - One MP wanted to add a clause for a government review into the impact of VPNs on the bill after 6 months, with no direction on what that would mean. - I have no idea if this clause actually got added, but it'd make sense. If you're going to introduce a stupid law you should at least plan to review if the stupid law is having any impact. - GB news is bottom of the barrel propaganda.
- ekianjo 1y ago> clause for a government review into the impact of VPNs on the bill after 6 months thats government speak for deciding to do something about the VPN problem. because there is no way a commission will not find a good reason to ban VPNs when you reach that point, because you could argue they help avoid UK restrictions.
- tomck 1y agoYou're repeating propaganda from a far right newspaper headline, written misleadingly to make it sound like labour have said something recently about VPNs (they haven't)
- Roark66 1y agoSomehow I have the deja-vu of when Theresa May (as a Home Secretary) tried to ban personal encryption altogether. Let me remind everyone this is in a country that already has a law that says you're legally required to give your encryption key to the police and if you do not, even if there is no other crime you can get 2 years in jail... This told me all I needed to know about her level of understanding of complex topics. It only went downhill from there.
- lysace 1y agoEven low-grade encryption was actually forbidden in France for a while in the mid 90s. I remember snickering about the whole thing back then, in a much smaller but also quite similar forum. https://www.theregister.com/1999/01/15/france_to_end_severe_encryption/ https://www.theregister.com/1999/01/15/france_to_end_severe_... > Until 1996 anyone wishing to encrypt any document had to first receive an official sanction or risk fines from F6000 to F500,000 ($1000 to $89,300) and a 2-6 month jail term. Right now, apart from a handful of exemptions, any unauthorised use of encryption software is illegal. These two former empires seem/seemed to have an over-inflated sense of importance and ability to control the world.
- pjc50 1y agoThere was also in the 90s the weird period of export control of encryption software from the US, leading to the "this tshirt is a munition" shirts with the algorithm printed on them. And the (thankfully failed) "clipper chip" mandate.
- dcow 1y agoThose controls all still exist. You just get a pass if you’re using “standard crypto”. Or if your implementation is open source.
- Quarrel 1y agoExport controls still exist, but we're at least a far cry from the days of "This version of Mozilla is illegal to download if you are outside the USA. Please don't do it." (and before that PGP!)
- billy99k 1y ago[flagged]
- cft 1y ago"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 find this a very unprincipled stance.
- crtasm 1y agoSo the hearing was on 22+23rd, is there a writeup of how it went and when we might hear the outcome?
- mikeyouse 1y agoYep case was heard last week but no decision returned yet: https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/uk/online-safety-act-wikipedia-cap-warning-5245543 https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/uk/online-safety...
- cormorant 1y agoCan anyone explain how Wikipedia supposedly is in Category 1? [1] And if it marginally is, how come they cannot just turn off their "content recommender system"? Perhaps an example is the auto-generated "Related articles" that appear in the footer on mobile only? [1] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2025/226/regulation/3/made https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2025/226/regulation/3/ma...
- ipnon 1y agoPerhaps they genuinely believe the mission of collecting all the world’s knowledge is more important than complying with the draconian moral panic of a likely short lived government in an increasingly irrelevant former great power.
- cormorant 1y agoAre you saying an algorithmic content recommendation system is an important part of "collecting all the world's knowledge"?
- kemayo 1y agoThe definition is: > 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. Speculating wildly, I think a bunch of the moderation / patroller tools might count. They help to find revisions ("user-generated content") that need further review from other editors ("other users"). There's not much machine learning happening (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/ORES https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/ORES), but "other techniques" seems like it'd cover basically-anything up to and including "here's the list of revisions that have violated user-provided rules recently" (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:AbuseFilter https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:AbuseFilter). (Disclaimer: I work for the WMF. I know literally nothing about this court case or how this law applies.)
- supermatt 1y agoWhy can't these measures be handled via parental control? Children are using mobiles and tablets almost exclusively, both major providers of which supply tools for parental administration. Content filtering is already facilitated by existing parental control. Mobile browsers could be made to issue a header if the user is under a certain age. Mobile apps could have access to a flag. Parents should be responsible for parenting their child - not big tech. Why does it need to be any more complicated than that?
- nsksl 1y agoThat's how it should work but you will find that a majority of parents cba rearing their children so they want the state to do it for them. And this extends to so many things in life that the authoritarian grip is only going to get tighter with time.
- supermatt 1y ago> parents cba rearing their children And THAT is the problem that they should be tackling.
- s_dev 1y agoIronically any attempt to control this is deemed 'authoritarian' as well.
- nsksl 1y agoNot necessarily. If they want to have uneducated children, let them.
- AngryData 1y agoThat is a terrible attitude about education. You are essentially condemning those kids and future generations to a shittier society and shittier lives.
- 1y ago
- hermitcrab 1y agoRelated: I have just written a brief overview of how I understand the Online Safety Act to apply to owners of forums without 'adult' content, e.g. forums hosted by product companies, about their products. https://successfulsoftware.net/2025/07/29/the-online-safety-act-for-forum-owners/ https://successfulsoftware.net/2025/07/29/the-online-safety-...
- bargainbin 1y agoNo one asked for this. Don’t blame parents. This is the government using the Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse to restrict your personal freedoms.
- boffinAudio 1y agoThis is a failure of Operating System Vendors, in my opinion. If Operating Systems had a way for parents to adequately monitor/administer the machines of their children, this would not be such a huge, massive hole, in which to pour (yet more) human rights abuses. Parents have the right to have an eye on their children. This is not repressive, it is not authoritarian, it is a right and a responsibility. The fact that I can't - easily, and with little fuss - quickly see what my kids are viewing on their screens, is the issue. Sure, children have the right to privacy - but it is their parents who should provide it to them. Not just the state, but the parents. And certainly, the state should not be eliminating the rest of society's privacy in the rush to prevent parents from having oversight of - and responsibility for - the online activities of their children. The fact is, Operating System Vendors would rather turn their platforms into ad-vending machines, than actually improve the means by which the computers are operated by their users. It would be a simple thing to establish parent/child relationship security between not just two computers, but two human beings who love and trust each other. Kids will always be inquisitive. They will always try to exceed the limits imposed upon them by their parents. But this should not be a reason for more draconian control over consenting adults, or indeed individual adults. It should be a motivating factor to build better computing platforms, which can be reliably configured to prevent porn from having the detrimental impact many controllers of society have decided is occurring. Another undeniable fact, is that parents - and parenting - get a bad rap. However, if a parent and child love and trust each other, having the ability to quickly observe the kids computing environment in productive ways, should be being provided, technologically. When really, we should be building tools which strengthen parent/child relationships, we are instead eradicating the need for parents. Unpopular opinion, I know: but Thats The Point.
- nsksl 1y agoMobile operating systems have very great children controls. You should research the topic yourself and you will see.
- boffinAudio 1y agoI'm a parent, I have researched it, and found it not great because it still involves third parties and doesn't promote local control/anonymity without involving some external entity - i.e. Apple requires accounts, Google still gets its metrics, etc. Unless you've got some specific better examples?
- makerofthings 1y agoA lot of people in this thread seem to enjoy the taste of boot and are spending a lot of words trying to say the OSA isn't a big deal. A bit of a sad attitude for a forum called HackerNews. This is massive overreach by the government, we shouldn't have to ID ourselves to message friends on bluesky, read homebrew forums or, soon, use xbox voice chat. The government won't give up this power, it's clearly the thin end of the wedge.
- Lio 1y agoI think one of the most chilling aspects of this roll out has the attempts to shutdown debate about security concerns with handing over biometrics to unknow entities. That's even to just access mainstream services such as direct messaging on social media sites. The most high profile example of this is the Technology Secretary Peter Kyle comparing Nigel Farage to a sex offender, specifically Jimmy Saville. Regardless of what you think of Farrage[1], that's a terrible thing to say. There are ligitimate concerns about this Act. The ICO is charged with protecting privacy and punishing breaches of personal information due to incompetence. Well they've never prosecuted an organisation for a biometric data breach. Until the ICO actually has teeth, and uses them, they shouldn't have introduced these restrictions and that's before we even get to the fact that the Act doesn't achieve what it say it will. 1. ...and I have very little positive to say about him but he is still an opposition MP and it is his job to oppose the government.