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Wikipedia escapes Category 1 designation under the UK Online Safety Act for now
- bcjdjsndon 3mo agoThinkudur chiddrun
- alephnerd 3mo agoWikipedia is still on the Ofcom watchlist and might be designated Category 1 at some point.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- neilalexander 3mo agoIn other words, "stay where you are for now, we promise to extend the legislation to cover you in the future".
- benj111 3mo agoDid you actually read the article. Ofcom used a "novel reading of the law" to exempt Wikipedia. The law it seems already covers Wikipedia. Ofcom are choosing not to enforce. I interpret the watchlist comments as ofcom setting up a defensible position for themselves. Yes the law is probably wrong to include Wikipedia, but the enforcers of the law seem to have common sense. Which overall seems to be a win.
- Chu4eeno 3mo agoConsidering wikimedia hosts what most people would consider porn (randomly came across a video of a couple going at it once) without any ability to filter it from the rest of the content/hide by default, it's not that surprising they are covered, I'm more surprised ofcom relented.
- wildzzz 3mo agoJust because there's a video of sexual acts doesn't mean Wikimedia exists for the prurient interest. It's not like Wikimedia is hosting a clip from "Backdoor Sluts 5", it's really just video of sex in the academic sense. Does a young child need to watch it? No, but I also don't think it should it should be censored. A teenager below the age of majority may benefit from seeing what sex actually is. So often a teenager's first visual experience with sex is from unrealistic porn. I'm not saying a realistic depiction of sex should be included in every sex ed classroom lesson but it should be freely available.
- pocksuppet 3mo agoActually, Wikimedia Commons has a category for pornographic videos.
- fsckboy 3mo ago>Just because there's a video of sexual acts doesn't mean Wikimedia exists for the prurient interest. nice goalpost move. just because wikimedia doesn't exist solely for the prurient interest doesn't mean that it should therefore provide pornography to children in places that have made that illegal. And just because you tilt the table toward providing pornography to children doesn't mean I should be downvoted for honest debate.
- neilalexander 3mo agoI did read the article, yes, and it is clear to me that this is a bug, not a feature. Ofcom were suddenly able to find a "novel reading" when directed to do so by a court as a means to temporarily make the problem go away and to avoid having to weaken the legislation. They know full well that if a successful legal challenge forced them to weaken parts of the OSA by removing service categories from scope, that they'd effectively open the floodgates to more challenges over other categories. The government and Ofcom don't want their precious work ripped up and the courts seemingly don't want to be responsible for doing so. Whatever loophole they've found, it is practically a certainty that it will be addressed in the future.
- pocksuppet 3mo agoThe UK has "parliamentary supremacy" which means legislation passed by the parliament overrules everything else. If the court determines the legislation has a problem, it goes back to parliament to make sure parliament intended a certain interpretation, but parliament can either change the law, or they can say the court is wrong and the law stands.
- frereubu 3mo ago> or they can say the court is wrong and the law stands Surely the way that parliament says the court is wrong is to re-legislate. They can't just have a vote and say "that interpretation is wrong" if, for example, the Supreme Court rejects their interpretation.
- pocksuppet 3mo agoI don't know the exact process but I don't see why they couldn't do that. Parliamentary supremacy means that Parliament is supreme. What they say, goes. It's a dictatorship of elected MPs, hopefully kept in check by the need to be elected.
- frereubu 3mo agoThey can't do that because it would make a mockery of the legal system. Parliament does outrank the Supreme Court, but they do that by passing legislation, not just having a vote and going "no, sorry, lol". The whole legal system is built on precedent, which is incompatible with parliament overriding it piecemeal.
- Georgelemental 3mo agoNo actually, it's not a "win" if everything is formally illegal, and everyone lives in fear that if they don't keep appeasing the faceless unaccountable bureaucrat, they will be prosecuted tomorrow. "For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law."
- monsecchris 3mo agoCould someone seek a private prosecution to make a mockery of the law?
- pipes 3mo agoI'm guessing they won't do it because it will finally wake the public up to all of this, I.e. bad press + scrutiny. The law should be applied equally to all, it shouldn't be a popularity contest.
- fsckboy 3mo agoand if it is a popularity contest, mystifying that wikpedia would qualify, it has many serious flaws (generally of the form that a small number of zealots can control the messaging on topics they are obsessed with where most people just want information and are unaware that there are people who don't share their enthusiasm for truth)
- generalizations 3mo agoThey just know they can't afford the power right now to do it. They would if they thought they could get away with it.
- lenerdenator 3mo agoGovernments would rather censor the whole internet before putting people who have credible allegations of sex crimes against children under investigation and in handcuffs when appropriate.
- jameskilton 3mo agoIt isn't and never has been about the children.
- bcjdjsndon 3mo agoYou can pin it down to less than maybe half a dozen cases that made the newsun the UK. I suppose politics has always been reactionary like this and explains why somewhere like Australia which doesn't really have its own culture still has different laws in response to different outrages
- bluescrn 3mo agoYes, building prisons is expensive. But the current UK government seems to treat it as a physical impossibility, while releasing violent offenders early due to lack of capacity.
- tancop 3mo agoa lot of uk prisons are effectively private. companies like serco and g4s get paid millions to run everything with zero oversight. its not quite as bad as the worst cases in america (no legal slavery for prisoners) but the government is definitely overpaying for bad services. early release is not a problem by itself. honestly the best way to reform the criminal justice system would be replacing fixed prison terms with release based on a psych evaluation and completed volunteer work. of course when you need to release offenders for capacity you should start with the least dangerous ones and i dont think thats happening here, its just random or going off time served.
- DaiPlusPlus 3mo agoThere's no conspiracy here; the UK government is not wanting to censor Wikipedia (honestly!) - what this really is is the consequence of poorly written legislation introduced at the behest of tabloid-newspaper-supported children's online safety nonprofits - they have a very high level of public support (from parents stressed-out over how bad the Internet is thesedays, which is fair enough!) - and this translates into strong political support, which leads to MPs actively avoiding listening to technical experts and other opposition voices because no-one wants the Daily Express to call them out as being on the side of (vague and nebulous) Internet child sex predators (or "the paedos" for short, in UK tabloid speak). ...and none of this has anything to do with Prince Andrew et al (because that's in real-life, not on the Internet). It's the exact same process that lead to the 2010s IWF/Cleanfeed/Wikipedia block over controversial 1970s music album art. It's idiocy and fear of a rabid public, not a conspiracy.
- waiwai933 3mo agoThe High Court judgment referred to is available at https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Wikimedia-Foundation-and-another-v-Secretary-of-State-for-Science-Innovation-and-Technology.pdf https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Wikimedi... I'm not sure if Ofcom's subsequent notification to WMF is publicly available anywhere.
- big85 3mo agoIf you don't fight government overreach now, it becomes permanent.
- bsimpson 3mo agoAs my dad told us every time we crossed a bridge when we were kids: "Tolls are a ratchet - they only move in one direction."
- tialaramex 3mo agoBecause England is very old it has a whole bunch of things which did charge a toll and then that expired, so, nope. It does also have situations where people go "Hey, this toll bridge was built 50 years ago, surely the tolls should be abolished" and the people who built the bridge are like "Nope. See, here's the press about it 50 years ago saying what a great idea it is to have the tolls be slightly lower but perpetual". Feel free to build a time machine and go tell your past selves that's not a great idea after all. But well, nothing is forever. In five hundred years that perpetual toll on a road is obsolete because hardly anybody owns a private vehicle so the toll mostly just moves (local) government money from one pile (funding transport) to another (build infrastructure) and it's not a very efficient way to do that. Or the bridge falls down and its replacement doesn't have a toll because people were sick of tolls. Nothing is forever.
- adammarples 3mo agoThere are plenty of pubs and houses in the UK called The Old Toll House so I know for sure that some have ended
- fsckboy 3mo ago"Toll House cookies" (chocolate chip cookies) are named after an inn that was named for a tollhouse on an old Massachusetts toll road.
- nyeah 3mo ago
- arjie 3mo agoI wonder what the difference in legal traditions is between the US and the Old World. The latter have a lot of "Yes, you're technically in trouble under the guidelines the enforcement authority rules using but they're going to make an exception for you, for now" and the former have a lot of "Yes, the spirit was to block this kind of thing but the letter of the law is that you do get away with it". What informed this kind of difference? Is there one? The US approach seems very much like the way Orthodox Jews follow the halakha by making workarounds around it.
- joe_mamba 3mo agoProbably because the US was founded by the immigrants who fled because they hated the way the system worked in their original countries, and designed a system that's diametral opposed to that, for better and for worse.
- arjie 3mo agoRight, that's what I'd lean to as well. But was the reason they left the legal tradition? In this telling of the story, they were fully aware of the legal tradition being the reason for their unhappiness. But is it true? I know the original immigrants/colonists were looking for a specific kind of religious freedom they couldn't have, but you must be speaking of the later waves (which are the majority of people). I remember ages ago reading this paper (PDF warning): https://annesofiebeckknudsen.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/thosewhostayed.pdf https://annesofiebeckknudsen.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/... It made the case that (simplifying) individualists left for the US while collectivists stayed. And because of the massive scale of the migration relative to the populations, this meant that the two regions were permanently altered. Cool, eh? But I don't know if the thesis has been supported by alternative tests. Essentially, it's what I feel is true, but I've felt many things are true and been wrong many times!
- BigTTYGothGF 3mo ago> original immigrants/colonists were looking for a specific kind of religious freedom they couldn't have The ones who landed at Plymouth Rock were, sort of, but I'm not sure how representative they were of the time.
- theginger 3mo ago> based on a novel reading of the law So they found a loop hole. Why do they need to find a loop hole in their own law, why not just make better laws to start with.
- cineticdaffodil 3mo agoYou know why all who grew up under the soviet regime in the eastern block are totally alergic to englands direction nowadaways.
- sharperguy 3mo agoSadly many of those countries are now in the EU which will force them to adopt similar legislation
- Cider9986 3mo agoIdentity verification should be illegal by default and companies that want to do it should have to prove it's absolutely necessary for their business.
- incompatible 3mo agoThe Wikipedia page implies that all the designated "Category 1" websites will now either have to collect ID from their users worldwide, or remove any presence in the UK. Edit: there's a list of the Category 1 services at https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-content/register-of-categorised-services-and-list-emerging-category-1-services https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-c... I.e., Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Quora, Reddit, Roblox, Snapchat, TikTok, Whatsapp, X, YouTube. Plus others at the Category 2A or 2B levels. Edit: well, it says they are "Providing user identity verification options." Unclear to me when they are supposed to get users to verify identity.
- voxic11 3mo ago> In 2027, the law will impose extra obligations on the most popular services. I presume this is the extra obligation starting in 2027 that wikipedia mentions.
- sunaookami 3mo agoHow did Discord escape category 1, the most notorious and infamous chat client!? Lmao
- Cider9986 3mo agoInsane Telegram isn't even listed. I wonder how simplex.chat would fair if it ever got popular enough, they're based in the UK and likely the most private messenger ever made, because the app introduces zero metadata. It's decentralized, but they have servers and the dev is based there...
- Cider9986 3mo agoThe Ministry of Truth approves of Wikipedia, for now. I suppose it's part of UK culture to be authoritarian which is how Orwell predicted it, but it's uncanny.
- Cider9986 3mo agoIt's be one thing if it was just privacy invasions to save the children, but no it's also freedom of speech, removing jury trials, and probably other things.
- josefritzishere 3mo agoSounds like turnkey fascism.
- Havoc 3mo agoOh so the muppets have finally started thinking about the practicalities of what they’re yolo legislating
- asdaqopqkq 3mo agoI don't get the anglo mind. They set up the same 1984 esque institutions in the subcontinent. Just why. Does it tickle their mind to control informantion or something ? Is is the boarding schools?
- baranul 3mo agoIt's more like, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." If there is no or not enough resistance, certain sadists and egomaniacs see that as a sign to power grab and cause suffering.
- 062570864389 3mo ago[flagged]