Somehow 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.
Even 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.
> 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.
Why do you think it's an issue or understanding or intelligence? It's a matter of power and control. Protesting the intelligence of these leaders won't result in any structural change.
If anything, greater intelligence would only accelerate the damage and persuasiveness behind its public consent.
Why 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?
That's what blows my mind anytime I hear someone complain about all the vile content on the internet today and that we need to protect children. What about "be a parent" is so impossible to do today? Every device and OS has parental controls for a reason. Yeah they aren't perfect but they will prevent 99% of the content from getting to your kids.
There's a cognitive dissonance to the opposition to this:
a) Content controls don't work, what are the government thinking?
b) This is parents' problem, they should use content controls.
Individual action doesn't work because it only takes one kid in the class who doesn't have parental controls then everyone loses. There's also obvious workarounds such as VPNs and a teenager walking into a pawn shop with £50 for a second hand smartphone without parental controls.
It also makes no sense that parents can't be bothered to turn on parental controls yet can be bothered to run a national grassroots campaign for this stuff (see e.g. http://smartphonefreechildhood.org)
Although your idea of an OS-level age flag is also being pushed by the Anxious Generation's Jonathan Haidt, so definitely has merit/traction as an alternative.
This is because these measures are not about protecting children.
It's a distraction.
Real objective is to further increase the barrier of entry for SMEs to compete (try start your own forum or any kind of challenger to Facebook et al). Government on the other hand gets a tidy surveillance tool as a sweetener.
So whenever time comes to turn a screw on dissent, the law is ready to be used.
That'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.
> 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.
I'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.
The problem with the focus being on porn behind age verification as the main effect, is that it ignores all the other effects. Closing community forums and wikis. Uncertainty about blog comments.
It is actually (as noted in many previous discussion about the Online Safety Act) pushing people to using big tech platforms, because they can no longer afford the compliance cost and risk of running their own.
It seems to be a fairly standard judicial review: if OFCOM(?) class them as "category 1", they are under a very serious burden, so they want the categorization decision reviewed in court.
I 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.
I 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".
X-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.
I 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.
You'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)
A 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.
Related: 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.
This 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.")
They can build a solid legal case on their exceptionalism _and_ hope the court uses it as an opportunity to more widely protect the open Internet.
The fact that the letter of the law means you can't have an open Internet isn't their fault.
Can 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?
> 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").
Perhaps 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.
I 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.
"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."
All 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.
The 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.
I 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.
The 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.
This 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.
Roark66|7 months ago
This told me all I needed to know about her level of understanding of complex topics. It only went downhill from there.
fidotron|7 months ago
"The Home Secretary's husband has said sorry for embarrassing his wife after two adult films were viewed at their home, then claimed for on expenses."
The follow up article has some fun nuggets too http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8145935.stm
lysace|7 months ago
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.
wahnfrieden|7 months ago
If anything, greater intelligence would only accelerate the damage and persuasiveness behind its public consent.
supermatt|7 months ago
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?
jajuuka|7 months ago
owisd|7 months ago
a) Content controls don't work, what are the government thinking? b) This is parents' problem, they should use content controls.
Individual action doesn't work because it only takes one kid in the class who doesn't have parental controls then everyone loses. There's also obvious workarounds such as VPNs and a teenager walking into a pawn shop with £50 for a second hand smartphone without parental controls.
It also makes no sense that parents can't be bothered to turn on parental controls yet can be bothered to run a national grassroots campaign for this stuff (see e.g. http://smartphonefreechildhood.org)
See also- I Had a Helicopter Mom. I Found Pornhub Anyway: https://www.thefp.com/p/why-are-our-fourth-graders-on-pornhu... 8-year old watches violent porn on friend’s iPad: https://www.thesun.co.uk/fabulous/32857335/son-watched-viole...
Although your idea of an OS-level age flag is also being pushed by the Anxious Generation's Jonathan Haidt, so definitely has merit/traction as an alternative.
hermitcrab|7 months ago
That would be the ideal. Unfortunately, many parents do not have the skills and/or motivation to manage their children's devices.
jalapenos|7 months ago
This is nothing to do with children, those utterances are just bare faced cover for increased surveillance and control.
varispeed|7 months ago
It's a distraction.
Real objective is to further increase the barrier of entry for SMEs to compete (try start your own forum or any kind of challenger to Facebook et al). Government on the other hand gets a tidy surveillance tool as a sweetener.
So whenever time comes to turn a screw on dissent, the law is ready to be used.
Welcome to British corporate fascism.
Jiro|7 months ago
Because the government is lying and this is about spying on the populace, not about parental control.
nsksl|7 months ago
braiamp|7 months ago
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.
chippiewill|7 months ago
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.
graemep|7 months ago
It is actually (as noted in many previous discussion about the Online Safety Act) pushing people to using big tech platforms, because they can no longer afford the compliance cost and risk of running their own.
pjc50|7 months ago
It seems to be a fairly standard judicial review: if OFCOM(?) class them as "category 1", they are under a very serious burden, so they want the categorization decision reviewed in court.
ZiiS|7 months ago
Quarrel|7 months ago
Have the court filings become available?
Of course, the random PR in the OP isn't going to go through their barrister's arguments.
While I agree that the main thrust of the legislation won't be affected either way, the regulatory framework really matters for this sort of thing.
Plus, win or lose, this will shine a light on some the stupidity of the legislation. Lots of random Wikipedia articles would offend the puritans.
mbonnet|7 months ago
noodlesUK|7 months ago
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|7 months ago
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:
It’s then up to the recipient’s device to warn them of incoming illegal-in-your-state content.Havoc|7 months ago
kypro|7 months ago
sealeck|7 months ago
exasperaited|7 months ago
[deleted]
miohtama|7 months ago
https://www.gbnews.com/politics/labour-ban-vpn-online-safety...
ozlikethewizard|7 months ago
- 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.
tomck|7 months ago
7952|7 months ago
hermitcrab|7 months ago
makerofthings|7 months ago
hermitcrab|7 months ago
https://successfulsoftware.net/2025/07/29/the-online-safety-...
perihelions|7 months ago
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|7 months ago
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?
ZiiS|7 months ago
bargainbin|7 months ago
cormorant|7 months ago
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/ma...
kemayo|7 months ago
> 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), 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).
(Disclaimer: I work for the WMF. I know literally nothing about this court case or how this law applies.)
ipnon|7 months ago
Lio|7 months ago
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.
cft|7 months ago
I find this a very unprincipled stance.
jonathantf2|7 months ago
bawolff|7 months ago
IlikeKitties|7 months ago
Every Company that implemented any compliance is a traitor to the free internet and should be treated as such.
blitzar|7 months ago
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.
Swinx43|7 months ago
A UK internet blockade might just get this going.
xnorswap|7 months ago
But of course Meta carved out their own exception in the law, so this law benefits Meta at the cost of alternatives.
graemep|7 months ago
lukan|7 months ago
What would be the punishment for that?
hermitcrab|7 months ago
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.
cubefox|7 months 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.
ChrisKnott|7 months ago
Seems to require an algorithmic feed to be Category 1 - https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukdsi/2025/9780348267174
crtasm|7 months ago
mikeyouse|7 months ago
https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/uk/online-safety...
boffinAudio|7 months ago
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|7 months ago
billy99k|7 months ago
[deleted]