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.
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 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 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.")
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".
> 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.
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.
"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."
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?
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?
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 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.
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.
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.
20 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 43.5 ms ] threadEvery Company that implemented any compliance is a traitor to the free internet and should be treated as such.
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 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.
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.")
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".
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.
https://www.gbnews.com/politics/labour-ban-vpn-online-safety...
This told me all I needed to know about her level of understanding of complex topics. It only went downhill from there.
I find this a very unprincipled stance.
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...
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?
https://successfulsoftware.net/2025/07/29/the-online-safety-...
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.
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.