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WIKIPEDIA TELLS UK GOVERNMENT IT WON’T COMPLY WITH PROPOSED AGE VERIFICATION
MANDATES

Policy

FROM THE SATISFY-YOUR-PERSONAL-DATA-BLOODLUST-ELSEWHERE DEPT

Tue, May 9th 2023 10:44am - Tim Cushing

The UK government still hopes to bend the internet to its will, but it’s
constantly finding out it won’t be as easy as just declaring a bunch of stuff
illegal. Tech companies from all over the world would be affected by its “Online
Safety Bill” (originally more proactively titled the “Online Harms Bill“).
Negatively affected.

The push continues to outlaw things like end-to-end encryption, expand the
government’s power to directly regulate internet communications, and otherwise
make everyone more miserable (and less safe, ironically).

The usual suspects have been cited in support of ruining the internet: hate
speech, CSAM, etc. While the proposed measures might have some immediately
noticeable effect, those effects will likely be limited to showboat-y,
ineffectual fining of non-compliant tech companies, perhaps with a few threats
of prosecution thrown into the mix.

Notably, the bill targets tech companies, rather than those engaging in the
activities the UK government wants to see eradicated. Tech companies are pushing
back, though. Some of the biggest providers of encrypted communication services
have already told the UK government they’ll exit the British market, rather than
make their offerings less secure.

It’s not just encryption being targeted by the UK government. The government is
also demanding service providers collect and retain more information about their
users, supposedly to ensure the proverbial children aren’t exposed to content
above their pay age grade.

Here’s where Wikipedia, via the Wikimedia Foundation, steps in and gives the UK
government the extended two-finger salute (one better than America!), as Chris
Vallance and Tom Gerken report for the BBC:

> Wikipedia will not comply with any age checks required under the Online Safety
> Bill, its foundation says.
>
> Rebecca MacKinnon, of the Wikimedia Foundation, which supports the
> website, says it would “violate our commitment to collect minimal data about
> readers and contributors”.

UK government officials have decided the Wikimedia Foundation (specifically, its
Wikimedia) places children in harm’s way by hosting content that is either (1)
actually pornographic (people stash porn at Wikimedia) or (2) sufficiently
descriptive of sexual acts to be considered pornography (even if said
descriptions are meant to educate, rather than titillate).

Consequently, Wikimedia/Wikipedia would be required to verify UK users’ ages,
something it has never done anywhere in the world. In response to this new
demand — one that would require Wikimedia to gather more information about its
users than it currently does — the Foundation has flatly stated it won’t be
invading its users’ privacy just to satisfy the UK government’s bizarre desire
to turn the internet into vast repository of user info it can dip into whenever
it feels it needs to.

Even if Wikimedia was inclined to comply with this ridiculous mandate, there’s
likely no way it could feasibly comply with it. The logistical demands verge on
impossibility.

> There are currently 6.6 million articles on Wikipedia, and she said it was
> “impossible to imagine” how it would cope with checking content to comply with
> the bill.
>
> She added: “Worldwide there are two edits per second across Wikipedia’s
> 300-plus languages.”

The online, user-generated encyclopedia does have its supporters in the UK
legislature. As the BBC reports, some are arguing for an exemption that would
allow sites like Wikipedia to bypass age verification since it relies on
community moderation, rather than its own employees or algorithms. But others in
Parliament, as well as the entities pushing for a more restrictive internet,
claim adding exemptions will just encourage services like Wikimedia to perform
less moderation, rather than more.

Those people are wrong. Mandates won’t force the internet to behave the way UK
politicians would prefer it behaves. Instead, it will mean their constituents
will lose access to services they currently use, be denied access to others, and
allow child abusers and bigots to sink even further below the radar where
they’re still capable of doing harm but far less likely to be detected.

Filed Under: age verification, online safety bill, uk
Companies: wikimedia

21 CommentsLeave a Comment

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21 Comments Collapse all replies

This comment is new since your last visit.

Anonymous Coward says:
May 9, 2023 at 11:00 am

Good on them

None of their offices or servers are in Britain, so they are not subject to
British law

Just like wen sites outside of the United sates do not have to comply with
Utah’s age verification law. If they are not in America, they are not subject to
ant US laws

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Threaded [2]
Anonymous Coward says:
May 9, 2023 at 10:11 pm

RE:

Tell that to the Predator drone circling your house.

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Anonymous Coward says:
May 9, 2023 at 11:06 am

if someone wants to watch porn they ,ll search xx videos, or Some adult website,
wikipedia is a community online encylopedia just because a educational website
mentions sex for instance the history of lgbt and the fight for gay rights does
not mean it should be treated like a website whose purpose is to display erotic
adult content or videos
It Should be exempted from this bill for the reason its an educational online
service that is used by a global audience
it would be a shame if uk users lose acess to such a valuable service that
provides free content on science history and current affairs that is constantly
updated .

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Threaded [2]
Ben (profile) says:
May 9, 2023 at 12:19 pm

RE: ALMOST RIGHT

I have only one problem with this… define ‘educational online service’ in a way
that actually works, and actually manages to differentiate between those smutty
sites you don’t want little Johnny seeing, and the ones that’ll teach him how to
understand what a period is. (not that I expect there to be a great deal of
useful material on PornHub on the latter subject, but you never know)

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Threaded [3]
Eldakka (profile) says:
May 9, 2023 at 7:30 pm

RE: RE:

> ctually manages to differentiate between those smutty sites you don’t want
> little Johnny seeing, and the ones that’ll teach him how to understand what a
> period is.

Pornhub is educational, it taught me about:

* anal sex
* Bukkake
* Gang bangs
* That my stepsister really wants to bang me (unfortunately I don’t have a
stepsister)
* how to masturbate properly (myself and others)
* what women really like*

I found all those videos highly educational.

(*) not really, no

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Threaded [3]
Anonymous Coward says:
May 9, 2023 at 10:13 pm

RE: RE:

If little Johnny’s parents have opinions about what little Johnny looks at
online, maybe they should discuss them with little Johnny rather than running to
Nanny State.

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Threaded [4]
PaulT (profile) says:
May 10, 2023 at 2:18 am

RE: RE: RE:

If they’re aware of what Johnny is actually looking at online, that already
places them above 95% of parents, either now or pre-internet (my parents didn’t
know what I was reading/watching either half the time, and that’s when I had to
physically hold a copy in my hands).

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Threaded [2]
Anonymous Coward says:
May 9, 2023 at 1:22 pm

RE:

If Wikipedia is forced to block the UK, someone in the UK could use Tor, Proxy,
or VPN to bypass that.

And it does not break US laws to this, so users in the UK could not be charged
under Us laws, and that includes the DMCA.

The anti-circumvention clauses of the DMCA do not apply to the end user.

In order to be charged with a felony under the law, you have to be doing it for
financial gain, meaning making money.

That is why, for example, I am breaking no laws when I go on road trips to
Mexico or Canada, and use my own VPN on my home computer to bypass geofencing to
listen to my iHeart and YouTube playlists on my phone while driving.

As an end user, I am not committing any crime, under the CMCA, because I am
doing it for my own personal use, and not doing to make money.

And there is no law in Mexico, Canada, or Alaska against that either. In short,
I am not committing any crime, anywhere in North America when I do that in my
car while on road trips because I am not doing it for any kind of profit.

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Anonymous Coward says:
May 9, 2023 at 7:16 pm

RE: RE:

Okay, VPN pointdexter.

But if visiting wikipedia is a fucking crime in the UK, your precious VPN isn’t
gonna help you, even if they don’t keep records to comply with, let’s say,
Swedish law.

If they’re clever, they’ll force wikipedia to comply using Interpol to monitor
the site for specific users.

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Threaded [4]
Anonymous Coward says:
May 9, 2023 at 10:14 pm

RE: RE: RE:

> If they’re clever

That’s a loadbearing hypothetical

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Threaded [3]
Anonymous Coward says:
May 9, 2023 at 10:15 pm

RE: RE:

Yet.

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Mononymous Tim (profile) says:
May 9, 2023 at 12:08 pm

The whole demonization of the way everyone got here in the first place is pretty
ironic. Let’s carry it a bit further. Those idiots should be ashamed they even
exist.

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Threaded [2]
Anonymous Coward says:
May 9, 2023 at 1:10 pm

RE:

They are. And they are taking it out on everyone else.

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Flakbait (profile) says:
May 9, 2023 at 12:49 pm

“Even if Wikimedia was inclined to comply with this ridiculous mandate, there’s
likely no way it could feasibly comply with it.”

Well, they could just nerd harder, now couldn’t they?

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Paul says:
May 9, 2023 at 1:46 pm

The sad thing is that it’s not just the governing party being imbeciles on this
stupidity, the largest opposition (and likely next government) is nowhere to be
seen in opposition to the bill, with several of their MPs actually supporting
it. There is simply no respite from government stupidity in the UK no matter who
is in government

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Anonymous Coward says:
May 9, 2023 at 4:51 pm

BOL

Brittania online – access via CD only

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parttimezombie (profile) says:
May 9, 2023 at 4:58 pm

RE:

Brittania send me a pack of cd’s in the 1990’s for free. It was almost pretty
cool, but then I’d click a link in an article and be prompted to insert disc 6
or whatever and have to wait 40 seconds or more for it to load. Everyone I
showed it to said “Wow, that’s neat. Oh, wait, no it’s not”.

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Anonymous Coward says:
May 9, 2023 at 4:54 pm

This is another one of those “It’s your job to coerce your population if that’s
what you want, not ours” deals. And see how long they keep their jobs, then.

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Anonymous Coward says:
May 9, 2023 at 10:16 pm

RE:

Based on recent history, I’d estimate 10 to 20 years, on average.

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PaulT (profile) says:
May 10, 2023 at 2:21 am

RE: RE:

Looks like we’re headed for roughly the same amount of time the Tories were in
power last time. They were on the same hypocritical moral crusades while
strip-mining everything important last time too.

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Anonymous Coward says:
May 10, 2023 at 5:22 am

They don’t want to protect kids from porn, they want to ensure that the only
source of information they (or any of us have) is government vetted content, and
if anyone says anything that doesn’t chime to their particular worldview must be
crushed out of existence.

Hmm, where have I seen that before…

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Penguin any second now…
* Candescence: Uh, Tucker Carlson is gone from Fox News??
* https://twitter.com/axios/status...
https://twitter.com/axios/status/1650524593923260416
* BentFranklin: It's too bad that FO comes so long after FA but it'll have to
do.
* Candescence: https://twitter.com/srl/status/1...
https://twitter.com/srl/status/1650527565671542784
* Something happened _all of a sudden_ that caused Fox to yeet him
* The lawsuits might've been a factor at least but nobody knows what the hell
is going on
* Definitely not an amicable parting tho
* Tomac: He's such a big fan of them, maybe he tried to stage a coup at fox
* mildconcern: Maybe he was due to make exactly $780 million in the next 10
years and they did the math
* Bode: i suspect they've discovered some nasty messages or tapes tethered to
that sexual harassment lawsuit that will be revealed in time. can't imagine
what he said or did to cause king propagandist murdoch to implement actual
accountability
* Candescence: The MS Activision merger is dead at least for now, the UK CMA
has announced they're blocking the merger.
* But not for the reasons you'd think - apparently the sticking point is *cloud
gaming* of all things.
* Which is baffling considering how small and irrelevant cloud gaming is atm
* mildconcern: The MS response is also downright angry. Threatening, even.
* I wonder if they'd just pull up stakes and leave the UK gaming market if it
stands. Another Brexit Benefit!
* Candescence: I'd be genuinely surprised if they actually were desperate
enough to do that
* Tomac: I read that response as a threat as well. Interesting path to take
when you're trying to persuade them.
* mildconcern: Right. Means they think they have leverage I suspect. I wonder
what their UK numbers are like. the UK is a lot more bully able lately, but
I'd not have thought it had gone that far.
* Samuel Abram: If that were the case, it makes me think of the principle as to
why Google pulled out of markets due to things like link taxes. The main
differences are that Google was pulling out due to impossibility of doing
business, and Microsoft would (theoretically) pull out for prevention of
getting bigger, so technically, different principles.
* Candescence: I'm noticing conversations about Bluesky are being tainted by
the fact that Jack Dorsey is the face of it as people think it'll just be
another libertarian techbro pipedream because of that
* BentFranklin: One bright side to this Wizards of the Coast / Hazbro debacles
is millions of young adults are getting a history lesson about the brutality
of the capitalists resisting unionization and waking to the reality that it's
not over.
* Mike Masnick: yeah, it's a bit frustrating, especially since jack has
basically written off bluesky, has made it clear he disagrees with the
direction they're going in, and the bluesky team has publicly described how
they're moving in a different direction than jack wanted. People freaking out
about it because of Jack don't realize that it's not a jack project
* The bluesky team is incredibly thoughtful in how they're going about things.
they'll make mistakes, but it's not going to be a "libertarian techbro
pipedream"
* Candescence: Oh, interesting, I didn't know that - what's got Jack's feathers
ruffled in this instance?
* Or is it just a case of vague disagreement with no publicly known reasons
* Mike Masnick: No, he's been pretty clear that he (1) doesn't think bluesky
should be so much like Twitter and that it should be more different and (2)
he disagreed with the idea that they should build out content moderation
tools before launching
* mildconcern: So he was in the "let a thousand Nazis bloom" school?
* I suppose that's not surprising
* pyrex: i realize this isn't a thing everyone cares about, but has bluesky
hinted at a pivot towards cryptocurrency features?
* Candescence: I'm pretty sure they've ruled out any kind of crypto integration
* pyrex: i wouldn't be that offended by their existence, but i would be if the
platform decided to move into that only after getting a captive userbase and
i guess i'm looking for foreshadowing
* mildconcern: that could also be part of what turned Dorsey off
* if I remember right he is/was into crypto
* pyrex: i definitely wanna clarify, i wouldn't use the service if it had
crypto features, but like, i probably won't use it anyways and it's ok for
things to exist that aren't for me
* suddenly springing it on people and hoping platform lock-in keeps people
there would be pretty unethical though, IMHO
* Mike Masnick: bluesky has no crypto. jay has been clear from the very start
(from before she was hired, actually) that even though she's worked in
crypto, it makes no sense to build a social network on crypto.
* but because she worked in crypto, and because of jack's "involvement" many
people assume that it's a crypto project
* pyrex: thanks, that's what i was hoping to hear!
* Mike Masnick: before she was hired, i was actually in a meeting with her and
some other folks, including a group that is trying to build a crypto-based
social network, and she was quizzing them on why, and asking what benefits
they thought it brought, and just kept pushing them when they tried to
handwave around things. so she's not anti-cryptocurrency by any stretch, but
she's one of the most practical and thoughtful people i know on this stuff.
she's very focused on building a good service, not based on ideology, but on
what's actually good
* pyrex: that's pretty reassuring! i briefly used uh, i think steemit? like, in
at least one case i saw jack dorsey float the idea of using crypto-based cash
tipping instead of likes. i understand why this is appealing to people and at
the same time i don't like the kind of content this incentivizes people to
make
* Mike Masnick: jack was floating that idea on nostr, which is also interesting
(to me) but i doubt will go mainstream
* pyrex: it's in "i probably won't use it, it should definitely be allowed to
exist, maybe i will like it in four years" territory to me
* i don't really understand nostr's fixation on censorship, which is very
frequently a dogwhistle
* i kinda like their protocol design, it looks to me like it does not attempt
to do very many things and would probably scale pretty well. with standard
cryptographic protocol problems like "if you lose your key, heaven help you"
* John Roddy: Wait... He *disagreed* on moderation tools being built out before
launch?
* Cathy Gellis: I don't understand that. But I also don't understand how anyone
could have volitionally decided to be a minority shareholder in a platform
Musk was about to take over, so I have already been perplexed by his
judgment.
* John Roddy: Especially right after so many other ones launched and
immediately slammed into exactly the same problem of bad moderation policies
* mildconcern: It would save them not at all if the network were not explicitly
aimed at crazy right wingers like so many of those were, too. Maybe that
would delay the pain by a day.
* Candescence: I think the only other main competitors that are worth watching
so far are Mastodon, Post and Hive
* Mike Masnick: Yeah, I'm perplexed a bit by that as well, but...
* there's also T2 and spoutible. spoutible seems... very questionable to me. T2
is... fine. But, it just looks like a twitter clone. I think if they were
smart, they'd quickly adopt the AT Protocol once bluesky releases federation
details
* BentFranklin: Is there a way to get techdirt in dark mode?
* Mike Masnick: not currently, no
* Candescence: So the Writer's Guild of America has started striking, and this
was one of their demands that the studios rejected:
https://twitter.com/pmiscove/sta...
https://twitter.com/pmiscove/status/1653249330239909888
* According to the guild, the counteroffer was "annual meetings to discuss
advancements in technology".
* Even though it's quite obvious to everyone what the end goal the studios have
with AI is, aka eventually reduce as much involvement of writers in the
actual writing process as possible
* MSR4: [link]
https://www.techdirt.com/2023/05/02/pornhub-says-no-more-porn-for-folks-in-utah-unless-they-know-how-to-use-a-vpn/
This is so stupid. You can not legislate morality. Just like attempts to ban
Usenet in the 90s because some teen could take a few text messages, mush them
together, and get a nude photo. Or heading over to a friends house to view
his dads playboy, there is nothing going to stop people from seeking out this
material. What is the end game, ban all porn in the US. Great, everyone will
move their opeations overseas. Then what, block internet connections to those
countries? Even North Korea and Iran is accessable from the Internet, not to
mention Tor. It is stupid virtual signaling to get around parents not wanting
to monitor what their kids are doing online and take responsibility for their
actions.
* Mike Masnick: yup.
* Samuel Abram: I would say this is as copyrightable as Naruto's selfie:
https://twitter.com/depthsofwiki...
https://twitter.com/depthsofwiki/status/1653093584042614792
* Actually, I wouldn't mind this monkey script replacing Lorem Ipsum...
* BentFranklin: “material harmful to minors” Today it means porn. Tomorrow it
means information on guns and climate change.
* Maybe Nintendo should hire the Pinkertons.
* Samuel Abram: I chuckled. https://twitter.com/amatsujanait...
https://twitter.com/amatsujanaito/status/1653518113697144832
* Happy Bandcamp Friday! Today, I have released a single I had long finished
but didn't have the cover art done until now: Lo, a track by the band Genesis
on the Sega Genesis (Mega Drive outside of North America), Mama (with the
vocaloid MEIKO)! [link]
https://ironcurtain.bandcamp.com/album/mama-feat-meiko
* Mike Masnick: i want to delete this spam, but the response is so good that i
feel like i have to leave it.
* Samuel Abram: [video]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7GdDLbm55U
* mildconcern: I'm going to be hiking in the Canadian rockies this summer for a
couple weeks. This video was a good chance to practice my Canadian language
skills.
* "Abooot.....aboooooooot....."
* Samuel Abram: @mildconcern I swear, I've been to Canada many, many times, and
J. J. is the only one I know who does that.
* mildconcern: I've met a couple others who do, but yeah for the most part
these days we're all raised by the same TV

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