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UK Court Ruling Leaves Wikipedia Facing Years Of Uncertainty Under Online Safety Act
Two headlines walked into a UK courtroom: the BBC says “Wikipedia loses challenge,” while the Guardian says “Wikipedia can challenge if the strictest rules apply.” Annoyingly, both are true—and tha…
The core issue is whether or not Wikipedia would be considered a “Category 1” service, which, while size-gated like the DSA’s “Very Large Online Platform” (VLOP) concept, comes with a different bundle of duties (e.g., “user empowerment” filters and ad-fraud prevention obligations) and a different theory of risk. As I wrote just recently about the OSA’s rollout, the law is already delivering exactly the harms critics predicted: invasive “age assurance” checkpoints, mass migration to VPNs, and collateral damage to health, safety, and news content—while small communities shut down or get fenced off behind ID walls. The judge’s “subset of pages where every editor has verified” workaround would balkanize articles, shatter the integrity of collaborative editing, and create a perverse incentive to link real‑world identity to speech—exactly what Wikipedia’s governance model (and basic safety) try to avoid.
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