The Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia, is due to challenge the UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA) in the High Court of Justice in London on July 22 and 23. It wants to challenge the categorization regulations that would classify Wikipedia as a Category 1 service, which was designed for large, commercial social media platforms in mind, not volunteer, non-profit encyclopedias.
If Wikimedia fails in its bid and Category 1 duties apply to Wikipedia, it will have to verify the identity of many of its volunteer contributors. This forced verification would undermine the privacy that keeps its volunteers safe from harassment, legal threats, and risks from authoritarian governments.
The Category 1 rules allow people who go on online to block unverified users to cut out content from anonymous accounts and anonymous trolls interacting with them. This provision would be bad for Wikipedia because its contributors are generally not verified. Additionally, if forced to comply, Wikipedia would have to divert its resources from improving the site to protecting users, even though it’s a non-profit.
Two rights organizations, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and ARTICLE 19 have come out in support of Wikimedia’s challenge, believing that the OSA is a threat to freedom of expression and privacy online, both in the UK and globally. The provisions in the law become operational on July 25, so Wikimedia will have to act fast if the ruling does not go its way in the days prior.
The decision by the High Court will be very interesting to see because the main targets and intent behind the OSA are to restrict access for children to pornography and harmful content on social media platforms. Wikipedia is neither of those and generally doesn’t include the harmful content found on those platforms, though, it does include information about things that parents might not want their kids to see.