https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-65388255
Bit of a turn up for the books. Turns out, particularly if an amendment passes in the House of Lords, Wikipedia could fall foul of the age verification bill. Turns out it isn't just pornographic websites that will have to implement it. This could affect any website, including Twitter, that allows linking or hosting of NSFW content. Never mind the threat of all the instant messaging apps to block the UK when the law is implemented. Even this website will have to either age verify or block UK residents. And we still have the prospect of residential VPNs being regulated to the point of being pointless and effectively banned.
Unlike the similar EU Digital Services Act, there will be no exception for encyclopedic and educational content.
I can imagine a few people will not shed a tear if Wikipedia is blocked in the UK.
It'll probably pass but enforcement will be extremely patchy at best, the UK government is so weak that the slightest push and It'll fall off a cliff (which isn't a bad thing) and I'll bet forcing everyone to use VPNs to watch content then attempting to block VPNs will piss people off enough they'll pull another 'we don't give a fuck anymore' like they did with lockdowns.
If this proves anything, it's that the current governments and authorities are too old or incompetent to UNDERSTAND the internet and social media companies, the only ones that know how to use it is intelligence agencies like FBI, CIA, China's agencies etc by having backdoors and admin tools.
This has nothing to do with age. The censorship the "old ones" want pales in comparison to the demands of young leftists.
The older ones might want to restrict porn. The younger ones want to control and dictate what you are allowed to read, say and think.
Airstrip One will use the law to censor and ban any website they deem doubleplus ungood in the eyes of the Party, and will happily look the other way towards any websites that technically break it but churn out their message. Wikipedia tows the Party line, so it'll be fine.
My only hope is that they go to such an extreme that more and more companies tell them to fuck off. There are so many censorship measures in the pipeline across Europe that my only hope (as slim as it may be) is that a critical mass of companies just ignore them.
The weirdest thing I experienced in a fully Current-Year-captured law school was the near-universal support for censoring the Internet among the little Gen Z commie faggots. It was so weird because they were all so open about their various fetishes, open about their support for trannies and other Internet autism derivatives, etc etc. How the hell would we have even had tranny shit as a going trend if all sex-related content was censored? How would they have “discovered” that they were all pansexual aromantic non-binary poly queers? I suppose they’d carve out exceptions to the point that only the sort of things straight men enjoy would be censored?
I highly doubt they’ll block Wikipedia. I think it’s far more likely they’ll allow it and use the threat of a ban to force policies they want on Wikipedia’s content.
If this website doesn't have employees or financial accounts in the UK, and if no treaties bind the country or countries in which there are employees or financial apparati, then we don't have to block the UK, only tell them to pound sand and wait for them to block us.
Wikimedia has a UK arm, so yes. Even then, GDPR requirements resulted in websites outside of Europe with no presence in Europe blocking European visitors, not the other way round.
I hope that horrible website (wiki? Like tiki? Like racist tiki torches?!) gets reported to the government and properly shut down.