Wikipedia will NOT be blocked in the UK - Ofcom extraordinarily unlikely to require age verification for editors - only a few thousand active editors and threshold is 7 million a month for category 1
- and the government can quickly add an exemption on the remote chance it is classified as catebgory 1 (not plausible)
Wikipedia hasn’t succeeded in its court case to make itself exempt from Ofcom requirements - but that’s because Ofcom hasn’t said what they are yet. The judge says that if Ofcom does say Wikipedia is category 1 they can try again. However as we’ll see this is extraordinarily unlikely.
Justice Johnson said his decision:
QUOTE STARTS … does not give Ofcom and the Secretary of State a green light to implement a regime that would significantly impede Wikipedia’s operations”.
… Ofcom’s decision as to which services fall within category one is a public law decision which is potentially amenable to the court’s review on grounds of public law error.”
https://www.thenational.scot/news/25380290.wikipedia-loses-online-safety-act-legal-challenge/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Bluesky#Echobox=1754914303-2
As of writing this, Wikipedia's number of active users - who have performed an action in the last 30 days - is only 107,766 or 460,816 across all Wiki projects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Statistics
They have 222,701,110 user accounts but most of them are inactive. So they wouldn't count.
They don't keep a count of the number of ip addresses that take actions, but that wouldn't be likely to bring numbers into the millions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Statistics
The definition is clear:
QUOTE In these Regulations “active United Kingdom user” means— (a) in relation to a regulated user-to-user service(b), any United Kingdom user(c) who has accessed the user-to-user part of that service
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2025/226/pdfs/uksi_20250226_en.pdf
Someone who just visits Wikipedia to read the encyclopedia hasn't accessed the user-to-user part of that service. They have to create an account and log in to do that.
Wikipedia itself is inaccurate in what it says about its own court case:
QUOTE Platform popularity: Finally, in assessing popularity, the Regulations seemingly do not differentiate [THEY DO DIFFERENTIATE] between users who visit the site just once a month, however briefly—for example, just to look up a date of birth on Wikipedia—versus those who spend hours each day “doomscrolling” potentially harmful content on social media.
All that matters is whether a website or app has several million UK visitors [THE WORD IS ACTIVE USERS NOT VISITORS] a month, total. Ofcom’s own research shows enormous differences in how educational services, like Wikipedia, are actually used in practice.
But this doesn’t seem accurate as we’ve just seen.
The regulations DO differentiate between users who log in and ones who just read the content.
Wikipedia says:
QUOTE 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.
So I don't understand why they took out this case. Seems highly improbable that Wikipedia would be classified as Category 1.
As for blocking - Ofcom could do that through a court case but only at the end of a long process of trying to work to find a solution and the service repeatedly refusing to make its site safe for kids in a case of serious risk of harm.
It’s not plausible at all for Wikipedia.
What if implausibly Wikipedia was classified by OFCOM as category 1 - would start a long process and likely lead to a need to add a new exemption legally
If they were then there would be a long period while OFCOM talks to Wikipedia about compliance but since they clearly can't comply that would likely lead to a need to change the law.
This is the original exemption that never got into the final bill:
QUOTE STARTS
LORD ALLAN OF HALLAM [proposed amendment]
...
A user-to-user service is exempt if its primary purpose is the creation of public information resources and it has the following characteristics—
(a) user-to-user functions are limited to those necessary for the creation and maintenance of a public information resource,
(b) OFCOM has determined that there is minimal risk of users sharing harmful content on the service, and
(c) it is non-commercial.”
https://bills.parliament.uk/publications/52119/documents/3778
The bill itself gives a streamlined way for the Secretary of State to grant an exemption and Parliament to approve that exemption - could be completed very quickly
However if there was a major issue it could be resolved quite quickly. If necessary the Secretary of State can grant an exemption:
QUOTE STARTS
220 (4) The Secretary of State may by regulations amend Part 1 of Schedule 1 to provide for a further description of user-to-user service or search service to be exempt, if the Secretary of State considers that the risk of harm to individuals in the United Kingdom presented by a service of that description is low.
However it has to be approved by both houses of parliament:
QUOTE STARTS
225 Parliamentary procedure for regulations
(1)A statutory instrument containing (whether alone or with other provision)—
...
(i)regulations under section 220(1), (2), (4), (6), (7), (9) or (13),
...
may not be made nless a draft of the instrument has been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, each House of Parliament.
It wouldn't take long for both Houses of Parliament to approve a common sense exemption like Wikipedia.
So in short, I'm not sure why Wikipedia took out this case at all.
On the remote possibility it does get classified as Category 1 and the legal case also fails then the Secretary of State can grant an exemption for it, and it would take a simple majority vote in both Houses of Parliament and then it's done.
Which they surely would do if there was a risk of Wikipedia having to block access or limit access to UK users.
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It is absolutely fine to digress and go off topic in conversations here - this is specifically about things you want help with that might scare people.
PLEASE DON’T TELL A SCARED PERSON THAT THE THING THEY ARE SCARED OF IS TRUE WITHOUT A VERY RELIABLE SOURCE OR IF YOU ARE A VERY RELIABLE SOURCE YOURSELF - AND RESPOND WITH CARE
This is not like a typical post on substack. It is specifically to help people who are very scared with voluntary fact checking. Please no politically motivated exaggerations here. And please be careful, be aware of the context.
We have a rule in the Facebook group and it is the same here.
If you are scared and need help it is absolutely fine to comment about anything to do with the topic of the post that scares you.
But if you are not scared or don’t want help with my voluntary fact checking please don’t comment with any scary material.
If you respond to scared people here please be careful with your sources. Don’t tell them that something they are scared of is true without excellent reliable sources, or if you are a reliable source yourself.
It also matters a lot exactly HOW you respond. E.g. if someone is in an area with a potential for earthquakes there’s a big difference between a reply that talks about the largest earthquake that’s possible there even when based on reliable sources, and says nothing about how to protect themselves and the same reply with a summary and link to measures to take to protect yourself in an earthquake.
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