Skip to main content

Online Safety Bill age checks won’t be done by Wikipedia


According to its foundation, Wikipedia will not submit to any age verifications mandated by the Online Safety Bill.

It would "violate our commitment to collect minimal data about readers and contributors," according to Rebecca MacKinnon of the Wikimedia Foundation, which sponsors the website.

A senior member of Wikimedia UK is concerned that the website might be blocked as a result.

However, according to the government, only services that pose the greatest risk to children will require age verification.

There are millions of entries on Wikipedia, created and edited by tens of thousands of volunteers from all over the world in hundreds of different languages.


According to information from analytics company SimilarWeb, it is the seventh most popular website in the UK.

The Online Safety Bill, which is presently before Parliament, will completely take effect sometime in 2024 and requires digital companies to safeguard users from harmful or illegal information.

According to Neil Brown, a lawyer who specialises in internet and telecoms law, the bill requires services that kids are likely to access to have "proportionate systems and processes" in place to shield them from dangerous information. This can involve confirming your age.


If a service violates the law, there may be severe repercussions, such as hefty fines, criminal charges against senior workers, or restrictions on access to a service in the UK.

Because of the Bill and the possibility that it may require age checks, Wikimedia UK is concerned that the website may be disabled.




Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Leak of iOS 17 shows consumers’ eagerly anticipated improvements

Leaked information indicates big modifications will be made to a number of functions as Apple prepares to release iOS 17. The new update will generally guarantee system improvements, stability, efficiency, and performance gains. According to the leaked information, iOS 17 will function on all devices running iOS 16 at the moment. More features will be added to Dynamic Island to improve its functionality. Since the Camera app UI changes have been postponed for some time, iOS 17 is expected to include them. Users may also anticipate upgrades to the display settings, focus mode settings, new emojis, notification settings, the user interface for the Health app, and much more.
Post a Comment
Read more

Biden discusses the risks of AI with the CEOs of Microsoft and Google

On Thursday, President Joe Biden met with the CEOs of some of the largest AI firms, including Microsoft and Alphabet's Google, and emphasised the need for them to make sure their technologies are secure before they are used. The popularity of apps like ChatGPT has made the term "generative artificial intelligence" popular this year, spurring a rush among businesses to release comparable products they hope would alter the nature of work. Millions of users have started experimenting with these tools, whose proponents claim can make medical diagnoses, write screenplays, create legal briefs, and debug software. As a result, there is growing worry that the technology could result in privacy violations, skew employment decisions, and be used in power scams and misinformation campaigns. The hazards that AI poses to people, society, and national security were discussed by Biden, who has used ChatGPT and experimented with it, according to the White House. T...
Post a Comment
Read more