by bbor | 2025-08-11 19:43:15+00:00
Thanks for the detailed answers! Again, I share at least some of your underlying concern, and don't want that to be overshadowed. That said, some responses:

This is the perfect opportunity to do so, and they aren't doing it. Instead, they are picking the smallest possible battle they can.

It looks like they've written three articles "strongly" opposing the "tremendous threat" posed by this bill: two when it was being considered[1,2] and another after it passed[3]. Yes, these articles are focused on the impact of the bill on Wikimedia's projects, but I think that's clearly a rhetorical strategy to garner some credibility from the notoriously-stuffy UK legislature. "Foreign nonprofit thinks your bill is bad in general" isn't exactly a position of authority to speak from (if you're thinking like a politician).

More recently, they've proposed the "Wikipedia test" to the public and to lawmakers (such as at the 2024 UN General Assembly[6]) that pretty clearly implicates this bill. The test reads as such: Before passing regulations, legislators should ask themselves whether their proposed laws would make it easier or harder for people to read, contribute to, and/or trust a project like Wikipedia.

That's ridiculous. ID systems endanger everyone, particularly the adults who participate.

I was more making a point about why social media companies aren't involved than justifying that choice for them on a moral level. I suspect you have stronger beliefs than I about the relative danger of your name being tied to (small subsets of-)your online activity, but regardless, Wikimedia agrees, writing in 2023 that the bill "only protects a select group of individuals, while likely exposing others to restrictions of their human rights, such as the right to privacy and freedom of expression."

The think-of-the-children argument is the oldest trick in the book. You are seriously asking me to take it at face value? No thank you.

It's still a valid argument. Again I wasn't really endorsing any position there, but I do think that in general the government should try to protect children. The only way I could imagine you disagreeing with that broad mandate is if you're a strong libertarian in general?

This is my biggest concern with how Wikimedia is behaving: they are in a significant position politically, and are abdicating this crucial responsibility.

This, I think, is the fundamental disagreement: I just don't see them as being in that significant of a position. Given today's news I wouldn't be surprised to see them throw up a banner on the Wikipedia homepage and/or do a solo one-day blackout reminiscient of 2012, but even those drastic measures are pretty small beans.

The real nuclear option--blocking the UK from accessing Wikimedia sites--would certainly garner some attention, but it would cost them greatly in terms of good will, energy, and raw output from their (presumably quite significant) UK editor base. And when would it end? If the UK government chooses to ignore them, wouldn't it feel weird for Wikipedia to be blocked for years in the UK but remain accessible in brutal autocracies worldwide?

In the end, this feels like a job for UK voters, not international encyclopedias. I appreciate the solidarity they've shown already, but implying that they are weak for "abdicating [their] crucial responsibility" seems like a step too far.

...IMHO. As a wikimedia glazer ;)

[1] March 2022: https://medium.com/wikimedia-policy/early-impressions-of-the...

[2] November 2022: https://medium.com/wikimedia-policy/deep-dive-the-united-kin...

[3] May 2023: https://diff.wikimedia.org/2023/05/11/good-intentions-bad-ef...

[4] June 2023: https://medium.com/freely-sharing-the-sum-of-all-knowledge/p...

[5] September 2023: https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2023/09/19/wikimedia-fo...

[6] September 2024 & June 2025: https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2025/06/27/the-wikipedi... // https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2025/06/27/the-wikipedi...