The news comes to us thanks to Rebecca MacKinnon who is a part of the foundation that shows support for the site.
Meanwhile, one senior member of Wikimedia UK claims that might be a signal that the website could soon be blocked. But the current government mentioned how those services serving as the biggest risk for kids would need proper verification of their ages.
For those who may not be aware, the site entails millions of different articles that come in hundreds of different types of languages. These are produced and even edited by so many volunteers situated in different places around the globe.
This makes this site a part of the top 8 most visited locations in the United Kingdom as per data arising from SimiarWeb, which is a top analytics firm.
This online safety bill is currently put in front of the Parliament and is known to place huge duties across different tech giants so they would do everything to provide protection to users from various types of harm or illegal content online. And that is known to come into existence by the year 2024.
Meanwhile, one solicitor by the name of Neil Brown is mentioning how such a bill means these kinds of services would be easily accessed by young audiences and therefore some sort of a proportionate system must be in place. After all, it needs to offer protection from users coming across dangerous content online. And age verification should be a part of that.
One of the chief executives of Wikimedia in the UK sent out a new warning about the content and material found on the webpage that may give rise to the need for age verification. For instance, even educational messages and pictures regarding sexuality may be misunderstood as explicit content.
But still, The Wikimedia Foundation admits that it will not verify the age of readers and contributors across the country. They similarly spoke about how the need for Wikipedia to put together information about different users and check their ages would need a huge overhaul of the entire tech system.
If a particular service doesn’t fit into some bill out there, that can bring with it plenty of consequences that entail huge penalties, senior staff being sanctioned for crime, and even complete restriction of the website for users in the UK region.
Today, Wikimedia UK says it has so much fear about the webpage getting blocked thanks to this Bill and there is a huge risk that it would make age checks mandatory.
So just the thought of one of the world’s leading and most popular web pages that provides free knowledge and data for so many individuals can’t be a source of free knowledge and data for millions.
Today, the site entails 6.6 million articles through Wikipedia and it’s just beyond impossible to think that it could function without verifying content to comply with regulations like this bill.
Read next: 65% of Chinese Consumers Will Boycott American Products if TikTok is Banned
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World
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