Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, has launched a legal challenge against the Online Safety Act as it says its users and contributors could be unfairly targeted in the new regulations.

Wikipedia has long shown concerns on how the Online Safety Act would impact its operations, often raising challenges to age verification on content deemed ‘harmful’.

Now, the Wikimedia Foundation, the firm behind Wikipedia, is challenging the Online Safety Act’s categorisation which ranks platforms on their user numbers and influence, placing more stringent regulations on more popular sites.

Wikipedia claims it will be designated as a Category 1 platform and will therefore face more regulations, including user verification and filtering, which it says could endanger its fleet of volunteers that create, edit, and review content across the platform.

New duties, which were made to mainly target social media platforms, could disrupt Wikipedia’s system for content creation which tries to ensure the accuracy of posts.

Wikipedia warns that the fallout could mean that malicious actors could post false or harmful content and then block volunteer editors before it can be removed.

Wikipedia says that since it is a “public interest” site – it does not advertise, sell personal data, or operate for profit – many of the regulations stipulated in the Online Safety Act does not apply in the same way to Wikipedia.

Content creators on Wikipedia may have to have their identities verified, which Wikipedia says could infringe on their identity, lead to data breaches, doxxing, and even legal ramifications.

While Wikipedia has said that it does not want to challenge the Online Safety Act outright, or the idea of a Category 1 designation, it is challenging the regulations that the Act has made for designating these categories, which says they are not appropriately recognising the nuances in regulating platforms such as Wikipedia compared to other sites.

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“We do not dispute the need for sensible online regulation. Wikimedia’s free knowledge projects are safe and important resources through which people across the UK—and the wider world—learn, share knowledge, collaborate, and gain media literacy, in over 300 languages,” Phil Bradley-Shmeig, lead council for the Wikimedia Foundation, wrote in a blog post.

“But for services like Wikipedia to thrive, it is essential that new laws do not endanger charities and public interest projects.”

He also added that Wikipedia is just one of many ‘outlier’ websites that may be unfairly targeted in the new regulations.

“As designed, the regulations will also fail to catch many of the services UK society is actually concerned about, like misogynistic hate websites,” he said.

Still, Wikipedia will face a steep challenge in its lawsuit against the already in-place law: this is the first judicial review brought up against the law.