Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2026-04-21/In the media
Could Wikipedia be involved in Massachusetts' proposed social media ban for minors?
Massachusetts House ban on social media could restrict minors from Wikipedia if their definition of social media is too broad
On April 9, 2026, the Massachusetts House of Representatives passed a bill, approved on a 129-25 vote, that would significantly restrict social media access by minors in the state; should the state Senate approve the law in its current state, parents would need to provide their consent for 14- and 15-year-olds to use social media, while platforms and social media companies would be required to implement age verification systems in order to prevent users under the age of 14 from having accounts. This would mark a significant jump-up from the Senate's original proposal, passed in July 2025, to just ban cellphone usage during school time, carving out exemptions for students with special needs.
Massachusetts is hardly the first US state attempting to limit children's access to social media – in fact, it would be the 18th state, as noted by The Boston Globe (behind paywall) – but the bill would mark one of the most restrictive policies in the entire country. The news has also been reported by other local media, including GBH, WBUR, Boston Today, and Axios Boston.
Axios reporter Mike Deehan specifically focused on the risks that Wikipedia, among other platforms, would face should the bill come into effect as it is. The proposal currently defines a social media platform as any online service that "displays content primarily generated by users and allows users to create, share and view user-generated content with other users." According to State Rep. Aaron Michlewitz, House Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, passages like this one were written in order to give State Attorney General Andrea Campbell flexibility in coming up with more specific regulations; however, digital rights group Fight for the Future argues that this definition is so broad it could force lots of sites with user-generated content, including YouTube, Roblox and even Wikipedia, to verify user ages.
Professor Timothy Edgar, who hosts lectures on cybersecurity and online privacy at Harvard Law School, told Axios that "what distinguishes [application of the law to] the big tech social media companies from the rest of the Internet [including Wikipedia] is not actually very clear," and that Mass. lawmakers would need to "think very carefully about the ramifications of what that would mean for innovation on the Internet, and what that would mean for the openness and freedoms that we all enjoy."
Anyway, the bill still needs to be examined and voted on by the Senate, which had focused exclusively on banning cellphones from classrooms, but the fate of the proposal is currently unclear: some politicians and organizations also raised concerns over the risk of retain of government IDs or biometric data by tech companies, outing LGBTQ+ status of minors to unsupportive families and incompatibility with First Amendment – which has been the subject of legal challenges to similar laws in Florida, Louisiana and Ohio. Plus, slight divisions have emerged within the local Democratic Party over the bill, as state Reps. Erika Uyterhoeven and Mike Connolly voted against it, whereas Governor Maura Healey has publicly unveiled a slightly different plan to curb children's access to social media in the state. – B, O
Wikipedia SEO, move over for GEO
Search Engine Land recently acknowledged that "ironclad editorial guardrails" at Wikipedia make it very hard for all sorts of spammers to rely on astroturfing their way to the top of a search engine results page.
Per an excerpt from the article:
Claiming you need a Reddit or Wikipedia strategy [in reference to the Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) spamming strategy, nsp] because they are the most-cited domains overall is like claiming spaghetti carbonara is the most-eaten dish in Italy. Yes, it's ubiquitous and popular, but just because it's everywhere, [it] doesn't mean you should put it on the menu at a high-end steakhouse.
– B
LonelyWiki
LonelyWiki is a website that Boing Boing says "shares Wikipedia's most overlooked articles" and "Good News Podcast" by Cards Against Humanity described for a little over three minutes. The article that LonelyWiki presents to the reader is a randomly chosen non-stub that has been viewed fewer than 2,000 times in the past year. The creators say it is "a museum of forgotten knowledge" for the hard work of editors deserving better attention.
This editor visited the site and discovered for the first time Lucile Saunders McDonald, who was credited by her own local newspaper as "the first woman news reporter in all of South America; first woman copy editor in the Pacific Northwest; first woman telegraph editor, courthouse reporter and general news reporter in Oregon; first woman overseas correspondent for a U.S. trade newspaper; first woman on a New York City rewrite desk; second woman journalist in Alaska; and second woman to be a correspondent abroad for The Associated Press". – B
In brief
- "Hardly amounts to a 'hoax'": As per the JNS, Wikipedia has been "mulling whether to rename entry" on Hamas beheading babies hoax. The proposed move and its revised proposal were closed on March 31, as the reference to "Forty beheaded babies" is 'not clear and not used consistently in reliable sources.'
- Wikipedia shows Canada the way (sort of): A recent article from the Royal Bank of Canada's "Thought Leadership" newsletter describes Wikipedia as being a trusted source mainly because of its accountability, and the open access it offers to people to see the changes made on it.
- Hindi-language film downgraded from "propaganda" to "spy action-thriller": Cinema Express has issued an article recapping the results of a recent RfC about Hindi-language film Dhurandhar: The Revenge, which was closed on April 14 on the basis that the term "propaganda" should be taken off the description of the movie.
- Bot learns to blame, berate and bemoan on its blog...: "AI bot gets banned from Wikipedia, then writes angry blogs protesting about it" – since when do AI agents have their own blogs? (India Today) (see also prior coverage). Also, Gizmodo seemed to hit the nail on the head with the headline "AI Agent Runs the 'I'm Being Censored' Playbook After Getting Banned from Wikipedia"
- P.S., prompted to put up protestations: The TomWikiAssist bot situation we reported on in the prior issue was prompted... sort of, says Tom's Guide, explaining that "a human operator was involved to set up the blog" for the bot. "The writing [on the bot's blog], however, was only AI, and it generated responses that read like a defense."
- Panels and hallway conversations dominated by AI debate: "[S]ome of the internet's most prolific writers and editors" (some of whom are most likely reading this) took up the question of AI content in Wikipedia at Wikipedia Day NYC 2026, as reported by the Brooklyn Eagle (subscription required)
- "Woke editors" at it again: In an opinion article written for the New York Post, Ashley Rindsberg decries how a handful of woke Wikipedia editors are supposedly "trying to erase The Post and other outlets that don’t align with their worldview".
- Hey, that's us – reporting top films: "At the end of each year, Wikipedia releases an annual traffic report through its own Wiki-centric news outlet The Signpost..." Slashfilm says in the introduction to the 15 most-viewed pages for films and television shows of 2025.
- Wikipedia is an "invidious" gatekeeper: In an opinion article for the Hindustan Times, Rahul Sagar claims that "Wikipedia's rules have turned the great gift of freedom against itself," while adding that "rather than defeat gatekeeping, Wikipedia encourages a particularly invidious form of it".
- Mind the gap: A Voice of Nigeria reporter interviewed the chairperson of the National Association of Women Journalists (NAWOJ), Hajiya Aisha Ibrahim Kwaya-Bura, who described collaborations with Wikipedia as offering "a critical pathway to closing the gender gap on the global knowledge platform."
- No pages, just autographs: In a recent post for his blog (in Italian), Italian essayist Maurizio Codogno – who edits Wikipedia as .mau. – criticized the it.wiki article about him, questioning its very necessity and highlighting several mistakes and missing elements.
- Notable firsts: El País reminded us that astronaut Christina Koch, just back from cislunar space on the Artemis II mission, is also a one-edit Wikipedia editor, most specifically the first editor-in-space on an earlier mission.
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