Wikipedia embroiled in legal battle in India
www.voanews.com
A monthslong legal battle between online encyclopedia Wikipedia’s parent company and Asian News International (ANI) raises concerns about free access to credible online information in the country
  • Stewbs@lemmy.worldEnglish
    621·
    2 months ago

    Indian censorship is comically bad and living in this country, seeing day-to-day examples of this is a lot of fun. How shit of a direction this country is taking. Talk about a judge being completely out of touch with how Wikipedia works and functions. Dangerous tool my ass, useful tool to keep people in check. They tried blocking Proton now it’s Wikipedia… what’s next, google??? Since disinformation and misinformation can be found on it too? I swear nothing appeases them except blatant false information pandering to assholes like these.

    India is become a censorship haven in all aspects slowly and slowly. It’s scary.

  • conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    504·
    2 months ago

    They should have just blocked India.

    Censoring factual articles globally is an extremely bad precedent to set for yourself.

    • SwizzleStick@lemmy.zipEnglish
      9·
      2 months ago

      Agree.

      Wikipedia is one of the giants that could easily geoblock a country and call it done.

      If the general populace of the country in question has a problem with that, they can address it with their government or find alternative ways to access it.

      Maybe there is a middle ground to be had that I can’t see, but kowtowing to the unreasonable demands of a pushy foreign government is idiotic.

  • cheese_greater@lemmy.worldEnglish
    171·
    2 months ago

    I’ve heard there’s an article that is missing from Wikipedia worldwide because of India. Is it true and how can we read it otherwise?

    • faintwhenfreeEnglish
      5·
      2 months ago

      Missing article was here It didn’t contain much other than dates it was filed and plaintiffs information. Which is a standard practice anywhere.

      In July 2024, ANI filed a lawsuit against Wikimedia Foundation in the Delhi High Court — claiming to have been defamed in its article on Wikipedia — and sought ₹2 crore (US$240,000) in damages.[14][15][16] At the time of the suit’s filing, the Wikipedia article about ANI said the news agency had, “been accused of having served as a propaganda tool for the incumbent central government, distributing materials from a vast network of fake news websites, and misreporting events on multiple occasions”. The filing accused Wikipedia of publishing, “false and defamatory content with the malicious intent of tarnishing the news agency’s reputation, and aimed to discredit its goodwill”.[17][14][18][19]

      The article is still up, Wikipedia calling ANI biased, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_News_International

      So not really sure, why the massive outrage. Removing intricate details from ongoing lawsuits is standard practice.

      While the lawsuit by ANI demands that editors who made the edit claiming ANI as govt mouth piece be identified, Wikipedia hasn’t done it yet and the article is right about setting a dangerous precedent if high court forces Wikipedia to reveal the names. But at the same time article is biased and has misleading information such as > In an unprecedented move, Wikipedia removed the page from its platform on October 21.>

      You can see some well noted examples of articles being removed before from Wikipedia here . So there is clearly precedent for removal of articles. I used love vox a decade ago, but now I see these half truths/partial stories are a commonplace and I’m happy to have ditched vox now.