Wikipedia Wikipedia is a free content, free Online content, online encyclopedia that is written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Founded by Jimmy Wales and La ...

has been censored by governments in a few countries including (but not limited to)

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...

Myanmar Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar; and also referred to as Burma (the official English name until 1989), is a country in northwest Southeast Asia. It is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia and has ...

Pakistan Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the Islam by country# ...

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in West Asia. Located in the centre of the Middle East, it covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula and has a land area of about , making it the List of Asian countries ...

Syria Syria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country in West Asia located in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to Syria–Turkey border, the north, Iraq to Iraq–Syria border, t ...

Tunisia Tunisia, officially the Republic of Tunisia, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered by Algeria to the west and southwest, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Tunisia also shares m ...

Turkey Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia (country), Georgia, Armen ...

Uzbekistan , image_flag = Flag of Uzbekistan.svg , image_coat = Emblem of Uzbekistan.svg , symbol_type = Emblem of Uzbekistan, Emblem , national_anthem = "State Anthem of Uzbekistan, State Anthem of the Republ ...

, and

Venezuela Venezuela, officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many Federal Dependencies of Venezuela, islands and islets in the Caribbean Sea. It com ...

. Some instances are examples of widespread

Internet censorship Internet censorship is the legal control or suppression of what can be accessed, published, or viewed on the Internet. Censorship is most often applied to specific internet domains (such as ''Wikipedia.org'', for example) but exceptionally may ...

in general that includes

content. Others are indicative of measures to prevent the viewing of specific content deemed offensive. The duration of different blocks has varied from hours to years. When Wikipedia ran on the

HTTP HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web, wher ...

protocol, governments were able to block specific articles. However, in 2011, Wikipedia began also running on

HTTPS Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is an extension of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). It uses encryption for secure communication over a computer network, and is widely used on the Internet. In HTTPS, the communication protoc ...

, and in 2015, switched over to solely HTTPS. Since then, the only

censorship Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by governmen ...

options have been to block one of the entire

list of Wikipedias Wikipedia is a free content, free multilingualism, multilingual open source, open-source wiki-based online encyclopedia open collaboration, edited and maintained by a Wikipedia community, community of volunteer editors, started on 15 January 2001 ...

for a particular language or prosecute

editors Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, or cinematic material used by a person or an entity to convey a message or information. The editing process can involve correction, condensation, organization, a ...

. The switch has resulted in some countries dropping their bans and others expanding their bans to the entire site.

Widespread censorship of Wikipedia

Types of censorship

Blocking all Wikipedia sites (in one or every language)

Some countries continue to block Wikipedia for long periods of time (e.g. China). Other countries use widespread blocks for shorter periods of time such as several months (e.g. Syria) to just hours (e.g. Pakistan).

Blocking specific articles

Before the switch to

, some countries blocked articles on sensitive topics, such as ideas espoused by a political opposition party, articles about current events (e.g. Russia), or ideas that are against the religious tradition of a regime (e.g. Iran). After the switch to HTTPS around 2016, it was no longer possible to see which pages on a website a user was visiting, so this type of blocking was no longer an option.

Prosecuting editors

These prosecutions tend to focus on editors who publish information that the government (e.g. Saudi Arabia) wants to censor, leading to

self-censorship Self-censorship is the act of censoring or classifying one's own discourse, typically out of fear or deference to the perceived preferences, sensibilities, or infallibility of others, and often without overt external pressure. Self-censorship is c ...

Prosecuting readers

Few or no reports of government mass surveillance of Wikipedia usage are known since Wikipedia switched over to

in 2015. However, some governments and companies have installed

mass surveillance Mass surveillance is the intricate surveillance of an entire or a substantial fraction of a population in order to monitor that group of citizens. The surveillance is often carried out by Local government, local and federal governments or intell ...

spyware Spyware (a portmanteau for spying software) is any malware that aims to gather information about a person or organization and send it to another entity in a way that harms the user by violating their privacy, endangering their device's securit ...

applications on user equipment, which may detect the usage of

VPN Virtual private network (VPN) is a network architecture for virtually extending a private network (i.e. any computer network which is not the public Internet) across one or multiple other networks which are either untrusted (as they are not c ...

software and record visited

URL A uniform resource locator (URL), colloquially known as an address on the Web, is a reference to a resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A URL is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identi ...

s. This can hypothetically be utilized to eavesdrop Wikipedia browsing. Legal code may deter people from accessing the sites due to the threat of fines, imprisonment, loss of job, or physical harm.

By country

Belarus

On 11 March 2022, Belarusian political police GUBOPiK arrested and detained Mark Bernstein, an editor of the Russian Wikipedia from Minsk, who was editing the Wikipedia article about the

Russian invasion of Ukraine On 24 February 2022, , starting the largest and deadliest war in Europe since World War II, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, conflict between the two countries which began in 2014. The fighting has caused hundreds of thou ...

, accusing him of the "spread of anti-Russian materials" and of violating Russian "fake news" laws. On 7 April 2022, a court in Brest sentenced Wikipedia user Pavel Pernikaŭ to two years of prison for three edits of

Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...

and Belarusian Wikipedia. He was found guilty of "discrediting the Republic of Belarus" (article 369-1 of the Criminal Code of Belarus).

China

Access to Wikipedia has varied over the years with the Chinese language version being controlled more tightly than other versions. As of April 2019, all versions of Wikipedia are blocked in mainland China under the

Great Firewall The Great Firewall (GFW; ) is the combination of legislative actions and technologies enforced by the China, People's Republic of China to regulate the Internet domestically. Its role in internet censorship in China is to block access to selected ...

. The

Chinese Wikipedia The Chinese Wikipedia () is the written vernacular Chinese edition of Wikipedia. It was created on 11 May 2001. It is one of multiple projects supported by the Wikimedia Foundation. The Chinese Wikipedia currently has articles, registered ...

was launched in May 2001. Wikipedia received positive coverage in China's state press in early 2004 but was blocked on 3 June 2004, ahead of the 15th anniversary of the

1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre The Tiananmen Square protests, known within China as the June Fourth Incident, were student-led demonstrations held in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, lasting from 15 April to 4 June 1989. After weeks of unsuccessful attempts between t ...

. Proposals to practice

in a bid to restore the site were rejected by the Chinese Wikipedia community. However, a story by the ''

International Herald Tribune The ''International Herald Tribune'' (''IHT'') was a daily English-language newspaper published in Paris, France, for international English-speaking readers. It published under the name ''International Herald Tribune'' starting in 1967, but its ...

'' comparing entries on the Chinese and English Wikipedias on topics such as

Mao Zedong Mao Zedong pronounced ; traditionally Romanization of Chinese, romanised as Mao Tse-tung. (26December 18939September 1976) was a Chinese politician, revolutionary, and political theorist who founded the People's Republic of China (PRC) in ...

and

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...

concluded that the Chinese entries were "watered down and sanitized" of political controversy. On 22 June 2004, access to Wikipedia was restored without explanation. Wikipedia was blocked again for unknown reasons in September, but only for four days. Wikipedia was again blocked in China in October 2005. Wikipedia users Shi Zhao and Cui Wei wrote letters to technicians and authorities in an attempt to convince them to unblock the website. Part of the letter read, "By blocking Wikipedia, we lose a chance to present China's voice to the world, allowing evil cults,

Taiwan independence Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of Chi ...

forces and others... to present a distorted image of China." In October 2006, ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' reported that the

English Wikipedia The English Wikipedia is the primary English-language edition of Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. It was created by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger on 15 January 2001, as Wikipedia's first edition. English Wikipedia is hosted alongside o ...

was unblocked in China, although the Chinese Wikipedia remained blocked. New media researcher

Andrew Lih Andrew Lih (; born 1968)Andrew Lih
"

", noting that for users of various

internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides a myriad of services related to accessing, using, managing, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, no ...

s in different locations in China— China Netcom in Beijing,

China Telecom China Telecom Corporation Limited (CT) is a Chinese telecommunications company. It is one of the publicly traded red chip companies of the state-owned China Telecommunications Corporation. The company's H shares have been traded on the Sto ...

in Shanghai, and various providers in

Anhui Anhui is an inland Provinces of China, province located in East China. Its provincial capital and largest city is Hefei. The province is located across the basins of the Yangtze and Huai rivers, bordering Jiangsu and Zhejiang to the east, Jiang ...

—the Chinese Wikipedia was blocked only in Anhui. Advocacy organization

Reporters Without Borders Reporters Without Borders (RWB; ; RSF) is an international non-profit and non-governmental organisation, non-governmental organization headquartered in Paris, which focuses on safeguarding the right to freedom of information. It describes its a ...

praised Wikipedia's leaders for not self-censoring. On 10 November 2006, Lih reported that the Chinese Wikipedia appeared to have been fully unblocked. Lih confirmed the full unblocking several days later and offered a partial analysis of the effects based on the rate of new account creation on the Chinese Wikipedia. Before the unblocking, 300–400 new accounts were created daily. In the four days after the unblocking, the rate of new registrations more than tripled to over 1,200 daily, making it the second fastest growing Wikipedia after the English version. Similarly, there were 75% more articles created in the week ending on 13 November than during the week before. On the same weekend that the Chinese Wikipedia passed the 100,000 article mark, Lih predicted that the second 100,000 would come quickly but that the existing body of Chinese Wikipedia users would have their hands full teaching the new users basic Wikipedia policies and norms. On 16 November 2006, the

Reuters Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide writing in 16 languages. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world. The agency ...

news agency reported the main page of the Chinese Wikipedia could be displayed but not pages on some taboo political subjects, such as "4June, 989 protests. However, subsequent reports suggested that both the Chinese and English versions had been reblocked the next day on 17 November. On 15 June 2007, access to non-political articles on the English Wikipedia was restored. On 6 September 2007, IDG News reported that the English Wikipedia was blocked again. On 2 April 2008, ''

The Register ''The Register'' (often also called El Reg) is a British Technology journalism, technology news website co-founded in 1994 by Mike Magee (journalist), Mike Magee and John Lettice. The online newspaper's Nameplate_(publishing), masthead Logo, s ...

'' reported that the blocks on the English and Chinese Wikipedias were lifted. This was confirmed by the

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

and came within the context of foreign journalists arriving in Beijing to report on the

2008 Summer Olympics The 2008 Summer Olympics (), officially the Games of the XXIX Olympiad () and officially branded as Beijing 2008 (), were an international multisport event held from 8 to 24 August 2008, in Beijing, China. A total of 10,942 athletes fro ...

and the

International Olympic Committee The International Olympic Committee (IOC; , CIO) is the international, non-governmental, sports governing body of the modern Olympic Games. Founded in 1894 by Pierre de Coubertin and Demetrios Vikelas, it is based i ...

's request for

press freedom Freedom of the press or freedom of the media is the fundamental principle that communication and expression through various media, including printed and electronic media, especially published materials, should be considered a right to be exerc ...

during the games. In September 2008,

Jimmy Wales Jimmy Donal Wales (born August 7, 1966), also known as Jimbo Wales, is an American List of Internet entrepreneurs, Internet entrepreneur and former Trader (finance), financial trader. He is a Founders of Wikipedia, co-founder of the non-profi ...

had a meeting with

Cai Mingzhao Cai Mingzhao (; born 16 June 1955) is a Chinese politician and journalist. He was appointed president of the Xinhua News Agency in December 2014, succeeding Li Congjun, who had retired. Cai formerly served as deputy director of the State Counci ...

, Vice Director of China's

State Council Information Office The State Council Information Office (SCIO) is the chief information office of the State Council of the People's Republic of China and an external name of the Central Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party. Historically, SCIO w ...

. While no agreements were made, Wales believed that a channel of communication had been opened between Wikipedia's community and the

government of China The government of the People's Republic of China is based on a system of people's congress within the parameters of a unitary communist state, in which the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) enacts its policies through people's congresses. ...

. According to a report published in the ''

American Economic Review The ''American Economic Review'' is a monthly peer-reviewed academic journal first published by the American Economic Association in 1911. The current editor-in-chief is Erzo FP Luttmer, a professor of economics at Dartmouth College. The journal is ...

'' in 2011, the blocking of the Chinese Wikipedia not only reduced the group size of its users but also decreased the unblocked users' contributions by 42.8% on average. In 2012, both the Chinese and English Wikipedias were accessible in China except for political articles. If a Chinese IP attempted to access or search for a "sensitive" article, the IP would be blocked from visiting Wikipedia for between several minutes to up to an hour. Chinese authorities started blocking access to the secure (

) version of the site on 31 May 2013. Although the non-secure (

) version was still available, it was vulnerable to keyword filtering allowing individual articles to be selectively blocked. GreatFire urged Wikipedia and users to circumvent the block by accessing other IP addresses owned by Wikipedia with HTTPS. In 2013, after Jimmy Wales stated that Wikipedia will not tolerate "5 seconds" of censorship, Shen Yi, an Internet researcher at

Fudan University Fudan University (FDU) is a public university, national public university in Yangpu, Shanghai, Yangpu, Shanghai, China. It is affiliated with the Ministry of Education (China), Ministry of Education and is co-funded with the Shanghai Municipal ...

Shanghai Shanghai, Shanghainese: , Standard Chinese pronunciation: is a direct-administered municipality and the most populous urban area in China. The city is located on the Chinese shoreline on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the ...

said that while "Wikipedia is tough against the Chinese government, it may not necessarily be so grand when faced with US government or European justice systems' requirements to modify or delete articles or disclose information". Meanwhile, Huang, an administrator of Chinese Wikipedia, told Radio Free Asia that he had already been exit banned (by the government) for 4 years since 2009 without a clear reason provided. According to GreatFire, both the encrypted and unencrypted Chinese Wikipedia were blocked on 19 May 2015. Since June 2015, all Wikipedias redirect HTTP requests to the corresponding HTTPS addresses, thereby making encryption mandatory for all users and rendering the site inaccessible in China. As a result, Chinese censors cannot see which specific pages an individual is viewing and therefore cannot block a specific subset of pages (such as

Ai Weiwei Ai Weiwei ( ; , IPA: ; born 28 August 1957) is a Chinese contemporary artist, documentarian, and activist. Ai grew up in the far northwest of China, where he lived under harsh conditions due to his father's exile. As an activist, he has been ...

Liu Xiaobo Liu Xiaobo (; 28 December 1955 – 13 July 2017) was a Chinese literary criticism, literary critic, human rights activist, philosopher and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who called for political reforms and was involved in campaigns to end Ch ...

Tiananmen Square Tiananmen Square or Tian'anmen Square () is a city square in the city center of Beijing, China, named after the Tiananmen ("''Gate of Heavenly Peace''") located to its north, which separates it from the Forbidden City. The square contains th ...

) as they did in past years. Wales said he would fly to China to lobby the Chinese government to unlock the site within two weeks at the Leadership Energy Summit Asia 2015 in

Kuala Lumpur Kuala Lumpur (KL), officially the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur, is the capital city and a Federal Territories of Malaysia, federal territory of Malaysia. It is the largest city in the country, covering an area of with a census population ...

on 2December 2015. The government of

completely blocked all language versions of the site again on 4 December. A large number of Chinese internet users complained about the block on social networks, although most of the complaints were deleted after a short period. However, it became possible to visit Wikipedia in other languages on 6December in China again. Wales met Lu Wei, the director of

Cyberspace Administration of China The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC; ) is the national internet regulator and censor of the People's Republic of China. The agency was initially established in 2011 by the State Council as the State Internet Information Office (SIIO) ...

on 17 December 2015 during the

World Internet Conference The World Internet Conference (WIC; zh, s=世界互联网大会, labels=no), also known as the Wuzhen Summit ( zh, s=乌镇峰会, labels=no), is an annual event, first held in 2014, organized by the government of the People's Republic of China ...

held in

Wuzhen Wuzhen ( zh, s=乌镇, p=Wūzhèn, Wu Chinese, Wu: Whu-tsen lit. "Wu Town") is a historic scenic Town (China), town, part of Tongxiang, located in the north of Zhejiang, Zhejiang Province, China. It was primarily built in the 7th century during th ...

Zhejiang ) , translit_lang1_type2 = , translit_lang1_info2 = ( Hangzhounese) ( Ningbonese) (Wenzhounese) , image_skyline = 玉甑峰全貌 - panoramio.jpg , image_caption = View of the Yandang Mountains , image_map = Zhejiang i ...

. Wales said that this was the first time they met and there was no consensus on specific issues but that the purpose of the meeting was for the two to "meet and know each other". Wales told Lu Wei how Wikipedia and Wikimedia work in the world and expressed hopes to meet Lu Wei and the Cyberspace Administration of China regularly in the future. When a reporter asked if he would order Wikipedia to hide some information to maintain stable operations in China, he responded "Never." Still, Wales' own words have been censored; he said that the improvements in

machine translation Machine translation is use of computational techniques to translate text or speech from one language to another, including the contextual, idiomatic and pragmatic nuances of both languages. Early approaches were mostly rule-based or statisti ...

might make it "no longer possible" for authorities to control flows of information in the future during a panel discussion. However, in the official translation, his statement was that such improvements will help governments to better analyze online communications. On 23 April 2019, all versions of Wikipedia were blocked in China. On 23 September 2020, Wikimedia's application for the status as an official observer at the

World Intellectual Property Organization The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO; (OMPI)) is one of the 15 specialized agencies of the United Nations (UN). Pursuant to the 1967 Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization, WIPO was created to pr ...

was rejected by the Chinese government because China's representative claimed that they had "spotted a large amount of content and disinformation in violation of he

One China ''One China'' is a phrase describing the relationship between the People's Republic of China (PRC) based on mainland China, and the Republic of China (ROC) based on the Taiwan Area. "One China" asserts that there is only one ''de jure'' Ch ...

principle" on webpages affiliated with Wikimedia, and Wikimedia's Taiwan branch has been "carrying out political activities... which could undermine the state's sovereignty and territorial integrity". On 24 October 2020, a Chinese citizen in

Zhoushan Zhoushan is an urbanized archipelago with the administrative status of a prefecture-level city in the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang. It consists of an archipelago of islands at the southern mouth of Hangzhou Bay off the mainland c ...

, Zhejiang was penalized by the local police for "illegally visiting Wikipedia". On 5 October 2021, the Chinese government rejected the Wikimedia Foundation's bid for observer status at the World Intellectual Property Organization again for the same reason as in 2020. Despite being censored in mainland China, and as VPNs are normally not allowed to edit Wikipedia, Wikipedia administrators from China have permitted IP block exemptions for a select number of mainland users. Such users are recruited to change the editorial content on Wikipedia in support of Chinese government's viewpoint and/or to support the election of pro-Beijing administrators on Wikipedia, with the aim of gaining control of Wikipedia. Academics suggested that "China urgently needs to encourage and train Chinese netizens to become Wikipedia platform opinion leaders and administrators ... hocan adhere to socialist values and form some core editorial teams." The WMC has clashed with Wikipedia editors from Taiwan, not only over Wikipedia's content, but also making death threats made against Taiwan's community of Wikipedians. One Taiwanese editor suggested that it was not just patriotic mainlanders, but a "larger structural coordinated strategy the government has to manipulate these platforms" beside Wikipedia, such as

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

and

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

. The WMC has threatened to report Wikipedia editors to Hong Kong’s national security police hotline over the disputed article "

2019–2020 Hong Kong protests The 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests (also known by other names) were a series of demonstrations against the Hong Kong government's introduction of a bill to amend the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance in regard to extradition. It was the largest ...

" characterized by edit warring. A Hong Kong-based editor, who remains anonymous because of fears of intimidation, noted that "Pro-Beijing people often remove content that is sympathetic to protests, such as tear gas being fired and images of barricades. They also add their own content". Acknowledging that "edit wars" happen on both sides, the anonymous editor stated that "Pro-democracy editors tend to add content to shift the balance or the tone of the article, but in my experience, the pro-Beijing editors are a lot more aggressive in churning out disinformation. It's now unfixable without external interference. Someone is trying to rewrite history." On 13 September 2019, the

Wikimedia Foundation The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. (WMF) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, and registered there as foundation (United States law), a charitable foundation. It is the host of Wikipedia, th ...

banned seven Wikipedia users and removed administrator privileges from twelve users that were part of Wikimedians of Mainland China. Maggie Dennis, the foundation's vice present of community resilience and sustainability, said that there had been a year-long investigation into "infiltration concerns" that threatened the "very foundations of Wikipedia". Dennis observed that the infiltrators had tried to promote "the aims of China, as interpreted through whatever filters they may bring to bear". Suggesting possible links to the

Chinese Communist Party The Communist Party of China (CPC), also translated into English as Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is the founding and One-party state, sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Founded in 1921, the CCP emerged victorious in the ...

, Dennis said "We needed to act based on credible information that some members (not all) of that group MChave harassed, intimidated, and threatened other members of our community, including in some cases physically harming others, in order to secure their own power and subvert the collaborative nature of our projects".

India

In July 2024,

Asian News International Asian News International (ANI) is an Indian news agency that offers syndicated multimedia news feeds to news bureaus in India. The company was established by Prem Prakash in 1971 and, under the name TVNF, it soon became the first agency in Ind ...

sued Wikimedia to uncover the identity of editors who characterized it on Wikipedia as being a propaganda tool for the government, alleging the editors had defamed the news agency. The

Delhi High Court The High Court of Delhi ( Hindustani: दिल्ली उच्च न्यायालय; ''dillī uchcha nyāyālaya'') is the high court in Delhi, India. It was established on 31 October 1966, through the ''Delhi High Court Act, 1966. ...

threatened to block Wikipedia in India if the names of editors were not turned over. On 21 October 2024, the Wikimedia Foundation suspended access to the article for the lawsuit itself—due to an order from the court stating that that article violated the ''

sub judice In law, ''sub judice'', Latin for "under a judge", means that a particular case or matter is under trial or being considered by a judge or court. The term may be used synonymously with "the present case" or "the case at bar" by some lawyers. I ...

'' principle. This is believed to be the first time an English Wikipedia page had been taken down after a court order. On 17 March 2025, the

Supreme Court of India The Supreme Court of India is the supreme judiciary of India, judicial authority and the supreme court, highest court of the Republic of India. It is the final Appellate court, court of appeal for all civil and criminal cases in India. It also ...

questioned the Delhi High Court's order asking Wikipedia to remove details of the lawsuit. It also asked why the High Court was being "so touchy" about the issue. It further noted that courts should not demand content removal merely because it is critical of them. Supreme Court Justices Abhay S. Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan noted that the case would have broad implications for press freedom. "This concerns press freedom. If it is Wikipedia today, it could be someone else tomorrow." The Delhi High Court's order that the article be taken down was overturned on appeal to the

. The Court said that in a liberal democracy, judiciary and media must support each other, and it is not the duty of the court to tell the media to delete or takedown content.

Iran

In a November 2013 report published by the Center for Global Communication Studies of the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

, researchers Collin Anderson and Nima Nazeri scanned 800,000 Persian-language Wikipedia articles and found that the Iranian government blocks 963 of these pages. According to the authors, "Censors repeatedly targeted Wikipedia pages about government rivals, minority religious beliefs, and criticisms of the state, officials, and the police. Just under half of the blocked Wiki-pages are biographies, including pages about individuals the authorities have allegedly detained or killed." Anderson said that Persian Wikipedia, as a microcosm of the Iranian internet, is a "useful place to uncover the types of online content forbidden and an excellent template to identify keyword blocking themes and filtering rules that apply across the greater internet." In May 2014, according to ''

Mashable Mashable is a Online newspaper, news website, digital media platform and entertainment company founded by Pete Cashmore in 2005. History Mashable was founded by Pete Cashmore while living in Aberdeen, Scotland, in July 2004. Early iterations o ...

'', the Iranian government blocked at least two pages on the Persian Wikipedia. In 2015, the Wikipedia software migrated to HTTPS protocol, leaving the Iranian government with no choice but to either block it completely or not block it at all. Iran chose the latter.

Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons, or simply Commons, is a wiki-based Digital library, media repository of Open content, free-to-use images, sounds, videos and other media. It is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation. Files from Wikimedia Commons can be used ...

was blocked during the first half of 2016, but the block has been lifted since then. According to the Associated Press, during the , access to Wikipedia was disrupted in Iranian networks. As of 2023, Wikinews Farsi is blocked. XTools was blocked for months.

Myanmar

On 21 February 2021, following the

military coup d'état A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. Militaries are typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with their members identifiable by a d ...

blocked Wikipedia in all languages as part of the junta's censorship.

North Korea

Internet access in North Korea is severely limited, requiring special permission and viewers of foreign media could face imprisonment or death.

Pakistan

For seven hours on 31 March 2006, the entire domain of wikipedia.org was blocked in Pakistan because one article contained information pertaining to the controversial cartoons of Muhammad. The English version of Wikipedia was blocked in Pakistan for several days in May 2010 during the controversy surrounding Everybody Draw Mohammed Day. On 1 February 2023, the

Pakistan Telecommunication Authority The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) () is the telecommunication regulator of Pakistan, responsible for the establishment, operation and maintenance of telecommunication systems and the provision of telecommunication services in Pakis ...

(PTA) degraded Wikipedia services for 48 hours due to what it said was Wikipedia's failure to remove sacrilegious content. The PTA stated that Wikipedia services would be blocked if the content remained available. On 3 February, Pakistani authorities blocked access to Wikipedia. On 6 February 2023, the Pakistani prime minister,

Shehbaz Sharif Mian Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif (born 23 September 1951) is a Pakistani politician and businessman who has served as the 20th Prime Minister of Pakistan, prime minister of Pakistan since March 2024, having previously been in the role between Ap ...

, ordered the PTA to immediately remove the ban on Wikipedia. The reason for lifting the ban was that "Wikipedia was a useful site/portal which supported the dissemination of knowledge and information for the general public, students and the academia". , most parts of Wikipedia are accessible, with Wikimedia Commons currently inaccessible.

Russia

Since the early 2010s,

Russian Wikipedia The Russian Wikipedia () is the Russian language, Russian-language edition of Wikipedia. As of , it has :ru:Special:Statistics, articles. It was started on 11 May 2001. In October 2015, it became the sixth-largest Wikipedia by the number of ar ...

and its editors have experienced numerous and increasing threats of nationwide blocks and country-wide enforcement of

blacklisting Blacklisting is the action of a group or authority compiling a blacklist of people, countries or other entities to be avoided or distrusted as being deemed unacceptable to those making the list; if people are on a blacklist, then they are considere ...

by the

Russian government The Russian Government () or fully titled the Government of the Russian Federation () is the highest federal executive governmental body of the Russian Federation. It is accountable to the president of the Russian Federation and controlled by ...

, as well as several attempts to censor pages, spread

propaganda Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded l ...

, and disinform, more recently during the 2014 Russo-Ukrainian war in the Donbas region and the current

since 2022. On 5 April 2013, the

Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media The Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, abbreviated as ''Roskomnadzor'' (RKN), is the Russian federal executive agency responsible for monitoring, controlling and censoring Russian mass media. ...

(better known as Roskomnadzor) confirmed that Wikipedia was blacklisted, stating that it had been "for a long time. I don't know why it's only now that they've woken up". The same day, Roskomnadzor ordered the Russian Wikipedia to remove the article ("Cannabis smoking"), or else they would block the entirety of Wikipedia in Russia. Internet censorship became more common after a new law was passed around November 2013, allowing the government to block content deemed illegal or harmful to children. On 18 August 2015, Roskomnadzor instructed Russian Wikipedia administrators to remove the article ("Charas (narcotic substance)"), about

charas Charas is a cannabis concentrate made from the resin of a live cannabis plant (''Cannabis sativa'' either ''Cannabis indica, ''Indica' subspecies or ''Sativa'' subspecies) and is handmade in the Indian subcontinent. The plant grows wild thr ...

, a type of cannabis, by 21 August 2015 or else they would block Wikipedia (which they executed to a limited extent on 25 August). The article was found by a Russian provincial court to contain a detailed description of how to make a narcotic, deeming it prohibited information. Roskomnadzor explained that "insofar as Wikipedia has decided to function on the basis of https, which doesn't allow restricting to individual pages on its site, the entire website would be blocked" if they did not comply. In response to the impending block, the director of NP Wikimedia RU Vladimir Medeyko argued that the article had already been promptly and adequately rewritten to remove the controversial points and satisfy the order, using scientific articles and UN documents, and also attempted to preserve the text by transferring it to the article ("Hashish"). Wikipedia representatives said if access was restricted, they would file a complaint to the prosecutor's office against Roskomnadzor and appeal the decision. Anticipating the ban, the Russian Wikipedia published a resource titled "What to do if Wikipedia was blocked". On 24 August, Roskomnadzor instructed Russian internet providers to block Wikipedia. By the night of 25 August, around 10–20% of Russian users had issues with accessing Wikipedia with access varying between regions and devices used. Also on the same date, the charas article was removed from the registry of banned sites. Roskomnadzor explained that they had "been informed by the Federal Drug Control Service that sufficient edits were made that met the conditions of court order". In February and March 2022, in the first week following the Russian invasion of Ukraine and breakout of the Russo-Ukrainian War, Russian Wikipedia editors warned their readers and fellow editors of several, reiterated attempts by the

Putin Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who has served as President of Russia since 2012, having previously served from 2000 to 2008. Putin also served as Prime Minister of Ru ...

-led Russian government of

political censorship Political censorship exists when a government attempts to conceal, misinformation, fake, distort, or disinformation, falsify information that its citizens receive by suppressing or crowding out political news that the public might receive through ...

, Internet propaganda,

disinformation Disinformation is misleading content deliberately spread to deceive people, or to secure economic or political gain and which may cause public harm. Disinformation is an orchestrated adversarial activity in which actors employ strategic dece ...

attacks, and disruptive editing towards an article listing of Russian military casualties as well as Ukrainian civilians and children due to the ongoing war. On 1 March 2022, Roskomnadzor threatened to block access to the Russian Wikipedia in Russia over the Russian-language article ("Russian invasion of Ukraine (2022)"). Roskomnadzor claimed that the article contains "illegally distributed information", including "reports about numerous casualties among service personnel of the Russian Federation and also the civilian population of Ukraine, including children". On 31 March 2022, Roskomnadzor threatened to fine Wikipedia up to 4million rubles (about $49,000) if it did not delete information about the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine that is "misinforming" Russians. In April–May 2022, the Russian authorities put several Wikipedia articles on their list of forbidden sites. The list included the articles 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ruscism, several articles in Russian Wikipedia devoted to the military action and war crimes during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and two sections of the Russian article about

Vladimir Putin Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who has served as President of Russia since 2012, having previously served from 2000 to 2008. Putin also served as Prime Minister of Ru ...

. On 20 July 2022, due to the refusal of Wikipedia to remove the articles about the Russian-Ukrainian war,

Roskomnadzor The Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, abbreviated as ''Roskomnadzor'' (RKN), is the Russian federal executive agency responsible for monitoring, controlling and censoring Russian mass media. ...

ordered search engines to mark Wikipedia as a violator of Russian laws. On 1 November 2022, the Wikimedia Foundation was fined 2million rubles by a Russian court for not deleting two articles on Russian Wikipedia. On 13 April 2023, the Wikimedia Foundation was again fined by a Russian court. In December 2023, Stanislav Kozlovsky, Wikimedia Russia's director, was listed as a "

foreign agent A foreign agent is any person or entity actively carrying out the interests of a foreign principal while located in another host country, generally outside the Diplomatic immunity, protections offered to those working in their official capacity fo ...

" by the Justice Ministry of Russia. Moscow University, where he taught, expelled him. Wikimedia Russia was forced to disband. In February 2024, Russian presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky suggested that 99% of the articles on Wikipedia were "absolutely neutral and even interesting", but 1% of articles were "enemy slander". He also encouraged the idea of a native Russian online encyclopedia alternative based on the content of Wikipedia.

Saudi Arabia

On 11 July 2006, the Saudi government blocked access to Wikipedia and

Google Translate Google Translate is a multilingualism, multilingual neural machine translation, neural machine translation service developed by Google to translation, translate text, documents and websites from one language into another. It offers a web applic ...

for what it said was sexual and politically sensitive content. Google Translate was being used to bypass the filters on the blocked sites by translating them. Though Wikipedia is not blocked currently, specific pages on Wikipedia were reported to be censored by Saudi Arabia in 2011, such as one page discussing the theory of evolution.

Encrypted In cryptography, encryption (more specifically, encoding) is the process of transforming information in a way that, ideally, only authorized parties can decode. This process converts the original representation of the information, known as plain ...

connections over

made censorship more difficult for these pages and today there is no evidence that individual pages are still being blocked. In September 2020, two Wikipedia volunteer administrators were arrested on the same day: Osama Khalid was sentenced to 32 years in prison while Ziyad al-Sofiani was sentenced to eight years, according to Smex, a Lebanese NGO to advance self-regulating information societies in the Arab-speaking world, and Democracy for the Arab World Now. A subsequent investigation by the Wikimedia Foundation identified 16 users who seemed to routinely engage in conflict-of-interest editing—reportedly including spying for the Saudi government.

Syria

Access to the

Arabic Wikipedia The Arabic Wikipedia () is the Modern Standard Arabic version of Wikipedia. It started on 9 July 2003. As of , it has articles, registered users and files and it is the List of Wikipedias, largest edition of Wikipedia by article count, and ...

was blocked in Syria between 30 April 2008 and 13February 2009, although other language editions remained accessible. Bassel Khartabil () was a contributor to a number of open-source projects including Wikipedia; his arrest in 2012 was likely connected to his online activity. He was executed at Adra Prison near

Damascus Damascus ( , ; ) is the capital and List of largest cities in the Levant region by population, largest city of Syria. It is the oldest capital in the world and, according to some, the fourth Holiest sites in Islam, holiest city in Islam. Kno ...

in 2015. Several organizations, including the

, established the Bassel Khartabil Free Culture Fellowship in his honor in 2017, for an initial period of three years.

Tunisia

The

website was inaccessible from Tunisia between 23 and .

Turkey

In the early hours of 29 April 2017, monitoring group Turkey Blocks identified loss of access to all language editions of Wikipedia throughout Turkey. The block came after Turkish authorities demanded Wikipedia "remove content by writers supporting terror and of linking Turkey to terror groups", a demand for which the government stated that it did not receive a satisfactory response. Starting on 17 November 2014, Turkey had only censored specific articles on Turkish Wikipedia, such as ("2015 Turkey general election polls") and articles related to reproductive organs. There was no court decision for this censorship. One Turkish internet provider, TTNET, speculated that Wikipedia was broken. Katherine Maher from the Wikimedia Foundation said this did not reflect the truth. In December 2019, the

Constitutional Court of Turkey The Constitutional Court of Turkey ( Turkish: ''Anayasa Mahkemesi'', sometimes abbreviated as ''AYM'') is the highest legal body for constitutional review in Turkey. It "examines the constitutionality, in respect of both form and substance, of law ...

ruled that the two and a half-year block was unconstitutional. On 15 January 2020, it was reported to the Wikimedia Foundation that access to the website was being restored.

Uzbekistan

The entirety of Wikipedia was briefly blocked twice in Uzbekistan, in 2007 and 2008. Blocking of the Uzbek Wikipedia caught the attention of the international press in late February 2012. Internet users in Uzbekistan trying to access Uzbek-language pages were redirected to MSN. Users in Uzbekistan could easily open Wikipedia articles in other languages. Only Uzbek-language articles were blocked. Today, Uzbek users can access Uzbek-language articles without problems. In 2022, the Uzbek government co-hosted the WikiStipendiya article creation editathon with the Uzbek community.

Venezuela

In the evening of 12 January 2019, the NetBlocks internet observatory collected technical evidence of the blocking of all editions of Wikipedia in

. The restrictions were implemented by

CANTV CANTV () is the state-run telephone and internet service provider in Venezuela. It was one of the first telephone service enterprises in the country, founded in 1930. The largest telecommunications provider in Venezuela, it was privatized in 19 ...

, the largest telecommunications provider in the country. NetBlocks identified a major network disruption affecting telecommunications infrastructure, which coincided with other restrictions affecting Venezuelans' ability to communicate and access information during the previous 24 hours. The collected data also showed that a number of local websites had been recently restricted, indicating that recent political instability could be the underlying cause for what may be a tightening regime of internet control.

Single-article disputes

Types of disputes

Individual articles can be disputed or blocked by a country for allegedly violating a range of laws from revealing the location of a secret military installation (see France below), defamation or misinformation laws (see Germany below), or a judgment that an image in an article was pornographic (see UK below).

Examples by country

Australia

In 2018,

County Court of Victoria The County Court of Victoria is the intermediate court in the Australian state of Victoria. It is equivalent to district courts in the other states. The County Court is the principal trial court in the state, having a broad criminal and ci ...

chief judge Peter Kidd placed a non-publication order on all of the evidence and the verdict in a trial of Australian Cardinal George Pell. The suppression order applied "in all Australian states and territories" and "on any website or other electronic or broadcast format accessible within Australia". This clearly included Wikipedia, which was cited but not charged.

France

In April 2013, a Wikipedia article describing the Pierre-sur-Haute military radio station attracted attention from the French interior intelligence agency DCRI. The agency attempted to have the article about the facility removed from the

French Wikipedia The French Wikipedia () is the French-language edition of Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia. This edition was started on 23 March 2001, two months after the official creation of Wikipedia. It has :fr:Special:Statistics, encyclopedia artic ...

. The DCRI pressured

Rémi Mathis Rémi Mathis (; born 20 November 1982) is a French historian and curator. He was president of Wikimedia France from 2011 to 2014. Early life Rémi Mathis was born in 20 November 1982 in Besançon, France, son of paleontologist . Mathis graduat ...

, a volunteer administrator of the French Wikipedia and resident of France, into deleting the article. The Wikimedia Foundation asked the DCRI which parts of the article were causing a problem, noting that the article closely reflected information in a 2004 documentary made by , a French local television station, which is freely available online. The DCRI refused to give these details, and repeated its demand for deletion of the article. According to a statement issued by Wikimédia France on 6 April 2013: Later, the article was restored by another Wikipedia contributor who lived outside France, in Switzerland. As a result of the controversy, the article became the most read page on the French Wikipedia, with over 120,000 page views during the weekend of 6–7 April 2013. It was translated into multiple other languages. The French newspaper , ''

Ars Technica ''Ars Technica'' is a website covering news and opinions in technology, science, politics, and society, created by Ken Fisher and Jon Stokes in 1998. It publishes news, reviews, and guides on issues such as computer hardware and software, sci ...

'', and a posting on ''

Slashdot ''Slashdot'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''/.'') is a social news website that originally billed itself as "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters". It features news stories on science, technology, and politics that are submitted and evaluated by site ...

'', noted it as an example of the

Streisand effect The Streisand effect is an unintended consequences, unintended consequence of attempts to hide, remove, or Censorship, censor information, where the effort instead increases public awareness of the information. The term was coined in 2005 by ...

in action. The French Ministry of the Interior told

Agence France-Presse Agence France-Presse (; AFP) is a French international news agency headquartered in Paris, France. Founded in 1835 as Havas, it is the world's oldest news agency. With 2,400 employees of 100 nationalities, AFP has an editorial presence in 260 c ...

(AFP) that it did not wish to comment on the incident. According to a judicial source quoted in an AFP story on 8 April, the article's deletion "was performed as part of a preliminary inquiry" led by the "anti-terrorist section of the Paris prosecutor's office" on the grounds that the French language Wikipedia article compromised "classified material related to the chain of transmission for nuclear launch orders". Following the incident, said that it expected that the DCRI would request that it take down the original 2004 report on which the Wikipedia article was based, though it had been filmed and broadcast with the full cooperation of the French armed forces. The National Union of Police Commissioners suggested that the next step would be for the judiciary to order French Internet service providers to block access to the Wikipedia article. However, the France-based NGO Reporters Without Borders criticised the DCRI's actions as "a bad precedent". The organisation's spokesperson told that, "if the institution considers that secret defence information has been released, it has every opportunity to be recognised by the courts in arguing and clarifying its application. It is then up to the judge, the protector of fundamental freedoms, to assess the reality and extent of military secrecy." The spokesperson noted that the information contained in the article had come from a documentary that had previously been filmed and distributed with the cooperation of the army, and that the hosts and intermediaries should not be held responsible.

Germany

In one case, Wikipedia.de (an Internet domain run by Wikimedia Deutschland) was prohibited from pointing to the actual Wikipedia content. The court order was a temporary injunction in a case filed by politician Lutz Heilmann over claims regarding his past involvement with the former

German Democratic Republic East Germany, officially known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR), was a country in Central Europe from Foundation of East Germany, its formation on 7 October 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with West Germany (FRG) on ...

's intelligence service

Stasi The Ministry for State Security (, ; abbreviated MfS), commonly known as the (, an abbreviation of ), was the Intelligence agency, state security service and secret police of East Germany from 1950 to 1990. It was one of the most repressive pol ...

United Kingdom

In December 2008, the Internet Watch Foundation, a UK-based

non-government organization A non-governmental organization (NGO) is an independent, typically nonprofit organization that operates outside government control, though it may get a significant percentage of its funding from government or corporate sources. NGOs often focus ...

, added the Wikipedia article '' Virgin Killer'' to its internet

blacklist Blacklisting is the action of a group or authority compiling a blacklist of people, countries or other entities to be avoided or distrusted as being deemed unacceptable to those making the list; if people are on a blacklist, then they are considere ...

due to the album cover's image and the illegality of

child pornography Child pornography (also abbreviated as CP, also called child porn or kiddie porn, and child sexual abuse material, known by the acronym CSAM (underscoring that children can not be deemed willing participants under law)), is Eroticism, erotic ma ...

in that country; the image had been assessed by IWF as being the lowest level of legal concern: "erotic posing with no sexual activity". As a result, people using many major UK ISPs were blocked from viewing the entire article by the Cleanfeed system, and a large part of the UK was blocked from editing Wikipedia owing to the means used by the IWF to block the image. Following discussion, representations by the Wikimedia Foundation, and public complaints,ZDNet
cites "floods of angry users". the IWF reversed their decision three days later, and confirmed that in future they would not block copies of the same image that were hosted overseas.

References

External links

''Full Text: Cui Objects to Wikipedia Shutdown''
(translated by The Washington Post Beijing Bureau)

(translated by The Washington Post Beijing Bureau) {{Wikimedia Foundation Academic freedom Digital rights Freedom of speech Freedom of information