this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2024
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136
Wikipedia embroiled in legal battle in India. (www.voanews.com)
submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/technology
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[–] Stewbs 63 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

Exactly! " If you don't like India, please don't work in India..." bitch do you think this is Ford or Sony??

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

They do this every where, india's regime is just looking like idiots here for pusbing too hard lol

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Blocking google would make sense

[–] [email protected] 46 points 1 month ago (2 children)

They should have just blocked India.

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

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Indians still deserve their information

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You can't give a deranged dictatorship global censorship authority.

That keeps the entire planet from access to information.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

not sure it'd be better if they wrote censorship software to protect articles based on geolocated IP for this

there's still https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_News_International#Litigation_against_other_organisations

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

They already have the capability to block content locally.

There isn't a worse option than allowing a government to globally block an article.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

They already have the capability to block content locally.

If by "They" you mean Wikipedia, they don't. Contempt of court risks excluding all Indian editors and readers from using Wikipedia along with hefty fines.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yes, they do. They've done it in the past.

It literally doesn't matter what Indian courts rule. Being banned from India is orders and orders of magnitude more acceptable than blocking a single article anywhere else on the planet. It single handedly eliminates all of their credibility.

India isn't capable of enforcing fines against an organization that doesn't operate in their country and there's no chance a US court will enforce such an unhinged judgement. They can't be forced to pay.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

could you link to examples of the past?

Information is the power behind revolutions and popular democracy. I’d be surprised if the WMF didn’t check a web archive before taking down the article. The court case was already all over worldwide news before that anyways. If they took the article down from archives, that’d be a different story.

India isn't capable of enforcing fines against an organization that doesn't operate in their country

You serve a website in that country, you operate in that country. What say you about the GDPR?

[–] [email protected] -5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

No, I have no interest in digging through their history. But it's less than trivial to do. Any random no name site can do it in 5 minutes with any source of the geo-mapping information, with virtually no knowledge required. It is not work.

GDPR can do literally nothing but block any site that doesn't have finances under their jurisdiction, and they shouldn't be able to. No one else will enforce their fines for them. It's no different than Russia fining Google more money than exists. You can't just magically rob someone because you're a country.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Could you at least give me some keywords to search?

Firstly, Wikimedia does have many usergroup organizations (i.e. subchapters) in India. And even without that, my point is that Wikipedia can't shut down in India.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

They not only can, trivially. They unconditionally must.

It is not possible to ever be a reputable organization ever again if you have to choose between censoring content globally for an authoritarian government and shutting down in that country, and censoring content globally is something they genuinely consider. Open, fact based information is their entire reason for existing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

But the information is already available archived elsewhere? Don't you think the people of India deserve to be educated?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Being available elsewhere is entirely irrelevant. Wikipedia must stand against totalitarian censorship to resemble a reputable organization.

Complying is unforgivable.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Dude, what bad does this do? To the Indian people, to you? The information has already been plastered all over the internet, including archives of said article, which anyone may access at their will and command. You want billions of Indian peoples to suffer and be deprived of intellectual revolution for what, grinding a utopic axe? Ceasing operations in India would do way more damage to Wikipedia's goal.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

It sets an absolutely obscene precedent that a government can globally restrict information. Even global terrible actors like Russia and China haven't succeeded at that.

Yes, that precedent is 1000 orders of magnitude more harm than India losing access (which they won't, because the entirety of Wikipedia is open source and would be mirrored in the country instantly. But even if they actually would, it is literally impossible to get anywhere near the harm of the precedent this sets).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

It sets an absolutely obscene precedent that a government can globally restrict information

Again, the information is still everywhere.

Even global terrible actors like Russia and China haven't succeeded at that.

Actually, the Chinese Wikipedia used to have a systemic bias in favor of the CPC before China blocked it, after which the bias was changed.

because the entirety of Wikipedia is open source and would be mirrored in the country instantly

It's a bit elitist to restrict information—weapons of revolution—to those who know how to find a mirror website. Why don't you survey the Chinese nationals in-person to see if they know how to get on Wikipedia? Plus, to avoid block evasion, no mirrors would be able to edit Wikipedia.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month 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 16 points 1 month ago (2 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month 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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

What are you doing India? This what happens when you elect a fascist government🤦‍♀️

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

https://www.techdirt.com/2022/11/02/hey-elon-let-me-help-you-speed-run-the-content-moderation-learning-curve/ strikes again