The battle for online information: Russian Wikipedia faces threat as Putin-friendly rival Ruwiki emerges
The article explores the challenges faced by Russian Wikipedia in the face of government censorship and the emergence of a Kremlin-backed rival, Ruwiki.
FollowIn late June, when a group of armed mercenaries seized a Russian regional capital and started marching toward Moscow, obtaining verified information was difficult. Initially, Russian President Vladimir Putin's propaganda machine largely ignored the mutiny by the Wagner Group, while government censors swiftly blocked access to Google News and suppressed search results on Yandex, the Russian search engine, particularly those related to the rebels' leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin.
One exception was the crowdsourced encyclopedia Wikipedia, which published a thorough article about the revolt in Russian and updated it as new information came in. The essay, titled "The Mutiny of the Wagner Group," was thousands of words lengthy and quoted sources from US publications to Russian official media, as well as news organisations the Kremlin deems "foreign agents" for not toeing the party line. On its first day, it received more than 270,000 page views.
Despite the Kremlin's aggressive efforts to control narratives about the government and its policies, Wikipedia has surprisingly maintained its presence in Putin's Russia. Wikipedia is one of Russia's most popular websites, attracting around 95 million visitors per month, with approximately 10,000 active editors who contribute to its nearly 2 million articles in Russian. Given the Kremlin's persistent attempts to control what is said about the government and its policies, a trend that has only intensified since the invasion of Ukraine, its persistence in Putin's Russia seems a little surprising. New legislation against purported "disinformation" and bans of news websites, civic organisations, and even environmental groups have been brought about by wartime censorship.
Although Wikipedia has continued to operate in Russia, there are indications that the tide may be turning against it. According to the Wikimedia Foundation Inc., a San Francisco-based organisation that hosts the servers that run Russian Wikipedia and is therefore legally responsible for what is published, the government repeatedly fined the website from March 2022 through this June, totaling nearly 23 billion rubles ($255 million).
Jacob Rogers, a lawyer representing the Wikimedia Foundation Inc. in Russian litigation, states that they have refused the government's requests to remove content and are challenging the fines in court. Rogers believes that Wikipedia provides valuable information supported by reliable sources and written from a neutral point of view. "We think that Wikipedia is full of pretty good information overall, that it's got good reliable sources representing a variety of different perspectives on these issues, that the users are doing a good job of making it be written in a neutral point of view," he was quoted as saying in a Bloomberg report.
Putin has long been vocal about his dislike of Wikipedia and has promised to back a replacement in 2019 that "will be reliable information, presented in a good, modern way."
In April, Valery Fadeyev, the head of the Kremlin-backed Human Rights Council, argued that Wikipedia's coverage of Ukraine warranted its replacement with a more cooperative regional option. Russian Minister of Digital Development Maksut Shadayev informed media that the government had no plans to do this in the same month, but he scarcely gave the encyclopedia a thumbs up. According to Interfax, he stated, "We are not yet blocking Wikipedia. There are no such plans for now."
In an alarming development, a near-replica of Russian Wikipedia called Ruwiki emerged online on June 27. The article regarding alleged human rights violations in Bucha at the outset of the war was one of many on subjects that Russia has prohibited. The Wagner Group was covered in a piece, but the mutiny was left out. An item on a vulgar cry used frequently by Ukrainian football fans against Putin was also removed.
Ruwiki created by Vladimir Medeyko, the long-serving leader of Russian Wikipedia editors, raised concerns among his colleagues. Medeyko left Wikipedia to establish a Kremlin-compliant rival, although he denies working for the government. The initial version of Ruwiki does not allow external editing, and Medeyko plans to have panels of experts review and approve content, aiming for stricter source requirements and more definitive language regarding current events.
"Experts are not interested in participating in Wikipedia because they don't want to argue with people without a proper education who have exactly the same rights," he stated.
While Medeyko claims that Ruwiki will adhere to Russian laws while maintaining neutrality, some hard-liners within the government view it as a potential replacement for Wikipedia. "There will be particularly strict requirements for the quality of sources and indisputable phrasing regarding current events," he said.
It just notes that "Military operations in Ukraine began on February 24, 2022" in their article on the invasion of Ukraine, without referring to it as an invasion. A crisis in the relations between Russia and Ukraine came before this.
Alexander Khinshtein, the chair of the digital committee in the Russian parliament, expressed this sentiment on his Telegram account, stating that Wikipedia could only be blocked once a domestic alternative was available. "As I've said many times, Wikipedia can only be completely blocked when a domestic analogue has been created. Now, that's no longer an issue," he noted.
Russian Wikipedians fear that their site may eventually face censorship or a potential blockage. Medeyko has been replaced by Stanislav Kozlovskiy, who added, "If they want to block us, they can." He claims that less than 200 pieces, or a miniscule portion, have been targeted by the Putin dictatorship. He adds that it's challenging to completely appease censors in government.
"We try to maintain neutrality, and any sensitive issues are reviewed by moderators," he was quoted as saying in the Bloomberg report. "We limit the use of Russian or Ukrainian sources for current events, but that doesn't stop the criticism. In Russia, officials think our articles are written by Ukrainians, while some Ukrainians seem to believe that they're written in the Kremlin."
Wikipedia has faced conflicts with local authorities in various countries. Turkey banned the site for over two years due to its refusal to remove content labeling the country as a state sponsor of terror. Pakistan temporarily shut down Wikipedia in February over alleged sacrilegious content, while India demanded compliance with its mapping laws, threatening to block the English version of Wikipedia. However, Wikipedia's popularity remains one of its strongest defenses against such actions.
When China, the only major nation to officially forbid Wikipedia, started to block the website, it first fostered a government-friendly substitute: the collaborative encyclopedia Baidu Baike. This lessened the damage. The new site provided users with a comparable experience while posing less of a threat to the government because it allowed registered users to generate their own content while being cautious to adhere to China's censorship laws.
Medeyko plans to incorporate some elements of Wikipedia's crowdsourced model in Ruwiki. He aims to attract editors who may not find Wikipedia inviting due to political controversies or other reasons. Medeyko's decision to create Ruwiki has caused a divide within the Wikipedia community, resulting in his account being deleted by other editors. The original Wikipedia contributors now face the dilemma of engaging with the new site that could potentially replace their work.
