Russia is preparing a technical solution to block Wikipedia. The reason is the new law on banning the promotion of VPNs. This was written in his Telegram channel by Anton Gorelkin, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Chairman of the Board of the Regional Public Center for Internet Technologies (ROCIT).
Gorelkin noted that representatives of "Runiversalis" [a universal online encyclopedia in Russian, operating since June 2022 — ed. note] found that the wiki article, which not only describes ways to circumvent blocking but also strongly recommends users to use them, has not been removed from the resource.
In addition, the regulator has a number of other complaints, many of which have already been adjudicated. There are legal grounds for blocking Wikipedia, it remains to be done so that this does not cause sharp discomfort to users.
In fact, all the valuable information that is available on this resource has already been duplicated, brought into compliance with encyclopedic norms, and placed on the Runet: on the "BRE", "Ruwiki" and "Runiversalis" portals.
It remains to make sure that when a user clicks on a link to a Wikipedia article, they are offered to open its safe version on one of the Russian counterparts. The technical solution necessary for this is already being developed by ROCIT experts.
Talk of blocking Wikipedia in Russia began after the official full launch of the online encyclopedia "Ruwiki", the Russian counterpart of Wikipedia, in early January. Before that, it had been operating in beta since the summer of 2023. Currently, "Ruwiki" contains 1,971,653 articles in Russian.
Wikipedia has already been found guilty before Roskomnadzor: in 2023, for failing to remove illegal materials against Wikimedia Foundation, Roskomnadzor drew up 12 administrative protocols under Part 2, Article 13.41 of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation. The total amount of fines amounted to 22.4 million rubles.
Also, Wikipedia does not comply with the provisions of Articles 15.1 and 15.3 of the Federal Law "On Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection." It does not remove from its pages unreliable information about the Russian military, as well as a number of extremist and terrorist materials, materials on the manufacture of explosives, and other content that is subject to restriction in Russia and violates the law.
