Wikipedia Owner Fined For Failing To Delete Alleged Extremist Content

The owner of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation has been recently fined by the Russian court for failing to delete content considered extremist as Moscow pursues a drive to crack down on independent sources of information.

Wikipedia states that it offers “the second draft of history”, and is one of the few surviving fact-checked sources of information in Russian since the crackdown intensified after Moscow sent its armed forces into Ukraine in February 2022.

The Tagansky district court stated that it fined Wikimedia 800,000 rubles ($9,900). Russian news agencies in the courtroom state that Wikimedia had been charged with failing to remove materials related to songs by the alternative rock band Psychea, or Psyshit, which has been officially designated “extremist”.

Russia has now fined Wikimedia around 9 million rubles ($110,000) in the past year, the agencies said.