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. 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”.
On 5 September, the Court threatened to hold Wikimedia guilty of contempt for failing to disclose information about the editors who had made changes to the article and warned that Wikipedia might be blocked in India upon further non-compliance. The judge on the case stated “If you don’t like India, please don’t work in India… We will ask government to block your site”. In response, Wikimedia emphasized that the information in the article was supported by multiple reliable secondary sources. Justice Manmohan said “I think nothing can be worse for a news agency than to be called a puppet of an intelligence agency, stooge of the government. If that is true, the credibility goes.”
On 21 October, the Wikimedia Foundation suspended access to the article for Asian News International vs. Wikimedia Foundation due to an order from the court.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_News_International_vs._Wikimedia_Foundation
wtf???
Why would they even bother to comply, India has no jurisdiction. Plenty of countries have banned wikipedia pages and the entire site before, why did wikimedia have to go out of their way to do it for them globally?
can’t ban pages anymore with https, and while they don’t want to be lumped in with the authoritarian states that ban all on Wikipedia, they are like them at heart
The current Indian government has prosecuted or detained employees of foreign companies in the past for actions taken by the company. There is a real risk here.
Right! It’s so suspicious they did it worldwide.