Wikipedia Under Fire: Legal Battles Abroad, Political Pressure at Home
Wikipedia has an up and down month in the international court system, Congress and the Trump admin question its inner workings, all the while its parent organization is on the hunt for new leadership.
🔔 Wiki Briefing
Court Countdown: WMF scores victories in India, finds new adversaries in UK
The Wikimedia Foundation's legal dispute with Asian News International — about Wikipedia describing ANI as a propaganda tool for India's ruling party — has been ongoing for nearly a year. It's been the subject of many discussions and articles both in Wikipedia's digital newspaper The Signpost and in the media ecosystem at large. Wikipedia’s coverage of the lawsuit has even become part of the controversy.
Message displayed to users on the English Wikipedia when access to the article was suspended
Following a ruling from the Delhi High Court in October 2024, the WMF removed the content from the article on the lawsuit and began the appeal process. Its appeal went all the way to the Indian Supreme Court, who completed its earlier rebuke of the lower court by reversing the order to take down the ANI v. WMF lawsuit article. Editors have already been hard at work updating the newly accessible page. The ISC also threw out an order by a lower court demanding the WMF remove "defamatory" language from the Asian News International article, but the dust is far less settled on that ruling. The ISC said the ruling was too broad, and left the door open for ANI to try again and get a narrower judgment.
Any thoughts the WMF might have had of taking a victory lap have been cut short, however, as it mounts a challenge to a United Kingdom law aimed at policing cyberspace. The Online Safety Act has requirements that could force some online platforms like Wikipedia to collect information on users and/or allow anyone to ban unverified users from changing content. User privacy and the ability to edit the encyclopedia anonymously are fundamental to how Wikipedia has operated since its inception. With concerns about becoming a target of renewed attacks by bad actors and the potential severe consequences for volunteers who are editing contentious topics, the WMF has asked for a judicial review to ensure its platforms are safe from those requirements.
📰 In the News
WMF to get new head
Maryana Iskander is stepping down. The Wikimedia Foundation's CEO since 2022, Iskander has been instrumental in leading the WMF through some of its biggest challenges, including the rising tide of AI influence and increasing pressure from world governments. Iskander says her departure was pre-planned to occur around this time, and that she hoped the Foundation would choose a new leader by January 2026, coinciding with Wikipedia's 25th birthday.
Photo of Maryana Iskander by Gabriel Diamond, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Trump admin and Congress take aim at WMF
Acting U.S. Attorney for Washington D.C. Ed Martin had a few questions for the Wikimedia Foundation in April. In a long letter outlining concerns over professional propagandists rewriting Wikipedia in a way "implicating national security and the interests of the United States" and the impacts these propagandists will have on LLMs, not to mention foreign nationals on the WMF board "subverting the interests of the American taxpayer". Martin challenged the WMF's nonprofit status in the letter, but he won't retain the post to continue the inquiry – that'll go to Jeanine Pirro, pending Senate confirmation. It isn't clear if Pirro will continue Martin's inquiry into the WMF's tax-exempt status.
Snippet of the letter sent from Ed Martin, Acting U.S. Attorney for Washington D.C. | Department of Justice Seal, U.S. government, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
In the meantime, a bipartisan group of 23 congressional lawmakers penned their own letter to the WMF expressing their concerns about Wikipedia's safeguards, particularly when it comes to policing antisemitic and anti-Israel content. This followed a March report by the Anti-Defamation League finding a coordinated network of anti-Israel editors were working to edit Wikipedia in secret. Wikipedia's Supreme Court, the Arbitration Committee, banned several editors involved in the scheme identified by the ADL, but questions remain from officials in both camps. The WMF is working to create a more standardized definition of "neutral point of view", one of its core tenets, across the different language editions of Wikipedia, but it is likely to be quite some time before any kind of policy change is rolled out across the whole of the Wikimedia Movement. Even with these efforts, the Foundation and Wikipedia as a whole are likely to continue to be the subject of heavy scrutiny.
🧩 Wikipedia Facts
After holding steady with around 14,000 monthly page views for the last year, interest in the Katy Perry article, uh, rocketed up when she took a Blue Origin flight in mid-April, peaking at 116,000 the day of the launch. Other notable women on the flight, including Gayle King (50,000 views), Aisha Bowe (62,000), Kerianne Flynn (47,000), and Amanda Nguyen (102,000) all had their page views spike the day of the flight, but the greatest jump was for Lauren Sánchez, whose article logged more than 154,000 views.
💡 Tips & Tricks
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