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Russia's communications regulator is threatening to fine Google and Wikipedia for not removing what it describes as misinformation about the war in Ukraine. Chris Delmas/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Russia's communications regulator is threatening to fine Google and Wikipedia for not removing what it describes as misinformation about the war in Ukraine.

The Russian government is threatening to fine Wikipedia if it doesn't remove content that contradicts its narrative about the war in Ukraine.

Communications regulator Roskomnadzor announced on Thursday that it had asked the online encyclopedia to remove a page containing "unreliable socially significant materials, as well as other prohibited information" about its operations in Ukraine, according to an English translation. It accused the site of intentionally misinforming Russian users.

It said it could fine Wikipedia up to 4 million rubles, or nearly $47,000, for failing to remove those materials, which are illegal under Russian law.

Russia enacted legislation last month that criminalizes war reporting that doesn't echo the Kremlin's version of events including by calling it a war. The law has forced most of Russia's remaining independent news outlets to close and many journalists to leave the country for fear of facing up to 15 years in prison.

The Wikipedia page in question describes the history and context of the war, as well as specific military operations, casualties and humanitarian impact, human rights violations, legal proceedings, international reaction, economic consequences and media depictions.

It is not clear what specific details the regulator is looking to have removed, but Newsweek reports that it said on Monday that the Russian-language version of the page contained "inaccurate information about the special military operation to protect the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics for the de-militarization and de-Nazification of Ukraine," including the use of the words war, aggression and invasion.

Roskomnadzor's announcement follows two separate warnings to the Wikimedia Foundation, which owns and operates the encyclopedia.

A spokesperson for the foundation told NPR over email that it had received demands on March 1 and again on March 29 to remove information from the Russian-language version of the page about the invasion, before learning of the possible fine.

"The Wikimedia Foundation supports everyone's fundamental right to access free, open, and verifiable information; this escalation does not change our commitment," the spokesperson said.

The information on Wikipedia is sourced and shared by volunteers, with the foundation saying last month that Ukrainian volunteers were continuing to make additions and edits to the encyclopedia even as the war on their country unfolded.

The spokesperson reiterated on Friday that the information within the article continues to be verified, fact-checked and "improved by an ever growing number of Wikipedia volunteer editors," who determine the site's content and editorial standards.

"The Wikimedia Foundation protects and will continue to protect their ability to engage in research and contribute to Wikipedia," the spokesperson added.

In a statement released after the first takedown request last month, the Wikimedia Foundation said the demand "threatened censorship," and that denying people access to reliable information at a time of crisis could have "life-altering consequences." As of March 3, they said the English-language version of the page had been viewed more than 11 million times, and articles about the war had been created in more than 99 languages.

"Wikipedia is an important source of reliable, factual information in this crisis," the foundation wrote. "In recognition of this important role, we will not back down in the face of efforts to censor and intimidate members of our movement. We stand by our mission to deliver free knowledge to the world."

Wikipedia isn't the only information platform facing such a request from Roskomnadzor. Just days ago, the agency warned it would fine Google up to 8 million rubles (more than $93,000) for not following its orders to remove YouTube videos to which it objected.

This story originally appeared on the Morning Edition live blog.

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Russia threatens to fine Wikipedia if it doesn't remove some details about the war - NPR

Did you know that theres a Swiss political party dedicated to opposing the use of PowerPoint? That some people believe Avril Lavigne died in 2003 and was replaced by a look-alike? Or that theres a stone in a museum in Taiwan that uncannily resembles a slab of meat?

Probably not unless, that is, youre one of the hundreds of thousands of people who follow @depthsofwikipedia. The Instagram account shares bizarre and surprising snippets from the vast, crowdsourced online encyclopedia, including amusing images (a chicken literally crossing a road) and minor moments in history (Mitt Romney driving several hours with his dog atop his car). Some posts are wholesome such as Hatsuyume, the Japanese word for ones first dream of the year while others are not safe for work (say, panda pornography).

Annie Rauwerda, 22, started the account in the early days of the pandemic, when others were baking sourdough bread and learning how to knit. Everyone was starting projects, and this was my project, she said.

At the time, she was a sophomore at the University of Michigan. Students are often discouraged from using Wikipedia as a source in academic work, because most of its pages can be edited by anyone and may contain inaccurate information. But for Ms. Rauwerda, the site was always more about entertainment: spending hours clicking on one link after another, getting lost in rabbit holes.

Wikipedia is the best thing on the internet, Ms. Rauwerda said in a phone interview. Its what the internet was supposed to be. It has this hacker ethos of working together and making something.

At first, only her friends were following the account. But it received a wave of attention when Ms. Rauwerda posted about the influencer Caroline Calloway, who was upset that the post featured an old version of her Wikipedia page that said her occupation was nothing. Ms. Rauwerda apologized, and Ms. Calloway later boosted the account on her Instagram.

Ms. Rauwerda has since expanded @depthsofwikipedia to Twitter and TikTok. She sells merchandise (such as a coffee mug emblazoned with an image from the Wikipedia entry for bisexual lighting) and has hosted a live show in Manhattan, featuring trivia and stand-up.

Her followers often pitch her Wikipedia pages to feature, but these days its hard to find an entry that will impress Ms. Rauwerda. If its a fun fact thats been on the Reddit home page, Im definitely not going to repost it, she said. For example, there are only 25 blimps in the world. Ive known about that for a long time, and it went around Twitter a couple days ago. I was shocked. I was like, Everyone knows this.

She is choosy in large part because many of her followers rely on @depthsofwikipedia for unearthing the hidden gems of the internet.

I just love to learn stuff, especially these strange photos and things I could never find on my own, said Gabe Hockett, 15, a high school student in Minneapolis. He said his favorite posts from the account include The Most Unwanted Song and the Dave Matthews Band Chicago River incident.

Jen Fox, 22, said that trading posts from the account with her boyfriend is a special, nerdy love language. Its also been a litmus test for friendships. When Ms. Fox, a copywriter, moved to San Francisco in February, she would mention the account to new people she met. If they were familiar with it, she said, we would start DM-ing each other and sharing our favorite posts, which felt like we were really solidifying a concrete friendship. Ms. Fox even attended a @depthsofwikipedia meet-up at a local brewery. Theres such a community behind it, she said.

Its not new for lovers of Wikipedia to rally around their passion for the platform. A Facebook group called Cool Freaks Wikipedia Club, founded eight years ago, has nearly 50,000 members who actively trade links.

Ms. Rauwerdas account makes the internet feel smaller, said Heather Woods, an assistant professor of rhetoric and technology at Kansas State University. It shortcuts the rabbit-hole phenomenon by offering attractive or sometimes hilariously unattractive entry points to internet culture.

Zachary McCune, the brand director for the Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia, said that @depthsofwikipedia is an extension of the sites participatory ethos. Its a place where Wikipedia comes to life, like an after-hours tour of the best of Wikipedia, Mr. McCune said.

And because Wikipedia has more than 55 million articles, having a guide like Ms. Rauwerda is helpful. She hopes that visitors to her page walk away with new shared knowledge. I want you to see something that makes you pause and go, Hmm, thats interesting, Ms. Rauwerda said. Something that makes you rethink the world a little bit.

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Mining the Depths of Wikipedia on Instagram - The New York Times

Heres a fun fact: the guy on the front of a Pringles can has a name Julius Pringles.

Heres an even funner fact: Pringles only started using that name in 2013, after Kelloggs acquired the company and trademarked it before using it in a half-hearted social media push involving Jimmy Fallon and then sort of forgetting about it for a bit.

Heres the funnest fact of all: the first fun fact began as a lie, until one day it became the truth.

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Julius Pringles began his existence not in a marketing brainstorming session at Kelloggs HQ in 2013, but in a college dorm room in 2006, when two freshmen quietly inserted the name into the Pringles Wikipedia page as an element of lighthearted vandalism:

The Pringles logo is a stylized cartoon caricature of the head of a male figure (commonly known as Julius Pringles) designed by Louis R Dixon.

Unlike most Wikipedia vandalism, it had a bit more effort behind it than simply whacking the edit button and dropping in a lie. One of the pair, Justin Shillock, was already a Wikipedia moderator with a fairly solid reputation, and the two immediately made a Facebook group Who knew he was named Julius Pringles? to help embed the claim further. After it was removed once, it was re-added, in a different format further up the page.

After a while, the name ended up just sticking around on the Wikipedia page, never quite getting enough attention to garner a citation needed tag, and eventually becoming such a longstanding claim on the page, only a total redraft by a dedicated editor would have had a chance of dislodging it.

Fake news travels fast

Such falsehoods havent been uncommon, particularly in the early days of Wikipedia. As much as the site has now outgrown its reputation among educators and experts as an untrustworthy den of calumny, its worth acknowledging that its reputation didnt come from nowhere.

And while Wikipedias systems, both formal and informal, do generally work to expel low-effort vandalism, falsehoods can stick around if they start to interact with the world outside the site. Almost a decade ago, the webcomic XKCD coined the phrase citogenesis to describe the process whereby a fake fact on Wikipedia is copied by a rushed journalist into an article, which is itself used as a source to prove the truth of the fact.

For instance: a friend, whose anonymity Ill preserve, once decided to add a fictional biographical detail to the page for Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexivitch that she briefly worked on Belarus first carp-fishing magazine. The claim was live for barely 15 minutes before an eagle-eyed editor pulled it, but that was still long enough for the claim to make it into a Deutsche Welle profile of the author.

But this is the first example Ive heard of something that goes beyond mere citogenesis. Here, a piece of Wikipedia vandalism managed to weave a true fact into reality, where it lay dormant until a viral tweet earlier this week.

It shows, I think, the inadequacy of so much conventional discussion around misinformation on the internet. Sometimes there really is such a thing as fake news: the claim that the pope endorsed Donald Trump for president really is, simply, false. But the internet isnt distinct from the wider world, and sometimes it can do more than simply reflect reality. It can alter it, too.

Thats not to say that enough people believing in the Ghost of Kyiv will suddenly summon a fighter ace into the sky above Ukraine. But if enough people believe plucky tractor drivers are taking on Russian tanks and winning well, that might be the sort of fact that begins as propaganda and blossoms into something else.

If you want to read the complete version of the newsletter please subscribe to receive TechScape in your inbox every Wednesday.

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TechScape: When Wikipedia fiction becomes real life fact - The Guardian

Halston Thayer thought he'd made a wise investment when he paid over a half-million dollars for an absolutely magnificent illustration of a nude Pepe the Frog bathing in a pond. After all, a one-of-a-kind Pepe NFT had recently sold at Sotheby's for $3.6 million

Pepe's creator Matt Furie, who issued the bathing Pepe NFT, implied in his advertisement for the sale that the NFT would be the only one sold through Furie's PegzDAO: "500 cards issued, 400burned, 99 will remain in the PegzDAO, and ONE is being auctioned here."

After Thayer bought the NFT, though, Furie allegedly gave away 46 identical cards for free. Now Thayer is suing Matt Furie and PegzDAO for "unfair, deceptive, untrue, and misleading advertising and wrongful actions."

The lawsuit claims that shortly after Thayer paid $537,084 (150 ETH) for the "rare Pepe" and "unique asset," Furie "released 46 of the 99 remaining Pepe NFTs, significantly devaluing Plaintiff's Pepe NFT to less than $30,000.00, hundreds of thousands of dollars less than what he paid for this purportedly 'unique asset.' Upon information and belief, those 46 NFTs were given away for free."

Furie hasn't commented about the lawsuit on Twitter but continues to advertise Pepe-themed NFTs there.

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Gentleman who paid $537,084 for a Pepe the Frog NFT files ...

CBS News Sunday Morning Jon Batiste and Suleika Jaouad. (N) 6 a.m. KCBS; 10 a.m. KCAL

Good Morning America (N) 6 a.m. KABC

State of the Union Secretary of State Antony Blinken; NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg; Gov. Larry Hogan (R-Md.). Panel: David Urban; Jane Harman; Amanda Carpenter; Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont). (N) 6 and 9 a.m. CNN

Fareed Zakaria GPS Sanctions against Russia: Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Russias invasion of Ukraine: Author Adm. James Stavridis (U.S. Navy, retired) (To Risk It All: Nine Conflicts and the Crucible of Decision). The Grammys: Musician Jon Batiste. (N) 7 a.m. and 10 a.m. CNN

Sunday Morning Futures With Maria Bartiromo Petro Poroshenko, former president of Ukraine; Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.); Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.); Atty. Gen. Patrick Morrisey (R-W.Va.). (N) 7 a.m. and noon Fox News

The Sunday Show With Jonathan Capehart Former deputy commander of the U.S. European Command Lt. Gen. Stephen Twitty (U.S. Army, retired); Rep. Charlie Crist (D-Fla.); Jonathan Capeharts aunt Gloria Avent-Kindred; Nina Totenberg, NPR; Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank); Ned Price, Department of State. (N) 7 a.m. MSNBC

Face the Nation Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. New York City Mayor Eric Adams; Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.); Fiona Hill. (N) 7:30 a.m. and Monday, 3:05 a.m. KCBS

Meet the Press Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Panel: Cornell Belcher; Leigh Ann Caldwell; Brad Todd; Amy Walter. (N) 8 a.m. and 1:30 a.m. KNBC

This Week With George Stephanopoulos White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain; Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.). Panel: Chris Christie; Donna Brazile; Astead Herndon, New York Times; Ruth Marcus, Washington Post. (N) 8 a.m. and 2 a.m. KABC

Fox News Sunday Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas); Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.); Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby. Panel: Ben Domenech; Susan Page; Juan Williams. Martha MacCallum hosts. (N) 8 a.m. KTTV; 11 a.m. and 11 p.m. Fox News

Reliable Sources With Brian Stelter Journalists ambushed while covering war in Ukraine: Stuart Ramsay and Dominique van Heerden, Sky News. Coverage of the war in Ukraine: Julia Ioffe, Puck; Ivan Kolpakov, Meduza. Media stories: Natasha Alford; David Zurawik. (N) 8 a.m. CNN

MediaBuzz Jason Chaffetz; Harold Ford Jr.; Griff Jenkins; Kat Timpf; Susan Ferrechio, Washington Times; Laura Fink, Rebelle Communications. (N) 8 a.m. Fox News

60 Minutes The International Medical Corps delivers supplies, training and resources into Ukraine; Russian billionaires and Great Britain; artist Laurie Anderson. (N) 4 p.m. KCBS

Frank Buckley Interviews Author Peter S. Goodman (Davos Man: How the Billionaires Devoured the World). 4:30 p.m. and 12:35 a.m. KTLA

The Circus: Inside the Greatest Political Show on Earth The Home Front. The Jan. 6 Select Committee investigation: Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.); Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank). President Trumps Jan. 6 phone logs: Bob Woodward, Washington Post; Robert Costa, CBS. The evolution of the Jan. 6 investigations: Conservative attorney George Conway. (N) 8 p.m. Showtime

The rest is here:
Guests on Sunday Talk Shows Hillary Clinton Meet the Press - Los Angeles Times