Everyone needs lists of lakes on islands within lakes
As Russia exerts more and more control over information sources during its invasion of Ukraine, Russian internet users are realizing some online resources might soon vanish, or at least become harder to access; Putin’s government has already declared Meta properties Facebook and Instagram extremist organizations. Of course, people use the internet for a whole lot more than just social sites, and apparently there’s currently a wave of Russian internet users scurrying to download backups of Wikipedia, fearing that it too may soon be forced offline.
Slate spoke to Alexander, a user of the Russian language Wikipedia, who cites the bias-free information about a huge variety of topics as fueling his interest. He was also one of many who saw government threats to ban Wikipedia as a cue to make sure he had a copy available no matter what, as Slate reports that the number of Russians downloading the site’s contents (29GB for the Russian version) after the February 24th invasion skyrocketed by 4,000% compared to January, putting that country in the lead for most downloads by a considerable margin. Kiwix, an organization that helps facilitate offline Wikipedia access, says 42% of its traffic is now coming from Russia — a huge boost over last year’s 2%.
Just about anyone can download their preferred language version of Wikipedia here. While the Russian government has yet to act on threats to ban the site, it has proven it can do so, such as the single day it banned Wikipedia for not removing a cannabis-related article in 2015. In a country where Vladimir Putin is threatening to send journalists to jail for up to 15 years if they don’t toe the Kremlin line, the dissemination of neutral information is probably on borrowed time.
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