RIYADH (Middle East Eye) – Saudi Arabia infiltrated Wikipedia by recruiting the organization’s highest-ranked administrators in the country as government agents, in a bid to control content on the website, activists say, citing an investigation.
Wikimedia, the parent company of Wikipedia, terminated all of its administrators in Saudi Arabia in December after an internal investigation, two activist groups claimed.
“Wikimedia’s investigation revealed that the Saudi government had infiltrated the highest ranks in Wikipedia’s team in the region,” Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) and Beirut-based SMEX said in a joint statement.
The Wikimedia Foundation, which hosts Wikipedia, disputed some of the claims, stating late on Thursday that there were “material inaccuracies” in SMEX and DAWN’s statements.
The foundation said that its investigation did not find that the Saudi government “infiltrated” Wikipedia, but that some users it banned “may have been Saudi”.
DAWN, a Washington-headquartered human rights group founded by slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and SMEX, a group promoting digital rights in the Arab world, documented Wikipedia’s infiltration by the Saudi government based on interviews with sources close to the company, “whistleblowers” and the imprisoned administrators.
In September 2020, the Saudi government arrested Osama Khalid and Ziyad al-Sofiani, two high-ranking volunteer administrators at Wikipedia with privileged access to the website, including the ability to edit fully protected pages.
In January 2022, Wikimedia became suspicious of efforts to exert control over content and launched an investigation. Last month, it announced global bans for 16 users “who were engaging in conflict of interest editing on Wikipedia projects in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region”.
In a statement at the time, Wikimedia said they “were able to confirm that a number of users with close connections with external parties were editing the platform in a coordinated fashion to advance the aim of those parties”, but didn’t disclose the exact location or identity of the banned users.
Sources with knowledge of Wikimedia’s operations revealed to DAWN and SMEX that the ban was against 16 Saudi users - Wikimedia’s highest-ranked editorial team in the region - following its discovery that they were serving as agents for the Saudi government to promote positive content about the government and delete content critical entries, including information about political prisoners in the country.