India Posts Notice to Wikipedia Over Bias Concerns

Wikipedia is facing increasing regulatory pressure in India as local authorities query whether the platform should proceed to enjoy legal protection as a neutral intermediary reasonably than being classified as a publisher.

India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting issued a notice to Wikipedia on Tuesday questioning the indirect status of the encyclopedia offered to technology platforms in India. The ministry cited concerns about concentrated editorial control and chronic complaints about bias and inaccuracies on the platform.

The notice follows a controversial case before the Delhi High Court, where judges described Wikipedia’s open editing feature as “dangerous” and threatened to suspend its operations in India. The court is hearing a defamation case filed by news agency Asian News International that seeks to discover Wikipedia authors who allegedly characterised the news agency as a “propaganda tool” of the Indian government.

Justice Navin Chawla rejected Wikipedia’s request for added time to respond due to Wikipedia’s lack of physical presence in India, warning of contempt proceedings against the platform if it fails to comply with the order to disclose user information. “If you don’t want to comply with Indian laws, don’t do business in India,” the judge said.

Wikipedia maintains that its volunteer editors must follow established rules on verifiable content and legal guidelines, though this defense is facing increasing scrutiny from Indian authorities concerned concerning the platform’s content moderation practices.

Wikimedia, the nonprofit organization that operates Wikipedia, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Nikhil Pahwa, editor of MediaNama and a outstanding voice on technology policy, questioned the legal basis for the federal government’s move, arguing that Indian IT law determines a platform’s status based on features reasonably than the variety of editors.

“You can be a platform with one user/editor or a billion,” he wrote on X.