Analysis | What sites blocked by Russia can learn from Wikipedia’s ban in Turkey

What sites blocked by Russia can learn from Wikipedia’s ban in Turkey

When Turkey blocked access to the encyclopedia site Wikipedia in 2017, its leaders quickly mounted a legal challenge. But it wasn’t until nearly three years later that the site was restored and its leaders have had to deal with fallout from being inaccessible in the region for years.

Wikipedia’s tribulations in Turkey offer a preview of the hurdles that may loom ahead for tech companies that have been restricted or banned by Russia amid the war in Ukraine. 

The Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia’s parent organization, took the case to court in Turkey and later to the European Court of Human Rights in a bid to force the government to restore the site. In December 2019, Turkey’s Constitutional Court ruled that the ban violated the country’s laws protecting freedom of expression. Weeks later, access to the site was restored. On Thursday, the European Court found that Turkey’s ruling offered “sufficient redress” and dismissed the case. 

While Wikimedia’s challenge ultimately succeeded, its lengthy courtroom battle highlights how difficult it is for digital services blocked by governments to get those decisions overturned, and how limited the legal tools at their disposal often are.

Stephen LaPorte, associate general counsel at the Wikimedia Foundation, said the group was able to make little progress getting the site back online, forcing them to take their case to the European court system in 2019, two years after the initial ban.

“Freedom of expression issues are a matter of urgency because when you’re not able to access information, it affects your ability to engage in society,” he told The Technology 202. “I think that there’s an importance in not just protecting freedom of expression, but protecting it quickly and protecting it promptly.” 

For sites blocked in Russia, their legal path to getting the bans overturned is likely exceedingly narrow.

“The recourse that would be available in Russia would really depend on the laws that are in that country and how they protect people’s rights, and we’ve seen a number of laws that have been passed in Russia that do limit freedom of expression, so there’s a weakening protection for these rights within domestic courts,” LaPorte said. 

Barbora Bukovská, senior director for law and policy at digital rights group Article 19, said that while companies could challenge recent blocking orders related to the war through the Russian court system, their chances of succeeding are slim to none.

“I would consider it almost nil,” she said.

These legal challenges, both domestically and internationally, don’t often bring swift resolutions.

In Turkey, it took almost three years for the courts to strike down the ban. Some international courts, including Europe’s human rights watchdog, require that complainants exhaust their legal options domestically before bringing their cases to them. That would mean services banned in Russia may be at the mercy of how quickly their cases move through the Russian judicial system. 

And even if they managed to get their case heard by an international watchdog, like the European Court, it could take years before it’s resolved. The European Court put Wikipedia’s case on a priority fast track, but even so, it did not rule on it for almost three years. 

“It’s going to be very, very long. … You don’t get this result within a month or two months. It’s usually protracted,” Bukovská said.

The battle isn’t over when bans are overturned, either. Companies may still struggle to regain their foothold among users who haven’t used their services in years. 

“There is a long-term consequence of a blocking,” LaPorte said. “It does decrease participation and once the block is lifted, it’s a great thing, but it does mean that there has to be extra work in restoring participation in the project.”

When Turkey banned Wikipedia, the site saw a massive drop-off in traffic in the region — by more than 90 percent, according to its parent organization. Turkish Wikipedia also saw a 70 percent decrease in the number of volunteer editors who update the site. The organization said that activity on Turkish Wikipedia surged after the ban was lifted, and that it’s again thriving in the region. 

But it didn’t happen overnight, and that’s a problem that sites and services blocked in Russia are likely to experience when, or if, their own bans are lifted. 

“When it’s blocked and that long-term consequence affects the project’s growth, it also has a lasting impact that needs to be sort of recovered from,” LaPorte said.

Europe adopts new digital rules

The Digital Markets Act targets companies like Google, Facebook parent Meta, Apple and Amazon, requires major messaging platforms to let their services interoperate with smaller platforms and imposes steep fines for noncompliance, Politico Europe’s Samuel Stolton reports.

“The new rules for so-called gatekeeper platforms, derived from years of antitrust enforcement in the digital economy, include restrictions on combining personal data from different sources, mandates to allow users to install apps from third-party platforms, prohibitions on bundling services, and a prohibition on self-preferencing practices,” Stolton writes.

“The Commission, as lead enforcer of the rules, is now tasked with staffing the relevant services that will be involved in the designation procedures, as well as preparing to enforce the obligations and the prohibitions, which become applicable later this year,” he writes.

Thousands of Amazon workers on Staten Island begin unionization vote

If workers successfully vote to unionize, the JFK8 warehouse in New York would be the first Amazon warehouse to unionize in the United States, Rachel Lerman reports. It would also deal a major blow to the e-commerce giant’s efforts to fight unionization.

The independent Amazon Labor Union doesn’t have official backing from national unions, and it faces a tough challenge in the unionization fight.

“To file for the vote, the ALU collected signatures from only about 30 percent of the Amazon workers, the required threshold campaigns need to meet in many cases in the U.S.,” Rachel writes. “But labor organizers typically try to secure roughly 70 percent or more, based on the assumption they will probably lose votes due to turnover and union busting.”  It was impossible to get more signatures because of the high turnover at the warehouse, ALU leader Chris Smalls said.

Amazon spokeswoman Kelly Nantel said workers have always been able to choose whether to join a union. “As a company, we don’t think unions are the best answer for our employees,” she added. “Our focus remains on working directly with our team to continue making Amazon a great place to work.”

(Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

Google asks judge to reject Justice Department’s motion for sanctions

The company said the Justice Department’s request to punish Google was “baseless” and that government lawyers had misread a small number of training slides, Reuters’s Diane Bartz reports. It’s the latest salvo in an antitrust case the Justice Department filed against Google in 2020.

“Google also said it was conferring with the government on which emails that are indicated as potentially falling under attorney-client privilege genuinely do,” Bartz writes. “It said it had given the government some of the affected documents.” 

Apple is working on a subscription service for its iPhone and other hardware products, Bloomberg News’s Mark Gurman reports. Politico’s Bill Kuchman:

Bloomberg News’s Nick Turner:

• The Center for Strategic and International Studies hosts an event on Russia’s Internet clampdown on Tuesday at 11 a.m.
• Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen and White House Office of Science and Technology Policy assistant director Suresh Venkatasubramanian speak at MIT’s Social Media Summit on Thursday.
• A House Energy and Commerce Committee panel holds a hearing on FCC oversight on Thursday at 10:30 a.m. 

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