Wikipedia: In Russian Censors’ Crosshairs for Publishing Marijuana-Related Content

The Russian Government does not approve of free speech on cannabis on the Web, and made this abundantly clear over the summer. In fact, when marijuana was legalised in Washington D.C., the Russian Ministry of Health stated that it would be detrimental to the city's population.

Just a few days ago the Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications (Roskomnadzor) decided to force Internet providers to block Wikipedia. The threat arose after the publication of a page on how to produce charas, hashish using cannabis extract from India and Pakistan: a regional court ruled that it was necessaryto prohibit access to the page.

Wikipedia decided to ignore the warnings and refused to withdraw the content. “The idea behind Wikipedia is to gather information and transmit it to people,” explained Stanislav Kozlovski, executive director of Wikipedia.ru.

Russian authorities followed through and actually blocked the collaborative encyclopaedia, although they did allow access to it just a few hours later, after discussing the modification of the article with the Russian community, to which significant changes were made, and a banner was added notifying users that the website could be blocked.

Reddit also recently received warnings from Russian censors.On this occasion the Roskomnadzor used the famous Russian social network VK to threaten to block the website across the country if it did not erase a thread of conversations in which the consumption of other substances was discussed.

The authorities contacted the company to request the deletion of the conversations, and when it received no answer they posted a “Wanted” notice on VK depicting the Reddit mascot, and suggested that its workers were too relaxed during their August holidays.

Moscow does not like freedom of expression on the Internet, as cases like that of Wikipedia and Reddit have made evident this summer.