Censorship of Wikipedia

Wikipedia has been censored by governments in countries including (but not limited to) China, Iran, Myanmar, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and Venezuela. Some instances are examples of widespread Internet censorship in general that includes Wikipedia content. Others are indicative of measures to prevent the viewing of specific content deemed offensive. The duration of different blocks has varied from hours to years.

When Wikipedia ran on the HTTP protocol, governments were able to block specific articles. However, in 2011, Wikipedia began also running on HTTPS, and in 2015, switched over to solely HTTPS.^[1] Since then, the only censorship options have been to block one of the entire list of Wikipedias for a particular language or prosecute editors. The switch has resulted in some countries dropping their bans and others expanding their bans to the entire site.