Operation Orangemoody

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On August 31, 2015, the English Wikipedia community discovered 381 sockpuppet accounts operating an undisclosed paid editing ring. Participants in the ring extorted money from mid-sized businesses who had articles about themselves rejected by the encyclopedia's "Articles for Creation" process, in which drafts are submitted for approval to experienced editors. The ring was nicknamed "Operation Orangemoody" after the first account uncovered in the sockpuppet investigation and was Wikipedia's biggest conflict-of-interest scandal as of June 2021, [1] [2] exceeding the scope of the Wiki-PR editing of Wikipedia incident in which approximately 250 sockpuppets were found and blocked in 2013.

Contents

The story was reported by many English language and non-English language news sources, including Komsomolskaya Pravda , Le Temps , [3] Le Monde and Die Zeit . [4] [5] [6] The editing was described by various media as "black hat" editors ( TechCrunch ), [7] "dishonest editing" ( PC World ), [8] "extortion" [9] ( Wired ), [10] a "blackmail scam" ( The Independent ), [11] and an "extensive cybercrime syndicate" ( ThinkProgress ). [12]

History

In 2015, administrators of the English Wikipedia blocked 381 accounts, [13] [14] many of them suspected of being sockpuppets of the same group of people, after a two-month investigation launched by Wikipedia editors. [1] More than 200 Wikipedia articles created from the accounts were deleted. [15]

Wikipedia's resulting investigation found that sockpuppets had searched the site for deleted or rejected articles about businesses and individuals. [16] Many of the articles had been deleted because of excessive promotional content. The editors, some posing as Wikipedia administrators, would then extort [17] payment from the businesses to publish and protect the articles. Besides businesses, individuals were targeted, including Cuban musician Dayramir González. [17] [18] The scammers themselves may have been involved in the deletion of some articles. [11]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of Wikipedia</span>

Wikipedia, a free-content online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers known as Wikipedians, began with its first edit on 15 January 2001, two days after the domain was registered. It grew out of Nupedia, a more structured free encyclopedia, as a way to allow easier and faster drafting of articles and translations.

Blackmail is an act of coercion using a threat.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">German Wikipedia</span> German language edition of Wikipedia

The German Wikipedia is the German-language edition of Wikipedia, a free and publicly editable online encyclopedia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sock puppet account</span> Online identity used for purposes of deception

A sock puppet is a false online identity used for deceptive purposes. The term originally referred to a hand puppet made from a sock. Sock puppets include online identities created to praise, defend, or support a person or organization, to manipulate public opinion, or to circumvent restrictions such as viewing a social media account that a user is blocked from. Sock puppets are unwelcome in many online communities and forums.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Russian Wikipedia</span> Russian-language edition of Wikipedia

The Russian Wikipedia is the Russian-language edition of Wikipedia. As of March 2024, it has 1,966,840 articles. It was started on 11 May 2001. In October 2015, it became the sixth-largest Wikipedia by the number of articles. It has the sixth-largest number of edits (136 million). In June 2020, it was the world's sixth most visited language Wikipedia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Criticism of Wikipedia</span>

The free online encyclopedia Wikipedia has been criticized since its creation in 2001. Most of the criticism has been directed toward its content, community of established users, process, and rules. Critics have questioned its factual reliability, the readability and organization of its articles, the lack of methodical fact-checking, and its political bias. Concerns have also been raised about systemic bias along gender, racial, political, corporate, institutional, and national lines. Conflicts of interest arising from corporate campaigns to influence content have also been highlighted. Further concerns include the vandalism and partisanship facilitated by anonymous editing, clique behavior, social stratification between a guardian class and newer users, excessive rule-making, edit warring, and uneven policy application.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Japanese Wikipedia</span> Japanese-language edition of Wikipedia

The Japanese Wikipedia is the Japanese-language edition of Wikipedia, a free, open-source online encyclopedia. Started on 11 May 2001, the edition attained the 200,000 article mark in April 2006 and the 500,000 article mark in June 2008. As of March 2024, it has over 1,406,000 articles with 13,594 active contributors, ranking fourth behind the English, French and German editions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arbitration Committee (Wikipedia)</span> Dispute resolution panel of editors on several Wikimedia Foundation projects

On Wikimedia Foundation projects, an Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) is a binding dispute resolution panel of editors. Each of Wikimedia's projects are editorially autonomous and independent, and some of them have established their own ArbComs who work according rules developed by the project's editors and are usually annually elected by their communities. ArbComs generally address misconduct by administrators and editors with access to advanced tools, and a range of "real-world" issues related to harmful conduct that can arise in the context of Wikimedia projects. Rulings, policies and procedures differ between projects depending on local and cultural contexts. According to the Wikimedia Terms of Use, users are not obliged to have a dispute solved by an ArbCom.

A series of incidents in 2009 led to Church of Scientology–owned networks being blocked from making edits to Wikipedia articles relating to Scientology. The Church of Scientology has long had a controversial history on the Internet and had initiated campaigns to manipulate material and remove information critical of itself from the web. From early in Wikipedia's history, conflict arose regarding the website's coverage of Scientology. Disputes began in earnest in 2005, with users disagreeing about whether or not to describe Scientology as an abusive cult or religion, and continued through the decade.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vandalism on Wikipedia</span> Maliciously editing Wikipedia

On Wikipedia, vandalism is editing the project in an intentionally disruptive or malicious manner. Vandalism includes any addition, removal, or modification that is intentionally humorous, nonsensical, a hoax, offensive, libelous or degrading in any way.

Widespread censorship of Wikipedia has occurred in countries including 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 length 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 running on both HTTP and HTTPS, and in 2015 switched over to solely HTTPS. Since then, the only censorship options have been to block the entire site for a particular language or prosecute editors, which has resulted in some countries dropping their bans and others expanding their bans to the entire site.

Conflict-of-interest (COI) editing on Wikipedia occurs when editors use Wikipedia to advance the interests of their external roles or relationships. The type of COI editing of most concern on Wikipedia is paid editing for public relations (PR) purposes. Several Wikipedia policies and guidelines exist to combat conflict of interest editing, including Wikipedia:Conflict of interest and Wikipedia:Paid-contribution disclosure.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wiki-PR Wikipedia editing scandal</span> Consulting firm that commercially edited Wikipedia

Wiki-PR was a consulting firm that marketed the ability to edit Wikipedia by "directly edit[ing] your page using our network of established Wikipedia editors and admins".

Status Labs is a digital reputation management company based in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 2012 by Darius Fisher, Jordan French, and Jesse Boskoff. The firm has been hired by various clients to hide unfavorable news from Internet search results.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Predictions of the end of Wikipedia</span> Theories that Wikipedia will break down or become obsolete

Various publications and commentators have predicted the end of Wikipedia since it rose to prominence. Multiple potential dangers have been proposed, such as poor quality control and inconsistent editors/administrators.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Deletion of articles on Wikipedia</span>

Volunteer editors of Wikipedia delete articles from the online encyclopedia regularly, following processes that have been formulated by the site's community over time. The most common route is the outright deletion of articles that clearly violate the rules of the website. Other mechanisms include an intermediate collaborative process that bypasses a complete discussion, and a whole debate at the dedicated forum called Articles for deletion (AfD). As a technical action, deletion can only be done by a subset of editors assigned particular specialized privileges by the community, called administrators. An omission that has been carried out can be contested by appeal to the deleting administrator or on another discussion board called Deletion review (DRV).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wikipedia and the Russian invasion of Ukraine</span>

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is extensively covered on Wikipedia across many languages. This coverage includes articles on and related to the invasion itself, and updates of previously existing articles to take the invasion into account. Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects' coverage of the conflict – and how the volunteer editing community achieved that coverage – has received significant media and government attention.

From 2012 to 2022, Zhemao, an editor of the Chinese Wikipedia, created over 200 interconnected articles about falsified aspects of medieval Russian history in one of Wikipedia's largest hoaxes. Combining research and fantasy, the articles were fictive embellishments on real entities, as Zhemao used machine translation to understand Russian-language sources and invented elaborate detail to fill gaps in the translation. She started this practice as early as 2010 on Chinese history topics, but turned to Russian history in 2012, and the political interactions of medieval Slavic states in particular. Many of her hoax articles were created to fill detail in her initial fabrications. Zhemao eluded detection for over a decade by obtaining the community's trust: faking a persona as a Russian history scholar, using sockpuppet accounts to feign support, and exploiting the community's good faith that her obscure sources matched the article content.

References

  1. 1 2 Moyer, Justin Wm. "Wikipedia sting snares hundreds of accounts used for paid editing". Washington Post. ISSN   0190-8286. Archived from the original on September 6, 2015. Retrieved February 8, 2021.
  2. ↑ "Wikipedia's biggest scandal: Industrial-scale blackmail". The Register . September 3, 2015. Archived from the original on July 15, 2019. Retrieved September 7, 2017.
  3. ↑ "Victime de fraude et d'extorsion, Wikipédia ferme 381 comptes de faux contributeurs". Le Temps (in French). Switzerland. September 1, 2015. Archived from the original on September 4, 2015. Retrieved September 6, 2015.
  4. ↑ Саша ПЯТНИЦКАЯ (Sasha Pyatnitskaya) (September 1, 2015). "Англоязычная Wikipedia заблокировала более 380 редакторов за "корыстные" правки" [The English Wikipedia has blocked more than 380 editors for "selfish" edits]. Komsomolskaya Pravda (in Russian). Archived from the original on July 15, 2019. Retrieved September 10, 2015.
  5. ↑ "381 comptes de Wikipédia bannis pour extorsion". Le Monde (in French). Paris. September 2, 2015. Archived from the original on November 8, 2020. Retrieved September 6, 2015.
  6. ↑ Kleinz, Torsten (September 1, 2015). "Wikipedia: Schutzgelderpressung in der Online-Enzyklopädie" [Wikipedia: protection racket in the online encyclopedia]. Zeit Online (in German). Die Zeit. Archived from the original on April 3, 2019. Retrieved September 6, 2015.
  7. ↑ Perez, Sarah (September 1, 2015), "Wikipedia Bans Hundreds Of "Black Hat" Paid Editors Who Created Promotional Pages On Its Site", TechCrunch , archived from the original on August 17, 2020, retrieved September 6, 2015
  8. ↑ Ribeiro, John (September 1, 2015). "Wikipedia bans 381 user accounts for dishonest editing". PC World . Archived from the original on February 5, 2016. Retrieved September 6, 2015.
  9. ↑ Chiel, Ethan (September 1, 2015). "Wikipedia editors just banned 381 accounts over a huge fraud and extortion scandal". Fusion TV. Archived from the original on September 5, 2015. Retrieved September 6, 2015.
  10. ↑ Cuplan, Daniel (September 1, 2015). "381 Wikipedia "sockpuppet" accounts banned for paid promotion". Wired (UK). Archived from the original on March 7, 2016. Retrieved September 6, 2015.
  11. 1 2 Merrill, Jamie (September 2, 2015). "Wikipedia 'rogue editors' have targeted hundreds of people in a blackmail scam". The Independent . Archived from the original on September 13, 2015. Retrieved September 7, 2017– via WebCite.
  12. ↑ Williams, Lauren C. (September 4, 2015). "Wikipedia Editors Uncover Extortion Scam And Extensive Cybercrime Syndicate". ThinkProgress . Archived from the original on July 26, 2016. Retrieved September 6, 2015.
  13. ↑ Pearson, Jordan (September 1, 2015). "Hundreds of Wikipedia Accounts Got Banned for Secretly Promoting Brands". Vice . Archived from the original on September 5, 2015. Retrieved September 6, 2015.
  14. ↑ Kravets, David (September 1, 2015). "Wikipedia blocks hundreds of linked accounts for suspect editing". Ars Technica . Archived from the original on September 5, 2015. Retrieved September 6, 2015.
  15. ↑ Dredge, Stuart (6 September 2015). "Wikipedia founder backs site's systems after extortion scam". The Guardian . Archived from the original on 5 December 2020. Retrieved September 9, 2015.
  16. ↑ King, Robin Levinson (September 2, 2015). "Wikipedia bans users for not disclosing they got paid to edit articles". The Toronto Star . Archived from the original on July 15, 2019. Retrieved September 10, 2015.
  17. 1 2 Weaver, Matthew (2 September 2015). "Wikipedia blocks editor accounts linked to extortion scam". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 8 November 2020. Retrieved September 9, 2015.
  18. ↑ Coolman, Robert (September 5, 2015). "I Was Shaken Down by Wikipedia's Blackmail Bandits". The Daily Beast . Archived from the original on April 17, 2017. Retrieved September 6, 2015.
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