County Officials Tried To Force Wikimedia To Remove Truthful, But Unflattering, Content From Its Wiki Page

Free Speech

from the well,-this-should-make-everything-worse dept
Thu, Aug 3rd 2023 09:21am - Tim Cushing

The best Streisanding is the Streisanding you give yourself, as the adage goes. The adage is even enshrined at Wikipedia, where it points to the creator of the term: Mike Masnick. Perhaps you’ve heard of him.

The best thing to do to counter negative content is presenting your own side of the case. The worst thing, however, is trying to bury it, especially when the burial attempt involves public figures. Internet case law has made this obvious for more than two decades. The people who think the Streisand Effect will never affect their actions are people who think the internet can be controlled with a combination of “being angry about stuff” and bullshit takedown demands.

That brings us to the latest in inadvertent self-sabotage, this time involving members of the Durham City (North Carolina) government, which thought it could force Wikipedia to identify the editors who posted the (squints at request) factual information. Here’s Lena Geller with the details for Indy Week:

At the request of several elected officials, Durham city attorney Kimberly Rehberg last month asked Wikipedia to unmask the identities of users who have published accurate but unfavorable information about said officials to the crowdsourced encyclopedia—a move that experts call inappropriate and troubling.

In a certified letter to the Wikimedia Foundation dated June 29 and obtained by the INDY last week, Rehberg explained that she was writing at the “express request” of Mayor Elaine O’Neal and city council members DeDreana Freeman and Monique Holsey-Hyman, each of whom took issues with content on their Wikipedia pages.

Ah, the ol’ “took issues with content.” Not that there was anything illegal or incorrect about the “content.” No, they only “took issue” because the (factual) “content” makes these entities look bad.

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I mean:

Holsey-Hyman is being investigated by the State Bureau of Investigation following a developer’s allegation that she attempted to solicit a bribe in exchange for her vote on a rezoning proposal. She has also been accused of improperly attempting to enlist city staff to work on her reelection campaign.

[…]

Freeman made news in March when her defense of Holsey-Hyman during a contentious city council meeting led to a profane shouting match that reportedly turned physical.

{snip}