Wikipedia Zero

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wikipedia Zero availability in 59 countries through 67 partner providers, May 2016
Wikipedia Zero logo
Video for free access to Wikipedia
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales in 2014 as speaker of the CeBIT Global Conferences on Wikipedia Zero

Wikipedia Zero was a project of the Wikimedia Foundation , which from 2012 to 2018 was supposed to increase the awareness of Wikipedia and its reach on mobile devices in countries of the so-called Global South .

When the project started in 2012, it was foreseeable that there would soon be more mobile Internet users than desktop users. In the countries of the Global South in particular , Wikipedia should be made accessible to a generation whose first and only access to the Internet is mobile. These goals were to be achieved by making Wikipedia articles available free of charge on mobile devices in cooperation with mobile phone companies , especially in Africa, South America and Asia ( zero rating ).

Access was mostly to the mobile version of Wikipedia; rarely to a version specially developed for this program called Wikipedia Zero, in which only the text of the articles is transferred without images. Because smartphones are used much less frequently in developing countries than in western markets, Wikipedia articles could be requested purely text-based as SMS or USSD .

history

The project began in Malaysia in May 2012 , followed by Thailand and Saudi Arabia in October 2012 with the providers dtac and Saudi Telecom Company . Pakistan followed in May 2013 with Mobilink and in June 2013 Sri Lanka followed with Dialog Axiata . Free access to Wikipedia in India is provided on the Internet by Aircel . Since the end of 2013, 4.5 million Airtel Africa customers have been included in the program. From August 22, 2014, Timor Telecom in East Timor offered Wikipedia Zero for the language versions in English, Portuguese, Indonesian and Tetum . After 2013, countries in South America in particular should be included.

The success of the project fell short of expectations. The number of page views that were made via Wikipedia Zero was overestimated by a factor of 16 in 2013. By summer 2014, Wikipedia Zero had 35 million hits.

In January 2014, Wikipedia Zero was available in 22 countries. According to the Wikimedia Foundation, 50 million page queries were made this month. In the same year, Jimmy Wales promoted as one of the speakers of the CeBIT Global Conferences in particular for Wikipedia Zero. At the beginning of 2015 the program was operated in "over 50" countries.

According to Zeit Online , the continuation of Wikipedia Zero should depend on the development of usage. If fewer than 100 million hits were reached by summer 2015, the program as a whole is up for grabs.

The Chilean government ruled in May 2014 that the free distribution of Wikipedia and Facebook violated net neutrality and therefore prohibited them. As a result, as a result of intensive lobbying by the Wikimedia Foundation, an agreement was reached with the Chilean authorities - which in turn provoked criticism from network activists, who saw access to knowledge in the long term due to the restriction of network neutrality as a result of such activities.

On February 19, 2018 it was announced that the existing agreements with providers would expire and that no new ones would be concluded. In a final blog post from the Wikimedia Foundation, it was said that the program had involved a total of 97 cell phone providers in 72 countries. 800 million users have been reached in this way. However, usage has fallen rapidly since 2016, not least due to the significantly lower costs for mobile Internet.

background

Editing of the English language Wikipedia worldwide (2011)
Access to all Wikipedia language versions worldwide (2011)

Wikipedia Zero reacted to the digital divide between industrialized and developing countries in the use of the Internet, especially to the north-south contrast . Both the edits and the retrievals from Wikipedia come mainly from the industrialized countries to the north. This imbalance should be balanced out in order to improve the accessibility to free knowledge in the long term. In the target countries, access to the Internet is mainly via mobile devices.

The Wikimedia Foundation thus joined the large commercial providers of social networks Google and Facebook , who carried out similar projects with mobile operators with Google Free Zone and Facebook Zero . The partner companies benefit by being able to win new customers through the free offer.

criticism

Weakening of net neutrality

The Chilean State Secretary for Telecommunications banned zero ratings in Chile on June 1, 2014 . The reason given was that the free use of selected services such as Wikipedia Zero, Facebook Zero and Google Free Zone, for which mobile data usage is subsidized, violates network neutrality .

The Electronic Frontier Foundation said in July 2014

"Whilst we appreciate the intent behind efforts such as Wikipedia Zero, ultimately zero rated services are a dangerous compromise."

"While we value the intent behind efforts like Wikipedia Zero, zero-rated services are ultimately a dangerous tradeoff."

- Jeremy Malcom : Electronic Frontier Foundation

The nongovernmental organization Access put it more clearly, saying in August 2014

"Wikimedia has always been a champion for open access to information, but it's crucial to call out zero-rating programs for what they are: Myopic deals that do great damage to the future of the open internet."

"Wikimedia has always been a heavyweight in the fight for free access to information, but it is extremely important to call zero-rating programs what they are: short-sighted deals that do great harm to the future of the open internet."

- Raegan MacDonald : AccessNow.org

Missing metadata

Since only the pure article text is available, readers cannot use the version history to check the origin and reliability of the article. Newsweek reported in April 2015 on the English-language Wikipedia article about the unrecognized Indian Institute of Planning and Management , a "fake college", a widespread evil in India. The administrator Wifione had reformulated the information about the university's illegal status in such a way that it was called concealment. Newsweek reported that rural families in India who only had access to Wikipedia Zero had relied on Wikipedia's reputation. Parents have pledged their farms in order to finance their children to study and an ultimately worthless university degree. Mahesh Peri, editor of Careers360 magazine , which did critical research on the Indian Institute of Planning and Management , said, according to Newsweek:

"In my opinion, by letting this go on for so long, Wikipedia has messed up perhaps 15,000 students' lives."

"In my opinion, by neglecting it for so long, Wikipedia has destroyed the lives of maybe 15,000 students."

- Mahesh Peri : Careers360

Walled Gardens

The journalist Hilary Heuler argued in May 2015:

“For many, zero-rated programs would limit online access to the 'walled gardens' offered by the web heavyweights. For millions of users, Facebook and Wikipedia would be synonymous with 'internet' ”

“For many, zero-rated programs would limit online access to the closed platforms offered by the heavyweights of the web. For millions of users, Facebook and Wikipedia would be synonymous with 'Internet'. "

- Hilary Heuler : ZDNet

In 2015, researchers examined how the similar program Facebook Zero affects the perception of information technologies in developing countries. They found that 11% of Indonesians who said they used Facebook also said they didn't use the internet. 65% of Nigerians, 61% of Indonesians and 58% of Indians agreed that “Facebook is the Internet” compared with just 5% in the United States.

Responses from Wikimedia organizations to the criticism

Wikimedia Foundation's Gayle Karen Young defended the program in the Washington Post in November 2014, saying:

“We have a complicated relationship to net neutrality. We believe in net neutrality in America, "

“We have a complicated relationship with net neutrality. We believe in net neutrality in America, "

- Gayle Karen Young : Wikimedia Foundation

However, added that Wikipedia Zero needs a different perspective in other countries:

“Partnering with telecom companies in the near term, it blurs the net neutrality line in those areas. It fulfills our overall mission, though, which is providing free knowledge. "

“In the short term, partnerships with telecom companies blur the line of net neutrality in these areas. However, we are fulfilling our overarching mission to spread Free Knowledge. "

- Gayle Karen Young : Wikimedia Foundation

Illegal file sharing

In early 2016, it became known that Wikipedia Zero was being used in Angola to upload copyrighted material to Wikimedia Commons for free . Links to these videos and other files are exchanged in Facebook Zero groups. This type of distribution was probably used because of the high prices for "normal" Internet access . Attempts to block Angolan IP address ranges were unsuccessful in the medium term. Similar incidents occurred in mid-2015.

Web links

Commons : Wikipedia Zero  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wikimedia Foundation contributors: Wikipedia Zero. Wikimedia Foundation, July 30, 2015, accessed August 8, 2015 .
  2. ^ Amit Kapoor: Wikipedia seeks global operator partners to enable free access “Wikimedia blog”. In: Wikimedia blog. Wikimedia Foundation, October 26, 2011, accessed August 9, 2015 .
  3. ↑ Erik Sofge: SXSW: Wikipedia for Non-Smartphones Is Brilliant. Here's why. In: Popular Mechanics . March 8, 2013, accessed August 8, 2015 .
  4. ↑ Maximilian Schönherr : For zero, but not in vain - the "Wikipedia Zero" project also started in India. In: Deutschlandfunk . September 21, 2013, accessed August 8, 2015 .
  5. ↑ Brandon Russel: Wikipedia Zero Brings Info to Mobile Users Without Internet. In: technobuffalo.com. February 22, 2013, archived from the original on March 29, 2013 ; accessed on August 8, 2015 .
  6. ↑ Kul Takanao Wadhwa: Getting Wikipedia to the people who need it most. In: KnightBlog. John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, February 22, 2013, archived from the original on July 4, 2013 ; accessed on August 8, 2015 .
  7. ↑ a b Wikimedia proposes Wikipedia Zero . In: Wikipedia Signpost. October 31, 2011. Retrieved October 21, 2013.
  8. ↑ a b c Stefan Mey: Free network access with Wikipedia Zero. In: DW.COM. Deutsche Welle , November 10, 2013, accessed on August 8, 2015 .
  9. ↑ Amit Kapoor: Wikipedia Zero launches in Malaysia with Digi. In: Wikimedia blog. May 26, 2012, accessed August 8, 2015 .
  10. ↑ Mobilink brings Wikipedia Zero to Pakistan. In: nation.com.pk. June 5, 2013, accessed August 8, 2015 .
  11. ↑ Wikipedia FREE. In: dialog.lk. Archived from the original ; accessed on April 8, 2014 .
  12. ↑ Aircel customers can now access Wikipedia on their mobile phones for free | NDTV gadgets . Gadgets.ndtv.com. July 25, 2013. Retrieved September 20, 2013.
  13. ^ Timor Telecom: Partnership with Wikimedia Foundation , accessed September 11, 2014.
  14. ↑ Torsten Kleinz: Donation campaign for Wikipedia starts . In: Heise Newsticker. November 14, 2013. Accessed on November 15, 2013: "Instead of the planned 200 million page views per month, the foundation was only able to record 12 million page views per month in the last reporting period."
  15. ↑ a b c d Torsten Kleinz: Wikipedia: Has the peak already passed? . In: time online. January 15, 2015. Retrieved January 15, 2015.
  16. ↑ Wikimedia Foundation: Wikimedia Foundation Report, January 2014 .
  17. ↑ Compare the documentation at Commons (see under the section Weblinks )
  18. ^ Leo Mirani: When net neutrality backfires: Chile just killed free access to Wikipedia and Facebook . In: Quartz . May 30, 2014. Retrieved June 1, 2014.
  19. ↑ Martin Holland: Wikipedia Zero: End of free cellular access in dozen of countries. In: heise online. Retrieved on February 19, 2018 (German).
  20. ^ Building for the future of Wikimedia with a new approach to partnerships. In: Wikimedia Blog. Wikimedia Foundation, February 16, 2018, accessed February 19, 2018 .
  21. ↑ Erik Zachte: Wikipedia edits visualized ( Memento from October 9, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) . In: Infodisiac. May 9, 2011. Retrieved October 20, 2013.
  22. ↑ Erik Zachte: Wikipedia views visualized ( Memento from May 23, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) . In: Infodisiac. November 21, 2011. Retrieved October 20, 2013.
  23. ↑ Mahafreed Irani: Facebook and 6 Tech Companies Launch Internet.org to Bring More People Online: The Founding Members of Internet.org - Facebook, Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera, Qualcomm and Samsung - Will Develop Joint Projects, Share Knowledge, and Mobilize Industry and Governments to Bring the World Online. ( Memento of November 5, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) . In: DNA: Daily News & Analysis. August 21, 2013. Retrieved October 21, 2013 from HighBeam Research.
  24. ↑ Ley de Neutralidad y Redes Sociales Free. In: Subsecretaría de Telecomunicaciones de Chile. May 27, 2014, accessed August 8, 2015 (Spanish).
  25. ^ Leo Mirani: Less than zero - When net neutrality backfires: Chile just killed free access to Wikipedia and Facebook . Quartz. May 30, 2014. Retrieved July 2, 2014.
  26. ↑ Jessica McKenzie: Face Off in Chile: Net Neutrality v. Human Right to Facebook & Wikipedia . June 2, 2014. Retrieved February 201407.
  27. ↑ Jeremy Malcom: Net Neutrality and the Global Digital Divide. In: eff.org. Electronic Frontier Foundation, accessed August 2, 2015 .
  28. ↑ Raegan MacDonald: Wikipedia Zero and net neutrality: Wikimedia turns its back on the open internet. In: accessnow.org. August 8, 2014, accessed August 2, 2015 .
  29. ↑ Higher education accreditation . In: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia . ( wikipedia.org [accessed August 4, 2015]).
  30. ^ Indian Institute of Planning and Management . In: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia . ( wikipedia.org [accessed August 4, 2015]).
  31. ↑ a b Alastair Sloan: Manipulating Wikipedia to Promote a Bogus Business School. In: Newsweek. March 24, 2015, accessed August 4, 2015 .
  32. ↑ Hilary Heuler: Who really wins from Facebook's 'free internet' plan for Africa? In: zdnet.com. May 15, 2015, accessed August 4, 2015 .
  33. ^ Leo Mirani: Millions of Facebook users have no idea they're using the internet. In: Quartz. February 9, 2015, accessed August 4, 2015 .
  34. ^ Brian Fung: Wikipedia's 'complicated' relationship with net neutrality. In: washingtonpost.com. The Washington Post, November 25, 2014, accessed August 2, 2015 .
  35. ↑ Wikipedia converted into a free swap exchange. In: netzpolitik.org. Retrieved April 15, 2016 .
  36. ^ Wikipedia: Courier . In: Wikipedia . ( wikipedia.org [accessed April 15, 2016]).
  37. ↑ Jason Koebler: Angola's Wikipedia Pirates Are Exposing the problem With Digital Colonialism . In: Vice Motherboard . March 23, 2016 (English, vice.com [accessed February 20, 2018]).
  38. ↑ Wikimedia Forum - Meta. In: meta.wikimedia.org. Retrieved April 15, 2016 .