Arshdeep Singh high-level panel will probably question the administrators of the crowdsourced digital encyclopedia on safety checks and may even seek clarification
KEY HIGHLIGHTS
- A high-level panel will probably question the administrators of the crowdsourced digital encyclopedia on safety checks and may even seek clarification
- According to Arshdeep’s Wikipedia page edit history, an unregistered user replaced multiple instances of the term “India” to the word “Khalistan”
After the Indian cricket team lost against Pakistan in the Asia Cup match on Sunday night, Arshdeep Singh became the focus of vicious internet harassment. People vandalized his Wikipedia page and claimed he was associated with the separatist Khalistan movement.
Arshdeep Singh
The words “India” and “Khalistan” were replaced at several points on Singh’s Wikipedia page at 12:28am India Standard Time (IST) by an unregistered user.
Additionally, this person changed his name to read “Major Arshdeep Singh Langra” for a brief period of time before changing it to “Major Arshdeep Singh Bajwa”. Singh’s game statistics also had some arbitrary alterations because of this person.
In links given to back up statements on the page, the user also changed the word India to Khalistan, leading to a supposed timesofKhalistan that does not exist.
About 15 minutes later, an anonymous Wikipedia editor undone all of these edits.
The Editor
The collaborative database or service known as Wikipedia is a wiki, and anybody can contribute or edit content on it. Anyone is welcome to suggest or make adjustments, however the service follows a strict logging mechanism.
The user who made those changes was not registered and was using the internet protocol (IP) address 39.41.171.125, according to Singh’s page’s version history.
The IP address was found using a whois lookup service on the internet and revealed to be in use in Pakistan. According to IP address allocation records, the Pakistan Telecommuication Company Limited (PTCL), Pakistan’s national telecom provider (similar to BSNL in India), received this specific address.
It is true that IP addresses can be spoofed using VPN services, and if a VPN service is using PTCL’s servers, someone outside of Pakistan might also spoof the aforementioned address as their own. However, the likelihood of such is quite low, and Pakistan was most likely the country where Singh’s Wikipedia article was altered.
Wikipedia stated that in some cases, pages may need to be protected from editing by specific editors. When a specific destructive event has been recognised and cannot be stopped by other measures, such as a block, pages are protected.
Executives summoned
After that, representatives from Wikipedia were called in to the Ministry of Electronics & IT to explain how false information about cricketer Arshdeep Singh’s page tying him to the separatists Khalistani movement was posted online.
The executives of the crowdsourced digital encyclopedia will probably be questioned by a high-level commission regarding preventive inspections, and they could even be given a show-cause notice.
According to media sources, the Center thinks that this misinformation would disrupt intercommunal peace and put the cricketer’s family in danger of lawlessness.
