Today I was reading in the (international) news about websites with knowledge on the topic of climate change disappear from the internet as result of the Trump administration. The second thing I read is that before something can be published about this topic, the government needs to approve this.
Do you realise what the right word for this is? censorship. Even if it is only partially.
Luckily there are many scientists working on getting all the data abroad, out of the US to ensure the research data is saved, including on servers in the Netherlands where Trump (hopefully) has no reach.
In the past week I was reading about the Internet Archive organisation, who is making a back up in Canada because of the Trump administration. I did not understood this, you may call me naive, but now I do understand, apparently they have some visionary people at the Internet Archive.
I miss a good answer to this situation from the Wikimedia Foundation.
Trump is now promoting harassment and disrespect, already for some time,
What signal is given to the rest of the world if an America based organisation is spreading the thought of a harassment free Wikipedia and the free word, while the president of the US is promoting harassment, disrespect and censorship on a massive scale.
This is just the first week of this president!
I am 100% sure everyone in the Wikimedia movement is willing to make sure Wikimedia faces no damage whatsoever, including in WMF, but to me this still starts to get concerning.
If we as Wikimedia movement think that free knowledge, free speech, freedom of information, etc are important, I would think that the location where the organisation is based is that country where liberty is the largest, I do not know where this is but it is definitely not the US.
To my impression WMF is stuck in the US, so I do not believe they would actually move when the danger grows.
But I think it is possible to make sure risks are spread over the world. Certainly as we are an international movement that intends to cover the knowledge of the whole humanoid civilisation.
To come to a conclusion, I think WMF and the Wikimedia movement should think about a back-up plan if it actually goes wrong.
If you do not agree with me: that is perfectly fine, that's your right and should be protected.
Thank you.
Romaine