Saudi Press

Saudi Arabia and the world
Thursday, Oct 02, 2025

How Hong Kong's keyboard warriors have besieged Wikipedia

How Hong Kong's keyboard warriors have besieged Wikipedia

Beyond Hong Kong’s tear gas-drenched streets and shattered universities, another battle has been raging over the city’s depiction online on the crowd-sourced internet encyclopedia, Wikipedia.

As anti-government demonstrations have intensified, articles on subjects from Hong Kong’s leadership to its police force have been ceaselessly rewritten for months on the website, used by millions everyday to check facts and untangle complex issues.

(Click tmsnrt.rs/37IPxAZ to see an interactive graphic on the Hong Kong Wiki wars.)

A Reuters analysis found a seven-fold surge in edits of the Hong Kong Police Force page over the 10 months to October, compared with a year earlier. Similar spikes occurred in articles about the protests and Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam.

Changes swapped facts for insults or inserted slabs of material that upset the balance of the articles.

Where it was possible to determine the location of the editor, 40% of edits were found to have been filed from computers in Hong Kong. Internet users can disguise their location by using a virtual private network (VPN).

The number of daily edits spiked during particularly intense clashes on the territory’s streets, and prompted Wiki administrators to restrict editing access to some pages, a common practice adopted with controversial issues.

Now, unregistered users and very new accounts cannot alter those articles directly, but have to make a request to submit edits.

“There has been a great increase in all types of disruptive editing including vandalism, edit wars, and extreme language from both of the major perspectives,” said a volunteer editor with the username MarkH21, who has 13 years’ experience.

“The level of disruptive editing against the government, particularly from sources in Hong Kong, is significantly higher,” MarkH21 said. The user did not respond to requests to be identified other than by their username.

More edits eventually improve Wikipedia articles and changes can be publicly tracked to aid transparency, said Samantha Lien, a spokeswoman for Wikimedia Foundation, the not-for-profit entity that operates Wikipedia.

“Articles about contentious topics, in particular, because they are watched so regularly by editors, tend to become higher quality and more neutral,” Lien wrote in an emailed response to a request for comment.


EDIT WARS

But not everyone is convinced.

As Wikipedia, founded in 2001, has grown in popularity and credibility, it has become a valuable but contested record of history.

“In many languages, Wikipedia is the main or sometimes only general knowledge repository online,” said Taha Yasseri, a senior research fellow at Oxford University’s Internet Institute, who has studied Wikipedia.

“Articles that are subject to edit wars can be a common place for misleading the readers,” he said, explaining that a reader would not be aware an edit war was happening. “At any given time, the information reflected in the article can only show some part of the truth.”

At one point in August, the police page grew by a third as long sections were added criticizing their response to demonstrators. The Oct. 1 shooting of a protester by police sparked another flurry of changes.

On the police Wiki page, the force’s motto was changed from “We Serve with Pride and Care” to “We Serve with Terror and Violence,” then to “We Shoot kids point blank”, before quickly reverting.

Lam’s page received similar bursts of editing, with changes dubbing her “Super Lady,” and then “Super Puppet”, after she decried a July attack on China’s representative office.

Police, who have arrested more than 5,000 protesters since June, have repeatedly defended their behavior as restrained in the face of demonstrators targeting them with petrol bombs and flaming arrows.

Neither the force nor Lam’s office responded to Reuters’ questions about their Wikipedia articles. Wikipedia’s volunteer editors, though, are bracing for more busy months.

“People naturally will advocate for anything that they strongly believe in,” MarkH21 said.

“Thankfully, the editing community has many safeguards against it ... the self-policing mechanism of Wikipedia is that it is built around the idea of consensus.”

Newsletter

Related Articles

Saudi Press
0:00
0:00
Close
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
Nvidia and Abu Dhabi’s TII Launch First AI-&-Robotics Lab in the Middle East
UK, Canada, and Australia Officially Recognise Palestine in Historic Shift
New Eye Drops Show Promise in Replacing Reading Glasses for Presbyopia
Dubai Property Boom Shows Strain as Flippers Get Buyer’s Remorse
Top AI Researchers Are Heading Back to China as U.S. Struggles to Keep Pace
JWST Data Brings TRAPPIST-1e Closer to Earth-Like Habitability
UAE-US Stargate Project Poised to Make Abu Dhabi a Global AI Powerhouse
Trump and Starmer Clash Over UK Recognition of Palestinian State Amid State Visit
Saudi Arabia cracks down on music ‘lounges’ after conservative backlash
Saudi Arabia Signs ‘Strategic Mutual Defence’ Pact with Pakistan, Marking First Arab State to Gain Indirect Access to Nuclear Strike Capabilities in the Region
Sam Altman sells the 'Wedding Estate' in Hawaii for 49 million dollars
Turkish car manufacturer Togg Enters German Market with 5-Star Electric Sedan and SUV to Challenge European EV Brands
World’s Longest Direct Flight China Eastern to Launch 29-Hour Shanghai–Buenos Aires Direct Flight via Auckland in December
New OpenAI Study Finds Majority of ChatGPT Use Is Personal, Not Professional
Kuwait opens bidding for construction of three cities to ease housing crunch.
This Week in AI: Meta’s Superintelligence Push, xAI’s Ten Billion-Dollar Raise, Genesis AI’s Robotics Ambitions, Microsoft Restructuring, Amazon’s Million-Robot Milestone, and Google’s AlphaGenome Update
Indian Student Engineers Propose “Project REBIRTH” to Protect Aircraft from Crashes Using AI, Airbags and Smart Materials
Could AI Nursing Robots Help Healthcare Staffing Shortages?
Turkish authorities seize leading broadcaster amid fraud and tax investigation
Qatari prime minister says Netanyahu ‘killed any hope’ for Israeli hostages
Apple Introduces Ultra-Thin iPhone Air, Enhanced 17 Series and New Health-Focused Wearables
Big Oil Slashes Jobs and Investments Amid Prolonged Low Crude Prices
Social Media Access Curtailed in Turkey After CHP Calls for Rallies Following Police Blockade of Istanbul Headquarters
Did the Houthis disrupt the internet in the Middle East? Submarine cables cut in the Red Sea
Gold Could Reach Nearly $5,000 if Fed Independence Is Undermined, Goldman Sachs Warns
Uruguay, Colombia and Paraguay Secure Places at 2026 World Cup
Trump Administration Advances Plans to Rebrand Pentagon as Department of War Instead of the Fake Term Department of Defense
Tether Expands into Gold Sector with Profit-Driven Diversification
Trump’s New War – and the ‘Drug Tyrant’ Fearing Invasion: ‘1,200 Missiles Aimed at Us’
At the Parade in China: Laser Weapons, 'Eagle Strike,' and a Missile Capable of 'Striking Anywhere in the World'
Information Warfare in the Age of AI: How Language Models Become Targets and Tools
Israeli Airstrike in Yemen Kills Houthi Prime Minister
After the Shock of Defeat, Iranians Yearn for Change
YouTube Altered Content by Artificial Intelligence – Without Permission
Iran Faces Escalating Water Crisis as Protests Spread
More Than Half a Million Evacuated as Typhoon Kajiki Heads for Vietnam
HSBC Switzerland Ends Relationships with Over 1,000 Clients from Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Qatar, and Egypt
Sharia Law Made Legally Binding in Austria Despite Warnings Over 'Incompatible' Values
Dogfights in the Skies: Airbus on Track to Overtake Boeing and Claim Aviation Supremacy
Tim Cook Promises an AI Revolution at Apple: "One of the Most Significant Technologies of Our Generation"
Are AI Data Centres the Infrastructure of the Future or the Next Crisis?
Miles Worth Billions: How Airlines Generate Huge Profits
Zelenskyy Returns to White House Flanked by European Allies as Trump Pressures Land-Swap Deal with Putin
Beijing is moving into gold and other assets, diversifying away from the dollar
Cristiano Ronaldo Makes Surprise Stop at New Hong Kong Museum
Zelenskyy to Visit Washington after Trump–Putin Summit Yields No Agreement
×