Several Wikipedia contributors, including the 64th largest of the French version of the online encyclopedia, have been permanently banned from the platform for manipulating Éric Zemmour’s page.
This is a rare punishment on Wikipedia. Seven contributors to the online encyclopedia have been banned from the platform for making changes to Eric Zemmour’s page for militant purposes. Wikipedia administrators made the decision public on Wednesday, February 23. These activists will never be able to contribute to Wikipedia again, even by creating a new account.
This affair began with the publication of the book by journalist Vincent Bresson called At the heart of the Z. We learn that one of the largest contributors to Wikipedia in French, a man named “Cheep”, ranked 64th with more than 150,000 contributions, was part of the WikiZedia cell launched by the candidate’s campaign team. The stated objective: to try to influence the content of the Wikipedia pages devoted to Éric Zemmour and his supporters.
Apart from basic influence attempts, consisting in removing the expression “far-right candidate” from Éric Zemmour’s page, Cheep also made changes to pages devoted to history. Thus, a photo of Pétain and Laval whose caption was modified revealed that their “responsibility for the Holocaust in France is subject to debate“. The changes made have since been removed.
A practice not so rare in politics
For his part, Samuel Lafont, Eric Zemmour’s digital strategy manager, justified himself by explaining that “people don’t understand how Wikipedia works, which is a participatory encyclopedia“and that the candidate’s party has”several cells and many people“.
The far-right candidate is unfortunately not the only follower of this practice in the political class. In May 2020, a Mediapart investigation overwhelmed MP (LREM) Laetitia Avia, who in addition to having humiliated her team on a daily basis, also tried to modify her Wikipedia file on several occasions. A practice that we had extensively documented.