Russia has just banned Wikipedia over an article about marijuana. Roscomnadzor, the official internet censor, has ordered Russian ISPs to block the site. The ban is due to a specific article about charas, a form of hashish that is handmade in India.
According to Roscomnadzor, the page constitutes instructions on how to make the drug, which makes it illegal under Russian laws. Wikimedia.ru has declined to avoid the ban by removing the post. Earlier this month, Russia briefly blocked the
entirety of Reddit over a post about hallucinogenic mushrooms after Reddit similarly refused to remove the post. Reddit later accommodated the censors wishes so as to unblock the site. The use of HTTPS, which encrypts traffic between websites and
users, is having an impact on ISP level censorship as it prevents the ISPs blocking specific pages. Update: Unblocked 1st September 2015. See
article from microcapmagazine.com Russia cancelled
the ban on the Russian-language Wikipedia, which just lasted a few hours and created a stir among Russian online users. The agency then removed Wikipedia from it's list of banned websites, quoting that the information in the article had been
edited, in kind adhering to the court decision. Internet users however, noted that Wikipedia didn't seem to have changed or edited the page, but only re-titled it | 
