Twitter bot catches Russian IP address editing MH17 Wikipedia entry

A government-monitoring Twitter bot, @RuGovEdits, caught a Wikipedia edit made on Friday by an IP address from the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, Wired UK reports.

The article in question was a Russian-language history of aviation disasters, which had initially been edited to include a section on Thursday's Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 crash, which killed 298 passengers when the plane was shot down passing over Ukraine. An initial description of the event described the plane as having been shot down "by terrorists of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic with Buk system missiles, which the terrorists received from the Russian Federation."

The language was changed less than an hour later by someone at the VGTRK to say, "the plane was shot down by Ukrainian soldiers."

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Unfortunately for whatever parties are behind the editing war, Wikipedia tracks the changes and makes IP addresses of users changing language viewable to the public.