Russian newspaper Vedomosti tags 1825 Decembrist uprising ‘undesirable,’ apparently after its software confused the historical rebels with an unrelated, banned German NGO

Meduza reports that Vedomosti, a Russian newspaper, accidentally flagged a nineteenth-century historical uprising as a banned organization. The article was about the eighteen twenty-five Decembrist revolt, but at some point, it got tagged with Russia's "undesirable" label — a legal status that bans organizations from operating and criminalizes any involvement with them. The label has since been removed. The mix-up was most likely caused by Vedomosti's automated content system, which confused the historical Decembrists with a modern German NGO, also called Dekabristen e.V., that Russia's Prosecutor General declared undesirable in twenty twenty-two.

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