They need to have a policy change… public figures like those calling for these edits need to be shown in the most realistic light imaginable… meaning the darkest possible.
This topic has come up a lot (not least from Cory Doctorow). The fact that the rich are both so fragile and so un-creative is why they love AI, especially the sycophantic variants. They can’t handle someone saying no to them or, apparently, an accurate description of the past that isn’t completely flattering to them. Let them work in food services, lol.
Let them work in food services, lol.
Fuck that. We do actual work. They’ll just slow us down.
Eat the rich is what I think they meant
Eat the Reich.
The rush are the problem, something needs to be done about them. I’m hungry.
We should all play that new mario brothers game multiplayer instead of whatever the fuck we think we are doing.
We honestly need to end the myth that Wikipedia is some impenetrable white tower. It can and has been infiltrated by corporate and political groups, and even creative vandals.
It’s the most valuable digital property in the world. You think people break into the Louvre but can’t touch Wikipedia?
People need to stop treating it like a source, one stop shopping for info, like copypasting AI search results.
Both of them require the reader to dig further into the information to find corroborating information and also to attempt to look for any information objectively critical of the result; and definitely check the source, hopefully being something reliable and objective as possible.
Yep like how North Face replaced photos of many pages with photos that had people wearing their products in it. And this is probably just the tip of the iceberg, there must be plenty of stuff that hasn’t been caught yet.
Wow. Do you have a link for that?
In 2019, The North Face faced consumer backlash and apologized after its marketing agency surreptitiously added photos featuring its apparel to Wikipedia articles on popular outdoor destinations.
The North Face - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_North_Face
Edit: they also sent a cease & desist to The South Butt a decade before that
Organized groups hire people to edit wiki pages, you can even spot them coaching each other on the talk section. Monied interests especially, but also history is under fire.
Revisionists are rife, every monster from history is seemingly being rehabilitated, for at least 15 years. Feudalism has pr firms now too, it was great! No perversion of reality is too obvious that the sheep will not mindlessly take it as fact.
Technical subjects’ articles utility depends on who wrote it, a share of them are showing off their learnings using technical words 95 percent or more will not fully grasp, while other entries are in common terms andd fully understandable.
Wikipedia is a great resource, but not infallible, or a reliable source in itself, although it’s listed sources could well be reliable sources.
Although manipulating the sources cited is a great way to manipulate Wikipedia. You have to recruit 10-40 people to act as a group of editors to manufacture concensus across topics. Or you can just create a website or series of press releases.
“Hey, this small-town museum has an article about a historical event. It must be true. Link it at the bottom.” Or “well, this local newspaper article says it is happened, so into the article it goes.”
Even more effective, especially for political groups, is just publish dozens of supportive articles, while miring competing articles in edit wars and the bureaucracy that comes with it. For sources, just cite expert books that are favorable. It’s not easy, but hiring or recruiting 10-40 editors is trivial for political entities.
They have firms whose job it is to hire out editing wikipedia pages on contract. It is not new or much of a secret. Idk the mechanics involved I don’t see why they would need that many anyone can change it with a source, there are groups that edit their own pages easy enough, politicians get caught doing it, circumstantially caught, regularly.
Having a number of different editors allows manipulating the discussion and concensus protections built into Wikipedia.
Depending on the topic, it may not be necessary. A complimentary article about a new technology product or company founder just takes a few press releases that get picked up. Manipulating world events and leaders requires more coordination.
There is an entire world of constructing studies to arrive at a predetermined conclusion, planting articles, etc like you mention. Wikipedia edits are small potatoes compared to the faked science corporations construct to further their interests. Nothing is too false for them. In 5 years nutrition labels will give the daily recommended value of glyphosate a food contains.
It’s even more structural than that. You can control functionally all editors by controlling the academia and media. Wikipedia is necessarily a reflection of the biases of the editors and the sources they peruse. Misogynistic bias in your society, media and academia will lead to a misogynistic Wikipedia. Racist bias in your society, media and academia will lead to a racist Wikipedia. Anticommunist bias in your society, media and academia will lead to an anticommunist Wikipedia.
For example, western Wikipedia editors have been quick to deprecate Chinese state media sources such as CGTN or Russian such as RT (not complaining about the latter), but even after the horrifying complacency in genocide in Gaza, the BBC is still widely accepted.
So that explains why some entries on companies don’t mention about their unscrupulous history.
Wikipedia’s TOS bans this kind of activity, and it’s pretty effective at detecting it. This has been going on elsewhere for over a decade, and I know of at least one reputation-laundering firm that has gone bust because of Wikipedia reverting everything they tried to plant.
Isn’t there a way to lock Wikipedia articles so they can’t be edited by just anyone?
Yes, there are mechanisms for that in Wikipedia
Edit: commented before I saw that other comment with a link, but that’s a good link to look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Protection_policy
They’re all publicly viewable edits aren’t they? Revert them and ban the IP ranges they come from? I thought that was the standard practice for abuse of Wikipedia?
IP bans are ineffective against anyone who isn’t a 13yo using their parents’ WiFi.
The problem lies in noticing them in the first place. If you make a thousand legit edits to various articles and then make some slight changes on some rich clients page chances are nobody will register this. Then again we’re on the internet so there’s always at least one guy who’d hyperfocus on monitoring something like this. The hero we need.
Then again we’re on the internet so there’s always at least one guy who’d hyperfocus on monitoring something like this.
Not just the Internet, but Wikipedia. It’s catnip to people who hyperfocus on topics.
Exactly. I remember reading an article about a Nazi who was tried in the UK, apparently Winston Churchill himself vehemently defended this guy because he was a Nazi who fought the Soviets, and Churchill really hated the Soviets. He pushed hard for the charges to be dismissed, had his life sentence reduced to a few decades, and then eventually had his sentence commuted so he was released. I found this article around the time that the main guy behind the Nuremberg trials, Benjamin Ferencz, passed away, however when I went searching for the article a couple months later it was nowhere to be found.
I suspect the article was deleted under Wiki’s general rule where they don’t like having articles about individuals, and instead prefer articles about events. However this individual’s story was the event, and this could have been an excuse by those looking to colour Churchill’s history how they felt it should be presented.
Let’s not forget, it took years for Wikipedia to even notice Neelix, the Wikipedia admin who made over 80,000 pages/links about titties.
Let’s not forget, it took years for Wikipedia to even notice Neelix, the Wikipedia admin who made over 80,000 pages/links about titties.
He was just out there spreading the word of boobah but yeah this stuff can go under the radar for a while.
How so? Did no one go tat for his tit then?
Idk about banning ip ranges. I have never edited a wiki page as such amd my ip is blocked from even viewing the edits or talk.
It is unfair to others improperly blocked, my ip is also on a blacklist somehow do not know if that is related. Some kind of ratfuckery is afoot on the latter.
Thing is the vast majority of people using wiki won’t think. They will just consume so the message gets through.
Can confirm. I use wiki and don’t know how to think.
I don’t understand. Someone read this to me.
Pages can be protected in various ways
Laws can be broken too
This all started with Theresa May and the
right for rich people to curate themselves onlineright to be forgotten.Two Tier Kier.
FYI, Two Tier Kier is a conspiracy theorist term pushed by people who say Kier harms white people and doesn’t punish non-whites for crime.
Better names are Queer Harmer or Kid Starver
Kid Starver doesn’t really make sense, he’s expanded free school meals, greatly raised minimum wages, increased free childcare, removed the two child benefit cap, etc.
Queer Harmer probably has more legitimacy to it, I suppose? The high court (not appointed by government or Starmer) had a controversial ruling on gendered toilets, saying that premises are free to exclude trans women from women’s toilets if they do choose. So far the government has made no attempt to alter the law to amend that, so it can perhaps be taken as silent support of that ruling.
