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Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

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Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

#551

Post by HenryBemis »

A "NOBUS" weapon. Any system (country/gov/para-...) needs the right 'tools' for people-manipulation and people-programming. And such weapons should not be allowed to be used against 'us'. Kinda like devices that must accept (and malfunction) but not cause interference.

So, for a "let people speak their mind - don't control information" the Trump side quickly goes to universities must teach only what 'WE' want, Wikipedia must mention only what 'WE' like. Hilarious if not pathetic and dangerous (very-very 1984-ish...)

Side-note: it has since amused me but apparently it's not often told/at all.. the absolute propaganda tool for Russia/Soviet was "Pravda" (the "Truth"). Imagine my amusement when Trump created "Truth Social". You can't make that shit up....

Now, as I've said before, I live in the EU and don't vote in the US, so you folks decide, and then we all get to 'share' the experience (since I do have some/plenty of SP500 and similar instruments).

Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

#552

Post by Riverheart »

Tycho wrote: post #215
sgnelson wrote: post #197

Serious question, after the past few months, how can anyone deny that America is heading in a totalitarian direction? Those of you who believe that all of the many actions that have happened in the past few weeks are "okay", please explain your perspective without resorting to "whataboutism" or cherry picking only one or two of the things that have occurred lately. Because from what I'm sitting, this is not behavior…

[flagged]

A systematic effort to dismantle the federal government bypassing the legislature entirely, replacing federal employees with people who pledge loyalty to the president over the constitution, firing anybody who would hold him accountable, undermining the separation of powers in favor of an all powerful executive who treats executive orders as law, attacking media outlets and judges they disagree with and threatening to either remove their access to the White House press room or revoke their license or fire them, deporting people without due process, threatening to invade Greenland, threatening to withhold congressionally approved funding as a cudgel, and invoking the friggin Alien Enemies Act of 1798 in a time of peace is not “pushing back a little”.

But if you haven’t realized that yet it’s obvious you never will till it’s too late and sure, maybe that’s harsh to say but as trump himself said “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters” because that’s precisely how much y’all care what he does. Gimme your downvotes but don’t pretend you’re standing on moral high ground, you’d justify anything he does.

The whole anti-DEI sweep across the government where people who don’t remove “let’s treat people nice” posters risk getting fired and attacking people using the office of the president is so obviously deplatforming and censorship that your criticism of democrats is laughable. When’s the last time Biden threatened to revoke Fox News license? Republicans even a tiny bit critical of Trump get exiled for daring to step out of line. You don’t hate censorship and deplatforming, you love it, can’t get enough of it, you just hate it when it happens to people you like.

Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

#553

Post by 20after4 »

lukan wrote: post #448
Loic wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. More and more, especially in engineering, I am in contact with people who just want everything to be easy to understand in TikTok length video clips or short posts. Some things are hard to understand, dynamic systems especially, black or white answers do not exist. (Sorry for the slightly off-topic/meta rant. This hit a nerve by me.)

Well, I believe things with serious consequences like banning someone permanently - should indeed be presented clearly. Exactly because I know some organisations like to shield themself from criticism, by having a intransparent process.

It's pretty straightforward but nothing on Wikipedia is really black-and-white. Most decisions are made through a consensus process. It's really quite different from what most people are used to.

A good place to start for information about how user blocking is done would be the following links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Policies_and_guideli... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Blocking_policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppetry

In this case I think that a sock puppet account can be trivially blocked without much process as long as it can be proved that it is operated by someone who is already blocked for some violation. The sock puppet is an attempt at evading the block that was placed on that user's other account.

Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

#554

Post by foldr »

roenxi wrote: post #543
foldr wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The BBC isn’t propaganda. It has its biases for sure, but it doesn’t exist for the purpose of spreading a particular viewpoint. It’s good to be aware of media bias, but it’s reductive and cynical to view all media as propaganda.

> The BBC isn’t propaganda. It has its biases for sure, but it doesn’t exist for the purpose of spreading a particular viewpoint. If it isn't pushing a British viewpoint, wouldn't it be incumbent on the British government to shut it down? Why would they be funding something that was pushing viewpoints that undermined Britain? This is simple incentive analysis stuff, this organisation isn't being funded for billions o…

Every news organisation reports its own point of view and could potentially be shut down by whoever controls the purse strings. Your logic will lead you to the conclusion that all news is propaganda. That might be technically true in some very broad sense, but it tends to lead to absurd comparisons like your comparison between the BBC and RT.

Incidentally, various British governments have tried quite hard to shut down (or at least neuter) the BBC and failed. You're failing to take into account the fact that the BBC is a popular institution and that there would be domestic political consequences for a government that attacked it too strongly. If you think that your average British government minister goes around thinking "thank goodness for the BBC's news coverage!" then you may be a little out of touch with British politics.

Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

#555

Post by keybored »

gitremote wrote: post #401
kristopolous wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty constant on hn. People paint everything from country X, holistically, with some broad and blunt moral brush. It reads like a cartoon. Everything from China is loaded with secret spyware snooping on you for countless unspecified evils - everything out of Russia by anyone is part of some secret global propaganda network. I point it out as absurd and reductive whenever I see it and people dogpile on me like…

State media in fascist dictatorships don't reflect the diversity of their people. It is untrue that humans of any nationality have free speech and a free press as a check against their government's actions. It is untrue that any country's government is legally obligated to transparency that is required in a democracy. When people say that Russian and Chinese state media are propaganda, it is not always because they a…

The media in liberal democracies don’t reflect the diversity of their people.

Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

#556

Post by guerrilla »

buyucu wrote: post #497
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Heritage Foundation has been open about their desire to strip Wikipedians of anonymity, this is just the government putting that plan into practice: https://slate.com/technology/2025/02/wikipedia-project-2025-...

The easiest solution is for the Wikimedia Foundation to move out of Us jurisdiction to a more democratic country.

I don't think that would work. The US would just attack those countries as they are doing right now, trying to force us to give up DEI and ESG.

Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

#557

Post by keybored »

r053bud wrote: post #109
tzs wrote: post #69

> Before being named U.S. attorney, Martin appeared on Russia-backed media networks more than 150 times, The Washington Post reported last week. In one appearance on RT in 2022, he said there was no evidence of military buildup on Ukraine’s boarders only nine days before Russia invaded the country. He further criticized U.S. officials as warmongering and ignoring Russia security concerns. This is getting ridiculous.…

We voted for this! This is “democracy” at work

It’s interesting that people who claim Americans live in a democracy will slam-dunk any topic based on a completely binary decision made every four years.

No discussion beyond that point is needed.

Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

#558

Post by bluGill »

0x457 wrote: post #162
hollerith wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I donate to a 501(c)(3) organization, the donation gets very favorable treatment by the tax code, reducing my taxes (provided I have income that can be cancelled out by the donation).

hmm, please correct me if I'm wrong, but donations just decrease your tax liability by the amount you've donated. It's the same as if you donated your pre-tax dollars to 501(c)(3) org.

Right but you get to choose where your money goes.

Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

#559

Post by keybored »

A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote: post #512
tsimionescu wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, the wonderful time of enlightenment when all straight white Christian land-owning men's rights became recognized, not just the nobility's. Just a few short centuries from there, the rights of poorer white men, children, women, people of any other skin color, non-Christian, and LGBT people would be recognized too.

You jest, but skin in the game is argument is not irrelevant. It is called a franchise for a reason after all. You want a slice of the pie, you should be able to prove that you know what you are doing. Owning land was a good enough proxy then. We can argue what would be a good proxy now.

You’re saying that people who owned land (and humans) as property had skin in the game while everyone else did not. Just stop.

Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

#560

Post by phrotoma »

stogot wrote: post #538
20after4 wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a whole bunch of little utilities like browser extensions and bookmarklets and even an entire in-house cloud infrastructure that is used for hosting various kinds of bots and web-based tools for automating workflows. It's all very ad-hoc, crude and not very well organized or publicized. There have been a few efforts over the years to create a repository for all of the little tools to help with exposure and…

They have excess money as an org, why don’t they hire SWEs to improve it?

They're constantly hiring engineers.

https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/jobs/#section-8

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