So the issue is “allowing foreign actors to manipulate information and spread propaganda to the American public.” and they are going after wikipedia instead of say TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X?
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
#582Earlier quoted context omitted.
In before this thread is also flagged for being "political".
There's a post that the FBI arrested a judge who helped an illegal immigrant avoid capture during a court proceeding. 900+ upvotes - it has nothing to do with tech - it's about a hot button political issue - it helps the Republican cause. Not flagged
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Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney
#583Here's the letter: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ocNyx34Et19sKtlta0bTPPzSPcp... No claims, no evidence. No sources, except "it has come to my attention" and "information received by my office".
It was probably Elon
Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney
#584The English Wikipedia is a massive target for influence campaigns. I don't think there are any other communities as resilient as it. Just an example: There's certain individual or group that edited under the name "Icewhiz", was banned, and now operates endless sockpuppet accounts in the topic area to influence Wikipedia's coverage on the Middle East. One of them was an account named "Eostrix", that spent years making…
Wikipedia isn't immune to influence campaigns - honestly, no open platform is - but the key difference is how seriously the community takes it. The amount of volunteer effort that goes into investigating sockpuppets, enforcing sourcing standards, and maintaining some kind of neutrality is incredible when you step back and think about it.
Neutrality? I’ve never seen an English language wikipedia article on a politically controversial topic that wasn’t the DC establishment/State Dept official take.
They listed Greyzone as an unreputable new source because it’s pro-Palestinian. When you Google the usernames of those who voted to ban them pro Israeli think tanks from DC come up. Wikipedia is a joke when it comes to politics. If you’re lucky you can find the real contours of an issue by seeing who’s been censored and silenced out of the article on the Talk page.
Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney
#585How do I start worshipping Wikipedia so it can become a church?
> can become a church?
Now we're talking about something that needs its non-profit status revoked...
Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney
#586Earlier quoted context omitted.
Voter suppression is the act of limiting the pool of voters. That includes putting large swaths of the population behind bars or flagged as non eligible to voting, putting barriers to voter registration etc. It can never be 0 and every country will have a minimum requirement, but the degree to which it is done in the US is far ahead of most western country. Gerrymandering has an effect on the criteria for voter eligi…
No, “voter suppression” is the act of preventing legitimate voters from voting. Society determining that categories of people shouldn’t vote (children, felons, non-citizens, etc.) isn’t voter suppression, it’s simply establishing qualifications for voting. The goal isn’t to get to 0 or try to get as close to 0 as possible. People who should vote should be able to vote, while people who shouldn’t vote shouldn’t be abl…
Voter suppression is suppressing voters one way or the other. Your idea of restricting by birth rights is of course another form of it.
It's fascinating to look at that proposition for a country that mostly got rid of its indigenous population.
Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney
#587Earlier quoted context omitted.
Keri Smith, a former hardcore SJW activist, has documented how she and others daily targeted people through Wikipedia edits for preparing a cancel. It's quite fascinating the extend of organization and process they used. For instance, they would not directly edit the target's page, but start working 2 links removed from it, compromise the "friend of a friend of a friend", and then work towards the actual target and f…
What is SJW? Please avoid using unclear acronyms.
It's the word for "woke activist" from 10 years ago.
Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney
#588The scale of deep body trauma that has been done to the US will not seem clear today, but it will have dire consequences for the future trajectory of US. I am sad for this, for the current status quo I was born under, but I suppose History must happen.
The US has not been a force for good in the world in some time, if ever. Unfortunately for Americans, it has to get worse before it can get better. Much worse. The institutions are deeply corrupt, and have been for decades. They must be destroyed and possibly replaced. It sucks, and it will hurt. It may even possibly require an entire revolution, as many of the deeply evil US institutions such as the CIA and FBI are…
> What comes after will be more transparent, more fair, and more integrated with society.
No one is claiming that US been or will ever be perfect, but what are you smoking? Everything that's happened in the current administration has gone the opposite direction of transparent, fair, and integrated.
Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney
#589Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What comes after will be more transparent, more fair, and more integrated with society. Can you walk me through how you see this playing out, step-by-step? I want to believe!
Over the last thousand years, humans have become more educated and more connected. Violent deaths have been steadily falling. Over the last hundred years, American military and paramilitary forces, and their vendors, have subverted transparency and democracy to turn America into a military dictatorship. There is nothing to suggest that the fall of the United States and subsequent replacement (with whatever may come)…
> There is nothing to suggest that the fall of the United States and subsequent replacement (with whatever may come) will reverse the thousand year trend of increased education and decreased violence.
The US recently put the world on notice that everyone needs a larger military and should develop their own nukes if they can. I fail to see how that will continue to decrease violence.
Re: Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney
#590The English Wikipedia is a massive target for influence campaigns. I don't think there are any other communities as resilient as it. Just an example: There's certain individual or group that edited under the name "Icewhiz", was banned, and now operates endless sockpuppet accounts in the topic area to influence Wikipedia's coverage on the Middle East. One of them was an account named "Eostrix", that spent years making…
What a contrast to the early days: 22 years ago I was simply appointed admin on the German language Wikipedia when there was simply a lack of hands doing deletions and stuff. No voting, just a show of hand a lots of trust put into people only know by what they write and discuss on this new website. A few years of work (10k edits) and a few years of dwindling participation on my side someone noticed that quite a few o…
In my experience (of also roughly 20 years ago), the German Wikipedia is as dysfunctional as it gets.
The primary goal of the admins seemed to be to gatekeep, in particular to keep “unencyclopedic” content out at all cost, e.g. by contesting the very existence of articles on individual episodes of TV shows, software, or video games, which are all completely uncontroversial on the English one.
“Just because it’s relevant on en.wikipedia.org doesn’t mean it’s relevant over here” is a sentence I heard frequently. Keeping the number of articles down was seen as an active ideal.
For me, it was a great motivator to improve my English, and I’ve only ever looked back when the English version didn’t have a lot of information on some Germany-specific topic. Last time I checked, they only just accepted the redesign (the one that greatly improves legibility), after vetoing it for years. What a psychotic way to run an encyclopedia…