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

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651–660 of 1001 posts

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

#651

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2025, most online users have learned how to look things up using.. the internet.

Of course, but if everyone does it, it is very inconvenient to read and in some case leaves unnecessary space for misunderstanding. Usually, acronyms are followed by the full wording the first time they are mentioned.

> Usually, acronyms are followed by the full wording the first time they are mentioned.

I'm sure they did at the time this (SJW) acronym got popular. That was maybe 10-15 years ago.

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

#652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The media in liberal democracies reflect the diversity of their people more than state media in a fascist dictatorship that jails dissenters, critics, and oppresses ethnic and/or gender and sexual minorities. Human rights, free speech, and a free press are the bare minimum before you tackle other problems like affinity bias in hiring.

You are engaging in the logical fallacy and propaganda tactic called whataboutism.* If people genuinely care about diversity and challenging bias, they wouldn't uncritically view an unelected president (or an elected president chosen in a country without free elections) as the spokesperson for their ethnic group.

* https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

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

#653
It's long due that we come up with an uncensorable, decentralized digital encyclopedia, with different versions for every article, each qualified perhaps by a voting or comment system of sorts, so we can work out biases and make up our own minds on any subject. That way, it'll also be truly nonprofit, afforded by its own users.

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

#654
post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but it doesn’t exist for the purpose of spreading a particular viewpoint. Id does exactly that, as does all State-supported media (such as RFI in France or Deutsche Welle in Germany).

The BBC’s editorial line isn’t determined by the government of the day. I’m not familiar with the output of examples you mention, but there’s no comparison with RT, which is simply a propaganda arm of the Russian state.

Then how come it lines up pretty closely with the British government’s views? See Covid, Ukraine and especially the genocide in Gaza.

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

#655
post #192

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We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43799635 . Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Noted, you can expect full compliance from me on that policy with regards any other detection positives in the future.

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

#656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Words have meaning. Setting qualifications is different than “suppression.” The former determines who are legitimate voters. The latter is an effort to keep legitimate voters from voting. Conflating legitimate qualification rules with “suppression” is fuzzy thinking in service of propaganda.

Restricting by birth right is simply an extension of the universal practice of restricting voting by citizenship. Every democracy decides who has sufficient stake in and familiarity with the society to be able to vote.

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

#657
post #122

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Anecdote != evidence. Also, your anecdote is specifically about a social media article about an attempt to use social media spaces to harass people. Seems extra “special case” to me.

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

#658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Yeah, Palestinians are indeed Semites, however, the word antisemitism (for historic reasons) is used to refer specifically to hatred of Jews. It makes historical sense that Germans are afraid to criticize the Jews. I probably disagree with your opinions, but the debate would likely be useless.

One of the obstacles to getting that point of view across is that very few of the people in countries with a majority religion (which is most countries) see criticism of their government's history as criticism of their religion. I've never really heard a Christian complain about the treatment of the thirty years war in history books, and that's presented in an extremely negative light. The equation you're making doesn't have a lot of traction in the broader world.

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

#659
post #469
post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those sites weren’t taken offline by Democratic officials, they had to find new hosting after breaking the contracts they entered into with private companies. They were still free to move elsewhere, as they did, whereas in this case Wikipedia is being threatened with penalties for remaining in the country. I would also note that the last straw for companies like Parler was involvement in a violent attempt to overthro…

There was the whole IRS targeting of conservative groups under Obama. And I’m sure the “government overthrowers” (lol) also used Facebook and Twitter, yet only these other ones were taken down. We later found out, of course, that the likes of FB and Twitter had embedded censorship teams working hand-in-glove with the security state and advocacy groups.

> There was the whole IRS targeting of conservative groups under Obama.

There was a lot of talk about that but I note you left out the part where it wasn’t real. The IRS investigated both liberal and conservative groups, but only the conservative groups lied about being singled out as part of a defense strategy.

https://web.archive.org/web/20180225112702/https://www.treas...

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

#660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no reason to conflate the two. To be frank, I explicitly stated land ( and not property as a more generic term ), which makes me question how much of a good faith of a conversation this is. My point stands on its own merits, but you seem to want to rely on cheap rhetorical theatrics a good chunk of the audience here can see through.

Okay, owning land then. My bad. All humans existing in the nation have skin in the game by the fact that they exist there. How do landowners have more of a stake?

They have land that can be taken or voted away. I don't think only land owners should be able to vote, but it's worth noting worldwide having significant property is one of the most common ways for immigrants to qualify for a resident visa (other two common ways is job or business investment). Right or not it signifies enough skin in the game to many if not most societies to reflect reciprocated integration the community.

Remember in the early days there was almost no immigration control as well, so finding proxies for skin in the game might have been more challenging than today, when emigrating is almost impossible for the poor so they are stuck with their skin in America whether they like it or not.

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