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House to investigate Wikipedia over allegations of organized bias

thehill.com

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Re: House to investigate Wikipedia over allegations of organized bias

#121

Post by SauciestGNU »

tptacek wrote: post #95
pjc50 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not complicated, same process as has been applied to government agencies and private universities: remove "DEI", that is any mention of anti racism. How it's enforced is a detail. They have the Supreme Court to issue whatever verdict is required.

No, it must be complicated. Wikipedia isn't grant-funded (they have money coming out of their ears) and it isn't a government agency subject to regulation. Most private publications are proudly biased. In fact, the most likely outcome to the House trying to play hardball with Wikipedia is a double-digit percentage increase in their donations. Which I don't think House Republicans mind, because none of this is actuall…

Snatching editors off the street who revert regime-approved edits? It wouldn't be the first time they sent a goon squad to black bag someone for disfavored political speech.

Re: House to investigate Wikipedia over allegations of organized bias

#122

Post by tptacek »

SauciestGNU wrote: post #121
tptacek wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it must be complicated. Wikipedia isn't grant-funded (they have money coming out of their ears) and it isn't a government agency subject to regulation. Most private publications are proudly biased. In fact, the most likely outcome to the House trying to play hardball with Wikipedia is a double-digit percentage increase in their donations. Which I don't think House Republicans mind, because none of this is actuall…

Snatching editors off the street who revert regime-approved edits? It wouldn't be the first time they sent a goon squad to black bag someone for disfavored political speech.

If they're going to operate purely extrajudicially, what would House hearings have to do with anything? These theories aren't coherent.

Re: House to investigate Wikipedia over allegations of organized bias

#123

Post by bawolff »

guywithahat wrote: post #118
mbeavitt wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what evidence do you have to back up this baseless claim? They openly publish their financial reports: https://wikimediafoundation.org/who-we-are/financial-reports $178 million might sound like an extremely large amount of money if you're a member of the general public, but for a global resource kept up to date that serves hundreds of billions of visitors per year this is actually not a huge quantity of money.

I don't work for wikipedia and haven't seen their budget in depth, but the link is mostly fluff. Reading it I have no idea if "support for volunteers" means supporting wikipedia editors, corporate, donations, etc. All we really know is that hosting costs are about 3.1 million a year. Usually non-profit organizations like this get significant corporate funding because they do work for companies and political organizat…

> Reading it I have no idea if "support for volunteers" means supporting wikipedia editors, corporate, donations

I think its pretty clear that "support for volunteers" does not mean corporate.

I too would like more detailed budgets, but we do have some info here.

> Usually non-profit organizations like this get significant corporate funding because they do work for companies and political organizations

The list of large donors is public https://wikimediafoundation.org/annualreports/2023-2024-annu... there are only 27 who gave > $50000. Which ones do you think Wikipedia is giving biased coverage to?

I'd also point out that there is a wall of separation between editors and the foundation.

> all you have to do is look at their URL blacklists to figure that out. The NYT is regarded as a high quality link, meanwhile you're not even allowed to link the epoch times as a reference despite it being the most comparable right-wing competitor to the NYT. Basically every major right-wing paper is banned, while every major left-wing paper is allowed

Discussion about epoch times at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Not... my understanding is the concern is around them promoting conspiracy theories without evidence not their political alignment.

Re: House to investigate Wikipedia over allegations of organized bias

#124

Post by bawolff »

bix6 wrote: post #39
iandanforth wrote: post #24

This is McCarthyism. You take a polarizing word, then you attack your enemies by claiming they are that thing, and couch the whole thing in an "investigation" whose outcome is predetermined. There is no merit to discussing if the target is that thing, it doesn't matter. It's an ideological attack. If you take it on its face then the attackers win because you're treating them as if they were honest participants in a d…

Preach. How much time and money will Wikipedia have to waste defending this? Don’t these people have anything better to do? Like lowering prices for everyday Americans instead of running up baseless legal bills?

From what I understand this is just a "polite" request, not a supeona, so Wikipedia can ignore it if they want.

Re: House to investigate Wikipedia over allegations of organized bias

#125

Post by jiggawatts »

mesk wrote: post #11

Hey, Let's investigate together if their freedom of speech is used correctly. /s Meanwhile: Hey EU, regulating our friedly corporate donors, means you harm their freedom of speech !!!!!!!!

“Your freedom of speech is whatever we say it is.”

Re: House to investigate Wikipedia over allegations of organized bias

#126

Post by bawolff »

nemomarx wrote: post #103
bawolff wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Caveat: I do not support this letter nor the current administration. At face value, the letter (from the House Committee on Oversight and Governmental Reform) offers a sensible-sounding top-line explanation: >> The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is investigating the efforts of foreign operations and individuals at academic institutions subsidized by U.S. taxpayer dollars to influence U.S. public opinio…

"subsidized" modifies institutions there, so what they mean is academics and students edit Wikipedia some times, and they want to claim the right to control what those people say.

Reading the actual request letter made it make more sense. It seems like they are after moderation records related to alleged influence campaigns by foreign states.

Re: House to investigate Wikipedia over allegations of organized bias

#127

Post by jiggawatts »

righthand wrote: post #5

Organized bias like creating a specific page to for a fictional syndrome in order to wave away any criticisms of your opponents. So organized that Wikipedia won’t remove the obvious bs: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_derangement_syndrome One of the many reasons I don’t donate to Wikipedia. To keep this page up is to continue fueling unnecessary culture wars. Which in my opinion doesn’t align with their mission…

I’m going to take a wild stab in the dark and guess that you have no issues with these wiki pages:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_image_of_George_W._Bu...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_citizenship_con...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_religion_conspi...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_tan_suit_contro...

Re: House to investigate Wikipedia over allegations of organized bias

#128

Post by grover_board »

tptacek wrote: post #47

This seems like just an attempt to change the news cycle, because there's no rule anywhere saying Wikipedia needs to be unbiased, any more than does Fox News or PragerU.

You're right, it's probably just a distraction, like sending the army into D.C. and Chicago is a distraction, like trying to illegally fire Fed governors is a distraction, like ordering the prosecution and persecution of political enemies is a distraction, like every blatant power-grab, attempt at intimidating the opposition, and obvious effort to establish a de facto hybrid authoritarian regime is just a distraction from...something. After all, the administration and its cronies are nothing but scrupulous about their adherence to The Rules.

Re: House to investigate Wikipedia over allegations of organized bias

#129

Post by grover_board »

tptacek wrote: post #95
pjc50 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not complicated, same process as has been applied to government agencies and private universities: remove "DEI", that is any mention of anti racism. How it's enforced is a detail. They have the Supreme Court to issue whatever verdict is required.

No, it must be complicated. Wikipedia isn't grant-funded (they have money coming out of their ears) and it isn't a government agency subject to regulation. Most private publications are proudly biased. In fact, the most likely outcome to the House trying to play hardball with Wikipedia is a double-digit percentage increase in their donations. Which I don't think House Republicans mind, because none of this is actuall…

The administration has just directed the head of the FHFA to create a pretext to illegally remove a governor of the Federal Reserve, what on earth do you think would stop House Republicans from ginning up some nonsense pretext for a politically motivated DoJ investigation? Why on earth do you think these people are bound by anything other than what they can get away with?

Re: House to investigate Wikipedia over allegations of organized bias

#130

Post by ranger_danger »

quickthrowman wrote: post #114
pjc50 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not complicated, same process as has been applied to government agencies and private universities: remove "DEI", that is any mention of anti racism. How it's enforced is a detail. They have the Supreme Court to issue whatever verdict is required.

Wikipedia doesn’t receive any federal funding, what leverage does the House of the current administration have without money to withhold?

Not directly but I have seen some people (senators) claim that at least one of their funds is "democratic dark money."
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