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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

#141

Post by SauciestGNU »

tptacek wrote: post #122
SauciestGNU wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Congress doing their investigation will be used in the media to "prove" that by virtue of being under investigation the executive actions against Wikipedia and its contributors are legitimate. Similar to how accusations of antisemitism led to the snatching of Ms. Ozturk.

Re: House to investigate Wikipedia over allegations of organized bias

#142

Post by tptacek »

grover_board wrote: post #128
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…

Sending the National Guard into DC is in fact a distraction. Trying to fire the Fed governors is not a distraction. Prosecuting political enemies is not a distraction. See? Both kinds of things happen. It's important to distinguish.

Re: House to investigate Wikipedia over allegations of organized bias

#143

Post by tptacek »

grover_board wrote: post #129
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…

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?

See the difference? The administration can in fact disrupt the Federal Reserve, and appears intent on doing so. But they would much rather you were talking about Wikipedia, which is something they have basically no power over whatsoever.

Re: House to investigate Wikipedia over allegations of organized bias

#144

Post by slipperydippery »

hshdhdhj4444 wrote: post #37
bazzargh wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remove 501(c)3 status, apparently. Trump's repeatedly threatened this in other cases - the TNPA concluded he didn't have that power with executive orders, but congress did https://tnpa.org/nonprofits-under-fire-how-the-irs-can-and-c... Not a lawyer tho, and it seems that even with a majority getting something like that through congress would be very difficult.

So bias is reason to remove 501c3 status? Then should we remove the 501c3 status of every church, mosque, temple, etc in the U.S. because they are biased towards not just the existence of a god, but the existence of their particular version of god?

More relevantly, it’s an open secret that a lot of churches are heavily into political advocacy directly for candidates, which they’re not supposed to do under their tax status, but they’ve been playing with the boundaries unchecked and are now really obviously past where they’re supposed to be—but nobody’s got the guts to go after them, so they just keep getting bolder.

Re: House to investigate Wikipedia over allegations of organized bias

#147

Post by serain »

OsrsNeedsf2P wrote: post #58

I used to (and still am) one of the highest ranked editors you can be without becoming an administrator. Wikipedia has its problems, and I spent years fighting them- but I slowly realized there is no better way to do it. Wikipedia is not an arbitrator of truth: everything needs a reliable, secondary source[0]. This means the content has to be notable enough that a reputable source wrote about it, and you cannot refer…

this is false. all you have to do is see a mildly controversial article like "woman". it is all opinionated. and citing sources to add similar content to "man" would not work. you can go to history and see the comment form the woman who started much of it, saying something like "trying to start something here" and since then, it is like this.

Re: House to investigate Wikipedia over allegations of organized bias

#149

Post by aeternum »

mbeavitt wrote: post #64
aeternum wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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.

https://wikimediafoundation.org/annualreports/2023-2024-annu...

They spend only $3mil on internet hosting. They spent almost 6 mil on travel and conferences, and 26 mil on awards and grants.

They could easily run all wikimedia hosting on investment income (endowment) alone so the banner that often pleads for donations to keep wikipedia running is pretty scammy.

Re: House to investigate Wikipedia over allegations of organized bias

#150

Post by aeternum »

bawolff wrote: post #123
guywithahat wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 la…

>my understanding is the concern is around them promoting conspiracy theories without evidence not their political alignment.

That might be their justification but is it actually true?

Specifically: Do you believe that every major right-wing paper promotes conspiracy theories while every major left-wing paper does not?

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