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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

#571

Post by shakna »

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…

The British government has repeatedly tried and failed to shutdown the BBC. They have repeatedly withdrawn funding. MI5 have had agents deployed inside the BBC to try and subvert it.

As of 2017, it runs by royal assent, and there is just about bukpus that the Parliament can do about it. Because at the same time, funding was moved to a trust, to prevent political interference - a trust that both main parties attempted to shutdown, and control, at different times, but were told that they could only operate within the rights granted by the royal charter.

> The BBC shall be independent in all matters concerning the content of its output, the times and manner in which this is supplied, and in the management of its affairs.

Its not a perfect system. But it is very far removed from the daily pressures of propaganda and an angry government. The BBC is not really "state backed". They are independent.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_independence

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Board

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

#572

Post by morsecodist »

I am not a lawyer but this sounds absurd. Even if everything in here were true it seems irrelevant to their non profit status. There are issue based non profits that do nothing but publishing information with an ideological slant. There is no restriction on a 501c3 being run by non-citizens let alone influenced. 501c3s can even engage in lobbying.

I know taking it at face value isn't the point but this claim is particularly galling.

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

#573

Post by 20after4 »

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?

My impression has been that the project has never been fully scoped and kind of bounced around between teams with nobody ever fully dedicated to seeing it through to completion. Scope creep and a whole lot of competing ideas, on top of a genuinely hard to solve set of problems has caused it to get put on the back burner more than once.

Sometimes perfect is the enemy of good enough.

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

#574

Post by Tycho »

int_19h wrote: post #507
YZF wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels like a decent list. I'm not an American but some of these processes seem to be happening in other places. 1. Is all of us, on the "right" or the "left". Let's not do this. 2. Here you could say maybe the government is doing a little. But I would still say most of the lies and conspiracies that are reverberating in our society are not originating from there. This is like 95% on all of us (or social media).…

You seriously don't believe that pardoning people like Enrique Tarrio for violent crimes perpetrated openly in pursuit of political goals doesn't encourage violence?

Is that Enrique Tarrio, FBI informant, you are referring to?

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

#575

Post by add-sub-mul-div »

krupan wrote: post #103
add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #45

[flagged]

It does, but both side's followers are blind to it when their side does it. Or they think it's ok for their side to do it. I'm not sure which is scarier

I'm demonstrably not, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to make the above commentary. But even if I was it would be irrelevant. It wouldn't cause both sides of this to be comparable, and neither does virtue signaling being above partisanship.

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

#576

Post by shakna »

eastbound wrote: post #564
dxroshan wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is happening is very scary. Many people don't seem to care about any evidence or sources. They blindly follow whatever lies that their leaders say. I think this has been the case at anytime in history. However, now, with the internet, it is easy to spread such lies to mass and easy for such leaders to make blind followers.

> Many people don't seem to care about any evidence or sources. They blindly follow whatever lies that their leaders say. I’m one of those people you complain about. When I did deep research about DEI, I presented evidence and sources to people like you, including judges that I knew in my private life. It seems you didn’t care, to a point that I had in my hand a document printed from a department of justice’s own web…

"given the scope you decide to choose"

By changing the scope, you changed the effect. Unless you did every statistical validation here... Yeah. That reads exactly like data manipulation. t-distribution approaches standard normal distribution, when the degree of freedom increases. That's not something that anyone should ignore and give credit to. It's the same bullshit that Donald has repeatedly tried to do, to prove himself doing the right thing, even as everything falls apart.

Caring about the truth, requires caring about the methodology, and not just the conclusions.

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

#577

Post by thrance »

Fascists hate knowledge, as is made apparent by Trump, Musk and co's repeated claims that Wikipedia is "radical-left woke DEI propaganda". I can only hope Wikimedia considers moving the bulk of their servers and organization to outside of the US before it is stolen by the evil bunch.

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

#578

Post by foldr »

roenxi wrote: post #569
foldr wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dow…

> This logic will lead you to the conclusion that all news is propaganda. A lot of media groups are pretty transparently in existence for propaganda purposes, but the logic doesn't imply that. It could be a media organisation exists to make their owners money while meeting an under-served need in the community. That is why most businesses exist. It obviously isn't why the BBC exists because there are a whole bunch of…

It's mere cynicism to argue that the BBC must exist for propaganda purposes simply because the British government (very indirectly) pays for it.

>we'll probably find out what the current vetting arrangements are in the 2040s

We'll find out because the BBC is subject to public scrutiny. Good luck finding out about the historical vetting arrangements of CNN or Fox news! Or indeed, those of Russia Today.

You only have to look at actual examples of BBC news coverage from the period you mention to see that it wasn't government propaganda with the goal of making the British government look good or expressing some nebulous "British point of view":

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02gbms5

Margret Thatcher, the longest-serving British Prime Minister of the 20th century, hated the BBC. She had 11 years to get rid of it. She couldn't because it's an independent institution and the UK has (imperfectly) a system of democratic norms. Contrary to what you suggest, the government of the day cannot simply direct the BBC's editorial output or defund the BBC if it displeases them.

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

#579

Post by extra88 »

crabmusket wrote: post #282
extra88 wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't bring them up without including that voting is compulsory there.

See my sibling comment. Getting your name checked off is compulsory but nothing stops you from handing in a blank ballot.

For the purposes of this comparison, those "informal" votes still count in the typically used participation statistics. Voters intentionally case "wasted" ballots in other countries too.

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

#580

Post by matwood »

hayst4ck wrote: post #84

Reason and truth are the enemy of authoritarian regimes. They want you to believe that truth is subjective. Truth and reason provide alternative legitimacy to authority. If nothing is true, there is no basis on which to judge those in power. There is a long legacy of authoritarian regimes attacking curious places, universities, historians, museums, books or any institution that grounds itself in reality which provide…

> Reason and truth are the enemy of authoritarian regimes. They want you to believe that truth is subjective. Truth and reason provide alternative legitimacy to authority. If nothing is true, there is no basis on which to judge those in power.

I agree. Only thing I would add is that the 'seeking of truth' is also important. Academics get it wrong all the time, but self correction is built into the process. Finding and fixing errors is important.

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