It was bad enough with 2001, 2008, and 2020. But this is next level.
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 so deeply and tightly integrated with the federal government that it may require destruction of the state itself.
The status quo has been comfy for a lot of Americans, but the world as a whole is not a better place because Facebook and Lockheed and the US CIA exist.
This has been pending for most of a century.
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 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) will reverse the thousand year trend of increased education and decreased violence.
The culture of the 3.6% of people who live in the current territory of the USA will be irreparably damaged, however. This may not be entirely a bad thing, given how significant an outlier the US lifestyle is compared to the rest of the world.
We're talking about long-term cycles of change here so it is difficult to opine with certainty leaving a lot of room for differing opinions. Unfortunately, however, I think the end of Pax Americana will usher in increased conflict and violence, particularly in the West which has experienced a long period of peace due to American dominance.
You've cherry-picked a few bogeymen.
What about Norman Borlaug, Bell Laboratories, the Gates Foundation, Margaret Sanger and the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology?
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/25/health/nejm-prosecutor-le...
You guys control the servers, if anything you have the psyop advantage.
However, the librarians are very vocal about self determination and keeping wikimedia out of important decisions.
Wikipedia could also stop operating as a 501c3 and incorporate.
But the typical out for these organizations are that they are not responsible for what people post. I don’t feel like that is very responsible. They already have moderation on the platform.
But Wikimedia/pedia can’t claim 501c3 status. It could spin off the political content/controversial into 501c4 which has more leeway. It can tighten editorial controls, emphasize first amendment, look at Section 230. Publish reports showing how misinformation is identified and corrected, partner with fact checking organizations.
But also if they cannot police their own content without an unpaid army of volunteers then herein lies the bigger issue with their model.
may I suggest Switzerland
Acting like they are the same shamefully diminishes the previous administrations actions, which is particularly dangerous since their documented suppression of the now widely accepted lab leak theory has resulted in little action to prevent further illegal gain of function research. Its inevitable we will face yet another worldwide pandemic in the next decade or so while this careless research continues without proper safety controls or scrutiny.
If we do, the absurdities about masks and vaccines that were spread by some will make it last just as long as the covid one
https://www.reddit.com/r/WatchWikipediaDie/wiki/scandals
Edit: If you had downvoted this comment, please look at what aingling had said here and think about it.
Last revised by deleted account 1 month ago
Damn Wikipedia assassinating critics now? Where will it all end
FTFY. If you go dig deeper at foundation.wikimedia.org you'll inevitably come across an Israeli court document describing systemic smear defamation and libel campaign mounted by toxic editors against an academic, which lasted around a decade.
Please donate now to show your support. It's time to fight back against this crap.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclop%C3%A9die
[1] "Show me the man and I'll show you the crime." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Give_me_the_man_and_I_will_giv...
No claims, no evidence. No sources, except "it has come to my attention" and "information received by my office".
> In view of public criticisms, including those expressed by Wikipedia Co-Founder Dr. Lawrence M. Sanger, regarding the opacity of editorial processes and the anonymity of contributors, what justification does the Foundation offer for shielding editors from public scrutiny?
Larry Sanger has been criticizing Wikipedia for more than 20 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Sanger#Criticism_of_Wiki...
The author of that letter is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Martin_(Missouri_politician... - "the first U.S. attorney for D.C. in at least 50 years to be appointed without experience as a judge or a federal prosecutor".
Anyone who's been involved in Wikipedia editing for long enough, especially on divisive topics, knows that this is indeed the case:
"Masking propaganda that influences public opinion under the guise of providing informational material"
Fact is, there are many topics on Wikipedia that follow an editorial line set down by a small group of powerful editors, some of which has even adversely influenced general policy that affects all articles.
This is mostly why I stopped editing. I realized that what I was contributing to - for free - was a project being used to push a particular world view, while purporting to be neutral. And this has become entrenched. That's not something I want any part of, even if I agree with much of that world view myself.
https://manhattan.institute/article/is-wikipedia-politically...
Oh shit! That happened already, didn't it? How is it going at attracting talented individuals?
We should remember that anti-wikipedia propaganda exists for decades now. Despite of that, it is a place cherished by many (including non commies). Its demise would be a public disaster.
Hoarders will maintain copies of it. And if there is bias, there will be tons of biased bootlegs around.
Further investigation would be more wise than rapid decisions by instinct.
This is getting ridiculous. Is there anyone associated with this administration who does not have a record of promoting Russia's positions?
It's like like Dugin's Foundations of Geopolitics was a wish list.
Maybe this is indeed what Russia would do to us. But we're beating them to the punch by doing it to ourselves.
The US system was never designed to be fair to individuals in the first place, pointing at it as a failure of democracy is IMHO pulling the actual issues under the rug.
Really need a viable means to fight it, say allowing an elected official's constitutes being able to sue them for no less than $10,000 for incidence of bearing false witness. Help erode the dark money networks.
Also having a 4th branch of Governments, the people with State and Federal binding resolution, would help. Only way to overrides those in power is to unionize the will.
Australia has entered the chat.
Yes, it might only take a small number of votes in the right place, but either you somehow know the right place, or you have to move a lot of votes.
There's a reasonable discussion to be had along the lines of 'these guys seem to be doing everything they whine about', but could they get a big operation done without a) bragging openly about it, b) leaving a big trail, or c) having a falling out with a conspirator who then tells all.
That's not definitive, to be sure. But it's sufficient for me to believe that we did this to ourselves. Now all we can do is figure out how we're going to get through it.
https://www.youtube.com/live/kdvpXxXVyok?si=XALuK7No9-PLQBAr...
Not defending it, but just saying that being on RT doesn't necessarily imply anything.
These things are complicated. Alex Jones and Michio Kaku were both on Genesis for instance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_Communications_Netwo...
I guess that's all fabricated bullshit then?
They were also some of the earliest at Occupy Wallstreet. Was that a fictional Potempkin event too?
You need to have a little more sophisticated eye than "Russia=bad" when reading news.
I think you're an adult, right?
Yo dawg, I heard you like to appeal to conspiracy theory types...
Why would someone introduce lots of seemingly indiscernible edits into important articles, fully knowing that the edit history is available to anyone who wants to look?
It would make more sense to spread propaganda in a place that doesn't fully track it.
Unless the exposition of such tracking edits as an obvious smoking gun exists to be staged to look like someone else did it.
Of course, it could all be to trigger a recursive conspiracytheorypocallipse that further erodes any belief in community generated content.
What should we do, Master Anakin? There's too many of them conspiracies.
There is a long legacy of authoritarian regimes attacking curious places, universities, historians, museums, books or any institution that grounds itself in reality which provides you a way to reasonably criticize authoritarian actions. Many authortarian regimes will "purge" as many of the country's intellectuals as they are able.
Wikipedia is absolutely the enemy of this administration and authoritarians everywhere in the world would love to see it's demise or collapse into chaos.
Whether the Wikipedia page for Israel says Gaza is a genocide or not, or that it's an ongoing debate matters. It matters because it influences what people think and therefore what they consent to or what they deem worth fighting for or applying resources to and that goes for just about any issue out there. If you can't read about the suffering that racism has caused, then how bad is racism really? If there are no examples of successful labor movements, then why would you hopelessly start one?
The ADL and other Jewish organizations have pointed out that aside from articles about Israel that articles about or mention Jewish topics generally have been editing with disinformation or that made Jews out to be the aggressors.
I agree with you that in order to believe in the ideals of liberal democracy that we must have a core belief in truth. And it's absolutely true that the Trump administration has taken a position that is deeply chilling on the issue of speech. It's clear they want to be the sole arbiters of what "truth" is and they want to use their power to manipulate the reality.
All that said, I cannot as a Jew ignore the fact that Wikipedia is not in itself neutral, and that "more eyes" does not negate systemic bias. What I've seen as a Jew is what the true meaning of marginalized minority is, which is to say that if you are truly a minority and truly marginalized then in a vote of "truth", your reality will be dismissed if it conflicts with the vast majority, and that Jews are only 0.2% of the world population.
While I brought it up, I am not debating the issue of antisemitic bias in Wikipedia[1] as anything other than an illustration of your point of objective truth being true, but also that we can't simply rely on the wisdom of the crowd to materialize that truth.
To preemptively address the issue that's bound to come up when I post this- I'm not arguing that the evils of silencing the entire Wikipedia project are equal to or a fair response to Wikipedia's antisemitic bias. I do believe Wikipedia needs to address its bias problem and that's best done through internal reform.
Two wrongs don't make a right, nor are two wrongs always of equal weight.
[1] Firstly because my point is separate, and secondly because I've encountered the exact issues I've found in Wikipedia elsewhere, which is why I'm sure I'll be voted down.
I agree this was a terrible move on the ADL's part, and there have been others, but you're essentially labeling the oldest anti-hate group "fascist" because you disagree with one statement they made.
This dismisses any concerns they raise, or if someone else says the same as them, then they too must be pro-facist.
I'm working on a solution to the effects of this isolation, but it's not ready for a big announcement.
Read it for yourself.
They also position things in such a way that implies antisemitic things, such as saying that Zionism is only 200 years old, or discussing the Israel wars only or primarily through an Arab lens.
These biases around Jewish topics are small individually but large in aggregate, especially in how they present Jews and Jewish topics.
Multiple Jewish and civil rights organizations have done a more comprehensive job at discussing this, even organizations who don't usually agree on things. While they talk about "anti-Israel bias" Wikipedia articles on or mentioning Zionism (80% of Jews are Zionist) are IMHO just as, if not more damaging, and demonstrate the issue.
Most importantly though, talk to the Jews in your life about this. They will tell you.
https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/news/wikipedia-entrie...
https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/article-846563
https://cameraoncampus.org/blog/seven-tactics-wikipedia-edit...
https://www.adl.org/resources/report/editing-hate-how-anti-i...
https://www.standwithus.com/post/it-s-time-to-correct-wikipe...
https://www.piratewires.com/p/how-wikipedia-s-pro-hamas-edit...
Once one believes that those who disagree with them are "pro-genocide", then they can easily dismiss anything the other has to say say or any view they have, since they're functionally dehumanized.
I would ask that, if you can, try to consider that there are nuances, and that using triggering language does not bring understanding, it only amplifies conflict.
That said, this conversation has been too difficult for me, and I'm not going to engage with you on it further.
Well said.
Hannah Arendt wrote a great book about this, but it sounds like you might have already read it.
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 clean uncontroversial edits until one day going for adminship.
Eostrix got 99% approval in their request for adminship. But it didn't matter, because an anonymous individual also spent years pursuing Eostrix, assembling evidence, and this resulted in Eostrix's block just days before they became a Wikipedia administrator.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investiga...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration_Com...
It's a useful contrast to a place like Reddit, where volunteer moderators openly admit to spreading terrorist propaganda or operating fake accounts when their original one gets banned. You don't get to do that on Wikipedia. If you try, someone with far too much time on their hands will catch you because Wikipedia doesn't need to care about Daily Active Users and the community cares about protecting a neutral point of view.
Not denying the existence of influence campaigns. There have been several major pro-Palestinian ones recently, which is probably why this letter has been sent. But the only reason you know about them is because Wikipedia openly fights them instead of covering them up. Most social media websites don't care and would rather you don't bring it to their attention. That is why Reddit banned /r/bannedforbeingjewish.
I agree that Icewhiz is an Emmanuel Goldstein-like figure at this point who's used by pro-Hamas editors/ultranationalists. A bunch of those pro-Palestinian editors that loved to complain about Icewhiz to deflect from their own behaviour were topic-banned from Israel-Palestine area a few months ago in January.[2]
It's challenging to deal with the Israel-Palestine conflict on any website that allows for user contributions. There's astroturfing and nation-state backed influence operations from probably a dozen countries. I don't think there's any website that has successfully navigated that minefield as well as Wikipedia.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests...
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests...
There's a survivorship bias in play here as we don't have a good other sample or more to compare to. After Wikipedia went big in the 2000s it was for a very long time a de-facto monopoly for people seeking out reference information on the Internet. Even Google's Knol project, which was intended to be a Wikipedia competitor, faltered after a few years. Same goes for Everipedia as well.
Power corrupts...
IA is at risk too.
[1] outside of identity politics
also english wikipedia is actually for english speakers.. so it includes countries that aren’t america. there’s a reason they didn’t name it american wikipedia.
https://emilygorcenski.com/post/on-truth/
""But one of the most significant differences critical for moving from polarization to productivity, is that the Wikipedians who write these articles aren’t actually focused on finding the truth. They’re working for something that’s a little more attainable, which is the best of what we can know right now. "
jmclnx•4h ago
shmerl•3h ago
> We, the Party, control all records, and we control all memories. Then we control the past, do we not?
dang•3h ago