If Wikipedia was called "liberalopedia", not many people would use it either.
And to their credit it didn't start out with any bias. I'll be downvoted for this I know, but it has a bias which developed over time.
For example it blacklists Fox News but allows CNN or MSNBC as valid citable sources.
To verify, and not just take my statement as truth, search for yourself "perennial source list Wikipedia".
There a whole host of other problems, including anonymity and partiality of the high level bureaucrats or admins. It started out as a good system but morphed into one with a lot of bias, because if the bias in high ranking volunteers, which is very hard to get rid of.
I do not know how Elon will plan to avoid similar bias, it is indeed a difficult human engineering problem - not necessity software engineering problem.
Gee I wonder why!
Maybe because of the constant lying, corruption, and absolute MAGA cult bias.
Wikipedia is biased towards truth, which incidentally looks like left-leaning bias to MAGA since they constantly lie about EVERYTHING
Honestly I can’t believe I have to read this kind of garbage on HN.
Really, why would any right-minded person want to settle for Wikipedia?
Plus, if you're citing Wikipedia verbatim instead of using it as an aggregator for secondary sources, you're using it wrong.
There's bureaucracy that makes this nearly impossible.
Wikipedia sources include liberal news media (e.g. CNN) but blacklist others (Fox News). So it is highly biased by the rules they set up.
To challenge the sources you need to become an admin, of which there are only 82. And they are anonymous, so you cannot call them out for misinformation or bias.
The edit history is present and you can see "tampering" or bias on many articles, in the form of reverted clarifications citing blacklisted sources or other reasons. There are many examples, one that I was following last year was about "Yasuke", which turned out to be based on very debatable source at best, or likely complete fabrication since it was propagated by one historian who was proven to be fraudulent.
It's been called out many times. Most recently by the 1 and half hour long interview of Wikipedia employee by Tucker Carlson.
But just because the history is there, it doesn't really matter. Some random person looking something up will not see the history.
Like I said originally - Wikipedia is an annotated source aggregator. If it so happens that the liberal-aligned sources are the only ones reporting on war or hate crimes, then you'll have to excuse the moderators for ignoring the protests of Fox News Australia and Times of Israel. Your reputation matters, in journalism.
Peritract•4mo ago
He has a documented history (charitably) overly-optimistic claims and (accurately) lies. On multiple occasions, he (or an unnamed disgruntled employee who happens to share his exact views) has manipulated the output of his own chatbot to push particular political positions.
He's very unlikely to actually do this, and if he did, it would not do what he describes.
rbanffy•4mo ago
The incentives are completely backwards in his case, and his history shows a blatant disregard for accuracy or responsible use of information.
jqpabc123•4mo ago
All he would be doing is documenting the fact that right wing propaganda is poorly rooted in facts.
But then again, a lot if what Musk does is the same. FSD is not really "full self driving". And he has filed a motion in federal court to keep crash data away from the public.
So he may try to do this but he won't do it in the straightforward way you would expect. For example, he may combine this with using legal means to impede wikipedia.
latexr•4mo ago
Sadly, it has become abundantly clear that facts don’t matter when forming opinions.
jqpabc123•4mo ago
billy99k•4mo ago
I've compared the bias from X and other platforms and you generally get both sides of the argument. Blue sky bans anything not left-leaning. This is evident by first-hand accounts and the fact that you never see both sides of an argument.
latexr•4mo ago
Mind sharing your methodology? I doubt a single person could accurately determine this without a very well laid out process.
Every study I’m finding, even when specifically searching for left biases, concludes Twitter is very right leaning. Which makes sense: Its owner is very openly right-wing, repeatedly posts right-wing-leaning fabrications, has shown to be thin-skinned and actively amplifies his own account and those who spout right-wing views, so it’s no wonder most who remain are those who agree.
rsynnott•4mo ago
Bluesky is a _hostile environment_ for the far-right, in that people won't be nice to them, and might put them on blocklists, but they're absolutely allowed.