Corruption and bribes in Wikipedia
It might not be news to everyone that Wikipedia — especially in the EN version — has issues with editors using Wiki articles to spread political propaganda and libeling innocents, sometimes being bribed to do so. Most of Wikipedia readers should have noticed that articles related to anything controversial are heavily biased if not purely propagandistic. This puts shame on the rest of Wikipedia, and on the work of honest editors who spend their free time making unbiased articles.
Well, now there is compelling evidence proving Wikipedia has a problem with wild, biased, and even bribed editors.
We have to credit the investigators in #Gamergate for that find. The vast majority of the edits done to the page were done by editors who are openly against #GamerGate:
As you can see, Ryulong and NorthBySouthBaranof are responsible for the main edits on the article — other editors merely did minor changes. Both of those guys are part of a movement against #GamerGate, funded on racism and misandry as you can see by the following evidence:
This is pretty much the equivalent of letting Benito Mussolini and his black shirts write the article on Fascist Italy; of course it’s going to be a bunch of propaganda.
They built an article quoting mainly sources against #GamerGate and avoided reporting the more unbiased or even pro-#GamerGate sources:
But here comes the most worrying part: Ryulong was given bribes by Anti-#GamerGate to edit the article against #GamerGate
This problem is quickly spreading to other issues. Those editors recently vandalized the Radical Feminism article by removing the entire “criticism” section even though it was well-sources and the sources were reliable by Wikipedia standards.
This was the part they removed:
Of course knowing that all Feminism groups dissociate from Radical Feminist due to their victimistic, dishonest, anti-white misandrist nature didn’t go well with certain Radical Feminist editors.
After this, they attacked the article on Cultural Marxism, first discrediting it as a conspiracy theory, then entirely removing it. Note that, as I often say, I did my thesis on Antonio Gramsci’s Cultural Hegemony (which is where Cultural Marxism was born), it is an historicall proven fact that it exists. To put it simple, Cultural Hegemony means creating an elite among the middle class that creates a narrative to herd the middle class and direct them how they want. I can see why editors creating false narratives to mislead people would want to censor this.
This spiraled out of control, first with Jimmy Wales doing some attempt to restore the article, and finally with a Wikipedia Administrator quitting his position because the agenda-driven clique’s control is getting crazy.
How do these editors get away with it?
The main strategy biased editors adopt to create false narratives is to report their side in a confident, matter-of-facty tone that leaves little doubt in the reader, while at at the same time misrepresenting the opposition using shaky, disillusioned statements. Sometimes the opposition’s statements are even followed by a counter-statement (worded much better) that invalidates them.
Another reason they get away with it is that Wikipedia’s higher ups are unwilling to denounce the bad editors or even punish their misconduct.
When Jimmy Wales was warned about this situation, he initially made a statement against bribed editors
But as evidence of bribed editors appeared around the web, Wales ultimately decided to side with the editors instead, for the sake of defending Wikipedia.
He even retweeded a guy who openly admitted to have donated to Wikipedia solely over Wales siding with Anti-#GamerGate
While it is understandable that he tried to defend Wikipedia’s interests, siding with obviously biased, agenda-driven editors wasn’t a great idea; I think we can all agree the better action in this case would be to weed out the bad apples poisoning the well, rather than trying to cover them up.
Why is this so important?
One of the main fundaments of Democracy and Human Rights is that all humans are presumed innocent until evidence that they are guilty. This is a very important concept; without it, anyone can be jailed, dehumanized and criminalized over baseless accusations. Luckily, this doesn’t happen in the first world because citizen are entitled to being innocent until due process decides otherwise.
#GamerGate counts more than 40,000 people and the article associates them with criminal accusations. The FBI investigated on those accusations for several months and the #GamerGate folks are still innocent and not guilty of any of those charges. Not to mention there isn’t even a trial on any of them. No evidence, no trials, and an FBI investigation leading to innocence? Not enough for Wikipedia biased editors.
Being innocent in front of the law is not enough for Wikipedia.
Are we stepping into an era where Wikipedia is judge and jury?
