As Big Tech suppresses conservative views in the name of fighting “fake news,” tech titans like Google and Facebook turn to Wikipedia to provide another “fix” to the problem. Despite messaging from Wikipedia’s owners encouraging this trend, over the years Wikipedia and its sister sites have pushed hoaxes and false information into the media and academia.
Some of the most extreme political bias on Wikipedia involves editors who support the violent left-wing group Antifa and protect the group’s image on the site. This has included downplaying Antifa’s far-left views and violence, even censoring major incidents and involvement in recent rioting. Many Antifa supporters, including self-identified anarchists and socialists, have taken to smearing the group’s opponents to defend violence against those opponents and portray their concerns as paranoia.
Following a month of discussion involving over 150 Wikipedia editors, Fox News is no longer deemed “generally reliable” as a source on political and scientific topics, a downgrade from its prior status. The official finding by a three-person panel of administrators, users with advanced privileges on Wikipedia, was that “no consensus” existed on Fox’s reliability in those areas. The finding came in an election year despite a plurality of editors believing Fox should retain its status as a generally reliable source alongside CNN and the Guardian, one of Wikipedia’s third most-cited sources.
Last week a company named Wikiprofessionals was banned from Wikipedia after an editor identified accounts the firm allegedly used for undisclosed paid editing. In a subsequent discussion, editors agreed to delete articles reputedly created by the firm and have so far deleted over a dozen. Articles deleted include ones on executives of social media game company Zynga and a Qatari billionaire who married pop singer Janet Jackson.
Editors on Wikipedia had financial blog Zero Hedge banned as a Wikipedia source following a NBC News hit piece about its criticism of Black Lives Matter, which got the blog temporarily demonetized by Google and labeled “far-right” on its Wikipedia page. The Federalist, also targeted by the piece and threatened with demonetization, was smeared when editors repeated false claims in the initial piece followed by further negative edits to the outlet and founder Ben Domenech’s pages. Both were previously smeared on Wikipedia.
Editors on Wikipedia have repeatedly added smears about Fox News pundit and journalist Tucker Carlson to the site since his show became a major voice supporting President Donald Trump. This has included attacks over his criticism of the Russiagate collusion narrative, his comments about immigration, his use of “Chinese coronavirus” to refer to the current pandemic, and even trying to minimize a violently threatening Antifa “protest” outside his house where his wife was alone at night.
Since the death of George Floyd in police custody in late May, Wikipedia has been subject to a wide-ranging campaign by left-wing editors favorable to the Black Lives Matter movement with encouragement from the Wikimedia Foundation, which owns the site. Articles have been regularly stripped of material detrimental to the movement and the site’s front page used as a platform for messages favorable to their cause and harmful to President Donald Trump.
After radio host Mark Levin criticized the “police-state tactics” of the Obama Administration in its use of intercepts and FISA warrants in 2017, editors on Wikipedia began to attack Levin’s credibility through edits to his page on the site. The criticism, which allegedly prompted President Donald Trump’s controversial wire-tapping allegations, has since been vindicated by revelations about widespread falsehoods in FISA warrants issued against Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, seen now as part of a broader Obamagate scandal. A number of attacks on Levin eventually ended up in news articles shortly before and after the premiere of his show on Fox News.
Conservative black activist Candace Owens has been subject to a prolonged smear campaign on Wikipedia since expressing her support for President Donald Trump. Many of the edits made to her page have selectively quoted or misrepresented Owens to portray her negatively. This included recent comments she made criticizing attempts to minimize the criminal past of George Floyd in the wake of his death in police custody.
An article in the Intercept last week reported that a Wikipedia editor was scrubbing the page of former Democratic Presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), considered a prominent member of the shortlist to be Joe Biden’s Vice Presidental pick. The piece mentioned changes such as removing a past campaign finance scandal and Harris’ record as a hard-line prosecutor. Changes not mentioned include removals of the alleged role nepotism played in her early political career and significant favorable additions about Harris.
Wikipedia editors have censored the page about the police-involved shooting of Rayshard Brooks by removing any mention of Brooks’ violent criminal history, despite him violently resisting arrest which precipitated police use of force. Criticism of District Attorney Paul Howard’s decision to charge officer Garrett Rolfe with felony murder has also been removed.
Last month Wikipedia’s Arbitration Committee, often likened to a Supreme Court, sanctioned a member of the Board of Trustees for the Wikimedia Foundation, which owns the site. The board member, Dr. James Heilman, was barred from edits related to drug pricing in medical articles following disputes with other Wikipedia editors about the propriety of such edits. Heilman, an ER doctor, argued for the inclusion of drug prices in articles and accused the American drug industry of seeking to conceal such details.
Throughout June, Wikipedia activists have been conducting an “edit-a-thon” started by a newly-established Black Lives Matter group on the site, creating large amounts of content on “racial justice” issues. Among their efforts, editors have got numerous articles on racism or alleged police brutality to appear on the front page with several articles having already been featured, including one smearing President Donald Trump and one promoting a book pushing “white guilt” on readers.
After riots over the death of George Floyd in police custody prompted renewed attention to the violent far-left group Antifa, editors on Wikipedia sought to keep out or minimize any mention of Antifa’s involvement in rioting as part of the group’s page on the site. Material about past Antifa violence was also removed and an effort has been made to soften or remove the description of Antifa as a far-left militant group.
Facebook is testing a new feature that integrates Wikipedia pages in Facebook search results. Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger admitted in May that the popular open collaboration encyclopedia is riddled with leftist bias.
A late 2018 analysis by a Wikipedia editor, banned from the site at the time due to criticism of political bias, showed left-wing British outlet the Guardian was the third most-cited news source on the online encyclopedia after the New York Times and the BBC, in many cases to make negative claims about President Donald Trump and other conservatives. Most of the top-cited news sources on Wikipedia are establishment left-leaning news outlets. Conservative outlets are disfavored by Wikipedia editors who cite the site’s standards for “reliable sources” with some outlets, including Breitbart, formally banned.
The Wikimedia Foundation, which owns Wikipedia, last Wednesday joined the chorus of companies organizations supporting the Black Lives Matter movement following the police-involved death of George Floyd. In its announcement, the Foundation stated there was “no neutral stance” on racial justice. They further committed to making Wikipedia and other Foundation-owned sites more “inclusive” through measures such as a “universal code of conduct” the Foundation Board recently demanded.
The Wikimedia Foundation, which owns Wikipedia, recently announced that it will impose a “universal code of conduct” on the site and others owned by the Foundation to make them “safe spaces” and improve the “diversity” of the community. The move comes a year after the Foundation took the unprecedented step of banning a veteran administrator, breaching the traditionally self-governing nature of Wikipedia’s community and sparking a revolt that ultimately saw the ban overturned.
Left-wing Wikipedia editors are using articles about the police-involved death of George Floyd and subsequent protests to attack President Donald Trump, including creating individual articles attacking his statements and actions to get them on Wikipedia’s front page. Editors have unduly favored comments criticizing Trump or America, even uncritically repeating attacks from authoritarian governments such as China and Iran, and emphasized police violence over violence from protestors, including Antifa. Such efforts have extended to pushing claims of “far-right” involvement.
Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales wasted no time in criticizing President Donald Trump for his recent executive order relating to social media, calling the President a “lunatic.”
Even as the criticism of Wikipedia’s left-wing political bias intensifies, including from the site’s co-founder Larry Sanger, the major tech platforms continue to use the online encyclopedia in their services and rely on it as a model for addressing “fake news” concerns. Rather than improving their services, the integration of Wikipedia into Big Tech platforms has, instead, made them disseminate false or biased information.
Larry Sanger, the co-founder of Wikipedia, published a blog post this month declaring that the online encyclopedia’s “neutral point of view” policy is “dead” due to the rampant left-wing bias of the site. Noting the article on President Donald Trump, Sanger contrasted its extensive coverage of presidential scandals with the largely scandal-free article on former President Barack Obama.
Wikipedia has deleted its ‘List of Scientists Who Disagree with the Scientific Consensus on Global Warming’.
Researchers found in a 2017 study that edits to Wikipedia about scientific subjects influenced the content of scientific literature and what studies would be cited in papers based on their usage on the “online encyclopedia.” Last year, another study found edits about Spanish cities had a measurable impact on tourist activity and an earlier study found investor sentiment could also be influenced. In the case of scientific research, the results showed that the creation of one Wikipedia page influenced up to 250 scientific papers.
Early in 2017, just months before 2020 Democratic Presidential candidate Andrew Yang announced his resignation as head of his non-profit firm Venture for America, the organizations’s Marketing Manager, Katie Bloom, created his Wikipedia page. No affiliation was disclosed, potentially violating the site’s Terms of Use.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, a former close friend of Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), said he lost because he sided with the “Ilhan Omar wing” of his party.
Slate reported in December that the Wikipedia article for 2020 Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg was created by Neehar Garg, a former volunteer for one of his state campaigns. While Garg admitted to Slate that he operated the accounts responsible for Buttigieg’s page, Wikipedia administrators used their advanced privileges to censor mentions of the report from both Buttigieg’s article and other parts of Wikipedia, claiming it was to protect Garg’s identity.
The Home Alone 2: Lost in New York Wikipedia page was reportedly altered briefly this week to note the impeachment of President Donald Trump, who appeared in a brief cameo in the Christmas classic.
Wikipedia’s GamerGate article has long been subjected to biased editing by opponents of the anti-corruption movement in gaming. They have been aided by major media sources that spent years defaming the movement, which had paid particular attention to press corruption. Breitbart News has found that many of these outlets, including BBC News, USA Today, the Daily Telegraph, and the Los Angeles Times have sometimes relied on Wikipedia itself for their false characterizations of GamerGate without crediting the online encyclopedia.
China critics the Epoch Times and conservative outlet the Gateway Pundit have been banned from use as reliable sources on Wikipedia in the latest cases of news outlets that support President Trump being banned from the online encyclopedia. The Epoch Times ban proposal cited NBC’s hit piece on the site over its coverage of improprieties in the Russia investigation, commonly called Spygate, which prompted smear efforts against the outlet on Wikipedia. Gateway Pundit was proposed for a ban shortly after Epoch Times.
Five years ago Wikipedia got sucked into the controversy over GamerGate, the anti-corruption movement in gaming. The narrative found on Wikipedia, like many others about GamerGate, is a lie. Wikipedia’s treatment of GamerGate foreshadows the site’s treatment of many political issues during the Donald Trump presidency.
Numerous high-profile pages on Wikidata, a data site affiliated with Wikipedia, contained long-standing defamatory vandalism according to criticism site Wikipediocracy. This included First Lady Melania Trump, who was labeled a “former sex worker and porn star” on Wikidata for more than a week. Many Wikipedia-affiliated sites use Wikidata’s information, so the description consequently appeared at her page on Simple Wikipedia, whose target audience expressly includes children, and remained for over a week.
As reports circulated identifying Eric Ciaramella as the alleged “whistleblower” driving efforts to impeach President Donald Trump, Wikipedia editors attempted to mention him in articles on the site. However, Wikipedia admins used their advanced privileges to delete records of his name, block creation of pages on Ciaramella, and even banned his name completely.
As controversy over President Donald Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy continues, Wikipedia editors likewise continue their efforts to slant related articles in favor of Democrat talking points. This has included falsely labeling allegations of Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 election in favor of the Democrats as “conspiracy theories” and claiming as fact that Trump used military aid as part of a “quid pro quo” with Ukraine.
In June, the Foundation that owns Wikipedia banned “Fram” who was one of the site’s veteran administrators, prompting an editor revolt with administrators resigning en masse and some using their advanced privileges to override the Foundation’s actions. The Foundation eventually backed down and allowed Wikipedia’s community-elected Arbitration Committee to review the ban, which they lifted, giving the revolt a notable victory — but Fram’s adminstrator privileges were not restored.
Venezuela’s freedom of speech was mutilated long ago. It wasn’t done overnight but, rather, carried out through a series of incremental steps that led us to this point.
A BBC investigation of Wikipedia found that communist China is manipulating the supposed “online encyclopedia” using techniques such as “mass edits.” The investigation found more than 1,600 edits on 22 “politically sensitive” topics such as the Hong Kong protests.
Echoing media outlets covering President Trump’s controversial July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and the resulting impeachment inquiry by Congressional Democrats, the intro to Wikipedia’s article on the controversy focuses solely on Trump supposedly demanding an “investigation” into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son. Both the media and Wikipedia have ignored or minimized that President Trump’s biggest concern was Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election helping spark the discredited “Russiagate” investigation.
After NBC News published a hit piece on news outlet the Epoch Times and its association with the Falun Gong, a spiritual movement persecuted by China’s government, the Wikipedia page for the outlet was vandalized and filled with attacks sourced to the piece. One editor involved has a history of attacking Falun Gong and defending Chinese communist figures such as Mao Zedong.
The Wikipedia page on Quillette journalist Andy Ngo was repeatedly vandalized in response to his reporting on the most recent Antifa-related violence in Portland. Although most vandalism was removed within minutes, some stayed up for hours before being removed.
