YSK There’s someone running around Lemmy posting misinformation against Wikipedia
He generally shows most of the signs of the misinformation accounts:
Wants to repeatedly tell basically the same narrative and nothing else
Narrative is fundamentally false
Not interested in any kind of conversation or in learning that what he’s posting is backwards from the values he claims to profess
I also suspect that it’s not a coincidence that this is happening just as the Elon Musks of the world are ramping up attacks on Wikipedia, specially because it is a force for truth in the world that’s less corruptible than a lot of the others, and tends to fight back legally if someone tries to interfere with the free speech or safety of its editors.
Anyway, YSK. I reported him as misinformation, but who knows if that will lead to any result.
Edit: Number of people real salty that I’m talking about this: Lots
Lemmy is too small to be a worthwhile target for musk-like campaigns. It's usually just people escaping their echo chambers to get their rage fix. If you're able to think for yourself, there's really no negative impact and scrolling past is a great solution.
The misinfo crowd has been twiddling their collective thumbs since the election and trump winning. Can’t make up bs about egg and gas prices anymore. They’re half-ass trying to incite intergenerational conflict between X, Z, millenials, etc. Guess they found a new target. Exact same MO. Repeat the claim ad nauseam, refuse to acknowledge any contrary argument, their argument is objectively false.
On lemmy, this is far more likely to be some weird tankie shit about western propaganda. Though it is definitely noteworthy that the far right and far left seem to push a lot of the same misinformation on here.
Also, in general lemmy trolls are super easy to spot because they don't do anything else. All they do is whine about democrats or post Russian propaganda and never engage on any other topics.
Thinking of the most recent so-called "far left" thing I saw about Wikipedia, it was a video by BadEmpanada talking about the different portrayals of the Uyghur situation in China. A pretty balanced take btw, looking pretty impartially at all evidence and questioning the mindset of people with different perspectives on it. The discussion of WIkipedia there was that it does naturally take on some bias due to a reliance on Western media as authoritative or reliable sources. I think that is a fact. There's a process to determine something as fact which I think is too quick, the second there's something of a perceived consensus of experts or authoritative sources, something is stated as fact. In hard sciences, that's typically fine, but in politics or recent history, IMHO you need a much more meticulous approach, because you're in dangerous territory the second you start treating any propaganda narrative as fact.
There are major issues with wikipedia, I say this as someone with thousands of edits. But I know exactly who you are talking about and they spread pure BS.
The last time I saw them their account was called “ihatewikipedia” or “fuckwikipedia” or something like that lol and they were just spreading conspiracies. Or useless drama. Like they were going on about how wikipedia “invades your privacy”, it IP blocks people and tracks IP’s linked to editing.
it IP blocks people and tracks IP’s linked to editing
Unless something changed, this part was at least partially true at one point. But only for anonymous edits iirc. Usually happened for IPs shared by a lot of people like from a campus or some VPNs, probably due to a lot of vandalism from such IPs.
Last time I heard about wikipedia's donation campaign (maybe 2 4 years ago or so), it was notorious for advertising in such a way as to imply your funds would be used to keep wikipedia alive, whereas the reality was that only a small part of Wikimedia Foundation's income was needed for Wikipedia, and the rest was spent on rather questionable things like funding very weird research with little oversight. Did this change? If it didn't, I wouldn't particularly advise anyone to donate to them.
I actually took a look at Wikipedia's accounts last week as I remembered that campaign when I saw the latest campaign and did some due diligence before donating. I didn't donate, but I'm still glad Wikipedia exists.
What I remembered: That hosting costs were tiny and Wikimedia foundation had enough already saved up to operate for over a hundred years without raising any more.
What I saw: That if that was true, it isn't any longer. It's managed growth.
I don't think they are at any risk of financial collapse, but they are cutting their cloth to suit their income. That's normal in business, including charities. If you stop raising money, you stagnate. You find things to spend that money on that are within the charity's existing aims.
Some highlights from 2024: $106million in wages. 26m in awards and grants. 6m in "travel and conferences". Those last two look like optional spends to me, but may be rewards to the volunteer editors. The first seems high, but this is only a light skim
Net assets at EOY = $271 million. Hosting costs per year are $3million. It's doing okay.
Well, that's definitely a super trustworthy thing, not at all relevant to the question of whether there is misinformation floating around that is targeted at Wikipedia.
I looked up their financial reports somewhere else in these comments when talking to someone else, and long story short, it's not true. Also, just to annoy anyone who's trying to spread this type of misinformation, I just set up a recurring $10/month donation to Wikipedia. I thought about including a note specifically requesting that it be used only for rather questionable things and funding very weird research, but there wasn't a space for it.
Well, Google takes 15 to 30% off the in-app purchases made through Google Play, so you would probably be giving back Google their own money anyways, plus it would fool many people who might think they're giving 10€ when actually they're only giving 8,50€ or 7€ to Wikipedia and the rest to Google.
It's likely this is a bot if it's wide spread. And Lemmy is INCREDIBLY ill suited to handle even the dumbest of bots from 10+ years ago. Nevermind social media bots today.
To be fair, it's virtually impossible to tell whether a text was written by an AI or not. If some motivated actor is willing to spend money to generate quality LLM output, they can post as much as they want on virtually all social media sites.
The internet is in the process of eating itself as we speak.
You don't analyze the text necessary, you analyze the heuristics, behavioral patterns, sentiment....etc It's data analysis and signal processing.
You, as a user, probably can't. Because you lack information that the platform itself is in a position to gather and aggregate that data.
There's a science to it, and it's not perfect. Some companies keep their solutions guarded because of the time and money required to mature their systems & ML models to identify artificial behavior.
But it requires mature tooling at the very least, and Lemmy has essentially none of that.
But something like Reddit at least potentially has the resources to throw some money at the problem. They can employ advanced firewalls and other anti-bot/anti-AI thingies. It's very possible that they're pioneering some state-of-the-art stuff in that area.
Lemmy is a few commies and their pals. Unless China is bankrolling them, they're out of their league.
Interesting all this WP news I'm hearing today. Last week I downloaded the entirety of Wikipedia. Anyone can do it, the base archive (no pictures) is only about 25G, although the torrent is slow AF, took me... almost 2 weeks to download it.
I did this because I feel like this might be the last chance to get a version of it that has any vestige of the old order in it, the old order being "trying to stick to ideals and express truth rather than rewriting history to the fascists' specifications."
I'd love to be wrong, but if I'm not, I feel like it will potentially be a good reference in the future if needed.
It's possible that India will succeed at eroding by a little bit Wikipedia's resistance to having things rewritten because of various powerful people demanding it. But, if you're looking for an organization that's resistant against those demands, I don't think you will be able to find one that is anywhere near the equal of Wikipedia in terms of the scale at which it operates combined with the resistance it puts up when people do this.
Wow, they really sued the Wikimedia Foundation instead of trying to find a reliable source to refute the article's claims. I looked up the edits they made. They removed content, citing various Wikipedia policies that govern how the article should be phrased.
In general, so long as the information is presented in a neutral, matter-of-fact manner and cites a reliable source, it can go in the article. Wikipedia's job is to summarize what reliable sources say about a subject.
So all ANI would've needed to do was find a reliable source (preferably more than one) refuting the claims they want to refute. The most they'd likely be able to do is put both points of view in the article rather than removing one point of view entirely from the article, which is what they were trying to do.
That's interesting and terrifying all at once. If the Indian government is successful, it will basically set the precedent for other powerful entities such as autocrats, oligarchs, and corporations to also force Wikipedia to edit their content to suit their desires. I donate frequently and will keep making sure they can win.
Just some context, Hetzner gave the shaft to the Kiwix project and took down their content servers without any apparent notice (Kiwix's side of the story at least), and they had to rebuild it with another provider.
A lot of the sincere tankies, though, at least want to talk about what they’re into, and have elaborate reasons why it’s all true. The low-effort “I can’t even be bothered to try to mount a defense, I just wanted to say Wikipedia is doxing its users and kowtowing to fascist governments, and now that I’ve said it my task is done” behavior is a little more indicative of a disingenuous propaganda account in my experience.
The most likely scenario here is not many puppet accounts spreading sarcasm or parody but rather that there are many actors that all true believers in what they are all saying. They sound the same because they are feeding off the same talking point.
Yeah, the comments have gone completely off the rails.
The false narrative is that Wikipedia is doxxing the identities of its users to the Indian government, because they kowtow to any fascist government that asks them to. The reality is that the Indian government is mad about content on Wikipedia, has taken Wikipedia to court, and they've been fighting in court to avoid changing the content or revealing the user identities, and have proposed a compromise where they reveal some parts of the user identity to only the judge in the case, so that some procedural things can be satisfied without compromising the privacy of their users and also without getting WP shut down in India because they're thumbing their noses at the court.
What's actually happening sounds reasonable to me. The way the person is presenting it sounds like Wikipedia is doing terrible things on purpose and we shouldn't support them, and to me it looks like they're totally uninterested in addressing the discrepancy.
I have heard A user I am not allowed to dox posted that wikipedia makes a ton of money, way more than neccassary to run the site. The excess is getting funneled into the pockets of millionaires, in the ballpark of 300m/y. _ Is this not true?_ With this further understanding, would you be able to link a source verifying/disproving this claim?
To be clear, I have always been pro wiki, it stunned me when I read that.
Edit: had to do some formatting to emphasise a couple bits for the less reading inclined among us
Yeah, I was trying to talk about the situation without specifically linking to the comments or starting any kind of brigade situation. I figured being vague was better than being inflammatory, and anyone who cared enough would know what I was taking about, which seems to be accurate.
There's a lot of people posting lies and acting weird on Lemmy at the moment unfortunately. There's been a sudden shift from evidence based to being an echo chamber
A few months ago you could have a discussion and people would exchange evidence. Now evidence no longer matters. People here have started acting the same as places like truth social unfortunately. It's a pity and I do miss the real discussions here I used to have.
In fact, it's part of the reason I've started to move back to Reddit.
Back when I started beekeeping, none of us wore any PPE and we kept getting stung. We started wearing PPE and it was better, but recently I've been stung a few times so I'm just going to do back to raw dogging it.
I recently was looking for help troubleshooting an issue and ended up checking reddit and I was shocked at just how bad it got. There were AI generated comments that seemed to provide a solution, but the link went to some spam URL instead of the product they were supposedly talking about (and these were recent comments, not old dead links). The kind of stuff you used to see on unmoderated comment sections on WordPress sites that nobody maintained.
It's just as bad as lemmy. In other words, some subs are fine, others are garbage.
Lemmy is at a great disadvantage, being a distributed service run mostly (or perhaps even all of it) as a volunteer service. Although sometimes I'm partial to the conspiracy theory that this was developed as a Chinese and Russian psyop.
If it's the account that has already be pointed out it's very likely just a person. Probably angry that they didn't got their way into editing some wikipedia's article on their specific bias and got too affected by it.
Hi, I hope you're having a great day. What a silly question you asked, as we all know there are 8 R's in the word strawberry.
I hope you will go on having a wonderful day.
On the contrary, seems like a lot of disinformation accounts are trying to elevate Wikipedia as a credible source. Seems to be coming from the same people pushing pro-western narratives. Which isn’t surprising, as western governments have been caught funding mass editing to promote western narratives.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the effort to elevate Wikipedia as “credible” has been ramped up during this genocide. The Zionists teach classes to their people on how to manipulate the site for their narrative.
On the contrary, seems like a lot of disinformation accounts are trying to elevate Wikipedia as a credible source. Seems to be coming from the same people pushing pro-western narratives. Which isn’t surprising, as western governments have been caught funding mass editing to promote western narratives.
I know how you’d like it to be interpreted, based on your original post. But anyone with a smidge of media literacy would see this article is pointing out Wikipedia has poured efforts into bolstering western narratives, specifically against China and Russia, and to promote pro-NATO narratives. But based on your post history, I don’t expect you mind that slant.
Weird how you can just look at the source and references in a wikipedia article to do your own research while articles like this are just "trust me bro it's all a conspiracy"
I think that's kind of situational. They were freaking out recently about the genocide being labeled a genocide on Wikipedia, and IIRC the ADL being labeled an unreliable source.
I was interested enough in what he was saying that I read one of his sources, and it says the exact opposite of what he’s trying to use it to justify. It’s actually pretty interesting how big the difference is that he either didn’t care about or didn’t even notice. Then, after that happened, I downvoted him.
Carl Sagan, prejudice versus postjudice, yada yada yada.
The person claiming every piece of negative information about russia and china and other similar places is a usa psyop is now quoting rules against a post trying to make people aware of misinformation?! Color me surprised.
You've never answered why you pretend to be American while at the same time clearly supporting Russia and spreading Russian propaganda.
Are you such a weak-willed American you've bought into Russian propaganda?
Isn't it annoying when you can't just delete my comment and ban me like you alway do, mr Pro-Russian?
(This guys has said things like "reality has a well known Russian propaganda bias".)
He's pro-Russian, and will never answer that particular question despite being ready to lie about everything else, because he knows even a clear lie of "I hate Putin" written by him in the context of him being American could be reason enough for him to accidentally fall out of a window. Because Russia is a shithole autocracy.
This guy never states shit, goes around spamming wannabe good looking lists of links of shit that's incredibly easily shown to be utter shit, but because there's so much, it'll always just diverge from the actual point.
It's got a name.
An outgrowth of Soviet propaganda techniques, the firehose of falsehood is a contemporary model for Russian propaganda under Russian President Vladimir Putin.
All you need to do to prove this is try to get him to answer whether he's pro-Russian or not. Not a hard question, yet he just can't manage answering it.
I replied to the person directly with why it isn’t true, and I reported them with an actionable report.
I wasn’t sure about the ethics of brigading or linking directly at the person, but presumably anyone who cares can find them pretty easily, and anyone who reads this and then also reads the misinformation, will be able to see the connection and make their own decision about whether I am speaking truly.
I care, I have found nothing similar to what you're discussing.
anyone who reads this and then also reads the misinformation, will be able to see the connection
I just read a post that said Wikipedia was the best website on the internet, was that the misinformation? Someone else donated, was that misinformation? People have shared a variety of thoughts around Wikipedia, most of them are positive, but some are negative.
Negative doesn't mean wrong. Negative doesn't mean misinformation. It might be, but it isn't certain.
I don't know exactly what is going on with WikiPedia right this moment, mostly because I am neither glued to the news nor to WikiPedia, and I have no idea who this user you talk about is or what they are saying. However, WikiPedia isnt exactly a 100% trustworthy source, and it never really was.
Calling WikiPedia a "force for truth" is kind of silly, in my opinion. It can be helpful with basic information or finding potential sources, but it is definitely not something you should just immediately take everything on the site at face value. Within the last maybe 10 years or so, the credibility of its sources have started to come into question, at least on some of their recently authored/edited articles. It certainly doesnt help that literally anyone can edit most pages, and that WikiPedia is not a verifiably neutral information source on most things. What I mean by this is that, WikiPedia might list both positive and negative reception about a certain film or video game, for example, but they usually wont mention whether the negative points are outliers or whether there is overwhelmingly more positive reception except if there is a controversy section. This gives a surface appearance of being neutral, but actually skews toward whichever side is the dissenting opinion. For video games and film, they at least list reviews which can kind of mitigate this, but on articles regarding history or art, you cant exactly put reviews on historian/artist opinions. This can lead (and has lead) to some instances of sources quoting themselves (which I think is against WikiPedia rules?) and other hilarity.
Yes it does. But not all of that information is always true. Wikipedia pages are vandalized all the time, people quote sources that are later revealed as made up or not credible, these are all things that happen everywhere, WikiPedia is not immune to this. That is why I said WikiPedia is not a "force for truth." It can be correct, but can you guarantee that every time you go to WikiPedia, the information on any given page will always be 100% correct? This is all I meant.
There will always be issues with Wikipedia, but overwhelmingly it is a useful and reliable resource. Also, "its sources" are any reputable journalism from around the world.
Well as I said it, isn't completely useless. I mean, sources aren't always reputable. People make mistakes, people act in bad faith, things happen.
I was just saying that WikiPedia is not a "bastion of truth," because it is very susceptible to wrong information. Sure, the information may be correct most of the time on popular high traffic pages, but on low traffic pages, or pages that used to be low traffic and suddenly became high traffic because of some topical issue, can you really be sure that you aren't reading wrong or biased information? That is all I am bringing up. I think any person with a brain can realize this, but I wanted to be sure to mention it regardless, as many people seem to not meet that low specification.
I have a different perspective. I do think they are a force for truth, because it is a forum for openly sharing information. Not all of the information that is shared will neccesarily be truthful or correct, but as long as it remains open and collaborative, the truth will prevail.
Another point is that the sources for the information are cited (or at least requested and notated when missing), and it must always be the responsibility of the reader to check and understand the sources.
but it is definitely not something you should just immediately take everything on the site at face value.
I don't think this should ever be the expectation for any source of information, really.
I remember some guys in high school altered the wikipedia page for the high school or principal or something and it was up in its altered hilarious state for a few days before it got reverted. I always think about that when reading Wikipedia pages. I might be reading a Wikipedia page during a window where the information is maybe disingenuous. Always good to be on your toes.
I've heard from a few people that there are people that edit a lot of articles with a lot of bias and have been getting away with it. It'd be interesting for a journalist to really go into it.
I’ve heard from a few people that there are people that edit a lot of articles with a lot of bias and have been getting away with it. It’d be interesting for a journalist to really go into it.
This is definitely the case for certain niche topics. A few power editors can push agendas as long as they have a handful of reliable sources, no end of time, and a good knowledge of Wiki's bureaucratic processes.
Love wiki, but don't take it for more than a very useful encyclopedia - as the name suggests.
It can be helpful with basic information or finding potential sources, but it is definitely not something you should just immediately take everything on the site at face value.
This I definitely agree with. Some of the rest of your message is, in my opinion, not exactly how it works, but all of this is besides the point. What I am saying is misinformation is that WP doxxed its editors to an Indian court, kowtows to any fascist government that asks them to, or is protecting a genocidal cult. All of those were claimed and then when we tried to talk about the claims with the person posting them, that person either evaporated or dissembled about it.
If someone posted an article saying that anyone can edit Wikipedia so take it with a grain of salt, I would never have cared and probably would have upvoted them.
I don’t think it will, though. I’ve reported the misinformation, and it’s still up as of right now.
I honestly am not even sure that mods should be in the habit of deciding that things are “probably” misinformation and removing them. In practice, they are not in that habit, so it’s not a solution. And even if they were, I certainly don’t think that the whole topic should be banned for discussion among the rest of us.
Dude. It's Christmas, and even if it wasn't, mods aren't a 24/7 presence.
If something gets seen and handled in a day or two, it's fine for anything that isn't illegal or dangerous to the instance.
Not that the mods/admins have to agree with your interpretation of whatever it is being misinformation to the kind of standard that needs intervention, but there's other reasons it could still be up that are entirely unrelated
My guy it's fucking Christmas day. The post itself is 2 hours old right now. Your response to that post is a whole whopping 4 hours old right now. Allow the admins to have at least a small grace period where they aren't sitting right at the controls. Lemmy is nowhere near as big as Reddit, with large admin and mod teams able to take shifts.
"PSA I reported an account because they have bad arguments in my opinion" seems like a terrible precedent of a post for this sub. Why are people upvoting this junk.
You should just report, block, and move on. If someone is a regular offender, their instance admin can just ban them. If they operate their own instance, they can be defederated.
It's good to identify bad actors, but there's no shortage of people with dumb opinions (even on Lemmy), and pointing them out like this only gives them more attention—exactly the kind of thing they want.