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
People posting misinformation? On Lemmy? No. It can’t be.
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.
Misinformation… you mean lies?
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 changer
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.
In fact, it’s part of the reason I’ve started to move back to Reddit.
Lol, yeah cuz Reddit has no bots at all.
Great idea. Good bye
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.
Yeah horseshoe theory is an actual thing and it shows hard here on Lemmy. Same lies, same taxticts, different extremists.
Horseshoe theory doesn’t fit-- it’s stethoscope theory
In this case it’s not so much horseshoe theory as it is that most tankies on lemmy are just trolls, or teenagers parroting trolls.
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.
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.
There’s an option to donate on their website here: https://donate.wikipedia.org/ I’m starting monthly at $5 and possibly bumping up to $10 later on.
really wish there was a way to pay with “Google play” because I found a way to get Google play money by lying to google lol
Last time I heard about wikipedia’s donation campaign (maybe
24 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’m donating 10 a month. Least I can do. It’s one of the last “good” places on the internet
There was a big “information” campaign against donating to wikipedia say 6 months - 2 years ago, anyone know what happened/why?
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.
Is it space karen?
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.
spend money to generate quality LLM output, they can post as much as they want on virtually all social media sites.
$20 for a chatgpt pro account and fractions of pennies to run a bot server. It’s really extremely cheap to do this.
I don’t have an answer to how to solve the “motivated actor” beyond mass tagging/community effort.
$20 for a chatgpt pro account and fractions of pennies to run a bot server. It’s really extremely cheap to do this.
openAI has checks for this type of thing. They limit number of requests per hour with the regular $20 subscription
you’d have to use the API and that comes at a cost per request, depending on which model you are using. it can get expensive very quickly depending on what scale of bot manipulation you are going for
Ur a bot. I can tell by the
pixelsunicode.Edit: joking aside you bring up a good point and our security through
anonymitycultural irrelevance will not last forever. Or maybe it will.
Wikipedia is an alien plot to get Earthlings to read more. DON’T FALL FOR IT!!! . . . ./s
Please donate to Wikipedia if you can.
I’ve heard wikipedia has alot of money anyway but i don’t know.
Wikipedia financials can be found here under Finances. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation
Here’s another good summary: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer
Many people say
What has that got to do with the price of fish?
did you reply to the wrong thing? or you specialize in bad jokes that are impossible for anyone to think funny?
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.
https://www.wired.com/story/wikipedia-state-sponsored-disinformation/
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.
https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2010/aug/18/wikipedia-editing-zionist-groups
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.
https://www.wired.com/story/wikipedia-state-sponsored-disinformation/
I think you should read the article you linked to, and then reread the way that you summarized what’s in it, maybe make some edits.
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.
Here’s what Wired had to say when they weren’t quoting a Koch foundation funded study: https://www.wired.com/2007/08/wiki-tracker/
And just like that, I had an attack of perspective. Why am I in this conversation? Everyone watching seems to understand that you’re changing your story and talking nonsense, so it seems unnecessary for me to say anything else for their sake. And it seems highly unlikely that, on your side, you’re going to suddenly come to some kind of realization along the lines of, “You know what? Reality does have an anti-Putin bias, and quite a strong one, so it makes perfect sense that a source that made an attempt at publishing objective truth would be against Russia in terms of the ‘bias’ of a lot of the facts that it publishes. As well as being against Israel, NATO, or ‘the West’ in general, when those governments in turn do terrible things. I think I should spend less time carrying water for genocidal maniacs who happen to wear the right color hat, and start being reasonable.”
So I hope your talking points go really well. You’ve said that Wikipedia is terrible. Well done! Mission accomplished. Feel free to continue, I won’t stop you.
Edit: Changed to “anti-Putin,” I have no problem with Russia or Russians, just their government.
It’s not the anti-Russia slant that concerns me. It’s the pro-Ukraine/pro-NATO angle.
Good rule of thumb: if you’re having trouble figuring out who’s the bad guys, it’s the side with Nazi symbols on their uniforms.
Please keep putting “Ukraine are the bad guys” stuff right next to “Wikipedia are the bad guys” stuff. I promise, it’s totally accomplishing the mission and convincing everyone, and not at all a powerful living example of why maintaining free flow of information is an important thing, and no one particular government’s perspective can be trusted to define the “correct” type of narrative and media literacy. You’re killing it.
Sure. I’ll keep going.
Armies with Nazi symbols on their uniforms are the bad guys. Military alliances committing genocide are the bad guys. Common sense, right?
Philip would like everyone reading to believe that these organizations controlling what is permitted to stand as “truth” on Wikipedia is a good thing.
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”
So to clarify, you do not believe intelligence agencies are manipulating Wikipedia?
Which wikipedia article? Check the references of that article. That’s your answer.
Except the intelligence orgs and think tanks are also making up the source information. That’s how it works. They make up the initial info, launder it through a source, coordinate with the media to reference that source, get their editors to use the laundered info as a source in their wiki edits, etc. It’s a self-referential and self re-enforcing disinformation scheme. And it’s why western governments are working hard to ban opposition media outlets, deplatform anti-imperialist public figures, and ban/censor social media that allows anti-imperialist messaging through that challenges their narrative.
You should read up on “manufacturing consent.”
https://www.cato.org/commentary/how-national-security-state-manipulates-news-media
You should read up on “manufacturing consent.”
https://ponder.cat/post/962017/1196897
I realize you weren’t talking to me, but trying to pretend the people you are talking with aren’t familiar with propaganda systems, or trying to cite Chomsky as to why we need to let Wikipedia get corrupted, is absolutely hilarious. One of the absolute hallmarks of Chomsky’s work was that you need to evaluate claims in terms of the objective facts, and the definitions of the words involved, and not let whether it is “pro-Western” or “anti-Western” taint your evaluation of whether or not it is true.
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.
everybody click your wrongthink ⬇️ button, quick!
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 article you’re talking about reads like a case of “our holy narrative-correcting taskforce vs their pagan misinformation agents”
[bad actors] put in the effort to build reputation…, mixing legitimate page edits with the more politically sensitive ones
through subtle changes like casting doubt on the objectivity of pro-Western accounts
they also mention adding links from Russian state-owned news, but the article doesn’t indicate that those things happen in the same incidents though mentioning it in the same sentence is certainly an attempt to conflate them. It’s one thing to remove insufficiently reliable sources, correcting misrepresented facts, and banning the wreckers that consistently produce it, but I think there is an issue if validly-sourced edits are being censored by “bias adjusters” (NPOV purposes withstanding) just because the content is deemed to have been written by a suspected bad actor.
the article you’re talking about reads like a case of “our holy narrative-correcting taskforce vs their pagan misinformation agents”
Sure, if you want to make this new, totally different argument, you’re welcome to. My point was that the original argument, that western governments have been caught funding mass editing to promote western narratives, was exactly backwards from what’s in the article. If you now want to say that funding mass editing for anti-Western narratives is a good thing to do, and it’s a bad thing Wikipedia making a “holy narrative-correcting task force” to try to stop it, then sure. You can.
Now I’m thinking you didn’t actually read the article. The entire thing is bragging about massive efforts enforcing western narratives on Wikipedia.
But considering your post history is a flood of western narratives, I understand how you wouldn’t be able to interpret that as a bad thing. You’re either a very enthusiastic volunteer in this effort, or getting paid for it.
But considering your post history is a flood of western narratives
https://ponder.cat/post/962017/1196897
https://ponder.cat/post/995769/1228100
Actually… when I was looking for a good third one, a random question occurred to me. Do you think Trump represents a violent force of Western imperialism? Are you worried about what Trump will do to accelerate various US crimes across the world, notably including support for Israel in its current genocidal activities?
I spoke against the bot farms. Their wrath is coming.
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.
This is in the news because Wikipedia is refusing to rewrite history to the fascists’ specifications.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdrdydkypv7o
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.
Instead, they went to court about it.
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.
Shit. I better donate.
I donate every year and they made it easier than ever this year if you use Apple Pay or anything equivalent. Like 15 seconds and that includes chhosing amount.
edit: for us with the lazys
Thanks for posting this. I just gave my entire Apple Cash balance. I had no idea what I was gonna use it for and this seemed likea worthy cause. Wikipedia just got $140 because of you.
Kiwix is a self hostable option for this, and you can get other content databases as well, like wikiHow, iFixit, and Khan Academy.
The downloads are much faster than two weeks too.
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.
Interesting, that’s too bad. Seems like it’s not an uncommon occurrence for Hetzner.
Who cares? If anything this just amplifes the misinformation.
I care.
This post amplifies my foresight into shitty misinformation existing which amplifies my ability to avoid/call it out.
There’s only one reason you might not like that kind of stuff being amplified. Go ahead, take a wild guess as to why.
What is this false narrative? Genuine question, I’m out of the loop and might not recognize the misinformation if/when I see it.
Sorry if it’s a stupid question, couldn’t work it out from a quick scan of the comments.
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.
Thank you!
I have heardA 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
I have heard that
Alright, Ill accept that my phrasing was poor. Evidently I should’ve phrased it as “a user that I am not allowed to dox posted this bit of possible misinformation.”
I figured there would be high enough reading comprehension to make my meaning clear, since I clearly framed it as possible misinformation in a thread about misinformation. Short of the comment i replied to, the thread did not actually state any of the misinformation that people were actually supposed to look out for.
It’s not true. Audited financial statements are here:
https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/financial-reports/
Their gross income for each of the last couple of years was around $160 million. I have no idea where you got the idea that there’s “ballpark” $300 million per year of “excess,” but that part definitely is totally untrue and a few minutes of checking can disprove it. I assume the rest of it is made up also. Wikipedia is one of the top ten web sites in the world. I have no real idea whether $160 million is a reasonable amount of money to use to operate the site, or whether there is “excess” someone is siphoning off, but the specific statements you’re making are disprovable, and I tend to assume they originally were made up for the same reasons as the other made-up statements I’m talking about in this post.
It does look like they don’t currently have any funding issues. They have 1.5 years of reserves and give about 15% of their income out in grants to other organizations. And like most web sites, the actual hosting costs are a relatively small part of their operation.
Very true. But what if Elon goes on a crusade against Wikipedia? Or he’ll, just continues to spread misinformation/slander against it? He wouldn’t have to spend a penny and Wikipedia would start feeling the burn, his influence is great sadly. The sheer amount o people that would cause problems for them would grow exponentially. 1.5 years is not enough when this asshole is basically the president for the next 4 years. It’s very sad things have gotten this bad. :(
Nice, appreciate it. I would assume I mistve read one of the posters you were referring to. I didnt care enough to check myself, as I have never had enough money to donate in the first place. But wikipedia is in my top 4 most used websites, so your post caught my attention and you seemed to be educated enough on the situation to simply ask you. Seemed like a pointless he said/she said without your source though, hence requesting it.
Lazy users just posting whatever 3rd hand half truth they misunderstood is a scourge. It might as well be a glue-pizza recommending AI post.
Glue pizza might actually be better. Ask yourself why anyone would need to make cheese stick to pizza. Because that’s not really a typical culinary issue. So, the answer came from practical effect strategies for a commercial cheese-stretch shot.
Now, I’m not saying that there isn’t still an issue with this type of misunderstanding. But, it’s not “hur-dur, just glue it” that everyone always paints it as.
It’s more interesting than that and raises issues about how questions are framed and how answers are digested.
it’s not “hur-dur, just glue it” that everyone always paints it as.
I agree AI hallucinations can be far more dangerous and more believable than glue on pizza. I used that reference because everyone remembers it. Pulling “answers” with no context is the problem.
Except i didnt “just post” it. I asked someone who seemed knowledgable. Pardon me for seeking correction.
Nb4 you tell me to “just google it” while putting on your signature look of superiority
Edit: better yet, i asked it in response to an incredibly vague post which offered no info on the claims actually being stated. So, what, everything posted about wikipedia is untrue? Well someone in this thread said its a good source of info, guess i need to disregard that too.
You made a claim with absolutely no references or sources then asked someone else to disprove your claim. That’s not how conversations or debates work at all. If you’re incapable of fact checking even the most basic statement conversations with you will never be productive and you’ll only be a useful idiot repeating the last thing you misread, do better.
