This topic has come up a lot (not least from Cory Doctorow). The fact that the rich are both so fragile and so un-creative is why they love AI, especially the sycophantic variants. They can’t handle someone saying no to them or, apparently, an accurate description of the past that isn’t completely flattering to them. Let them work in food services, lol.
The rich are the problem, something needs to be done about them. I’m hungry.
Edit- ugh, embarrassing misspelling left up too long.
Wikipedia’s TOS bans this kind of activity, and it’s pretty effective at detecting it. This has been going on elsewhere for over a decade, and I know of at least one reputation-laundering firm that has gone bust because of Wikipedia reverting everything they tried to plant.
It bans some versions of this, but it can’t ban all of it. The obvious way is fully banned and hard to get away with: pay someone to delete unflattering things about you on Wikipedia. But, you can do a much more costly, slower, but much more likely to be acceptable version: you can buy a newspaper and arrange for that newspaper to write flattering articles about you. Since those articles qualify as a primary source, you can then have someone update Wikipedia to include things from that article using the article as a primary source. That doesn’t delete the unflattering things, but it pushes them down the page and surrounds them by flattering things. If you’re a billionaire, you’ll find a way to get the articles edited in a way that is permitted by the Wikipedia rules.
We honestly need to end the myth that Wikipedia is some impenetrable white tower. It can and has been infiltrated by corporate and political groups, and even creative vandals.
It’s the most valuable digital property in the world. You think people break into the Louvre but can’t touch Wikipedia?
Yep like how North Face replaced photos of many pages with photos that had people wearing their products in it. And this is probably just the tip of the iceberg, there must be plenty of stuff that hasn’t been caught yet.
Wow. Do you have a link for that?
In 2019, The North Face faced consumer backlash and apologized after its marketing agency surreptitiously added photos featuring its apparel to Wikipedia articles on popular outdoor destinations.
The North Face - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_North_Face
Edit: they also sent a cease & desist to The South Butt a decade before that
Organized groups hire people to edit wiki pages, you can even spot them coaching each other on the talk section. Monied interests especially, but also history is under fire.
Revisionists are rife, every monster from history is seemingly being rehabilitated, for at least 15 years. Feudalism has pr firms now too, it was great! No perversion of reality is too obvious that the sheep will not mindlessly take it as fact.
Technical subjects’ articles utility depends on who wrote it, a share of them are showing off their learnings using technical words 95 percent or more will not fully grasp, while other entries are in common terms andd fully understandable.
Wikipedia is a great resource, but not infallible, or a reliable source in itself, although it’s listed sources could well be reliable sources.
Although manipulating the sources cited is a great way to manipulate Wikipedia. You have to recruit 10-40 people to act as a group of editors to manufacture concensus across topics. Or you can just create a website or series of press releases.
“Hey, this small-town museum has an article about a historical event. It must be true. Link it at the bottom.” Or “well, this local newspaper article says it is happened, so into the article it goes.”
Even more effective, especially for political groups, is just publish dozens of supportive articles, while miring competing articles in edit wars and the bureaucracy that comes with it. For sources, just cite expert books that are favorable. It’s not easy, but hiring or recruiting 10-40 editors is trivial for political entities.
They have firms whose job it is to hire out editing wikipedia pages on contract. It is not new or much of a secret. Idk the mechanics involved I don’t see why they would need that many anyone can change it with a source, there are groups that edit their own pages easy enough, politicians get caught doing it, circumstantially caught, regularly.
Having a number of different editors allows manipulating the discussion and concensus protections built into Wikipedia.
Depending on the topic, it may not be necessary. A complimentary article about a new technology product or company founder just takes a few press releases that get picked up. Manipulating world events and leaders requires more coordination.
There is an entire world of constructing studies to arrive at a predetermined conclusion, planting articles, etc like you mention. Wikipedia edits are small potatoes compared to the faked science corporations construct to further their interests. Nothing is too false for them. In 5 years nutrition labels will give the daily recommended value of glyphosate a food contains.
Isn’t there a way to lock Wikipedia articles so they can’t be edited by just anyone?
Pages can be protected in various ways
Laws can be broken too
They’re all publicly viewable edits aren’t they? Revert them and ban the IP ranges they come from? I thought that was the standard practice for abuse of Wikipedia?
The problem lies in noticing them in the first place. If you make a thousand legit edits to various articles and then make some slight changes on some rich clients page chances are nobody will register this. Then again we’re on the internet so there’s always at least one guy who’d hyperfocus on monitoring something like this. The hero we need.
They need to have a policy change… public figures like those calling for these edits need to be shown in the most realistic light imaginable… meaning the darkest possible.
Wikipedia should start displaying a disclaimer banner that the person has been trying to edit the page
