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The Max Blumenthal fan club want everyone to think Philip Cross is some sort of CIA bogeyman that controls Wikipedia. He's prolific, but far less influential th
by gobonobo 6y ago
The Max Blumenthal fan club want everyone to think Philip Cross is some sort of CIA bogeyman that controls Wikipedia. He's prolific, but far less influential than he's made out to be.
- rurban 6y agoWell, being paid by the CIA or MI5 is the most likely theory. But point is the agenda, not the affiliation. Not all the goons are influental, but he is (like most media figures), and their policies and practices align.
- luckylion 6y ago> Well, being paid by the CIA or MI5 is the most likely theory. "Most likely theory"? What? The most likely theory is that he's convinced of his worldview. There are incredible amounts of people who are true believers of whatever they subscribe to. They're certainly not all paid, or we'd see much larger intelligence budgets everywhere.
- notahacker 6y agoOne hypothesis involves intelligence agencies being unaware that it is possible to edit from other Wikipedia accounts and having opinions almost as strong on jazz as geopolitics. The other relies on there being a person with a lot of time on his hands who generally believes what he reads in the Times and responds to provocation on Twitter, and George Galloway not jumping to the correct conclusion.
- pjc50 6y agoOf course someone who works for Russian state TV is going to say their enemies are CIA.
- pydry 6y agoHe's more prolific than any person would be. There's no indication he's a person and every indication that his persona is run by an institution that doesn't like anti war campaigners. Craig Murray graphed his contributions here: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/05/the-philip-cross-affair/ https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/05/the-philip-c... In fairness his views do seem to match up with Jimbo Wales (who is, as a good friend of Tony Blair/Gordon Brown, not exactly anti war). He might be an institutional construct but there's plenty of institutions other than the CIA he could be fronting. It's also possible he's basically a sockpuppet for Jimmy Wales, judging by the way he lashes out on Twitter at people questioning who Philip Cross really is. So he clearly is pretty influential.
- throwaway81523 6y agoThe Craig Murray graph is completely misleading. It was not generated by Murray, it was generated by Wikipedia, and Murray apparently saw it, misunderstood it, flipped out, and put it on his own site. It is discussed rather thoroughly in the Wikipedia proceedings. It doesn't mean anything like what it looks like. Of course generating the misleading graph is Wikipedia's fault, but it was intended for something else altogether.
- pydry 6y agoIs there a link to this discussion somewhere that disproves the notion that the account is a 9-5 editing machine?
- Kim_Bruning 6y agoIt was actually technically findable with links presented in this HN discussion, but I've dug down to the relevant bit to save you some time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/BLP_issues_on_British_politics_articles/Evidence#Evidence_presented_by_173.228.123.166_(talk) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests...
- pydry 5y agoSomebody is definitely downplaying him here. Im not seeing any data to support that though.
- throwaway81523 6y agoDisproves? It's a stupid premise to begin with. But yes, you can look at the account's editing history. There is a timestamp on every edit. It is nothing like how Murray imagined.
- k1m 6y agoIf a banned Wikipedia editor was responsible for 56% of the content of your Wikipedia page, would you not be concerned?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]