7 ms·

https://nitter.net/echetus/status/1579776106034757633 https://nitter.net/echetus/status/1579776106034757633 - that's all you need to read. They're funneling te

https://nitter.net/echetus/status/1579776106034757633 https://nitter.net/echetus/status/1579776106034757633 - that's all you need to read. They're funneling tens of millions of dollars of donations into the US culture war.

hikingsimulator 4y ago
The thread you provide is overly alarmist. Wikipedia giving a few millions to social justice groups isn't "funneling" much first compared to political financing as a whole, and is not "culture war." I would urge people looking at this thread to think about the idea of "culture war," who is selling and profiteering from making it a front page issue (it's not).
- RobertRoberts 4y ago
  It's a conflict of interest, no matter your politics, when an organization is supposed to be a neutral purveyor of knowledge. (unless I somehow misunderstood the purpose of Wikipedia, which is possible)
  - hikingsimulator 4y ago
    Knowledge acquisition is not neutral per se. Wikipedia's goal is to be a peer-to-peer encyclopedia. It's not, and never will be perfect. The best thing you and I can do, instead or beyond donating, is to read Wikipedia and point out places with issues, if not become editors outright.
  - polygamous_bat 4y ago
    Just want to point out that "neutral" doesn't always mean apolitical, even though it may be convenient to think so. Hypothetically, if in a two party system there is a "burn and ban the books" party, and a "let's really not burn the books" party, the moral obligation of a neutral purveyor of knowledge is to do everything in its power to stop the "burn the books" club. How Wikipedia is interpreting that can be questioned, but not the fact that it should try to further the cause for its existence.
    - joemazerino 4y ago
      So far, I've seen both sides of the aisle look to ban books -- but only one of the sides is banning books targeting children sexuality.
      - p0pcult 4y ago
        Can you please provide an example of one of these books that is "targeting children sexuality"? A title will suffice.
        Natsu 4y ago
        Not OP, but most of the controversy has been about age restrictions on the books "Gender Queer: A Memoir" which contains images of graphic scenes of gay sex and oral sex as well as a girl encouraged to “taste” herself by her own siblings or “Lawn Boy” which describes a man talking approvingly to his friend about having oral sex with a grown man when he was only in fourth grade. I'm not aware of any 'bans' per se, but the books have been removed from some school libraries or made subject to age restrictions. There was another list going around that was said to be satire that people retweeted seemingly unironically: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/florida-book-bans-schools-libraries/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/florida-book-bans-schools-...
        p0pcult 4y ago
        Based on your descriptions, it's hard for me to conclude that these books are "targeting children sexuality" as the OP put it. Teens are--shock of shocks!--sometimes sexually active, even by choice. My brother was sexually active in the 4th grade. Is it that weird for literature to represent those kinds of experiences? I can see where one would make it generally unavailable to the very young, or maybe only with parental permission, but does this seem like a project to "turn kids gay" (as alleged by some one star amazon reviews)? No, lol.
        Natsu 4y ago
  - kmeisthax 4y ago
    Wikipedia is NPoV but that doesn't mean their funding org has to be.
- fallingknife 4y ago
  If I donate to Wikipedia, I expect that my donation will go to Wikipedia, not to unknown external groups. That's a bait and switch. According to the twitter thread, $22.9 million was given in such grants. That's almost 10x what Wikipedia is paying for hosting. That's not "funneling." That's taking the whole pie.
  - hikingsimulator 4y ago
    It's a donation, not an investment. There is no obligation on Wikimedia's part to do specific actions on your behalf. You can expect money to be used in some ways, sure, but it's not like WM uses 50% of your donation on vanity projects. Personally, I wish WM would invest more in the quality of non-English articles. French "toponymie" sections tend to be brigaded for whatever reasons for instance. French linguists wage wars apparently.
    - trothamel 4y ago
      Sure, but there's also no obligation to donate to Wikimedia in the first place, and it's quite reasonable to decide that if the organization is flush enough with money that it can donate it to outside organizations, it doesn't need more. (And it certainly shouldn't imply it needs more to keep the lights on.)
    - fallingknife 4y ago
      You're right. They don't use 50% on vanity projects. They use way more than that. Their donation income last year was around $150 million and their hosting costs were $2.4 million. Let's say their necessary engineering / admin cost was $20 million (a massive overestimate). That's >80% on BS.
      - hikingsimulator 4y ago
        I think you misunderstand what Wikimedia is and does. It's not just Wikipedia and hosting. It is also a lot of research into their Wikidata free knowledge database (look it up) for instance. It requires a lot of people and core knowledge to develop and run. To some extent Wikimedia is a research company too.
- subradios 4y ago
  Wikipedia is not a PAC, they are not NARAL or LPUS or YAF or Center for American Progress. It isnt alarmist to notice that Nice, Professional, Educated people have been guiding institutions that are ostensibly neutral (Wikipedia, or at risk of being spicy, the ACLU) taking great pains to support a worldview that is popular with only 8% of the US population, let alone the population of the world (https://hiddentribes.us/ https://hiddentribes.us/). They are doing so at the expense of their stated mission, in Wikipedia's case - this means taking money that could be used for hosting endowments, translations, original research and using it to forward the worldview and cultural dominance of a very small group.
Tempest1981 4y ago
It feels a bit cherry-picked... and I counted $500k of examples listed. The more I read of the rant, the more I felt that the author is trying to manipulate me. > Unfortunately, the lab experiment went horribly wrong, killing the poor creatures before the research could be concluded Feels like there must be more to the story... and was a million dollars spent on this? Or more like $5000? Again, feels like they're trying too hard to incite outrage. (Perhaps that's the way on Twitter)
- scythe 4y ago
  The referenced essay, "Wikipedia has cancer", is far more detailed and less emotionally charged (title notwithstanding) than the Twitter thread: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C... I suggest interpreting the Twitter thread as trying to convince you to read the full article.
  - stefan_ 4y ago
    But it isn't, the original "Wikipedia has cancer" article has no connection whatsoever to these "culture wars" screeches. This Twitter thread is trying to tie it's critique over $500k of the hundred million budget to a well established different criticism to leech off legitimacy for it's partisan-infested shitposting.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  Well, there is money on the line. Lots of money based on the statements linked in parents post. If I were to read it cynically, I would comment that someone, who was expecting to see a donation did not so they decided to start an all out information war with Wiki over this. That said, even if cherry picked, the example provided is sufficiently damning for me to refrain from donating if it was determined to be true ( I am not a donor to that cause so I have no horse here ). <<Feels like there must be more to the story.. I agree with this wholeheartedly. There is a concerted effort to go after Wiki for one reason or another. The situation they find themselves in is not new, but has only recently became an issue in public eye. And I am saying this as a person, who is leaning towards saying 'Wiki does not NEED more money; other charities should get a slice'.
clnq 4y ago
I don't think most of the donors know the money is used for things other than Wikipedia and that Wikimedia is very well off. This is an even bigger ethical lapse than funnelling money into charities people might not agree with.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Spivak 4y ago
God this shit it tiresome, giving money people doing social justice isn't funneling money into some "culture war" -- at best you could say that the groups involved see the greatest opposition to their mission is political but these groups aren't political except as a means to an end. They would, (and do, I'm part of one) support politicians on both sides of the aisle so long as they support their mission. You would be surprised how amenable Republicans at the local level, who don't have to keep up appearances on Twitter, are to social justice -- doubly when someone in their family is a member of one of those disadvantaged groups. You don't get to say "I don't like this so I'm going to say it's political and then demand you stay out of politics." Literally everything is political.
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  Would you feel the same way if Wikimedia funded groups acting against social justice?
  - antihero 4y ago
    No because there’s a difference between doing good and doing bad, even if that’s subjective.
    - ars 4y ago
      You didn't think that through, did you? It's almost impossible to define good vs bad without it being subjective. You killed someone. That's bad. Except they were dying of a terminal disease, so now it's good. Except you still killed someone, so that's bad.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - 988747 4y ago
      "Social justice" is the opposite of justice, and therefore evil :)
    - 4y ago
Gordonjcp 4y ago
What's this "US culture war"?
- GameOfFrowns 4y ago
  >What's this "US culture war"? Post-modernist deconstruction of what is viewed as "white people culture" (meritocracy, high-trust societies, traditional gender roles and family) inspired by the Frankfurt School[0] of philosophy and older concepts[1]. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_School https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_School [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tikkun_olam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tikkun_olam
  - Gordonjcp 4y ago
    Ah, so a racist dogwhistle?
p0pcult 4y ago
Quoting from your source: >In the west, an advanced industry of NGOs, charities, and foundations has evolved which funds so much of the weirdness in our daily lives. A caste of activist-professionals have emerged, which inevitably capture any non-profit with spare cash. This is what is sometimes called The Blob: a powerful but inconspicuous force that has given us the dysfunction of the 21st century Foolish me, I thought it was Gilded Age-level income inequality, and its subsequent funding of authoritarianism that was giving us the dysfunction of the 21st century. Good thing we have this crack journo to tell us it's... checks notes ...Non-Profit Organizations!
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

hikingsimulator 4y ago

The thread you provide is overly alarmist. Wikipedia giving a few millions to social justice groups isn't "funneling" much first compared to political financing as a whole, and is not "culture war." I would urge people looking at this thread to think about the idea of "culture war," who is selling and profiteering from making it a front page issue (it's not).

RobertRoberts 4y ago
It's a conflict of interest, no matter your politics, when an organization is supposed to be a neutral purveyor of knowledge. (unless I somehow misunderstood the purpose of Wikipedia, which is possible)
- hikingsimulator 4y ago
  Knowledge acquisition is not neutral per se. Wikipedia's goal is to be a peer-to-peer encyclopedia. It's not, and never will be perfect. The best thing you and I can do, instead or beyond donating, is to read Wikipedia and point out places with issues, if not become editors outright.
- polygamous_bat 4y ago
  Just want to point out that "neutral" doesn't always mean apolitical, even though it may be convenient to think so. Hypothetically, if in a two party system there is a "burn and ban the books" party, and a "let's really not burn the books" party, the moral obligation of a neutral purveyor of knowledge is to do everything in its power to stop the "burn the books" club. How Wikipedia is interpreting that can be questioned, but not the fact that it should try to further the cause for its existence.
  - joemazerino 4y ago
    So far, I've seen both sides of the aisle look to ban books -- but only one of the sides is banning books targeting children sexuality.
    - p0pcult 4y ago
      Can you please provide an example of one of these books that is "targeting children sexuality"? A title will suffice.
      - Natsu 4y ago
        Not OP, but most of the controversy has been about age restrictions on the books "Gender Queer: A Memoir" which contains images of graphic scenes of gay sex and oral sex as well as a girl encouraged to “taste” herself by her own siblings or “Lawn Boy” which describes a man talking approvingly to his friend about having oral sex with a grown man when he was only in fourth grade. I'm not aware of any 'bans' per se, but the books have been removed from some school libraries or made subject to age restrictions. There was another list going around that was said to be satire that people retweeted seemingly unironically: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/florida-book-bans-schools-libraries/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/florida-book-bans-schools-...
        p0pcult 4y ago
        Based on your descriptions, it's hard for me to conclude that these books are "targeting children sexuality" as the OP put it. Teens are--shock of shocks!--sometimes sexually active, even by choice. My brother was sexually active in the 4th grade. Is it that weird for literature to represent those kinds of experiences? I can see where one would make it generally unavailable to the very young, or maybe only with parental permission, but does this seem like a project to "turn kids gay" (as alleged by some one star amazon reviews)? No, lol.
        Natsu 4y ago
- kmeisthax 4y ago
  Wikipedia is NPoV but that doesn't mean their funding org has to be.
fallingknife 4y ago
If I donate to Wikipedia, I expect that my donation will go to Wikipedia, not to unknown external groups. That's a bait and switch. According to the twitter thread, $22.9 million was given in such grants. That's almost 10x what Wikipedia is paying for hosting. That's not "funneling." That's taking the whole pie.
- hikingsimulator 4y ago
  It's a donation, not an investment. There is no obligation on Wikimedia's part to do specific actions on your behalf. You can expect money to be used in some ways, sure, but it's not like WM uses 50% of your donation on vanity projects. Personally, I wish WM would invest more in the quality of non-English articles. French "toponymie" sections tend to be brigaded for whatever reasons for instance. French linguists wage wars apparently.
  - trothamel 4y ago
    Sure, but there's also no obligation to donate to Wikimedia in the first place, and it's quite reasonable to decide that if the organization is flush enough with money that it can donate it to outside organizations, it doesn't need more. (And it certainly shouldn't imply it needs more to keep the lights on.)
  - fallingknife 4y ago
    You're right. They don't use 50% on vanity projects. They use way more than that. Their donation income last year was around $150 million and their hosting costs were $2.4 million. Let's say their necessary engineering / admin cost was $20 million (a massive overestimate). That's >80% on BS.
    - hikingsimulator 4y ago
      I think you misunderstand what Wikimedia is and does. It's not just Wikipedia and hosting. It is also a lot of research into their Wikidata free knowledge database (look it up) for instance. It requires a lot of people and core knowledge to develop and run. To some extent Wikimedia is a research company too.
subradios 4y ago
Wikipedia is not a PAC, they are not NARAL or LPUS or YAF or Center for American Progress. It isnt alarmist to notice that Nice, Professional, Educated people have been guiding institutions that are ostensibly neutral (Wikipedia, or at risk of being spicy, the ACLU) taking great pains to support a worldview that is popular with only 8% of the US population, let alone the population of the world (https://hiddentribes.us/ https://hiddentribes.us/). They are doing so at the expense of their stated mission, in Wikipedia's case - this means taking money that could be used for hosting endowments, translations, original research and using it to forward the worldview and cultural dominance of a very small group.

Tempest1981 4y ago

It feels a bit cherry-picked... and I counted $500k of examples listed. The more I read of the rant, the more I felt that the author is trying to manipulate me. > Unfortunately, the lab experiment went horribly wrong, killing the poor creatures before the research could be concluded Feels like there must be more to the story... and was a million dollars spent on this? Or more like $5000? Again, feels like they're trying too hard to incite outrage. (Perhaps that's the way on Twitter)

scythe 4y ago
The referenced essay, "Wikipedia has cancer", is far more detailed and less emotionally charged (title notwithstanding) than the Twitter thread: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C... I suggest interpreting the Twitter thread as trying to convince you to read the full article.
- stefan_ 4y ago
  But it isn't, the original "Wikipedia has cancer" article has no connection whatsoever to these "culture wars" screeches. This Twitter thread is trying to tie it's critique over $500k of the hundred million budget to a well established different criticism to leech off legitimacy for it's partisan-infested shitposting.
A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
Well, there is money on the line. Lots of money based on the statements linked in parents post. If I were to read it cynically, I would comment that someone, who was expecting to see a donation did not so they decided to start an all out information war with Wiki over this. That said, even if cherry picked, the example provided is sufficiently damning for me to refrain from donating if it was determined to be true ( I am not a donor to that cause so I have no horse here ). <<Feels like there must be more to the story.. I agree with this wholeheartedly. There is a concerted effort to go after Wiki for one reason or another. The situation they find themselves in is not new, but has only recently became an issue in public eye. And I am saying this as a person, who is leaning towards saying 'Wiki does not NEED more money; other charities should get a slice'.

clnq 4y ago

I don't think most of the donors know the money is used for things other than Wikipedia and that Wikimedia is very well off. This is an even bigger ethical lapse than funnelling money into charities people might not agree with.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Spivak 4y ago

God this shit it tiresome, giving money people doing social justice isn't funneling money into some "culture war" -- at best you could say that the groups involved see the greatest opposition to their mission is political but these groups aren't political except as a means to an end. They would, (and do, I'm part of one) support politicians on both sides of the aisle so long as they support their mission. You would be surprised how amenable Republicans at the local level, who don't have to keep up appearances on Twitter, are to social justice -- doubly when someone in their family is a member of one of those disadvantaged groups. You don't get to say "I don't like this so I'm going to say it's political and then demand you stay out of politics." Literally everything is political.

zeroonetwothree 4y ago
Would you feel the same way if Wikimedia funded groups acting against social justice?
- antihero 4y ago
  No because there’s a difference between doing good and doing bad, even if that’s subjective.
  - ars 4y ago
    You didn't think that through, did you? It's almost impossible to define good vs bad without it being subjective. You killed someone. That's bad. Except they were dying of a terminal disease, so now it's good. Except you still killed someone, so that's bad.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - 988747 4y ago
    "Social justice" is the opposite of justice, and therefore evil :)
  - 4y ago

Gordonjcp 4y ago

What's this "US culture war"?

GameOfFrowns 4y ago
>What's this "US culture war"? Post-modernist deconstruction of what is viewed as "white people culture" (meritocracy, high-trust societies, traditional gender roles and family) inspired by the Frankfurt School[0] of philosophy and older concepts[1]. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_School https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_School [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tikkun_olam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tikkun_olam
- Gordonjcp 4y ago
  Ah, so a racist dogwhistle?

p0pcult 4y ago

Quoting from your source: >In the west, an advanced industry of NGOs, charities, and foundations has evolved which funds so much of the weirdness in our daily lives. A caste of activist-professionals have emerged, which inevitably capture any non-profit with spare cash. This is what is sometimes called The Blob: a powerful but inconspicuous force that has given us the dysfunction of the 21st century Foolish me, I thought it was Gilded Age-level income inequality, and its subsequent funding of authoritarianism that was giving us the dysfunction of the 21st century. Good thing we have this crack journo to tell us it's... checks notes ...Non-Profit Organizations!

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]