5 ms·

Wikipedia has long been hijacked to serve agendas. The “truth” is whatever the highest bidder wants it to be. Most recently hijacked by the Qatar dictatorship:

by brap 9mo ago

Wikipedia has long been hijacked to serve agendas. The “truth” is whatever the highest bidder wants it to be. Most recently hijacked by the Qatar dictatorship: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/16/pr-firm-portland-accused-of-commissioning-favourable-changes-to-wikipedia-pages https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/16/pr-firm-p... News, influencers, Wikipedia, almost all information we consume nowadays is intentional. And not even getting into billions poured into American colleges by the same people.

alex1138 9mo ago
You need only to look at how many actual well credentialed doctors get their Wiki pages smeared with words like "misinformation spreader" for dissenting against covid narratives
- jahnu 9mo ago
  Can you provide an example?
  - sigmoid10 9mo ago
    They probably mean people like Robert Malone [1], who - despite being well accomplished in a related field - spread verifiably wrong information about vaccines on social media during the pandemic. There are many people like him who showed past accomplishments in a related field, but were totally out of their depth when interviewed about covid on the Joe Rogan podcast or similar. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Malone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Malone
    - nephihaha 9mo ago
      Yet in officialdom, that kind of thing was perfectly acceptable. In Scotland we had a dentist running Covid lockdown, which is ironic since public dental services were decimated by it and never recovered.
  - brigandish 9mo ago
    You can simply do a Wikipedia search for "misinformation doctor" and get plenty of results, even with its search system, let alone if you use a search engine to power the search. I would think that posting any particular person would descend in to a pointless argument over whether those claims are merited. Do you have some better reason to want a particular name?
    - qudade 9mo ago
      If there is misinformation on Wikipedia it can be corrected. Unless you are claiming that all hits for "misinformation doctor" are incorrect, a few examples to verify and correct would be helpful.
      - hagbard_c 9mo ago
        Some 'misinformation' is hard to correct because the corrections are reversed by those who are intent on spreading the 'misinformation'. This is especially prevalent around contentious and/or politically sensitive subjects like the mentioned SARS2-related cases. This is what makes it hard to trust articles on such subjects on Wikipedia.
        komali2 9mo ago
        If this is quite widespread, it should be fairly straightforward to point to an example of a page that's being defaced with misinformation, which would include an edit history and perhaps a Talk page documenting whatever sides to the debate there is that's preventing consensus. I don't disagree that weird bullshit occasionally happens on Wikipedia, but I have noticed that as soon as light is cast on it, it usually evaporates and a return to factual normality is established.
        brigandish 9mo ago
        My go-to example is the "Constitution" of Medina[1] > It is widely considered to be one of the first written constitutions of mankind. Now go to the page on constitutions in history[2] and see how far down the list that one is. Now go back to the Constitution of Medina (itself an example of misinformation, since it should be charter or even more precisely, treaty, but those protecting the page have meddled with the title too) and look at the reference it uses[3] and what it says to get a feel for the kind of "reference" that is being used there, and then try and update said Wikipedia page by removing the parts about its being the first. The talk pages of both show that invested groups have been trying to force their views, and they've done it quite successfully. Let us all know how you get on with that, and then I'll point you to the next example, and the next example… Some other notable things to check are co-founder Larry Sanger's 9 theses[4], and the news that broke yesterday about a PR firm doing "Wikilaundering"[5]. That's just the tip of the iceberg. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Medina https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Medina [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution#History_and_development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution#History_and_devel... [3] https://journalijcar.org/issues/first-written-constitution-world-important-document-prophet%E2%80%99s-time-study-dr-muhammad https://journalijcar.org/issues/first-written-constitution-w... [4] https://larrysanger.org/nine-theses/#1-end-decision-making-by-consensus https://larrysanger.org/nine-theses/#1-end-decision-making-b... [5] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/16/pr-firm-portland-accused-of-commissioning-favourable-changes-to-wikipedia-pages https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/16/pr-firm-p...
  - whynotmaybe 9mo ago
    Dr Raoult was very vocal in France about hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for covid 19. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didier_Raoult https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didier_Raoult It seems today that he was just wrong and used to make "dubious" clinical trials. > As of 2025, 46 of Raoult's research publications have been retracted, and at least another 218 of his publications have received an expression of concern from their publishers, due to questions related to ethics approval for his studies.
    - thrance 9mo ago
      In this case, he was actually spreading misinformation. Anyone with two braincells could see it at the time.
      - whynotmaybe 9mo ago
        > Anyone with two braincells could see it at the time. It seems a captain obvious now but it wasn't so at the time. (Or maybe my.braincells.count() < 2) Many people listened because he wasn't some youtuber doing his research, he was the head of the "Infectious and Tropical Emergent Diseases Research Unit" ad the Faculty of Medicine of Marseille. I've watched one of his interviews where he stated that people survived in his unit with hydroxychloroquine and that he had numbers to prove it. When you look at his credentials, and my.braincells.count(), it was hard to identify it as misinformation.
        thrance 9mo ago
        I definitely exaggerated with my "two braincells". Even the french president said about the guy "we need more people like him" (although I wouldn't say he's that smart himself...). But even without being knowledgeable about statistics, there were a lot of very serious people giving very good arguments against his results. You just had to see them. And seeing all the Facebook doctors lunatics instantly side with Raoult and defend him tooth and nail should definitely raise some red flags...
    - agumonkey 9mo ago
      Raoult's case is so strange.. he's not the usual fringe doctor, up until covid, he had a center seat in national health institution and everybody around him was listening. I still don't get why nobody was wary of him there..
agumonkey 9mo ago
it's one crucial topic imo internet altered the way society communicates and why, a lot of discussions now end up by "show me your sources" aka "what is the truth" and it's often centralized into some accepted source like wikipedia where there simple single point of 'truth' like that before ? my 2cents is that humans are not meant to live in one global absolute truth and we all lived in relative fuzzy reality before, it was slow and imperfect but not as easy to tamper with
- graemep 9mo ago
  Showing sources is not a bad thing. The harm is not questioning sources. A lot of people rely on poor sources. Whatever what the first result in Google historically, and now LLM summaries.
  - agumonkey 9mo ago
    maybe my viewpoint is weird but i think this distorted human interactions on multiple domains. of course we all wanted to communicate faithful information, but now any discussion turns into a religious difference, and the escape is of course "who has the truest source". people don't necessarily understand the content, they just defer the validity to an official third party, so basically we're back to zero.. but we're all debating everything now. and it makes me think that locally, we chatting, was never meant to exchange rigorous information, but mostly to share opinions lightly, more emotional than rigorous and scientific
- whynotmaybe 9mo ago
  Not so long ago, the "truth" was mainly given by the priest or the mayor.
  - ajsnigrutin 9mo ago
    And now it's given by the mainstream media, which is mostly owned by a few very rich people and pushes the same type of propaganda as before (but now globally).
falcor84 9mo ago
There are agendas there, just like in every human endeavor, but it definitely hasn't been "hijacked", it's still by far the best single repository of human knowledge out there. If I had to choose one website to take with me to a desert island, it's an obvious choice. We should keep talking about the issues and improving things, but don't throw out the baby with bathwater.
- komali2 9mo ago
  If you can download the Talk pages and edit history, you probably have enough information to, on average, mostly be dealing with objective fact.
- slfreference 9mo ago
  But by claiming one thing and doing the exact opposite (on a statistical quantitative basis), Wikipedia and all other western outlets have become just a front for propaganda which is also the reason why I don't believe in "Persecution of Uyghurs in China" German Scholars Reveal Shocking TRUTH About China’s Xinjiang Province https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Fp-MZsRhKM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Fp-MZsRhKM
  - tim333 9mo ago
    That video's main gripe seems to be that western media gloss over things being kicked off by islamic terrorists but from the Wikipedia: >...Uyghur terrorists killed dozens of Han Chinese in coordinated attacks from 2009 to 2016. These included the September 2009 Xinjiang unrest, the 2011 Hotan attack, the 2014 Kunming attack, the April 2014 Ürümqi attack, and the May 2014 Ürümqi attack. The attacks were conducted by Uyghur separatists, with some orchestrated by the Turkistan Islamic Party (a UN-designated terrorist organization)...
    - slfreference 9mo ago
      "The US government hates China and also hates Muslims but suddenly cares about Muslims in China" - forgot who quoted this. Compare US stance on Gaza. If media can ban discussions on gaza, can't it invent phantom genocide in Xinjiang Province? Something to think about.
dataviz1000 9mo ago
When I was working in the heart of conservative online media in West Palm Beach—nestled between Rush Limbaugh’s studio, Mar-a-Lago, and Newsmax—targeting Evangelical Christians in the Bible Belt, my salary (and the direction things eventually went) was being paid for by the Saudis. At the time, the propaganda was mostly “pro-oil” and “climate change is a hoax.” Around that same period, those same Saudis bought a 10% stake in Fox News and helped shape the narrative for millions of Christians who tune in and treat it like their main source of news. So yeah, if you were ever curious where the profits go every time you fill up your car with gas… there. I thought I was just building media websites. I didn’t even see the content until after six months. I put in my one month notice, finished what I was working on, and left. The amount of money they offered me to stay was ridiculous. I don’t blame people at Fox News for bending the knee and taking that Saudi money -- I just couldn’t make myself do it. “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” A lot of people are going to spend eternity in hell for propaganda and lies.
- gsky 9mo ago
  No wonder Terrorism is supported by oil money.
- hgomersall 9mo ago
  What level of moral compromise is acceptable in this world to take whatever money is offered? Presumably the job of hitman is unacceptable? Where's the line drawn? Personally I'd say that lying to perpetuate a system that is leading to various populous parts of the world becoming uninhabitable is on the wrong side of that line.
  - cujo 9mo ago
    unquestionably. i'm not sure when we all decided to be hush-hush about people doing ethically dubious work. i'm allowed to judge you based on who you take money from.
- pavlov 9mo ago
  They hate Muslims, but they love money and theocracy more, and Saudis are top of the world in both.
komali2 9mo ago
> And not even getting into billions poured into American colleges by the same people. What does this mean?
- curtisblaine 9mo ago
  Colleges are political, and donations are made to assure they keep on being political.
  - komali2 9mo ago
    > Colleges are political, and donations are made to assure they keep on being political. Ok, to clarify: > > And not even getting into billions poured into American colleges by the same people. Which American colleges, by what people, and what does "being political" mean? Maybe I'm very ignorant of the USA, are these just known things to Americans?
mch82 9mo ago
I’m continually impressed by Wikipedia’s quality controls. In my experience people underestimate them.
- nephihaha 9mo ago
  I don't underestimate them, I just don't think they are good. I've been on Wikipedia for at least twenty years.

by brap 9mo ago

alex1138 9mo ago

You need only to look at how many actual well credentialed doctors get their Wiki pages smeared with words like "misinformation spreader" for dissenting against covid narratives

jahnu 9mo ago
Can you provide an example?
- sigmoid10 9mo ago
  They probably mean people like Robert Malone [1], who - despite being well accomplished in a related field - spread verifiably wrong information about vaccines on social media during the pandemic. There are many people like him who showed past accomplishments in a related field, but were totally out of their depth when interviewed about covid on the Joe Rogan podcast or similar. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Malone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Malone
  - nephihaha 9mo ago
    Yet in officialdom, that kind of thing was perfectly acceptable. In Scotland we had a dentist running Covid lockdown, which is ironic since public dental services were decimated by it and never recovered.
- brigandish 9mo ago
  You can simply do a Wikipedia search for "misinformation doctor" and get plenty of results, even with its search system, let alone if you use a search engine to power the search. I would think that posting any particular person would descend in to a pointless argument over whether those claims are merited. Do you have some better reason to want a particular name?
  - qudade 9mo ago
    If there is misinformation on Wikipedia it can be corrected. Unless you are claiming that all hits for "misinformation doctor" are incorrect, a few examples to verify and correct would be helpful.
    - hagbard_c 9mo ago
      Some 'misinformation' is hard to correct because the corrections are reversed by those who are intent on spreading the 'misinformation'. This is especially prevalent around contentious and/or politically sensitive subjects like the mentioned SARS2-related cases. This is what makes it hard to trust articles on such subjects on Wikipedia.
      - komali2 9mo ago
        If this is quite widespread, it should be fairly straightforward to point to an example of a page that's being defaced with misinformation, which would include an edit history and perhaps a Talk page documenting whatever sides to the debate there is that's preventing consensus. I don't disagree that weird bullshit occasionally happens on Wikipedia, but I have noticed that as soon as light is cast on it, it usually evaporates and a return to factual normality is established.
        brigandish 9mo ago
        My go-to example is the "Constitution" of Medina[1] > It is widely considered to be one of the first written constitutions of mankind. Now go to the page on constitutions in history[2] and see how far down the list that one is. Now go back to the Constitution of Medina (itself an example of misinformation, since it should be charter or even more precisely, treaty, but those protecting the page have meddled with the title too) and look at the reference it uses[3] and what it says to get a feel for the kind of "reference" that is being used there, and then try and update said Wikipedia page by removing the parts about its being the first. The talk pages of both show that invested groups have been trying to force their views, and they've done it quite successfully. Let us all know how you get on with that, and then I'll point you to the next example, and the next example… Some other notable things to check are co-founder Larry Sanger's 9 theses[4], and the news that broke yesterday about a PR firm doing "Wikilaundering"[5]. That's just the tip of the iceberg. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Medina https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Medina [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution#History_and_development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution#History_and_devel... [3] https://journalijcar.org/issues/first-written-constitution-world-important-document-prophet%E2%80%99s-time-study-dr-muhammad https://journalijcar.org/issues/first-written-constitution-w... [4] https://larrysanger.org/nine-theses/#1-end-decision-making-by-consensus https://larrysanger.org/nine-theses/#1-end-decision-making-b... [5] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/16/pr-firm-portland-accused-of-commissioning-favourable-changes-to-wikipedia-pages https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/16/pr-firm-p...
- whynotmaybe 9mo ago
  Dr Raoult was very vocal in France about hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for covid 19. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didier_Raoult https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didier_Raoult It seems today that he was just wrong and used to make "dubious" clinical trials. > As of 2025, 46 of Raoult's research publications have been retracted, and at least another 218 of his publications have received an expression of concern from their publishers, due to questions related to ethics approval for his studies.
  - thrance 9mo ago
    In this case, he was actually spreading misinformation. Anyone with two braincells could see it at the time.
    - whynotmaybe 9mo ago
      > Anyone with two braincells could see it at the time. It seems a captain obvious now but it wasn't so at the time. (Or maybe my.braincells.count() < 2) Many people listened because he wasn't some youtuber doing his research, he was the head of the "Infectious and Tropical Emergent Diseases Research Unit" ad the Faculty of Medicine of Marseille. I've watched one of his interviews where he stated that people survived in his unit with hydroxychloroquine and that he had numbers to prove it. When you look at his credentials, and my.braincells.count(), it was hard to identify it as misinformation.
      - thrance 9mo ago
        I definitely exaggerated with my "two braincells". Even the french president said about the guy "we need more people like him" (although I wouldn't say he's that smart himself...). But even without being knowledgeable about statistics, there were a lot of very serious people giving very good arguments against his results. You just had to see them. And seeing all the Facebook doctors lunatics instantly side with Raoult and defend him tooth and nail should definitely raise some red flags...
  - agumonkey 9mo ago
    Raoult's case is so strange.. he's not the usual fringe doctor, up until covid, he had a center seat in national health institution and everybody around him was listening. I still don't get why nobody was wary of him there..

agumonkey 9mo ago

it's one crucial topic imo internet altered the way society communicates and why, a lot of discussions now end up by "show me your sources" aka "what is the truth" and it's often centralized into some accepted source like wikipedia where there simple single point of 'truth' like that before ? my 2cents is that humans are not meant to live in one global absolute truth and we all lived in relative fuzzy reality before, it was slow and imperfect but not as easy to tamper with

graemep 9mo ago
Showing sources is not a bad thing. The harm is not questioning sources. A lot of people rely on poor sources. Whatever what the first result in Google historically, and now LLM summaries.
- agumonkey 9mo ago
  maybe my viewpoint is weird but i think this distorted human interactions on multiple domains. of course we all wanted to communicate faithful information, but now any discussion turns into a religious difference, and the escape is of course "who has the truest source". people don't necessarily understand the content, they just defer the validity to an official third party, so basically we're back to zero.. but we're all debating everything now. and it makes me think that locally, we chatting, was never meant to exchange rigorous information, but mostly to share opinions lightly, more emotional than rigorous and scientific
whynotmaybe 9mo ago
Not so long ago, the "truth" was mainly given by the priest or the mayor.
- ajsnigrutin 9mo ago
  And now it's given by the mainstream media, which is mostly owned by a few very rich people and pushes the same type of propaganda as before (but now globally).

falcor84 9mo ago

There are agendas there, just like in every human endeavor, but it definitely hasn't been "hijacked", it's still by far the best single repository of human knowledge out there. If I had to choose one website to take with me to a desert island, it's an obvious choice. We should keep talking about the issues and improving things, but don't throw out the baby with bathwater.

komali2 9mo ago
If you can download the Talk pages and edit history, you probably have enough information to, on average, mostly be dealing with objective fact.
slfreference 9mo ago
But by claiming one thing and doing the exact opposite (on a statistical quantitative basis), Wikipedia and all other western outlets have become just a front for propaganda which is also the reason why I don't believe in "Persecution of Uyghurs in China" German Scholars Reveal Shocking TRUTH About China’s Xinjiang Province https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Fp-MZsRhKM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Fp-MZsRhKM
- tim333 9mo ago
  That video's main gripe seems to be that western media gloss over things being kicked off by islamic terrorists but from the Wikipedia: >...Uyghur terrorists killed dozens of Han Chinese in coordinated attacks from 2009 to 2016. These included the September 2009 Xinjiang unrest, the 2011 Hotan attack, the 2014 Kunming attack, the April 2014 Ürümqi attack, and the May 2014 Ürümqi attack. The attacks were conducted by Uyghur separatists, with some orchestrated by the Turkistan Islamic Party (a UN-designated terrorist organization)...
  - slfreference 9mo ago
    "The US government hates China and also hates Muslims but suddenly cares about Muslims in China" - forgot who quoted this. Compare US stance on Gaza. If media can ban discussions on gaza, can't it invent phantom genocide in Xinjiang Province? Something to think about.

dataviz1000 9mo ago

When I was working in the heart of conservative online media in West Palm Beach—nestled between Rush Limbaugh’s studio, Mar-a-Lago, and Newsmax—targeting Evangelical Christians in the Bible Belt, my salary (and the direction things eventually went) was being paid for by the Saudis. At the time, the propaganda was mostly “pro-oil” and “climate change is a hoax.” Around that same period, those same Saudis bought a 10% stake in Fox News and helped shape the narrative for millions of Christians who tune in and treat it like their main source of news. So yeah, if you were ever curious where the profits go every time you fill up your car with gas… there. I thought I was just building media websites. I didn’t even see the content until after six months. I put in my one month notice, finished what I was working on, and left. The amount of money they offered me to stay was ridiculous. I don’t blame people at Fox News for bending the knee and taking that Saudi money -- I just couldn’t make myself do it. “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” A lot of people are going to spend eternity in hell for propaganda and lies.

gsky 9mo ago
No wonder Terrorism is supported by oil money.
hgomersall 9mo ago
What level of moral compromise is acceptable in this world to take whatever money is offered? Presumably the job of hitman is unacceptable? Where's the line drawn? Personally I'd say that lying to perpetuate a system that is leading to various populous parts of the world becoming uninhabitable is on the wrong side of that line.
- cujo 9mo ago
  unquestionably. i'm not sure when we all decided to be hush-hush about people doing ethically dubious work. i'm allowed to judge you based on who you take money from.
pavlov 9mo ago
They hate Muslims, but they love money and theocracy more, and Saudis are top of the world in both.

komali2 9mo ago

> And not even getting into billions poured into American colleges by the same people. What does this mean?

curtisblaine 9mo ago
Colleges are political, and donations are made to assure they keep on being political.
- komali2 9mo ago
  > Colleges are political, and donations are made to assure they keep on being political. Ok, to clarify: > > And not even getting into billions poured into American colleges by the same people. Which American colleges, by what people, and what does "being political" mean? Maybe I'm very ignorant of the USA, are these just known things to Americans?

mch82 9mo ago

I’m continually impressed by Wikipedia’s quality controls. In my experience people underestimate them.

nephihaha 9mo ago
I don't underestimate them, I just don't think they are good. I've been on Wikipedia for at least twenty years.