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
You just described the average Tankie around here lmao
Yeah, there’s kind of a Poe’s Law situation.
A lot of the sincere tankies, though, at least want to talk about what they’re into, and have elaborate reasons why it’s all true. The low-effort “I can’t even be bothered to try to mount a defense, I just wanted to say Wikipedia is doxing its users and kowtowing to fascist governments, and now that I’ve said it my task is done” behavior is a little more indicative of a disingenuous propaganda account in my experience.
elaborate reasons why it’s all true
Usually it’s “just read these 10 hundred-year-old books” that they absolutely have not read.
And if you ask them to make a point from those books, they can’t. Apparently they’re only comprehensible as a whole.
This is an excellent suggestion for how to deal with this. I can’t thank you enough.
That’s now poe’s law, it would be Occam’s razor.
The most likely scenario here is not many puppet accounts spreading sarcasm or parody but rather that there are many actors that all true believers in what they are all saying. They sound the same because they are feeding off the same talking point.
You’re right, I was misremembering Poe’s law. We need a law for “there is no point of view so idiotic that someone won’t be out there passionately proclaiming it, not because they are a propaganda troll, but because they really believe it.”
That sounds like the Dunning Kruger Effect.
Maybe we could call it Bucket’s Law
I am pretty convinced that .ml is legitimately used as a Russian troll training ground before they get promoted to Facebook and reddit.
Meanwhile, at .ml:
Since Pi is infinite and non-repeating, would that mean any finite sequence of non-repeating numbers should appear somewhere in Pi?
Even the most extreme extremist of echo chambers will have benign random conversations. Singling out a random blurb of conversation, without even any source link, is just cherry picking.
It’s even worse when you link to the actual comments.
https://lemmy.ml/post/24032724
They are having an extended conversation about a question which has an actual real mathematical answer. The correlation between what mathematics knows about it, and the things the lemmy.ml people are trying to say about it with a tone of voice that implies they have some knowledge and you need to listen to them, is almost nonexistent.
There are, to be fair, a bunch of highly-upvoted explanations of the real answer, which is that we don’t know. But there are also plenty of top-level comments getting lots of upvotes, which say things like:
Yes, this is implied. It’s also why many people use digits of pi as passwords and make the password hint “easy as pi”.
Yeah. This is a plot point used in a few stories, eg Carl Sagan’s “Contact”
Yes
Yes.
And if you’re thinking of a compression algorithm, nope, pigeonhole principle.
Not just any all finite number sequence appear in pi
It’s actually extremely popular, it looks like, to just come up with some kind of random nonsense and then for one of the lemmy.ml people to be telling other lemmy.ml people that your random nonsense is the answer they’re looking for. When it comes out of the realm of politics and into the realm of mathematics, it suddenly looks really jarring and weird that they’re all so committed to sitting around handing out wrong answers to each other all day.
Are we saying it’s an echo chamber, or a literal propaganda training ground commissioned by the Russian government?
I’m not sitting here saying that one random thread I spotted when I jumped over there totally disproves either of those. It’s more of an amusing counterexample. I would LOVE if people would stop doing this thing where they expect you to defend an argument you didn’t make, I feel like I’ve pointed out it on this site 3 times in as many days.
That’s actually a really good way to illustrate what is wrong with lemmy.ml.
On math stack exchange:
Let me summarize the things that have been said which are true and add one more thing.
- 𝜋 is not known to have this property, but it is expected to be true.
- This property does not follow from the fact that the decimal expansion of 𝜋 is infinite and does not repeat.
On lemmy.ml:
0.101001000100001000001 . . .
I’m infinite and non-repeating. Can you find a 2 in me?
You can’t prove that there isn’t one somewhere
Why couldn’t you?
Because you’d need to search through an infinite number of digits (unless you have access to the original formula)
And:
Not just any all finite number sequence appear in pi
And:
Yes.
And if you’re thinking of a compression algorithm, nope, pigeonhole principle.
All heavily upvoted.
IDK if you’re allowed to link to lemmy.ml here or what, but the post ID is 24032724. The response to “You can’t prove that there isn’t one somewhere” - “You can, it’s literally the way the number is defined.” - is +8/-1. Plus the original guy pointing out the 10100[…] sequence is +21/-1. What are you saying is the issue? If it’s “they’ll just upvote anything that sounds right”, I think you’re gonna find that’s true on reddit, and true here, as well.
I’m saying the issue is that on math stack exchange, the people who actually understand the issues involved are generally the ones talking and being listened to. On lemmy.ml, the guy saying you can’t prove that a sequence of 0s and 1s doesn’t contain a 2 has +5 upvotes. You can look over the comments, and even more so than for politics, it’s just really apparent that there are quite a lot of people who have no idea what they’re talking about exchanging confident proclamations to each other about what it is that’s going on.
I’m not trying to hate on anyone for not knowing something. I’m hating on them for thinking they know something, and need to teach it to everyone else, when they are mistaken and haven’t made even the basic effort beyond “I just thought for 2 seconds and decided this is how it works” to figure out what’s going on.
On
lemmy.mlpretty much all reddit-like boards.You can’t really compare a stack exchange board about a specific topic with general purpose boards.
There are plenty of Reddit-like boards which feature people who generally know what they’re talking about. Reddit used to be one, years ago, remember jokes about how the comments were a better way to learn the truth of the story than reading the article?
There are places on Lemmy that are like that, too. Weirdly enough, this comments section is a good example. The people voting are extremely capable to identify the bullshit and downvote it, it’s actually very accurate. Just have a look around. It’s not always like that. Lemmy.world, Lemmy.ml, and some of the tech-focused communities are notable places where the idiots outnumber the rest of the people, but it’s not at all a universal feature of Reddit-like general purpose forums. It just takes a little while to build the culture that way, and a lot of Lemmy is actively hostile to building it because the wrong people are so aggressive about pushing the wrongness, and it kind of chases people away unless they’re cool with that.
I was thinking earlier about how fucked we are in the U.S., that the MAGA contingent, and to a degree the Dem contingent as well, have accepted mentalities that are incorrect and actively reject correction. That people (the population in general) are being trained to reject the fundamentals of logic, and associate all opposing viewpoints with an evil “other”.
In the comments they go into why it’s not even true that an infinite non-repeating sequence must contain all other finite sequences (10100100010000[…] example not containing any other digits). So it would follow that they wouldn’t contain all infinite sequences either. I think.
Bro, why are you attacking people unrelated to the post’s topic?
Could you be anymore vague
Yeah, I was trying to talk about the situation without specifically linking to the comments or starting any kind of brigade situation. I figured being vague was better than being inflammatory, and anyone who cared enough would know what I was taking about, which seems to be accurate.
It’s Musk, he’s spreading the disinformation about how Wikipedia leaks your data
Via Lemmy?
Via people. Who go on Lemmy.
Source?
My source is it’s a joke on how Musk is a misinformation merchant that profits from the attention of greedy and gullible chuds, or the outrage of people that feel disenfranchised by the billionaire class.
I understand you feel that way. I thought you had a source for the claim you made. My searching for anything related to what you said pulls up nothing.
So for the record, your claim is bullshit. You are spreading misinformation about something because you’re mad that you think Elon spreads misinformation.
K
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/elon-musk-takes-aim-at-wikipedia/ar-AA1wrixP
https://www.politifact.com/personalities/elon-musk/
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/elon-musk-europe-surging-far-right-rcna185145
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/05/elon-musk-ron-desantis-2024-twitter/674149/
Woosh
Chandler?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
it IP blocks people and tracks IP’s linked to editing
Unless something changed, this part was at least partially true at one point. But only for anonymous edits iirc. Usually happened for IPs shared by a lot of people like from a campus or some VPNs, probably due to a lot of vandalism from such IPs.
Yes it does. That was my response to them. But this is pretty acceptable to prevent vandalism.
Read: some dork got very banned and intends to die mad about it.
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
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?
Many people say
Misinformation… you mean lies?
Misinformation and lies are only separated by intent.
You can use true statements to spread misinformation, I guess.
How does that work?
In addition to what frazorth said, you can change how a statement is interpreted by simply using a passive voice. Compare “Alice was hit by Bob” to “Bob hit Alice”. Both statements are identical, but the former is a lot less accusatory towards Bob. This technique is used when reporting about Police abuse, or about how the civilians in Gaza are treated.
Information without context can create a different narrative than that same information with context.
You see this in racially biased crime reporting. Without context, you see that one demographic is disproportionately prone to being arrested and convicted of crimes. The conclusion being aimed for is the expected racist one.
With context, you see that criminality is roughly equally distributed, but that certain classes of crime are enforced with prison more often, that different demographics get disproportionately more attention from law enforcement, and that due to socioeconomic factors different demographics are more likely to inhabit income brackets where the likely types of crime are more likely to be harshly enforced.Information without context can be misleading. If someone seems to care about the conclusion you take away more than some bit of context that makes that conclusion less forgone, thats a sign they might be pushing a narrative.
There is, unfortunately, a contrasting rhetorical trick where someone provides such an overwhelming amount of context that you cannot possibly handle all of it in a reasonable amount of time.
Exactly where the line is is unfortunately not something I think there’s a simple answer for determining. I try to determine if it seems like the person is using the information to support their point, or if they’re using it to drown out opposition.
“I make more money than last year” when i make lwss inflation-adjusted
“we have reached record incomes” when you make more money than ever but still less than you should (i.e. your competitor went bankrupt and you failed to capture their customer-base)
It’s all about the 💫Framing🌟
You probably have more than the average amount of legs too.
That comment is very mean
tap for explanation
Because it’s the mean average
Things like “lies of omission” basically.
You’ve never heard of people bending the truth?
Saying something factually correct, but misleading because parts are omitted?
Lying by omission is still a lie.
Misleading by omission is deception
The best propaganda is built on a foundation of truth. You’ll see this on fascist websites that love to flood their feeds with “black on black crime” stories, to heavily promote “white woman attacked by black man” news narratives, and to repeatedly post images of young black/latino men with facial tattoos or in mug-shot photos. Any individual statement can be validated as true, but deliberate miss-sampling of information leads the audience to develop broad negative biases towards certain demographics.
Then you get a drum-beat of assertions about skin color as a heuristic for public safety. People are asserted as dangerous because of their skin color and you need to be proactive in keeping yourselves away from these people through… white flight and neighborhood gentrification, panicked public responses to black people, reporting black people in your neighborhood to the police as “suspicious”, leaning towards prosecution/high sentencing of black suspects when you’re a member of a jury pool, organizing with your neighbors to harass and expel black neighbors, pressure your school/local community center to hold back/suspend/expel black students disproportionately, and otherwise make your community hostile to black residents until you get a segregated neighborhood through public pressure.
The combination of the cherry-picked information and the advocacy for populist segregation leads to more interracial conflicts and an increased anxiety between white and black residents. This sets off a wave of self-confirming incidents - you get to see more black people in your neighborhood punished by authority figures, which leads naive viewers to believe more of the “minorities are inherently evil” media narratives. More conflicts feed into the social media scene of cherry-picked video clips and biased news articles, with “innocent white person victimized by evil black person” becoming received wisdom rather than something you need to read in a headline anymore.
People are trained into becoming racist over time by the engineered social dynamics.
Check out the NYTimes when they’re not just lying… Any hegemonic media really.
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.
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.
The politically elite are so used to puppeteering public sentiment with ease, and so confident in their efforts to suppress education in America that they have stopped trying to be sneaky. All American ‘news’ is propaganda and the this is a blatant attempt to divide the public on one of the last free resources for factual information**. Free as in non-criminalized. These types of posts by EM are to incite division in order to amp-up for the criminalization of information. And it’s not very difficult to see.
**factual when readers uphold its integrity through critical consumption and editing.
The ability to control the narrative of public discourse is one of the first things that needs to dismantled. The propaganda machine and it’s made up culture war/distraction needs to go.
And the fact that it’s escalated to the point of wealthy elites trying to dismantle public access to information should be deeply alarming for all of us… because then all we have for information is what they tell us… and that’s a dystopia i have no intention of experiencing.
Those tactics won’t really work here but if there’s a small army of them on super low IQ platforms their lies can spread.
They’re half-ass trying to incite intergenerational conflict between X, Z, millenials, etc.
That’s not even new.
Dismissively saying “OK boomer” has been around for several years.
Not the same.
I mean actively blaming specific generations for political and financial issues. Yeah, we blame the boomers for a lot, but now the complainers are shifting focus.
Who hates Wikipedia:
- Tech bros
- Russia
- Israel
- Other generic fascists
Who hates Wikipedia:
Russia
Is this even true? Has any Russian state official or organization indicated they give two shits about an English-centric US-hosted online encyclopedia? Ditto Israel.
Feels like every time I read a “bad actors on the internet” story, I get someone in the comments insisting a foreign intelligence officer is secretly pulling all the strings. As though American propagandists and industrial scale media magnets aren’t willing or capable of doing the job themselves.
No its true actually. Vladimir (the impaler) Putin and President Xi got together and had a secret meeting all about how Wikipedia is the greatest threat to their total dictatorship of Earth, because its the only thing keeping the American citizens so free and open minded and a place where people can go to learn about forbidden topics like Tank Girl and Winnie the Pooh. Putin got mad because he read the article about Grizzly bears and it said he’d probably die if he tried to wrestle one, so he spun up his special government botnet from his elite hacker force and activated his army of Tankie sleeper agents on Lemmy to make an attack on the Freedom of Information Act (thats a special law that Biden made to try to protect wikipedia and keep free speech safe).
this is a joke about foreign influence on Lemmy, not about Wikipedia itself. I like wikipedia
Ditto Israel.
Lol. You should learn the differences between russians and zios.
- https://electronicintifada.net/content/ei-exclusive-pro-israel-groups-plan-rewrite-history-wikipedia/7472
- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/aug/18/wikipedia-editing-zionist-groups
- https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240620-zionist-lobby-group-labelled-propaganda-and-misinformation-source-by-wikipedia/
There is a Russianfork.
what of the teachers that say not to use it?
They don’t actually hate Wikipedia. They hold that it’s not a primary source for things that require citation, and that it’s not a great textbook.
Reading the Wikipedia page for optics is a bad way to learn optics.
It’s also difficult to cite as a source because you can’t actually specify who you’re citing, which is why Wikipedia, for research purposes, is a great way to get a quality overview and the terms you need, and then jump to its sources for more context and primary sources as you need them.Encyclopedias in general are overviews or summaries of what they reference. Teachers would typically like you to reference something that isn’t a summary or overview when writing one, sincenthat what most of those reports are.
The website is literally run by tech bros.
He said tech bros, not tech-minded people. Big difference. Tech bros are the fuckers who run all the crypto and NFT grifter shit and other such things such as twatter.
deleted by creator
Do download a copy of Wikipedia but give them some credit. This isn’t the first nor last attack on information freedom (see internet archive)
NO NO CREDIT GIVEN MUST SHOUT
Or even better, donate to wikipedia. I know I just did.
Can I get a TLDR. I’m on the page about downloading it, but there are so many files to download which makes me think I am looking at the wrong stuff.
Wikipedia is pretty large now, even for text only versions. So the most recommended option to download/read an offline version is by using “Kiwix”.
Kiwix is a reader designed to open and operate archived websites like Wikipedia that are stored in a .zim (think z-file compression but for websites).
Kiwix is open sourced and readers can be installed on your pc, phones, self-hosted as a website, etc.
You can check out their Kiwix library for a list of curated zim’s beyond Wikipedia that are updated on a schedule
You can also use their zimit tool to archive websites on your own as well.
It took a day for me to grasp all these concepts since they were designed mostly for Wikipedia archival purposes but it’s amazing how robust the tools and community are.
I consider myself pretty savvy but I’m also at a loss. I thought and still think you can download all the text but there are so many readers there, different file types. When I finally got to some raw data it was from 2008.
If you want to use Kiwix as posted by @ChogChog@lemmy.world above, you can find the data here: https://dumps.wikimedia.org/other/kiwix/zim/wikipedia/
The latest (January 2024) total dump for Wikipedia (English) is:
wikipedia_en_all_maxi_2024-01.zim…but there’s other languages and sizes available as well.
“the page”? Do you mean kiwix?
lol, no it won’t….
Musk is getting desperate.
Examples? Links?
This unactionable vaguepost is what suffices as a YSK?
Rule 2- Your post body text must include the reason "Why" YSK
Why should I know this, OP?
I replied to the person directly with why it isn’t true, and I reported them with an actionable report.
I wasn’t sure about the ethics of brigading or linking directly at the person, but presumably anyone who cares can find them pretty easily, and anyone who reads this and then also reads the misinformation, will be able to see the connection and make their own decision about whether I am speaking truly.
anyone who cares can find them pretty easily
I care, I have found nothing similar to what you’re discussing.
anyone who reads this and then also reads the misinformation, will be able to see the connection
I just read a post that said Wikipedia was the best website on the internet, was that the misinformation? Someone else donated, was that misinformation? People have shared a variety of thoughts around Wikipedia, most of them are positive, but some are negative.
Negative doesn’t mean wrong. Negative doesn’t mean misinformation. It might be, but it isn’t certain.
I just read a post that said Wikipedia was the best website on the internet, was that the misinformation?
No.
Someone else donated, was that misinformation?
No.
Wikipedia is only a source for truth for people that either don’t know what it’s protecting or are in the genocidal cult it is protecting.
And then I asked the person about this genocidal cult and got no response whatsoever, almost as if it was, not just a negative thing, but a wild and inaccurate thing said apparently with not even a little pretense that it corresponded to the truth. Was that misinformation? Yes!
Hope this helps.
So the “other” thread links here, so I’m going to link to them. https://lemmy.world/post/23535522
I think that thread would have been a much better thing to post. However this isn’t some secret project, this is a single account that is obviously labeled, so this whole post is just a silly.
YSK conspiracy theorists exist.
You are asking weighted nuance from Lemmy. You might as well squish rocks to get water.
This post just reads as it could have been a mod report and that’s about it. Looks like outrage for the sake of outrage
Oh hello mr Russian-pretending-to-be-American.
You’ve never answered why you pretend to be American while at the same time clearly supporting Russia and spreading Russian propaganda.
Are you such a weak-willed American you’ve bought into Russian propaganda?
Isn’t it annoying when you can’t just delete my comment and ban me like you alway do, mr Pro-Russian?
(This guys has said things like “reality has a well known Russian propaganda bias”.)
He’s pro-Russian, and will never answer that particular question despite being ready to lie about everything else, because he knows even a clear lie of “I hate Putin” written by him in the context of him being American could be reason enough for him to accidentally fall out of a window. Because Russia is a shithole autocracy.
This guy never states shit, goes around spamming wannabe good looking lists of links of shit that’s incredibly easily shown to be utter shit, but because there’s so much, it’ll always just diverge from the actual point.
It’s got a name.
An outgrowth of Soviet propaganda techniques, the firehose of falsehood is a contemporary model for Russian propaganda under Russian President Vladimir Putin.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood
Spreading FUD everywhere.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty,_and_doubt
All you need to do to prove this is try to get him to answer whether he’s pro-Russian or not. Not a hard question, yet he just can’t manage answering it.
I mean, you can say all of this stuff… or you could actually post links to evidence.
Look at his profile.
Then look at my post.
Then look at the modlogs from the times on the screenshots of those posts.
It’s common knowledge lemmygrad.ml and lemmy.ml are complete tankies. D’you know why?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_disinformation
One of the easiest ways to spot Russians disinfo is when they pretend to be stupid to say that Russia doesn’t use disinfo, or that at least definitely not on Lemmy, no way.
And the exact same guys absolutely refuse to answer a simple yes or no question. Are you pro-Russian or not? Are you?
While claiming they’re American. Saying Russia is doing all the right things while criticising every Russian enemy and supporting China. Literally everything is in line with Russian propaganda. Yet they can’t say whether they’re pro-Russian or not. While clearly being pro-Russian, and adamantly claiming to be American?
That isn’t enough for you to figure it out? Alrighty then, let’s do it the way he does; just spam the ever living fuck out of anything tangentially related.
https://en.zois-berlin.de/publications/russian-state-sponsored-media-and-disinformation-on-twitter
That 404’s, but it’s on the wayback machine https://web.archive.org/web/20210916150314/https://en.zois-berlin.de/publications/russian-state-sponsored-media-and-disinformation-on-twitter
In particular, it needs to be established what messages are spread on social media platforms and under what conditions, and whether disinformation is shared more widely than objective reporting. Likewise, future research should consider investigating the effects of disinformation spread by RT and Sputnik on social media platforms.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_disinformation
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinformation_in_the_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine
https://www.state.gov/russias-pillars-of-disinformation-and-propaganda-report/
What’s your theory? That he’s an America hating American who loves Russia, hates facts and has made it his life mission to emulate Russian propaganda, but is still too ashamed of it to take a stance on whether he’s pro-Russian or not? And that sounds probable to you…?
Oh okay, so I looked at the post and the posted modlog. Looks like that’s all I need to know.
I’ve never spent so much time writing paragraphs and paragraphs about one Lemmy mod, and maybe you shouldn’t, either.
So you think it’s not good to expose Russian disinformation? Or are you saying he isn’t spreading Russian disinformation?
Because you’re saying one or the other with this “you’re being sad, stop being like that, you’re writing too much”. This is a forum. People write on forums. If a text long enough to merely have paragraphs instead of pages is too long for you, then I can’t help you.
The person claiming every piece of negative information about russia and china and other similar places is a usa psyop is now quoting rules against a post trying to make people aware of misinformation?! Color me surprised.
True, this tells us nothing
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
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.
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.
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.
Their own charts in your link show that web hosting expenses have flatlined over the last decade. Digging into the PDFs in the sources, you can see this was only $2,335,918 in 2019. They even spent more on travel and conferences that year. As contributions continue to grow, the spending category that is growing far faster than any other is salaries and wages. Their CEO made $789k in 2021, all while content is created by volunteers. I like Wikipedia and the content they host; however, I think any increase in contributions is just going to line the pockets of the executives.
Edit, just to be clear: I’m not defending the wildly inflated numbers quoted above; however, I believe they are right in concept. The executives are the ones bleeding the foundation dry. The chart I previously mentioned is below. Internet hosting and many of the other smaller expense categories have been relatively flat year-over-year, but salaries and wages are increasing at an unsustainable runaway pace.
The executives are the ones bleeding the foundation dry.
Kiss my ass. The form 990s show all salaries for developers, administrative staff, executives, and all. You picked the one year when the CEO made $789k, instead of $200-400k, and then claimed that the CEO making four times the engineer salaries is “bleeding the foundation dry” and eating up the whole $186M they brought in that year, or something. The CEO makes about double what the developers make, in most years, and the developers have competitive salaries. Good. That’s how it should be.
This is how modern social media propaganda works. One person says wikipedia is kowtowing to fascist governments and doxxing its members. That turns out to be bullshit, but during the discussion someone else says that $300 million “excess” went missing and no one knows where it went, implying that someone is skimming off money and we shouldn’t be donating because the whole thing is corrupt. That turns out to be bullshit, but during the discussion someone else says that wikipedia is slanting all its coverage to a pro-Western, pro-Israel slant and covering up the truth through a narrative enforcing task force. That turns out to be bullshit, but during the discussion, someone else combs through their financials and finds out that the CEO is making some money, and uses phrases like “bleeding the foundation dry” or “all while content is created by volunteers.”
Get the fuck out. Stop coming up with new bullshit to use to attack wikipedia. I don’t care if the CEO made $700k. I hope it doubles, and I hope they use my $10/month to make it happen. Wikipedia is doing great stuff, and the vigor with which this variety of transient Lemmy villains is popping out to use this various array of bad-faith bullshit to attack them only demonstrates to me that they’re doing something right.
Kiss my ass. Get the fuck out.
Yikes, wow! Totally not an unhinged response. You seem hyper-focused on whatever what said today and assume everything is related to it. I haven’t even read Musk’s statements because his opinions don’t mean anything to me. In reality, concerns with Wikipedia’s financials are nothing new. One of the OG posts highlighting concerns circulated in 2016 (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer) and has continuously been updated with each new year’s disclosures. I believe I first saw it when the author did a Q&A on r/IAmA, 8 years ago (link). In sum, nothing has been done to change course and spending has only increased. In reality, the Wikipedia Foundation and Endowment have over $400-million in assets and core functionality should be able to continue indefinitely. I want to see Wikipedia succeed, and I think it could easily be set for lifetimes if managed appropriately. Looking at core responsibilities (internet hosting), there is no reason why Wikipedia can’t thrive on their investment income. I can only assume those encouraging Wikipedia’s current path hope for someone with a bigger checkbook to come by and bail them out (with strings attached, of course).
I can only assume those encouraging Wikipedia’s current path hope for someone with a bigger checkbook to come by and bail them out (with strings attached, of course).
Lol
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.
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.
The wikimedia foundation has hundreds of millions of dollars in assets.
Now they have ten more
There was a big “information” campaign against donating to wikipedia say 6 months - 2 years ago, anyone know what happened/why?
It is about the wikimedia content creators not getting a proper share while the wikimedia foundation acts basicly like Peta, Green Peace and other “Charity”-Buisnesses by using drastic and guildinducing ads even in third world countries. The server activty is funded for aprox the next 100 years and the content is created for free. Most of the money is therefore actually going to around 700 employees in the adminstration, that work on new projects, lobbying or ideas like wikimedia enterprise. But this in turn is not what the ads imply.
Thanks.
Yeah I always thought it be a bit wild they needed money so frequently.
Apparently that particular round of slander was not as successful as this one.
I’m donating 10 a month. Least I can do. It’s one of the last “good” places on the internet
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
Well, Google takes 15 to 30% off the in-app purchases made through Google Play, so you would probably be giving back Google their own money anyways, plus it would fool many people who might think they’re giving 10€ when actually they’re only giving 8,50€ or 7€ to Wikipedia and the rest to Google.
Better than letting that survey money expire and staying 100% with Google.
Opinion rewards?
ding ding ding!
I use a Firefox extension that occasionally googles random jibberish so about once a day I’ll get an opinion thing asking about the search results. Today I got one that was asking about ‘china next gen aircraft’. I got like 80 cents from it which is 80 cents less I’ll have to pay for my mullvad subscription!
