hckrnws

https://archive.is/JozhY

I am going to say a thing I say a lot: please edit Wikipedia. It is easier to do than you probably think! Wikipedia's biggest constraint is no longer money or server space, it's editor time (especially since LLM-based garbage is a force multiplier on disruptive editing that does not have a corresponding improvement to good-faith editing). Any topic area you know about and/or care about can benefit from your attention. Fixing typos is valuable. Adding photos is valuable. Flagging vandalism is valuable. Please edit Wikipedia.

I have in the past, but three things put me off doing so now;

Pages where I can spot inconsistencies are often controversial, with long dense discussion pages, edits here are almost impossible beyond trivial details. I dont mind fixing trivia, but not if the actual improvement I think I can make is rejected.

There is a bit of a deletionist crusade to keep some topics small, for example, Ive had interesting trivia about a cameras development process simply deleted. Maybe it is truly for the better, but it is not really that easy to add to the meat of the project, without someone else's approval.

Third, the begging banners really feel a bit gross; I know the size of the endowment, and how long it would be able to sustain the project (forever essentially)... It really feels like the foundation is using the Wikipedia brand to funnel money to irrelevant pet causes. This really puts me off contributing.

I made an edit last year, it immediately got reverted and I got a banner on my user page for vandalism. I complained about that, other people agreed with me but the person who reverted my edits never responded. So there it sits.

The only few times I tried to make small edits, typo corrections, or similar, they just got immediately reverted as vandalism. So when I found a page that is largely wrong about a relatively obscure historical figure that I actually know a lot about and have plenty of source material for, I didn't really feel motivated to put the work in to clean it up.

I made a small edit to fix a mistake once and it didn’t get called vandalism but I sort of got a harsh message telling I did it wrong and didn’t follow processes

There must be some admin-level expectations of how things should be done but the editor flow gives you zero warning or indication. This was a while back so maybe they changed the flow

I've had my edits similarly mass reverted with an unkind message.

If there's a dispute and the person you're having a dispute with never materialises to argue their side of the argument, you're fine to just revert the banner.

How are people supposed to understand these hard to follow and shifting rules?

The base rules are actually not very complicated.

But any time you try to write them down, people will come along and interpret them to their own advantage, sometimes outright in the opposite direction. That's a people problem, to some extent, not purely a Wikipedia problem.

(BRD is my favorite pet-peeve)

BOLD, revert, discuss, for those unfamiliar:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:BOLD,_revert,_discus...>

> The base rules are actually not very complicated.

> But any time you try to write them down, people will come along and interpret them to their own advantage, sometimes outright in the opposite direction.

I think this a feature/bug of a (litigious) society that works on the letter of the law rather than the spirit of the law.

I am going to use this at work!

For reasons unknown, I am much better than many at navigating this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40655989

https://x.com/arjie/status/1847046183342297498?s=46

If you share with me what your change is I might be able to get it done.

Seems like the story of Stackoverflow.

If you revert someone's malicious reverts three times, you'll be forced into arbitration. They rarely bother with that though.

Would be curious to learn what you edited.

I think it's an antispam bot, just rerevert.

I've had basic facts about mathematics which are wrong deleted in revisions by editors with no knowledge of the subject beyond having asked ChatGPT (which repeats the wrong shit on Wikipedia). It's hard to be worth it. Wikipedia's biggest problem is the editors.

Wikipedia is really, really bad at mathematics. The tone is all over the place, from “plagiarized from an undergrad textbook” to “crackpot with an axe to grind against Cantor.”

A new layer of Citogenesis? ( https://xkcd.com/978/ )

Interesting. Do you have an example? I'll go look!

I think the "deletionist" tendency is one of the biggest problems with Wikipedia. At least it's the main thing that prevents me from making significant contributions. I say tendency, but maybe it really is more of a crusade. Deletion and rejection definitely seem to be the default "predisposition." I've seen a lot of examples of apparently well meaning contributors being pushed away by the need to establish "notability" for a subject and the expectation that all information must be referenced to a fairly limited number of approved reliable sources. These are norms which have been built over a long period of time so it would be incredibly difficult to change them now.

Exactly. It makes it basically impossible to get niche industry/trade information and history onto wikipedia unless it was so newsworthy it's covered everywhere.

Yet when I (or others) are trying to raise the issue on certain Reddit communities in addition to Lemmy people there still prefer to bury their heads in the sand. Often they'll simply resort to personal attacks and so on just to avoid facing the fact that Wikipedia is not as infalliable as they think at all.

Example:

https://lemmy.world/comment/14158030

That's a feature. Each article requires future attention and adds load.

Most of the important articles were in the first 100,000.

I think the ongoing hosting cost of any given article is incredibly close to zero with the exception of a very tiny fraction of popular articles. The popular ones obviously deserve to be there as evidenced by their popularity alone. Maybe there is something I'm not taking into account but I have a hard time seeing the meaningful cost of some obscure wiki page merely existing.

> Maybe there is something I'm not taking into account but I have a hard time seeing the meaningful cost of some obscure wiki page merely existing.

The thing you're not taking into account is that every article that exists takes up some amount of editor time, which is why it's good when more people participate in Wikipedia. You are correct that the server/bandwidth cost of almost all articles rounds off to zero. That leaves just the cost in "an actual human looked at this and okayed it," which has different scaling characteristics.

If that's the intention, fine. But don't be surprised when no one but the most committed politicians want to bother trying to contribute to the project.

I've also edited random things in the past. Like inaccuracies in Comp.Sci. topics.

I used to like Wikipedia but I'm changing my mind. One thing amongst many others was seeing some company that competed with the startup I worked in basically introduce marketing material into the site. It just feels like it's too big and there are too many interests that want to distort things. I was surprised to see some article recently removed effectively rewriting history and directing to some alternative version. I just checked again and it's been restored but it just seems like the wild west.

I'd need some serious convincing to restore my trust in it. There are still some good technical/science articles I guess. It kind of sucks that instead of getting more reliable information on the Internet we're trending towards not being to trust anything. It's not clear how we fix this since reliability can not be equal to popularity.

> It just feels like it's too big and there are too many interests that want to distort things. I was surprised to see some article recently removed effectively rewriting history and directing to some alternative version. I just checked again and it's been restored but it just seems like the wild west.

In fairness, this does mean the system is working.

Yeah- Maybe it's "eventually working". It's hard to trust when it seems so fluid. Maybe there needs to be some mechanics to make it harder to change. Something like being able to suggest changes/corrections but having those come out on some schedule after a review? (thinking software release process here). Quarterly Wikipedia releases? Creating some "core" of Wikipedia that is subject to tougher editorial standards?

Not sure.

Its definitely an eventual consistency kind of model.

There was some attempts at change review (called "pending changes") that is used on very continous articles, but it never really scaled that well. I think its more popular on german wikipedia.

Wikipedia is so dominant that it has kind of smoothered all alternative models. Personally i feel like its kind of like democracy: the worst system except for all the other systems. All things are transient though, i'm sure eventually someone will come up with something superior that will take over, just like wikipedia took over from encyclopedia briticana.

> Personally i feel like its kind of like democracy: the worst system except for all the other systems.

It's exactly this, in large part because Wikipedia happens to also be a large-scale exercise in direct democracy.

It will unnerve you to know, that this is the state of the art, and the information environment we run in, is incredibly fragile at the speeds at which it is moving.

It may also hearten you to know, that small, consistent actions like yours, make these collective systems run.

Control theory (among others) says that a more rapid cycle actually often improves reliability and accuracy of a system. (If on average an iteration will converge on a set point/objective, then more/faster iterations will converge more rapidly, or become stable past some threshold). People keep trying to slow Wikipedia down though. They do succeed somewhat, and that actually hurts accuracy and engagement.

> It's hard to trust when it seems so fluid.

Perhaps we should trust it more because it is fluid and that fluidity is documented (see the history and talk tabs for any given article). Historically, reputable sources depended upon, to a very large degree, the authority of the author. The reader typically had little to no insight into what was generally agreed upon and where there was some debate. How the Wikipedia exposes that may be imperfect, but it is better than nothing.

Mechanics like that exist for when warring over a page escalates. See the old essay (20 years old now!) "The Wrong Version": https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Wrong_Version

Harder to change doesn't make it more or less correct, just means wrong information sticks around longer. Because revision history is kept and changes are instant, it's easy to fix bad changes. For topics that see extensive astroturfing, they can be restricted.

It’s worth remembering that the entire point of a wiki is that it’s quick and easy to make a change (the name means “quick” in Hawaiian). Being quick and easy to change was the defining quality of Wikipedia and its advantage over more rigid traditional encyclopaedias. These days editing Wikipedia seems like you have to fight bureaucracy and rules lawyering, and doesn’t seem very wiki-like at all.

But a review process can make it both harder to change and more correct. A delay in impacting the official version makes it harder for people to vandalize.

We do this in software all the time.

In software if there's a critical bug sometimes we accelerate a fix. We can have a process like that for "wrong information". But you'd think most articles about established topics should not see a lot of churn. Yes- Sometimes they find a new fossil that calls some preexisting science into question, but these are relatively rare events and we can deal with that e.g. by putting a note on the relevant topic while the new article gets worked on.

Basically every other complaint in this thread is that editing is impossible because everything is reverted. Your issue seems like an impossible one to cleanly solve

"hard to trust when it seems to fluid"

This has nothing to do with the information itself, it has to do with human emotions and resistance to change.

Not everything meets Wikipedia editorial goals, but you still have a lot more of latitude in Wikibooks and Wikiversity, the latter also admitting original researches.

I've tried to contribute to Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects but they block Tor, e-mailing admins to get an account manually created always results in them telling you to follow some other process, but that process is only for "established editors", so it seems there's no realistic way for me to contribute.

It really feels that way because that's what they're doing. There's a legit non-profit internet encyclopedia barnacled with a bunch of generic left wing political stuff, except the barnacle is bigger than the boat.

Yeah I stopped donating to Wikipedia once I learned where the money goes.

Even if it ends up supporting causes I agree with, why would I need the Wikimedia Foundation as an intermediary? I could just give money directly to the causes!

I've done a fair bit of editing over almost 20 years. Some of my photos are featured in small articles, and I've only had a few of my edits reverted, always for sensible reasons. It's easy to get started, and the pitfalls (chiefly, adding commentary without a source) are well documented.

So on that basis, I agree. Please edit. It's easy. Start small.

That said, I've watched entire articles vanish under the banner of non-notability, which were clearly notable if one bothered to find some citations. The deletionists have a process and a timeline, while the contributions come slowly and sporadically. This asymmetry is a cancer. If there's a treadmill belt pushing articles off the site which fail to run fast enough, then it's impossible for small articles, which are just learning to crawl, to survive long enough to survive. It's not a test of notability, it's a test of Wiki-savvy among an article's supporters.

The best way to make a new article actually stick around, is to basically build the whole thing elsewhere, which takes weeks or months of effort for a single person since it's not collaborative, then plonk it into Wikipedia fully formed, and maybe, just maybe, it might have enough citations to pass the test of notability. But this means that, from the outset, it represents a single author's viewpoint.

Deletionists eviscerate what makes Wikipedia interesting, and they're the main reason I haven't edited more.

This needs to be talked by a lot! However per my experiences and those of others if you go to either the "front page of the internet" or Lemmy the competitor you'll get side-eyed and harassed by people who thinks that you're a "far-right obscurantist" for simply criticizing Wikipedia.

I tried to get interested in Wikipedia and the crazy level of gatekeeping over topics these editors had no clue about was frustrating to me. They don’t know what is notable and they have no business telling people what to do in many instances (esp with more obscure topics).

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Interesting how so many people are answering that they've had trouble!

How about I look at some of those cases? Especially if it's relatively recent, I can take a look. Leave me a message here, or at my email address (see my HN info) , or on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Kim_Bruning

I'm not very active anymore, but I'll check in the next couple of days and see what I can do. Really to be able to help I generally need links to revisions, but if you have a username, a page, and a reasonably short time frame (a concrete date) I might be able to figure out the relevant revisions from there.

To onlookers: When I investigate cases like this, there's often a "catch." Sometimes contributors really did break Wikipedia policies — and just don’t mention that part when telling their side of the story.

Now I'm certainly not saying every case is like that, so I will look, and if you don't get what the issue was, I'll try to explain. In some cases if it was recent and it somehow wasn't fair, I might even be able to'fix' it within the bounds of Wikipedia policy.

> How about I look at some of those cases?

Please note that, although there are scores of anecdotes in this thread, precisely none of them link to any examples or give enough details to find them. It’s always like this with Wikipedia detractors; I don’t know why, but it is. Complaints and horror stories galore, but nobody will link to any of it, preventing anybody from investigating what actually happened.

There are a couple of legitimate reasons. Raising the issue internally only brings ire and attention by admins and shadow groups. I tried doing this via the WMF village pump , technical pumps, admin pages and only drew more attacks.

Raising the issues externally comes off as petty, because the “evidence” consists of 50+ pages of inane bickering on talk pages, community post , etc with no clear narrative or verdict. It’s a unique community that leans heavily on hyper-bureaucratic and bespoke debates.

I could share > 5 severe cases that required weeks of effort to “resolve” . It would require nearly as much effort for anyone to draw conclusions from.

There are some index pages of some of the more notable conflicts & debates. If you can indicate that digging that up would be worth my time to help you understand more, I may be willing to help you out.

I was mostly looking for specific interactions to dig in to, but if you have a link or two for me to take a peek, we'll both know if it's worth it soon enough. You don't have to dig deep straight away.

i just got pinged with this being archived. It was regarding abuse of USERTALKSTOP to block any criticism on user talk pages. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk%3A...

There's no such policy , but it's abused as a way to censor criticism over behavior, which itself is a policy (RUCD)

There were a couple instances where user conduct concerns were raised on their talk page (in accordance with RUCD), and that user used USERTALKSTOP to censor the concerns. The outcome is that me and the other users who were raising concerns received a temporary ban (one permanent), instead of the concerns themselves being attended to and addressed.

Worse than the ban was the hours and hours of inane dialog on admin pages, defending your edit history, account history, intentions, etc. And the UI is clumsier and noisier than the worst 1990s web BBs

You can see how a seemingly benign non-policy can be abused to censor even well-intended volunteers.

Did that help

see what i mean.

Because we/they have detached from the issue. It was a bad experience and thus it gets pushed aside. I also have my wikipedia deletionist story - the German wikipedia is among the worst there, way worse than the us-american - but it's not like I will keep an account active on a project with those awful people. So linking it isn't even all that easy.

You're not wrong, per-se.

I'm still going to ask though! We might get lucky. Want to help out?

>although there are scores of anecdotes in this thread, precisely none of them link to any examples or give enough details to find them

In the past, when I've tried to keep receipts on this sort of thing (which requires an extraordinary amount of effort, and is often only possible if you've anticipated that there would be a need to do so - since content is often deleted or archived without warning, and nobody ever enters an argument on the Internet with the expectation of talking about that specific argument years later) and actually presented evidence, I've been accused being "creepy" or various other forms of misconduct, and the argument is still not taken any more seriously. I've given up on presenting evidence of this sort of thing because the people who ask for it are not being intellectually honest, in my extensive experience. They don't care if you can actually prove what you're saying; they will ignore you anyway.

If the evidence has merely been “archived”, it would still be possible to find and link to, no?

And even if, as you say, all the evidence has been completely deleted, an honest critique would at least point out the exact article in question, and summarize the details of the attempted changes.

But all the criticism in this thread (and elsewhere) always lack this. It is a mystery.

Finding things again is a lot of work. There's similarly "always" this selective demand for rigor that faces complainants such as myself. I don't owe you my time. Often these complaints are motivated by recollections of years-old incidents - sometimes by many such incidents.

There are multiple entire websites out there criticizing Wikipedia and what they have to say tends to revolve around the editing process, specifically the social/cultural aspects. Have you attempted to research this yourself?

Are you familiar with what Larry Sanger himself had to say about the bias that has emerged in Wikipedia (https://unherd.com/newsroom/wikipedia-co-founder-i-no-longer...)?

e: another comment elsewhere on this post brought up another source: https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/reliable-sources-how-wik... . I've read a bit of it and can generally endorse what's being said there. In particular, some specific usernames are cited and I recognize most of them, which in itself is telling. Other comments here suggested that Sanger's personal views are less than scientific, to say the least. I have not looked into this personally, but I don't think this in any way negates the argument about bias. (Nor is any political camp immune to pseudoscience.)

How do we rate biases, and what’s the rank of Wikipedia along the diverse methodologies to do so?

Also note that the issue is biases in there whole generality. Most data produced by the universe will just not attract interest of most human beings. Or at least, as finite beings, we have to pounder where we put our attention and can’t afford to study every single topic with the same level of scrutiny.

To offer a counter-example to the many anecdotes about being gatekept(?) by veteran Wikipedia editors: I have the opposite experience.

I occasionally contribute to various topics, and in many cases experienced editors silently fixed formatting errors I made, allowing me to focus on contributing to Wikipedia without having to keep up with the best practices.

I also participated in a deletion discussion once, and - despite being inexperienced and in the minority position (keep) - the experienced editors considered my arguments and responded to them.

I agree with this as well ( I wrote a critical comment above). I’ve had the most enjoyment fixing typography & typos (aka copy editing). It feels more like a casual (video) game that way.

Some of my edits to technical articles were well received.

You’re right it’s good to highlight the good and bad, but given the amount of goodwill that was burned , the bad did outweigh the good for me.

I created a page, it got declined because the guy who two films have been made about didn't count as important enough. I kind of get it, but still, did kill the energy slightly.

The notability requirement is a real bane, but it also kind of makes sense when there's really insufficient manpower for the articles they already have. But then, maybe they'd have more manpower if they loosened the notability requirement.

The general notability guideline is another thing that's effectively downstream of "there's not enough editor time to keep everything up to basic standards." If Wikipedia had 10x the editor-hours it does now, notability requirements would de facto loosen, because there would be enough editor-hours to keep the extra articles useful. Seriously, editor time is the major bottleneck of Wikipedia.

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If you care about a topic and want to edit Wikipedia but do not want to deal with the process, you can simply talk about what you want to change on the discussion page. Is there an equivalent workaround when it comes to creating new pages?

You can create a page as an anonymous user. The content and subject is much, more more important than the fact of being created as an anonymous user. If that's the process you want to avoid, there's also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_creatio... but that one is more geared towards people who are already engaged with Wikipedia. An outsider saying "well, someone, but not me, should do something about this problem," is just as welcome on Wikipedia as it is anywhere else.

I suppose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_creatio... is the closest equivalent but not really the same thing.

What's the issue with naming the person if you think there should be an encyclopedic article about said person?

If it's about anonymity / not wanting to publicly link your HN and Wikipedia profiles, well fine, but the fact that there are two films about a person does not say much.

People can make films about themselves, too.

Oh, it was just because it didn't matter to the conversation. It was about Bernie Jordan who left his nursing home to attend a D-Day event. I created the article because both films imply the nursing home prevented him, but in actuality they went to great lengths to help him.

I see, thanks!

Reading the article about the movie, I can kind of see both sides here.

Probably a veteran Wikipedia contributor could draw the lines best, but it seems reasonable to say that the incident itself would not be relevant enough unless it had been made into a movie.

The article about the movie clearly states that it's a true story.

i mean, there are often "curiosity" stories reported by multiple newspapers that are still not really historical events warranting their own article.

I'd draw the line depending on the volume of coverage and publicity in such cases.

And this case doesn't appear to me as if it was a major cultural thing that everyone knew about when it happened (unless they were interested in the movie).

I'm not in the US though, so I can only tell what I see in search results and that the story hasn't really crossed the atlantic into any notable publicity here.

I’ve tried, but every article even the most inconsequential seems to have an angry bird in the roost enforcing whatever their particular vision of the article is.

It's even worse when you add a source and you get reverted for reasons quite clearly disproven in your source. I had to make a single edit three times because it got undone twice by two separate administrators. A less stubborn person would've just given up on the first baseless revert and never edited Wikipedia again.

When it finally got through, were they nice to you at least? (They'd better have been!)

And, it probably wasn't administrators, unless you specifically looked. You do sometimes have to be a bit insistent, you're quite right. If someone reverts you, it's often not personal. Ask on the talk page why they reverted, and if no one says anything for 24 hours (definitely wait this long), just try your edit (or a better one!) again.

I wrote an essay on this once that still gets used a lot on wiki (misquoted even more often). The original version of the essay had a few more tricks up its sleeve -but- if you do it this way you're not likely to get in trouble at least. And otherwise now you know someone you can ask for help.

>When it finally got through, were they nice to you at least?

Not really. They continued to grumble about being "stuck" with the data on the talk page because they couldn't find any source to refute it, and the last edit one of them made about it was "Since I can't find any source to refute this (everyone seems to use it without question), let's at least sort the data correctly".

>And, it probably wasn't administrators, unless you specifically looked.

I did look! One of them is still an administrator and the other one is currently a "former administrator". I think I remember the other one being an admin back then too, but I could be misremembering.

Oh dear. If you want to point me at the talk page in question, I'll take a look!

It's quite an old discussion at this point and is now archived.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_best-selling_vide......

Edits are public so other members of the community can eventually make a case against or for the actions of a dedicated maintainer. Keep trying.

Sounds like stackoverflow defenders. I'm another person who tried about 5-7 times over the years to do larger improvements all for it to go to waste. Minor edits many times survive but even those I stopped doing because of the sour effect of the larger ones getting denied.

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Honestly I have more valuable things to do with my time.

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> please edit Wikipedia. It is easier to do than you probably think!

Last time I tried to do that, I flagged a citation that went to a book saying the opposite of what wikipedia was citing it in support of as "failed verification".

This attracted the attention of an editor, who showed up to revert my flag, explaining that as long as the book exists, that's good enough.

Wikipedia could improve noticeably by just preventing the existing editors from making edits.

I edited mostly a single page many years ago. It wasn't a controversial subject really, just one where there is a lot of garbage popular history and some light revisionism that made it a bit of an effort to remove unreliable sources and add some better sources. Never any issues or fights over it, but I got bored eventually and just let it be.

Recently I edited a page or two, then tried to edit more, but everything is so complex now. All the special markup and stuff to consider is really off-putting. Took me forever to figure out how to properly fix the year of death of a person and some other data I just ignored because it was too much red tape. Wish it was more simple plain text. Makes quick drive-by edits too much work.

I spent like 30 minutes trying to fix a busted citation link a while ago before giving up. I write code and markdown for a living. :shrug:

They could maybe explain it better with some short youtube videos?

For citations you an usually delete the old stuff and then click 'Templates' to insert a new one. For "cite web" you can just enter the url and click the magnifying glass symbol and it automatically fills the rest.

I tried on a completely uncontroversial page that documented a certain idiom and examples of where it was used.

My edit was reverted, twice, because apparently there is no such thing as a notable source for lines from a 1980s British TV episode, not even a fan website that has a transcript for all of them. Gave up after that.

That's an error, because episodes can be cited directly, and the template "cite episode" exists for this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Cite_episode

It can be seen in use for instance on the Beavis and Butt-head article, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beavis_and_Butt-Head where the citation looks like this:

"Werewolves of Highland". Beavis and Butt-Head. Season 8. Episode 1. October 27, 2011. MTV.

Sounds like that might have been a copyright issue? In the UK a transcript of a show would need permission of the writers/owners to be reproduced. I can see Wikipedia would be sensible to disallow infringing works as being bad sources.

Ironically an excerpt of the script/transcript would be allowed by UK copyright - but a site with only excerpts would probably but be a good source for Wikipedia's purposes.

I've been an editor since 2004. It's getting really, really hard now. Like, it is really off-putting and no longer enjoyable.

Curious, as a longtime editor, what's gotten harder for you recently?

As a casual, very infrequent editor, I echo everyone else's complaints that it's intimidating to have your additions reverted by the old guard who seem to have an increasingly particular vision of the site.

21 years of editing, that's awesome! I'm curious though, what's changed? If I were to maybe guess, I'd imagine it coincides with the rising temperature of the online culture war?

You tend to have to get all your ducks 100% in a row before you edit or create. It used to be I could author a new article with some decent solid sources and there would be no argument. Then someone later would come and fix any deficiencies and maybe switch out the sources for better ones.

Basically, it's become "perfect is the enemy of good."

> Fixing typos is valuable. Adding photos is valuable. Flagging vandalism is valuable. Please edit Wikipedia.

Wise that you omit adding other credible sources that do not agree with the main editor's views. What you're describing sounds like already preserving their work, no matter if it happens to be provide info based on multiple convergent sources or not.

Since so many commenters here have bad experiences, I'll provide a counterweight. I've made numerous edits and have run into little to no resistance. I'm sure asking people on a forum does not evoke a representative response.

I don't want to contribute to this giant propaganda machine by making it more valuable. Structural problems must be fixed first.

"If your solution consists of 'everyone should just X', you don't have a solution"

People say "propaganda machine" but I have yet to see much example of that. The Trumpists don't like it because it fact checks their lies but I'm not sure it's fair to call that propaganda? Any examples like a link to an article or section that you feel is propaganda?

Many people here decry Wikipedia as biased, impossible to edit and other bad things.

But none of the comments point out the actual article that they wanted to edit.

Ironically, presumably to remain anonymous. Anonymity and pseudonymity are directly attacked in the letter this article is about.

Wikipedia sure isn't perfect, but so far, when commenters attack it with fundamental vitriol, I've always found these people to have a political agenda.

{{Citation needed}}

/s

I tried volunteering and contributed a few thousand edits, and ended up brigaded into hours of silly reviews by sock puppets and their crony admins. The bureaucracy is nuttier than a Monty python sketch. Endless futile debates on talk pages.

It’s not supposed to have many rules (according to the Jimbo gospel), but admins apply policy pages as law , and given how many inane and convoluted policies there are, you can be censured for practically anything with the right quote. You can see these sockpuppet brigades watching and pouncing on the edit history of any semi controversial page.

It’s a pathetic monoculture that lacks any self awareness or sense of introspection. Critical discussions are quickly shut down and the authors are put into a penalty box.

Leadership needs to address the power dynamics, and come up with a better self regulating structure. Editors need to identify themselves and their agenda. Networks & brigades need to be monitored and shutdown using activity tracking.

Wikipedia’s social network is operating with 1990s era protocols but their influence via syndication on every common news surface means they are way too influential. Google, Alexa, LLMs and mainstream media all syndicate Wikipedia content as gospel. But the content is completely unregulated.

And don’t get me started on Wikimedia Foundation.

It’s not easy to do at all. They have extensive blacklists to reputable conservative papers, and I’ve been cussed out for trying to link things. There are a lot of topics that can’t even be discussed because the pro-left bias is too strong that any reputable source is banned, and many non-political pages which are monitored so tightly by a single individual it’s impossible to edit.

Have you tried using sources that aren't explicitly "conservative papers"? And if so, have you considered the lack of evidence found outside of overtly biased sources might indicate the position you are defending is not defensible outside of a strictly partisan perspective and worldview, and is buoyed only by other strictly partisan sources?

On many occasions, right-wing Internet acquaintances have given me a link to a story in a conservative news source; I would try to look up other coverage with a search engine, and I would find exclusively conservative sources discussing what happened, even though it was clearly verifiable fact that the the thing in question had in fact happened.

During the Rittenhouse trial, I watched trial coverage live, then evaluated what various news outlets were saying about what happened. Unironically, Fox News was objectively far more truthful and accurate than every left-wing source. I caught left-wing sources trying to push disproven and dubious narratives - in particular, the "taking an illegal firearm across state lines" bit - long after anyone had an excuse, even after the basic issues with that story had already been debunked by other left-wing sources. Shortly after the verdict dropped, Al Jazeera Plus put out an absurd, naked propaganda piece trying to paint the DA as a hero unjustly thwarted, with imagery showing complete ignorance to and/or resistance of the proven facts of the case.

(As a reminder: this is a DA who didn't check a firearm personally before pointing it at the jury, in order to try to make a ridiculous point about how Rittenhouse might possibly have been holding the weapon, while clearly having no actual idea how to hold and aim it properly. Who then made a closing statement baldly asserting falsehoods about the basics of how firearms work that had been disproved immediately prior. Who had previously made repeated, blatant attempts to violate Rittenhouse's Fifth Amendment rights and introduce evidence that had been very clearly excluded from consideration in pre-trial hearings.)

I have witnessed supposedly respected, mainstream sources (with a rarely acknowledged left-wing bias and an axe to grind) smear people I've personally met, and movements and groups that include people I personally know and care about (especially movements that have nothing to do with the traditional left-right axis but which certain leftists have decided to label as "right-wing" for their own reasons).

The bias built in to Wikipedia's "reliable sources" policy is self-reinforcing. You can't get conservative sources added even if what they're saying is provably true, or "liberal" (an absurd abuse of the term, but that's the American jargon now) sources excluded even if what they're saying is provably false, because a) the latter agree with each other; b) a new source needs vetting, which generally involves agreeing with existing sources; c) there is no objective standard for accuracy or reliability.

You present your comment as though you imagine that "sources that aren't explicitly conservative" are, thereby, not also "overtly biased". A lot of people seem to believe this, but it's not at all true. The fact that you frame this in terms of "defending positions" is also telling, for me.

See also: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/01/neutral-vs-conservativ...

You actually highlight the problem very well. Any group of people can make their own websites, publish their own papers, produce their own films, cross-refencing each other all along the way, thereby creating the illusion their their alternate reality, though largely fabricated, is as true as the real world we all live in. But it isn't. The "facts" within that sphere are only supported by other "facts" within that same sphere, and they fail to connect to the larger, long-standing and global web of data, research and opinion that are far more diverse, well-documented and debated. And by failing to connect, or only tenuously connecting, to the larger conversation they are rendered irrelevant, except for their use as a weapon towards personal or political ends.

The problem is that you tried to attribute this behaviour to conservative sources specifically, in order to rebuke someone else here, but in reality this is not a specific trait of conservative sources.

I just fucking said that. Any sphere, if sufficiently disconnected from or contradictory to the mass of human knowledge, is highly suspect at best. Most likely it's complete garbage. Pollution that hinders the healthy advancement of human knowledge.

That's a strange choice of words. Divergence from human beliefs is perfectly legal, because beliefs are fallible. How can you possibly be ignorant about this when you just now described an echo chamber yourself?

Tried many times, nothing sticks. Lots of resistance.

Every time I've tried to edit Wikipedia I've been called names and bullied off the platform.

I used to edit wikipedia until I got permanently "community banned" because of some poor choices of words and even my apologies were ignored. The site is full of people who are chronically online and like to witch hunt and destroy people's lives. That wasn't the case almost two decades ago when I started using the site, but now it's full of the type of people that passionately use reddit and bluesky and that were formerly on twitter. (It's worth noting that a "community ban" is a special type of ban that's basically a lynch mob where a bunch of people dog pile and if there's enough "consensus" you get banned, which can happen by the person proposing it simply calling forth all their friends. And this type of ban is considered "stronger" than an actual administrator ban so cannot be overturned by an administrator. It's mob violence at its finest.)

I was a very active editor who'd been using the site for a very long time, but they don't care. One major mistake and you're gone forever.

The site also has a huge bias toward "media" sources rather than actual scientific content or primary sources in general. They treat the media as vetters of the truth and ignore all of the group-think/mass delusion that is common among mainstream media where they all re-report each others stories. That causes a huge blind spot. It didn't used to be that way too, it used to be that most notable sources were books, but nowaydays with everything online and the quality of media reporting going down and down it's caused Wikipedia itself to decline in quality.

I used to encourage people to edit Wikipedia like you, no longer. The site needs a hard fork, at least for the english speaking site.

With how hostile userbase is on wikipedia, no - i would rather not. especially in my native tongue.

I used to edit Wikipedia actively. I was was active on the conflict of interest notice board and involved in pushing back against a few self-promotional scams. The worst one involved the "binary options" industry, before it was shut down. "Better Place", a hype-based electric car startup that went bankrupt, was another.

A few years previous, most heavy promotion on Wikipedia was music-related. Then business hype dominated. Then political hype took over. Trying to push back in the "post truth" era is valuable but painful.

It was worth doing for a while. But not for too long. It's wearing.

I'll add: please edit in areas where you are an expect. Over the last 20 years I have racked up a few thoudand edits, rewrites, new articles, etc.. Don't contribute to the low effort noise everyone is screaming about. In a century an edit in transcendental number theory with a citation is going to be a lot more important than whatever the current culture war is.

Why is their editor so awful to use?

I don't know, but it's definitely not a lack of funding.

Designers happened.

Years ago I tried adding a weblink directing to a community, to an article about a game, where there were already weblinks to other communities, which were in no way any more official or proper than the community I linked to, but this edit never made it into the page, because someone played gatekeeper there, probably a person of the already linked communities. Since then I don't even bother editing wiki any longer. It is gatekeeping by people with their own agenda. What else I read about edit wars did not inspire confidence either.

I've tried this but my edit is either auto reverted for some bureaucracy violation, or the article requires extended confirmed status to edit at all.

I used to, until entire notable topics within a certain culture were deleted as "not notable" by editors unfamiliar with the topics.

"not notable" is the cancer within wikipedia. You can't claim to be the sum of human knowledge but also arbitrarily remove articles to meet some imaginary criteria.

They block VPN use that makes editing impossible for people from some of big countries with so called "firewalls".

I always wonder why certain topics are locked.

For most things the talk pages will explain why it is restricted, but if someone forgot to put a notice there, there's also a giant list of "the following topic areas reliably attract disruptive editing and get people angry, so admins move much more quickly to restrict editing than they would otherwise." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:General_sanctions#Ac...

wikipedia means different things depending where you are. Content in English looks a lot better than browsing content in other languages like Spanish, French, Italian, ... Especially when it is about non Tech subjects in these languages, there seems to be a strong difference in quality, and the utility you get from Wikipedia varies with how many languages you speak.

My biggest beef is that any contributions volunteers make will be stolen by sama and similar scam artists & SV dweebs so they can improve their AI (and while Wikipedia is free AI which requires login/authentication and maybe even paid subscription in future).

I tried making some contributions and ended up getting totally put off by passive-aggressive rules-lawyering and BS. There is a certain sort of person who edit-squats pages and fights remorselessly over every change and it just wasn’t worth the time and emotional energy to try to get over that hump.

I've seen such bad editing lately. Basic grammar rules being missed/capitalization issues, personal opinions and hearsay cited as "fact", lack of references. Seemingly unrelated topics except in whoever made an edits eyes.

So yeah, you don't even have to be an expert. What's weird is that there IS a lot of edits by ideologues of many kind. And it doesn't have to be "foreign agents" and this Trump attack reeks so hard of yet another attempt at authoritarian control and NewSpeak. Biden gave in with the TikTok to Trumps initial games, and now it just feeds the game. We have to resist this sort of thing from below.

I wish people had a good "sniffer" for bullshit. I'm not saying I'm perfect (we all have our blind spots) but after a while you can tell when certain things are trying to put a spin on something... It's especially odious when it comes to national identities trying to put a spin or tie either themselves or their enemies to a particular view point. The worst part is it's not necessarily obvious, to a lot of people if you don't have the knowledge, or the ability to critique and ask questions.

So we need people to keep asking questions for sure, and sniffing out this sort of thing. But it has to not be "IN THE NAME OF NATIONAL SECURITY" but rather "IN THE NAME OF OPEN KNOWLEDGE FOR ALL". Otherwise you just become a front or spokesthing for a given state, and that's no better than fucking Pravda.

Why? Bots reverse every edit.

You can usually just revert the revert if your edit was legitimate. I think the bot will say this too in the message it sends you.

Why revert edits in the first place then? Do they think people are editing Wikipedia by accident?

Please do not edit, write for, read, or cite Wikipedia. If you care about or know about a topic, consider writing a book or article about it.

Understand the sentiment. Less reasonable people that edit Wikipedia will continue to make it a hellscape for the rest. Please try to edit and create.

In the past, I have done so, and won't, again.

First, my (quite correct) edits in existing pages have been reversed within minutes. No explanation as to why (I assume because I was not "known" enough). I have heard this complaint numerous times.

Second, when I tried to create a page about a system that I had originally authored, has become a well-known, worldwide tool, managed by a large team that does not include me, the page was rejected. I think it was because I had been involved in the creation of the tool.

I decided that it wasn't worth it. I didn't get upset, but it was clear that my input wasn't wanted.

Here's the letter: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ocNyx34Et19sKtlta0bTPPzSPcp...

No claims, no evidence. No sources, except "it has come to my attention" and "information received by my office".

Yikes that letter is alarming.

> In view of public criticisms, including those expressed by Wikipedia Co-Founder Dr. Lawrence M. Sanger, regarding the opacity of editorial processes and the anonymity of contributors, what justification does the Foundation offer for shielding editors from public scrutiny?

Larry Sanger has been criticizing Wikipedia for more than 20 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Sanger#Criticism_of_Wiki...

The author of that letter is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Martin_(Missouri_politician... - "the first U.S. attorney for D.C. in at least 50 years to be appointed without experience as a judge or a federal prosecutor".

The Heritage Foundation has been open about their desire to strip Wikipedians of anonymity, this is just the government putting that plan into practice:

https://slate.com/technology/2025/02/wikipedia-project-2025-...

If the HF is behind this, then Wikipedia is doomed beyond any legal defense. Back it up entirely and move it overseas.

Authoritarian regimes thrive on fatalism and despair. But they also inspire resistance. We did not have mass protests a few months ago. Our society is in deep crisis and the outcome can still swing either way.

For all the progress they’ve made in dismantling our democratic institutions, deep incompetence runs through this administration.

Our efforts should be still directed to fighting their overreach. It is not the time to retreat.

The easiest solution is for the Wikimedia Foundation to move out of Us jurisdiction to a more democratic country.

I don't think that would work. The US would just attack those countries as they are doing right now, trying to force us to give up DEI and ESG.

It’s questionable whether this bully continues to have as much influence as it thinks it does.

I don't see any signs of succesful resistance yet.

China is doing just fine resisting the bullying. EU can do the same.

EU already tried.

they should try harder.

To be more clear, it's operatives of the Heritage Foundation who now work in the government putting this into place. Does anyone think Trump actually does much day to day? He often seems completely unaware of what's going on in his own government. I invite anyway to watch his evening press conferences where he's handed a bunch of Executive Orders, is told what he's signing (he has no clue), and signs it.

Too bad there's not a maximum age for being elected president.

Their entry on Wikipedia is well worth a read:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heritage_Foundation

Kind of explains a lot in the balancing act in Trumps rise to power while trying to look like a marionette for various interests this term. They should remember Hitler's rebellion from his masters.

Trump is dumb and 80 though. But if he had been 40 and intelligent.

Vance is 40, I wonder how intelligent or not is he?

he might be intelligent, but he has negative rizz. the only person excited about Vance 2028 is Peter Thiel.

Getting really bad vibes from this. Plenty of people in power are unhappy with Wikipedia for years. So far it’s an amazing source and surprisingly neutral given the complexity of the problem. Would not want to lose it in a political fight.

This is legal communication written by a lawyer and intended to be read by lawyers.

Consistently, the first thing every lawyer has said to me when preparing for any interaction with third parties that had a legal aspect was "never volunteer information you were not explicitly asked for". Of course lawyers would practice this among themselves. The law requires him to suspect something wrong to investigate, so he states "I hereby formally suspect something wrong". If the investigation leads to a court filing, the law would then require him to submit evidence, so he will strategically decide which evidence to submit and submit it. Why would he commit in advance to what evidence he believes relevant if not required by law?

But also, if reading the letter as if written in good faith - which I find hard to do - those are all true reasons to suspect something wrong (it is common knowledge and well established that Wikipedia is a very influential source of knowledge, and that there are attempts at foreign influence), and great questions to ask to investigate whether the Foundation is making a reasonable effort to fight it if you were a regulator or auditor or other investigator, all of which have great answers already written up that prove the foundation is doing a very good job at establishing and maintaining processes to ensure the neutrality of its articles. In my headcanon, Wikipedia's lawyer responds simply with a list of URLs.

What is happening is very scary. Many people don't seem to care about any evidence or sources. They blindly follow whatever lies that their leaders say. I think this has been the case at anytime in history. However, now, with the internet, it is easy to spread such lies to mass and easy for such leaders to make blind followers.

Clearly people care very deeply about sources and evidence -and they're attacking things (wikipedia, various gov websites) which can be used as objective sources.

If you don't have objective sources, it's easier to lead people around by the nose -hence the attack.

Here's the root of the problem though: wikipedia isn't an objective source by its very nature. Wikipedia requires mainstream established news sources for a lot of articles that aren't academic in nature, and especially for articles about people. You cannot include information that isn't supported by corporate news articles, which means corporate news is now the arbiter of truth, and corporate news lies all the time about everything.

Wikipedia is, and always has been, the encyclopedia of the elite and billionaire narrative, and especially the left-wing narrative, which dominates nearly all corporate news groups. I say this as a far left person myself.

corporate news rarely lies outright. libel is illegal. articles will spin and speculate, emphasize and elide, omit and opine, but that's not lying, it's spin, and a careful reading can extract the facts of the matter.

yes, you have to cite reliable sources on Wikipedia. yes, this means AP is considered more reliable than someone's Substack. you can, however, cite NPR or PBS, the BBC or the Guardian. if two reliable sources differ, you cite both and describe the conflict.

how do you know that "corporate" news lies all the time about everything? who told you that? why do you trust them? why should I trust them?

if you characterize something with such incredible bias, and do so knowing that the resulting impression and information someone will leave with does not match objective facts in reality, then that is dishonest and to me, equivalent to outright lying. this mischaracterization is in basically every single political article, including literally the top story on cnn dot com right now

> Many people don't seem to care about any evidence or sources. They blindly follow whatever lies that their leaders say.

I’m one of those people you complain about. When I did deep research about DEI, I presented evidence and sources to people like you, including judges that I knew in my private life.

It seems you didn’t care, to a point that I had in my hand a document printed from a department of justice’s own website (about mothers’ own violence on their children, which is as high as men’s given the scope you decide to choose) and the person who in his public life is a judge, didn’t even bother discussing the thesis and just told me: “This document is false. You changed the figures before printing the document”.

You may say that Trump is bad for dismantling your administration, but you guys don’t care an inch about truth, evidence, sources, honesty, bad faith, or even for the number of children who are beaten to death by their mothers.

Yeah I think you might be doing a little over-generalization there.

Depends on the extend of the subjects I’ve studied and the number of good faith - bad faith people I’ve met.

I literally wrote a book on one of those subjects and made it to a national news channel in two countries about it.

The cause is lost for science, people don’t respond to logic.

"given the scope you decide to choose"

By changing the scope, you changed the effect. Unless you did every statistical validation here... Yeah. That reads exactly like data manipulation. t-distribution approaches standard normal distribution, when the degree of freedom increases. That's not something that anyone should ignore and give credit to. It's the same bullshit that Donald has repeatedly tried to do, to prove himself doing the right thing, even as everything falls apart.

Caring about the truth, requires caring about the methodology, and not just the conclusions.

That’s not what the judge argued. He accused me of falsifying the document by doctoring it before printing.

Which shows:

- How much bad faith you have, assuming I argumented to a judge on a false hypothesis,

- Condescension to assume that I’m not a scientist who masters p-values,

- And ultimately, you confirm the hypothesis that you lead your research in bad faith, knowing full well the true level of violence from women and hiding it, which leads to more child deaths. You are accessory to criminality.

Your attitude confirm as well that it’s good this entire field of researched be defunded, it is a net win for science.

I'd really appreciate to hear about your research and where I could read about the violence. My Gmail username is the same as my HN username. Thank you!

The p-value is useless, where the t-value does not hold substance. One depends upon the other. If there's too much of a degree of freedom, it doesn't matter if the p-value looks accurate. The data is probably no longer normally distributed, requiring non-parametric testing.

You've leapt to me being a researcher acting in bad faith, accusing me for a whole industry. As to defunding an entire field of research, it sounds like you'd like statistics or mathematics defunded? I'm afraid they will persist regardless. Too many industries depend upon them.

“Some people say.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYA9ufivbDw

This isn't a trial, the government doesn't have to submit evidence about any wrongdoing. It's just a letter asking for additional information. Now are the government's motivations for this legitimate in this case? Perhaps not, but they do have a right to ask.

It was probably Elon

Can we stop bringing up annoying people in every single comment section when they have nothing to do with the topic at hand?

Elon Musk has been waging a war with Wikipedia[1] for a couple of years now, and has the ear of the president. Of those in the administration, he is the single name that really stands out as a guy with a Wikipedia beef.

Seems like he has lots to do with the topic, and it is absolutely likely that he is the one who elicited this. Recall that Musk also basically appointed his own head of the IRS (though Bessent then ousted that person and installed his own stooge).

1 - https://www.the-independent.com/tech/elon-musk-wikipedia-naz...

this is a really high level of hyperbole that isn't reflective of reality

Hyperbole? What? What did I say is remotely hyperbole? You can't simply drop that as if it immunizes you from reality.

Your claim that Elon has "nothing to do" with this is simple ignorance. Either you simply didn't know, in which case say "oops, sorry, I don't know what I'm talking about", or you're being grossly insincere.

Elon brings up Wikipedia constantly. Elon, you know the guy constantly at the president's side and who literally named a head of the IRS, absolutely has something to do with the government suddenly turning its evil eye of ignorance towards the group.

> Before being named U.S. attorney, Martin appeared on Russia-backed media networks more than 150 times, The Washington Post reported last week. In one appearance on RT in 2022, he said there was no evidence of military buildup on Ukraine’s boarders only nine days before Russia invaded the country. He further criticized U.S. officials as warmongering and ignoring Russia security concerns.

This is getting ridiculous. Is there anyone associated with this administration who does not have a record of promoting Russia's positions?

Martin was also at the coup attempt on Jan 6 and on that day said "Like Mardi Gras in DC today: love, faith and joy. Ignore #FakeNews". https://archive.ph/jekzQ

[flagged]

One time sure, 150+ on the Russia propaganda network ? I’m drawing my own adult conclusions about it: “The friend of my enemy is my enemy”

Yes. 150+ times is akin to Funding an individual, rather than seeking to add a unique perspective.

I'd argue that there's another perspective, more complimentary to US politics. There's obviously a list of "experts" aligned with RT narrative which they use depending on the topic. No media like RT wants someone from this list to be too visible and appear too often, whether they are pay-rolled shadowy or not. So it looks like not so many "experts" are eager to be on alert on this list.

“To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”

― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

150 times is a lot of carelessness.

That’s not how foreign policy and international politics work. Every country would be enemies with every other country in that case.

All the pro-Palestinian anti-Israel country would be enemies of the US then, including Japan. You’d be supporting Trump’s tariffs and anti-China us or them stance then towards every country that has friendly business relations with China, which is everybody at this point. Heck, even Taiwan and China are friends more than Westerners would like to think. Meanwhile, America is friends with countries like Saudi Arabia and countries that keeps a blind eye to the funding of terrorism in America

There’s a reason the famous saying is “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” rather than “the friend of my enemy is my enemy”

Comparing the choices of individuals with foreign diplomacy is specious. It is much harder for countries to have principles than individuals.

The same can be said of boardroom politics and board of directors. Or investment circles such as tech venture capital

They don't have principles.

Even "maximize the hegemonic monopolistic power of my claws" can be taken as mindset principles.

Having principles is orthogonal to striving adoption of ethical fair well being for everyone.

Yeah, but they don't really seem to have that either.

[dead]

"les états n'ont pas d'amis, que des intérêts."

States are very different beasts, unlike human individual which have clear skin borderies as a given, they are able to take parts of each other and assimilate them. Even when they are not in official direct opposition, rampant dirty plots are always going on in the parallel background of any the official sympathy to everyone, be it because even within a state there is a broad variation of contenders.

RT is not legit. It is Russian propaganda. When those people participated they were collaborators.

Ex-CIA head Brennan famously remarked in an MSNBC interview [0] that when he says something is a Russian information operation that includes dumping accurate information.

So really it isn't enough to identify something as Russian propaganda - it is necessary to analyse whether it is propaganda of the accurate and informative variety, or the inaccurate variety.

Propaganda really just means someone is arguing a viewpoint. The BBC is classic propaganda, but nonetheless a pretty reliable source of information and a lot of the views are very agreeable.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8Shx2AR_E4

> a lot of the views are very agreeable

That's why you don't "ignore" propaganda, but consume all, from all sides. Just consuming agreeable propaganda simply means it is working.

Nope, you shouldn't. Because propaganda is effective.

Humans are by default not influenced by logic, but rather respond on beliefs and emotions. This is one of the hardest thing to swallow for us people, we do see ourself as independent rational thinkers. We are sometimes able to, with effort.

To understand it better, you should know that Russian propaganda is not designed to instill a certain belief, but rather to make you not belief the truth. The Kremlin is happy to push different, conflicting stories. You end up with a society of nihilists.

> We are sometimes able to, with effort.

and i'm saying everyone should expend this effort, because otherwise, people and democracy gets taken over. It's one's civic duty to ensure that you are not making choices based on lies or manipulations.

> and i'm saying everyone should expend this effort,

Agreed. But I would add that one shouldn't stick their head into stuff that is deliberately trying to steer you away from the truth and seeks to undermine your moral compass.

I think it would help people immensely if they first could filter their sources on intent and principles. The Guardian is a better source than the newspapers from North Korea.

The BBC isn’t propaganda. It has its biases for sure, but it doesn’t exist for the purpose of spreading a particular viewpoint. It’s good to be aware of media bias, but it’s reductive and cynical to view all media as propaganda.

> The BBC isn’t propaganda. It has its biases for sure, but it doesn’t exist for the purpose of spreading a particular viewpoint.

If it isn't pushing a British viewpoint, wouldn't it be incumbent on the British government to shut it down? Why would they be funding something that was pushing viewpoints that undermined Britain? This is simple incentive analysis stuff, this organisation isn't being funded for billions of dollars because the Brits happen to just be uniquely dedicated to the cause of the truth even if it hurts their interests. They're British! They're one step removed from the people who invented espionage, there is a long history of information warfare here.

RT & the BBC are both state backed media organisations. It is quite difficult to come up with a reason for those except propaganda. The US has been running this experiment for centuries now, it has been well established that the government-sponsored perspective isn't any more legitimate than anyone else's.

The British government has repeatedly tried and failed to shutdown the BBC. They have repeatedly withdrawn funding. MI5 have had agents deployed inside the BBC to try and subvert it.

As of 2017, it runs by royal assent, and there is just about bukpus that the Parliament can do about it. Because at the same time, funding was moved to a trust, to prevent political interference - a trust that both main parties attempted to shutdown, and control, at different times, but were told that they could only operate within the rights granted by the royal charter.

> The BBC shall be independent in all matters concerning the content of its output, the times and manner in which this is supplied, and in the management of its affairs.

Its not a perfect system. But it is very far removed from the daily pressures of propaganda and an angry government. The BBC is not really "state backed". They are independent.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_independence

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Board

My eye is drawn to the section:

> The various foreign services of the BBC have always been tied, in some manner, to the national interest. In the 2017 Agreement, that means the Foreign Secretary. Article 33.6 (right) is subject to the Mission and the Public Purposes of the BBC as defined in the Charter, but it supersedes Article 3 (independence).

> Taking account of the strategy and the budget it has set, the BBC will agree with the Foreign Secretary-

> (a) objectives, priorities and targets for the World Service;

> (b) the languages in which the World Service is to be provided

> (9) In addition to the specific provisions of paragraphs (4) to (8), the relationship between the Foreign Secretary and the BBC for the provision of the World Service is based on the following principles-

> (a) the BBC has full editorial and managerial independence and integrity in the provision of the World Service, within the structure of the Charter and this Framework Agreement;

> (b) in particular, the BBC will decide the most effective and efficient way of delivering the World Service; and

> (c) subject to compliance with the Charter and this Framework Agreement the BBC may generate other sources of income for the World Service.

Every news organisation reports its own point of view and could potentially be shut down by whoever controls the purse strings. Your logic will lead you to the conclusion that all news is propaganda. That might be technically true in some very broad sense, but it tends to lead to absurd comparisons like your comparison between the BBC and RT.

Incidentally, various British governments have tried quite hard to shut down (or at least neuter) the BBC and failed. You're failing to take into account the fact that the BBC is a popular institution and that there would be domestic political consequences for a government that attacked it too strongly. If you think that your average British government minister goes around thinking "thank goodness for the BBC's news coverage!" then you may be a little out of touch with British politics.

> This logic will lead you to the conclusion that all news is propaganda.

A lot of media groups are pretty transparently in existence for propaganda purposes, but the logic doesn't imply that. It could be a media organisation exists to make their owners money while meeting an under-served need in the community. That is why most businesses exist. It obviously isn't why the BBC exists because there are a whole bunch of laws and public funding propping it up and it isn't independently profitable.

> ...absurd comparisons like your comparison between the BBC and RT.

The BBC had a policy for 60 years [0] of vetting applicants through MI5 based on their politics. And realistically it took 60 years to find that out we'll probably find out what the current vetting arrangements are in the 2040s. Any media organisation with that sort of historic tie to intelligence can be safely compared to RT.

> Incidentally, various British governments have tried quite hard to shut down (or at least neuter) the BBC and failed. You're failing to take into account the fact that the BBC is a popular institution and that there would be domestic political consequences for a government that attacked it too strongly.

That seems to be largely irrelevant. I'm sure there are factions in the Russian government that see RT as a waste of money on any given day and I'm happy to accept that British propaganda is popular in Britain.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC#MI5_vetting_policy

It's mere cynicism to argue that the BBC must exist for propaganda purposes simply because the British government (very indirectly) pays for it.

>we'll probably find out what the current vetting arrangements are in the 2040s

We'll find out because the BBC is subject to public scrutiny. Good luck finding out about the historical vetting arrangements of CNN or Fox news! Or indeed, those of Russia Today.

You only have to look at actual examples of BBC news coverage from the period you mention to see that it wasn't government propaganda with the goal of making the British government look good or expressing some nebulous "British point of view":

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02gbms5

Margret Thatcher, the longest-serving British Prime Minister of the 20th century, hated the BBC. She had 11 years to get rid of it. She couldn't because it's an independent institution and the UK has (imperfectly) a system of democratic norms. Contrary to what you suggest, the government of the day cannot simply direct the BBC's editorial output or defund the BBC if it displeases them.

> It's mere cynicism to argue that the BBC must exist for propaganda purposes simply because the British government (very indirectly) pays for it.

So what's your complaint about RT? Because I'm seeing arguments here that suggest if it were subject to public scrutiny it isn't propaganda, if factions of the Russian government want to shut it down it isn't propaganda, if it says something critical of the Russian government it isn't propaganda. If it is funded by the Russians it isn't necessarily propaganda.

None of those arguments in defence of the BBC really get to the root of the issues, RT could sit on any pole of all those observations and it'd still be Russian propaganda. We don't need any of those details on how the sausage is being made. The issue is that the reason it exists is to push the Overton window in directions that are favourable to the state known as Russia - and the BBC serves the same purpose for Britain and hits the same triggers as RT for identifying propaganda.

> Contrary to what you suggest, the government of the day cannot simply direct the BBC's editorial output or defund the BBC if it displeases them.

I never put either of those things. They are both obviously untrue.

Margret Thatcher wasn’t a “faction of the British Government”. She was Prime Minister for 11 years. Do you really think RT would still be here if Putin had wanted it gone for the past 11 years? People and institutions that Putin wants rid of don’t tend to hang around quite that long. And what sort of effective public scrutiny can you possibly think that RT’s journalism is subject to?

But more broadly, you’re arguing at a level of abstraction that rises above actually looking at the content produced by the BBC in comparison to the content produced by RT. You only have to watch each for 15 minutes to see the very clear difference. Perhaps your theory of the world tells you that the BBC must be British propaganda because it depends to some extent on the British government for its existence. Ok then — so much the worse for your theory of the world. Believe it or not, there is actually such a thing as public service broadcasting as distinct from state propaganda. The BBC is really the obvious counterexample to any claim to the contrary.

> Contrary to what you suggest, the government of the day cannot simply direct the BBC's editorial output or defund the BBC if it displeases them. >> I never put either of those things. They are both obviously untrue.

You asked “If [the BBC] isn't pushing a British viewpoint, wouldn't it be incumbent on the British government to shut it down?” That clearly suggests that the government of the day could defund the BBC if it displeased them.

Thatcher certainly wanted to put the BBC in its place after the clip I linked above. Her husband memorably complained that she’d been “stitched up by bloody BBC poofs and Trots [Trotsykists]”.

> Margret Thatcher wasn’t a “faction of the British Government”. She was Prime Minister for 11 years.

Fair enough, faction of British politics. She didn't have the power to shut down the BBC, so she obviously didn't represent the consensus position. Again, the argument seems like it would be that the BBC isn't propaganda because the British PM is relatively weak. That doesn't hold together. Besides, Putin isn't the PM of Russia, Wikipedia tells me that is Mikhail Mishustin.

> But more broadly, you’re arguing at a level of abstraction that rises above actually looking at the content produced by the BBC in comparison to the content produced by RT. You only have to watch each for 15 minutes to see the very clear difference.

So if RT was better written then it wouldn't be propaganda? Because the fact that the BBC has better journalists and targets the middle and upper class in style doesn't particularly mean much except they're better at their jobs than the RT people. You're mistaking propaganda for low quality writing with that one. Good propaganda relies on truth and being mostly credible (see also - the model pioneered by the BBC with enormous success).

> You asked “If [the BBC] isn't pushing a British viewpoint, wouldn't it be incumbent on the British government to shut it down?” That clearly suggests that the government of the day could defund the BBC if it displeased them.

"displeased" is a bit vague but yes if there was a consensus in the Houses of Lords and Commons that the BBC wasn't advancing the interests of Britain I imagine it'd not last long. The parliament is quite powerful when it unites on a question of policy. That doesn't mean a PM can just snap their fingers and the BBC disappears, it'd be a long process.

The BBC certainly serves the interests of Britain, but it does so precisely because it is not merely a state propaganda service. You mention the limits on the PM's power. More generally, there are reasonably effective democratic norms and institutions that prevent the BBC's independence from being subverted by the government. Independent journalism isn't unbiased or uncolored by its political environment, but it's distinct from propaganda.

If you want to say that the BBC is British propaganda just because the journalists are British and present a British point of view (rather than, say, a Surinamese point of view), then ok, but I don't think that's a very interesting point. By that definition, every American news service is American propaganda.

Some of your other points here are transparently not serious, such as the suggestion that I can't compare the British PM to the Russian President because the latter has a different title.

> If you want to say that the BBC is British propaganda just because the journalists are British and present a British point of view (rather than, say, a Surinamese point of view), then ok, but I don't think that's a very interesting point.

So if you were to focus in on RT, are you of the opinion that it isn't Russians pushing mainstream Russian viewpoints? That is the major complaint most people have - it is representing an unabashed Russian perspective and choosing issues that powerful Russians think are important.

The issue with the BBC is it is government funding, with historic links to British intelligence vetting to make sure that the journalists had appropriate views and a long history of running British propaganda globally with no obvious reason as to why they'd stop. The UK is supporting a particular bias and pushing it out for global broadcasting - that is the essence of propaganda. Plus as a comment pointed out further upthread, according to Wikipedia their Charter links them to objectives set out by the Foreign Secretary. This is more or less where RT will be sitting - there isn't much else they can do.

If I were to somehow end up running RT as their head of propaganda, I'd do two things: first, learn to speak Russian. Second, sit all the managers down and use my new language skills to call them idiots and tell them that standards were going up and they need to do things more like the BBC. No compromising factual accuracy and there's going to be high quality articles out on every topic from a staunchly Russian perspective. That's how competent people run their propaganda missions. The real mistake RT has been making for years (hilariously on stereotype for the Russians) is it is far too direct and straightforward about executing its mission. It'd be more effective if they were a few notches more subtle - the BBC sits at a much neater optimum.

> By that definition, every American news service is American propaganda.

A lot of them are. One of the interesting things about the so-called Twitter Files was how quickly Twitter was integrated into US state propaganda, presumably similar linkages are kept with other US media companies.

But I wouldn't say that all US media outlets are US State propaganda. Many of them are independent propaganda for their own reasons, with independent funding and goals.

one step removed from the people who invented espionage

Some temporal and geographic myopia going on here.

> RT & the BBC are both state backed media organisations. It is quite difficult to come up with a reason for those except propaganda.

False equivalence.

By your logic, any government support automatically makes an outlet propaganda. So, NPR and PBS would also be propaganda, since they get a small grant.

RT and other Russian-sponsored outlets, in case you didn't know, try to both push the state narrative, and push conflicting conspiracy theories in different markets to convince people that there is no objective truth.

Like, for example, claiming that reliable Western news sources are government propaganda...

> but it doesn’t exist for the purpose of spreading a particular viewpoint.

Id does exactly that, as does all State-supported media (such as RFI in France or Deutsche Welle in Germany).

The BBC’s editorial line isn’t determined by the government of the day. I’m not familiar with the output of examples you mention, but there’s no comparison with RT, which is simply a propaganda arm of the Russian state.

Then how come it lines up pretty closely with the British government’s views? See Covid, Ukraine and especially the genocide in Gaza.

It doesn’t. You can find people of all political stripes complaining about BBC journalism, including government ministers.

This applies to all state owned media. The US is unique that even privately held corporations push propaganda.

The most gratuitous example is NYT, as documented by Ashley Rindsberg in his book “The Gray Lady Winked.”

> The US is unique that even privately held corporations push propaganda.

How is that unique to the US?

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Entirely uncritical state controlled or substantially aligned media masquerading as news is always bad and should be criticized. See also almost anyone called on in White House press briefings these days.

Plus, you are saying it like all propaganda is somehow the same. Rosie the Riveter != "Russia isn't going to do anything...well, it's America's fault...NATO something something...actually, Ukraine basically deserved it."

Not who you are responding to, but given that as rational humans, we have the capacity to make non-binary comparisons, Kremlin propaganda is indeed far worse than most. I say this as a European who sees clear flaws in the US system, but that does not make the Russian system good, or even a little good. It is objectively horrible. The Russian people, for one, deserve far better.

It is important to point out that Russian propaganda is actually excellent propaganda. However, their message is the at the very bottom:

There is no truth, up is down, nothing matters, the invader is the victim, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_propaganda_in_the_Russia...

If NelsonMinar doesn't say it, I will.

It is.

Stop trying to make everything equal.

Ed Martin made 198 TV appearances on RT in 2023 and 2024.

How many RT TV hits did Larry King do? How recently did King appear on RT?

( Larry King died in Jan 2021.)

approximately 1,000 over 7 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_King_Now

RT America though.

> Amy Goodman

Source for that? My impression is that Democracy Now!, while it has a clear perspective and set of biases, has been fairly independent. I don't think Goodman herself would be involved with them, but I think some of her sometimes guests have been.

In general I agree with folks replying to you that RT is not trustworthy and someone being involved with it is a red flag.

Here's two: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x61wly8 or https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xvxx8j

Chris Hedges had a show as well.

Thanks for the first two. So she was a guest on panelist/talking head shows about her antiwar positions.

I know about Chris Hedges. I wasn't asking about him.

Mostly I'm sensitive to the classic technique of scapegoating an external enemy as the source of failure for a poorly done internal policy.

Whether it's Jews, Russians, Communists, leftists, the Chinese, immigrants, it's always some infiltrating evildoer and not the failure of policy.

It's purely ideologically driven because these accusers think their thing being sabotaged, whether it's an economic policy, a candidate, whatever, is so obviously superior that only some secretive cackling outsider could be to blame for the disparity of the results

Whether it's Clinton in 2016 or Trump in 2020 there's an elaborate conspiracy to explain it. Any excuse to avoid introspection.

If I am anything in life I am anti-bullshit. Nothing can move productively forward when based on nonsense.

So that's really the larger context here.

Being part of Jan 6 is a signal, being a repeated guest on an ideological show like Nick Fuentes, Russ Roberts, or Richard Wolff, these are signals.

Appearing on Rt? Not so much

I think this is a naive position that likely comes from lack of exposure to Russian propaganda. It doesn't take much to discover that RT is illegitimate.

I think people who haven't figured this out do get sucked into it without realizing what they are.

It's similar to Fox News, but I would say worse.

It's not too difficult to draw connections between Wikileaks, Assange, RT and Russian government. It's known that the GRU funneled info to Wikileaks many times, and at the same time they never published anything that could seriously affect Putin. Examples: the Dirt on opponents were published by UK newspapers. The Fancy Bear papers were published by hacker groups and online news. Pandora Papers by the ICIJ.

The only leak than contains something barely close to Putin and was published on Wikileaks were the Panama Papers, that names three friends of him, not in the government. The lack of any russian officials in those papers speaks volumes.

Best case scenario, they are tools. Worse case, they are assets.

> That's more relevant. RT has had some fairly legitimate people on it such as Larry King, Julian Assange, John Pilger, Amy Goodman... Many Pulitzer prize and Peabody winners ... It's a mixed bag, people can't be so reductive about it.

Can you back up your accusations with facts? I can state that I have not seen any reprehensible reporting from Amy Goodman; but rather the opposite, backed up by facts (e.g. about mass graves on Russian-occupied areas [0]).

[0]: https://www.democracynow.org/2022/9/29/ukraine_russia_mass_g...

Yeah, like 10 seconds of google search. https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x61wly8 and https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xvxx8j

> Not defending it, but just saying that being on RT doesn't necessarily imply anything.

I'm not sure who's claiming that here. The RT appearance in question is about him spreading disinformation and Russian propaganda on the eve of Ukraine invasion.

It's pretty constant on hn. People paint everything from country X, holistically, with some broad and blunt moral brush.

It reads like a cartoon. Everything from China is loaded with secret spyware snooping on you for countless unspecified evils - everything out of Russia by anyone is part of some secret global propaganda network.

I point it out as absurd and reductive whenever I see it and people dogpile on me like I desecrated a sacred cow.

The world is incredibly complex and a simple label doesn't cut it. Wernher von Braun was a Nazi but that doesn't mean his work on rocketry was fictional lies.

You need to assess things based on the merits of the thing, not on any narratives of attributive associations you're choosing to assign.

Yes but in this case, the dude in question was uncritically parroting Russian propaganda - as do most people on RT, since that's its purpose.

State media in fascist dictatorships don't reflect the diversity of their people. It is untrue that humans of any nationality have free speech and a free press as a check against their government's actions. It is untrue that any country's government is legally obligated to transparency that is required in a democracy.

When people say that Russian and Chinese state media are propaganda, it is not always because they are racists. Many people say this because they make a distinction between a government and the people, and understand the difference democracy makes.

It's great that you're trying to emphasize with people in other countries. Empathize deeper and think through how it must be like to live in such a political environment to their full conclusions.

The media in liberal democracies don’t reflect the diversity of their people.

The media in liberal democracies reflect the diversity of their people more than state media in a fascist dictatorship that jails dissenters, critics, and oppresses ethnic and/or gender and sexual minorities. Human rights, free speech, and a free press are the bare minimum before you tackle other problems like affinity bias in hiring.

You are engaging in the logical fallacy and propaganda tactic called whataboutism.* If people genuinely care about diversity and challenging bias, they wouldn't uncritically view an unelected president (or an elected president chosen in a country without free elections) as the spokesperson for their ethnic group.

* https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

I know about Whataboutism. Thanks. It’s a perfectly reasonable rthetorical strategy.[1][2]

You are engaging in the logical fallacy of making a true statement about fascist dictatorships which is skewed to, by implicit comparison, imply that the thing in question is the case elsewhere (elsewhere here being liberal democracies because that’s the most common comparison and also where most people in these discussions live). Media in liberal democracies do not reflect the diversity of their people, no.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6VCzhWy-Kk

[2] How do I know? Because it’s the only reply you get 90% of the time when replying to these kinds of statements.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine is just as colonialist as the US invasion of Iraq.

They’re both colonialist wars. Do you have a point or are you just fishing for a particular response?

>everything out of Russia by anyone is part of some secret global propaganda network.

Who has claimed all Russians are part of a large propaganda network. This is about a government news network.

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The US government is also framed the same way on HN, though I don't like this metrics gathering method.

Most discussions are of the war in Ukraine which also connects to US politics. It's going to be negative and treated extremely suspect because Putin is ex KGB, lied that he wouldn't invade, the war itself, and their influence in US elections.

This is about the Russian government though. If your argument is that it's wrong in these constraints then I disagree but your generalization is valid. My original comment was about Russia as a whole but I think I wrong to try to shift to that as it doesn't come up

Russia interfered with our elections and is actively hostile to us. It's not a meme, it's real.

Sometimes focusing on each of the individual puppets distracts you from who is pulling the strings.

Why use a non-example to mention it though?

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We voted for this! This is “democracy” at work

Sure, but you also voted for a system of checks & balances, laws, and separation of powers - whatever happened to all these laws and stuff from the Cold War where even a hint that you may have ties to Russia would get you a Visit?

Do you think it's legitimate when the administration transgresses constitutional limits? With legal eyes nobody voted for that, you can't vote inside the system to break the system, office holders are expected to follow the law once elected.

People also voted in a Congress that is tasked to uphold the law, and it seems fine with this.

That was the really stupid part of that election.

Less than 30% of voter age Americans voted for this

The majority that did vote, voted for this. The participation rate has always been low in rich western countries. Given the standards of media literacy and civics education, there's no evidence that a higher participation rate would have changed the outcome.

Everybody votes in Australia (not sure how rich, but in top 20 for sure). If you don't you have to show cause or pay a AUD$50 fine. I know some think this is anti-freedom, but it does prevent farces like the current USA. Historically there have been problems in the past (30 years ago) but these days the Australian Electoral Commission (Independent from government) revise electoral boundaries to ensure no more gerrymanders.

Farces occur in the US because it has a 2-party system where the winner takes all, and there is no limit to political funding. In parliamentary systems common in the rest of the West, there is at least a pretence of inter-party cooperations, e.g. forming coalitions to contain the power of the party with the plurality (but not majority) of votes.

In Belgium attendance is mandatory as well. I think it's a positive as it means complacency ("my side has already won, no reason to go out and vote") is never a factor in the outcome.

In Brazil as well. I think a good side effect, or perhaps the main intended one, is that governments aren't allowed to supress voters and have to make sure everyone has easy access to the voting booths. Every election there are mandatory pieces on TV about how people are voting even in the most remote of places.

> The participation rate has always been low in rich western countries.

The general election in 2022 had 84,2% of eligible voters in Sweden.

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Italy had 64% for the parliamentary elections in 2022, which is the lowest ever but it's pretty far from 30%.

just to note that if “30% voted for this” participation was roughly 60%

63.9% per https://www.cfr.org/article/2024-election-numbers Which apparently was quite high. Only 3 presidential elections in the past 100 years exceeded 63%: 1960, 2020, and 2024.

Plurality, not majority. It may be pedantic but it's an important difference.

I was going to say that it was a majority this time, but it seems like the results shifted as more votes were counted after election night, and he ended up with 49.8%. Still, unbelievably, pretty close to a majority.

I don’t think it’s important in the slightest. Fact is that they were exactly two competitive candidates, and of all the people that cared to vote, more voted for one than the other. It may not be technical majority, but this is the common understanding in this country of “majority rule.”

We regularly have 92% - 93% participation in federal elections here in Australia. Having one next weekend, and already record numbers of pre-poll votes.

It’s almost like elections are held on Saturdays and participation is compulsory.

Almost…

And those that don't vote have to show a very good reason, or pay a fine, or face gaol.

Correction: those that don't enter a polling station. What you do in there is up to you. You can cast a vote, spoil the ballot, cast a "donkey vote" (numbering the options in the order printed), leave the ballot empty, as long as it goes in the box.

Must be the sausages

There’s also no evidence that increased turnout would have had the same result.

What seems to be overlooked in these conversations is the skill with which American voters have been disenfranchised by partisan forces.

It’s easy to blame people for not voting if you ignore the real difficulties in actually casting a vote for many Americans.

<< It’s easy to blame people for not voting if you ignore the real difficulties in actually casting a vote for many Americans.

I hesitated while reading this part, because I wholly agreed with the first 2 sentences. Do you mean physically difficult in terms of barriers to voting or making a less direct comment about the usefulness of that vote? If the former, I think I disagree compared to other countries ( and the levels of paperwork needed ). If the latter, I would be interested to hear some specifics.

Physically more difficult. Purging voter rolls. Moving polling locations. Voter ID requirements. Restrictions on mail in ballots. Etc.

I willing to give you moving polling locations, but with that minor concession.

Can you explain to me like I am 5 why those are bad things? For a simple person like myself, one would think, data accuracy, voting system integrity, and verifiability would be of use and value to everyone.

Voter ID laws disproportionately affect a very specific subset of the population, one that reliably skews in one direction on the political spectrum.

However, there is no evidence that voter ID laws reduce fraud, nor is there evidence that the absence of such laws introduces fraud.

Something like 90% of voter fraud is people making mistakes on their ballot, or not realizing they were not allowed to vote. Also, voter fraud is rare and elections are already very secure.

Introducing laws that don't affect the (already low) level of fraud, while making it harder for one party's voter base to vote, is not of use and value to everyone -- it is of use and value to the side that benefits from a reduction in the other side's votes.

> Voter ID laws disproportionately affect a very specific subset of the population

Can you prove that? I've never read about a single case of somebody being unable to obtain a government photo ID who was legitimately eligible to vote. People need their photo IDs for pretty much everything these days. That's why voter ID is a requirement in most countries. Because it's reasonable, it makes sense, and it benefits society more than any theoretical, unproven harm.

> I've never read about a single case of somebody being unable to obtain a government photo ID who was legitimately eligible to vote

That doesn't mean your opinion is true. I don't know how much or how widely you read, nor do I know how varied your sources are. That you have never read an anecdote describing my assertion does not mean my assertion is false.

You can read more about the effects of voter ID laws (according to research) here:

https://electionlab.mit.edu/research/voter-identification

<< not realizing they were not allowed to vote << Introducing laws that don't affect the (already low) level of fraud << voter fraud is rare

Hmm. Just the perception of fraud among the population is enough to undermine the system. We can argue whether Republicans in this case are simply playing to their base by drumming up doubt in the voting system or rigging the system for their benefit or both, but if you are going to admit that a) people who are not supposed to vote do vote b) argue that laws to penalize such votes don't work, you sound about as partisan as they do ( and merely arguing for 'your' side ). Just sayin'.

<< Voter ID laws disproportionately affect a very specific subset of the population,

Why is that important to you?

> Why is that important to you?

I am telling you that people are being prevented from voting. Why is that _not_ important to you?

It is important to me because it is not fair.

I am going to go out on a limb here and I assume you are, in fact, human ( this is a rhetorical device and not accusation of poster being llm ). As such, you likely should know that life in general is inherently not fair. And if you are going to be bold and trot out society during this argument, we are going to have a lot of fun.

I suggest trying to make life more fair for the citizens of a democracy and you make fun of me. Please proceed with your intimations that I am, what? Gullible? Naiive?

You haven't presented a supported argument.

> if you are going to admit that a) people who are not supposed to vote do vote

They do. And the system already functions: their votes are caught and discarded.

> b) argue that laws to penalize such votes don't work

I didn't argue that. I argued against voter ID laws, which are not "laws that penalize such voters". Those laws already exist, catch fraud, and penalize those who commit fraud intentionally. Those who do so accidentally have their votes discarded. There's no evidence the existing laws are insufficient. The available evidence shows that incidences of voter fraud are rare in the USA.

> you sound about as partisan as they do ( and merely arguing for 'your' side ). Just sayin

What? I haven't argued for a side. I have spoken what I understand based on the research I have done. I have cited sources in other posts. I don't like being accused of being partisan when I'm basically just repeating the conclusions of those who have studied this. Knowledge isn't partisan.

>> There's no evidence the existing laws are insufficient. << b) argue that laws to penalize such votes don't work >> I didn't argue that.

Ok, maybe it is just too early. What did you argue?

If you read my argument, you will find out what I argued.

Yes, recognizing the full consequences requires second order thinking which by definition is a challenge for the simple minded.

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In fact there was an extensive analysis of the election by Democrat pollster David Shor, who found that 100% turnout would have resulted in an even larger Trump win, by 4.8 points: https://www.vox.com/politics/403364/tik-tok-young-voters-202...

This has been the pattern for awhile now. The pool of politically unengaged people are especially Trumpy compared to regular voters: https://abcnews.go.com/538/vote-back-trump/story?id=10909062...

This is very interesting but how would turnout and choice change if historically disenfranchised and suppressed communities had equal access to the polls?

Such as?

I’m sorry I don’t understand the question.

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That an enormous sample size. Statistically a complete participation should be very close, so the burden of proof lies with those who claim it would be different. Regardless of whether Trump would have won or not, that is a clear indication of evenly split public sentiment. So we still get to justly reap the fruits of our collective choices. There is no exoneration by whimsically dreaming of improbable alternatives.

I don't think it is was that hard to vote. That is a straw man to avoid facing the hard truth of American apathy. Now next election, perhaps we can have a conversation on that point. Things a trending rather poorly right now.

"I don't think it is that hard to vote"

Says a person commenting on HN that almost certainly isn't in a demographic that it has been made intentionally difficult to register, stay registered, and get time off an hourly job to stand in line for hours to vote.

I did not say 'is', I said 'was'. I have not seen studies or even many anecdotal stories indicating people think it was too hard for they themselves to vote. I have seen a lot of people saying that about other people, but as of 2024, attempts to disenfranchise voters had not been very well done. I also don't think having ID is a high bar, which is what a large amount of the noise has been about. Many, many democratic countries have this requirement [1]. Coupled with other things it can become a problem, but when anybody says voter id itself is a problem, I can't take them very seriously.

I however repeat, that was last year. Things could very well take a dramatic turn for the worse.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_identification_laws

Having an ID is a high bar when it can take a day or more at the DMV to get one. Right now in NC you either have to book an appointment - none are available for months - or show up like you’re queuing for concert tickets in the 80s at 6am before the office opens, get a number, come back at one, and hope they get to your number. (Source: daughter just did this procedure last week for a learner’s permit.)

The GOP has also closed polling places in predominantly D areas, fought drop off boxes, etc. It is intentionally hard to vote for minorities and people in D areas.

Yes, it’s going to get worse. But it isn’t good now.

The problem is that all the additional requirements _always_ result in targeting Democratic voters. Always.

For example, voting by mail is bad. Unless you are a senior (and thus more likely to vote Republican).

And it doesn't take much to change the outcome of many elections. Just a 0.1% shift is often enough to flip the result.

So the fight needs to be to make things universal and fair, not to do away with everything. I agree there are many attempts to throw elections in the US, but I also think unreasonable resistance to measures that make a lot of sense on many levels would have far better results if it was spent making sure things were implemented correctly.

I think a lot of people see all-out resistance as extremist and somewhat irrational, and so you are losing people's good will. I do see it that way, I am sympathetic as to what leads to it and don't let it count against those pushing for 'no new rules' even if I find it immature / poorly thought out - but at the same time I don't think most people think it through and are as understanding as I try to be.

> So the fight needs to be to make things universal and fair, not to do away with everything.

Like, automatic voter registration on license renewal? Nope. Denied if you're in a Republican state.

> I think a lot of people see all-out resistance as extremist and somewhat irrational

That's more restrictions _will_ be used to entrench Republicans even more. That's the simple reason for resistance.

And yes, the media does a poor job explaining this.

The electorate self-selected into voters and non-voters, it wasn't a random sample. Some chose to go to the polls and some chose to stay at home. Voter preferences don't say a lot about the preferences of non-voters, who've already shown they choose differently.

It shouldn't be that hard for you to show some evidence things would be different then. There is nothing indicating a stronger preference to vote has anything at all to do with which direction you lean. More and less does not equal right and left, so the burden of proof is on those who claim it is relevant. Yet polling indicates things would have gone pretty much just as they went.

I don't know if voters and non-voters have the same political leanings. It isn't something I've ever looked into. My observation was merely that measures of statical confidence assume random samples. Extrapolating from a non-random sample can give odd results. But this isn't a research paper, so it doesn't much matter.

You are reading too much into it. If I study runners, I should presume the study will apply to those who don't run should they become runners, unless I have evidence otherwise. All the more since many runners were once non-runners. It's not obviously a confounding factor, that would need to be demonstrated. And as I and others have already said, the actual studies indicate the results would have been the same in this election.

There’s also one party that disproportionately targets specific voter demographics for suppression.

Under fifty percent for what it’s worth. And there was a lot of disenfranchisement

Not majority, under 50%

> The participation rate has always been low in rich western countries.

Australia has entered the chat.

For reference, informal votes were around 5% in our last federal election:

https://results.aec.gov.au/27966/website/HouseInformalByStat...

This article contains a fun breakdown of the types of informal votes including a category for "the usual anatomical drawings" (0.7% of informal votes):

https://www.crikey.com.au/2025/04/22/2025-federal-election-p...

You can't bring them up without including that voting is compulsory there.

See my sibling comment. Getting your name checked off is compulsory but nothing stops you from handing in a blank ballot.

For the purposes of this comparison, those "informal" votes still count in the typically used participation statistics. Voters intentionally case "wasted" ballots in other countries too.

Why would you hand blank ballot at. That point? You might as well vote.

"I don't like any of the rat-bastards." "I don't care." "I think it's funnier to draw a dick. (And I don't care.)" "I trust other people to make the right choice." "I refuse to participate in this bourgeois sham election." ...are all reasons I've heard, even if I don't actually understand any of them.

Arguments based on voter participation overlook that voting is a statistical sample of the population. The people who don’t vote broadly break down roughly the same way as the people who do vote. And even to the extent they don’t, it’s risky to make assumptions about how they would have voted.

If you can generalize about non-voters, it’s that they’re broadly more anti-institution than voters—which is what causes them to put less stock in the institutional practice of voting. In the U.S. in the Trump era, that has meant that non-voters or infrequent voters support Trump somewhat more strongly than regular voters.

> The majority that did vote, voted for this

Nitpick: Trump got less than 50% of the votes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidentia...)

More importantly, I think quite a few who voted for Trump didn’t vote for this extreme version of Trump.

The majority did not vote for Trump, and I question how many of the minority that did vote for him voted for this, specifically. Almost certainly not all of them, given his approval rating is now well below his popular vote share.

100% of voter age Americans made a decision. That includes not registering to vote or not voting.

Pretend I want a snack, I can choose between a cookie and an apple. If I dislike both then I also have the option to not get a snack. Neither is selected.

This is different from not voting because a candidate still wins.

If the US wanted voting to be more popular, there would be a Federal Holiday to promote it. There is no incentive when there are known costs...at least since the wild inflation of the 80s when it got prohibitive to lose a shift and the slow dissolution of union jobs. This is the result of the tyranny of indifference. Those that benefit continue to promote and benefit, those that do not, are disenfranchised. It's a common theme in history.

>If the US wanted voting to be more popular, there would be a Federal Holiday to promote it.

I agree but it doesn't actually matter. 97% can vote by mail, early, or another method besides election day according to this article https://www.cbsnews.com/news/map-early-voting-mail-ballot-st...

>There is no incentive when there are known costs... is the result of the tyranny of indifference.

What is the cause of the Indifference in your opinion ?

Who said people are indifferent?

They can still actively engage in civil life with a variety of actions that look more relevant and meaningful to them.

If people are not given opportunity to actively engage in meaningful way like contributing to the creation of the laws they will have to follow, then sure they sooner than later they won't bother signing the blank check of void promises.

>Who said people are indifferent?

The person I replied to

stop. Voting is incredibly easy. Voting by mail is incredibly easy. Theres no reason you cant vote by mail. The reason people arent voting is because they dont want to/cant be assed

> stop

No.

> Voting by mail is incredibly easy.

This missed the point entirely.

This is about changing behavior and making it "easier" isn't the blocker. People often do not behave the way you expect them to due to simple socialization. Regardless of the specifics, making it more of a celebration (because that's how the vast majority of PTO is perceived) will make it seem like it's more important beyond the lipservice that, frankly, has been ineffective.

Voting for the sake of voting is a horrible idea. Voting as a celebration seems bad too. Voting is a privilege that has a lot of responsibility entwined and it is ok to bow out if you arent sure. Politics these days is fully maximizing for psychological tricks so I dont think theres any shame in feeling overwhelmed.

The issue with complaining about non existent problems is that it leads to everyone ignoring you. My issue with that is that when you hijack my political movement with this non issue now my movement is being ignored because of your dumb non issue. So basically Im ok with you feeling this way but dont hijack the democratic platform

>Regardless of the specifics, making it more of a celebration (because that's how the vast majority of PTO is perceived) will make it seem like it's more important beyond the lipservice that, frankly, has been ineffective.

Why? Political ads are everywhere in election season and the news constantly talks about elections. If this isn't sufficient to make people think it's important why would making it a celebration?

I'm trying to understand why this would work.

>making it more of a celebration

Then wouldn't people not want to spend hours waiting to vote if they could party?

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Voters who do not vote say "I'm fine with all winners", like "What pizza do you want?" - "I'm fine with every pizza".

> "Less than 30% of voter age Americans voted for this"

I'll point out again an article about a post-election analysis by David Shor posted on HN a few weeks ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43400172): "The reality is if all registered voters had turned out, then Donald Trump would’ve won the popular vote by 5 points [instead of 1.7 points]. So, I think that a 'we need to turn up the temperature and mobilize everyone' strategy would’ve made things worse."

Even as late as April 9, disapproval of the Democratic Party is higher than for the Republican Party according to Pew Research: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/04/23/views-of-con...

There isn't a hidden wellspring of pro-Democratic voters to tap. The Dems are going to have to go out and fight to win people over.

What presidential elections are you comparing it to?

David Schor’s analysis found that if everyone had voted, Trump would have won by 4.8 points: https://www.vox.com/politics/403364/tik-tok-young-voters-202...

And those that stayed at home deserve what they got.

According to this non-official but prestigious NPO source [0]

Trump got 49.8% of votes for president, Harris got 48.3%. Vote total ~156.3 million. A rather slim 'mandate' methinks.

[0] https://www.cfr.org/article/2024-election-numbers (Council on Foreign Relations)

"American democracy"

And a minority of those who did vote voted for this.

It’s interesting that people who claim Americans live in a democracy will slam-dunk any topic based on a completely binary decision made every four years.

No discussion beyond that point is needed.

> We voted

Depends if your “democracy” have one person = one vote. Or if the land is included somewhere in the vote.

There is no democracy without a free press, or else no one can make an informed decision. I doubt that the press can be called free when it’s owned by oligarchs.

I mean yes? Democracy is a pretty poor model for governance. IMO peak enlightenment happened circa the 17th or 18th century when classical liberalism decided government should be based on individual liberties and anything outside of that is decided democratically not because it is a good system but because votes are roughly a tally of who would win if we all pull knives on each other because we didn't like the vote.

Democracy is not 2 parties doing voter suppression and gerrymandering as a filter to pass the result to an electoral college.

The US system was never designed to be fair to individuals in the first place, pointing at it as a failure of democracy is IMHO pulling the actual issues under the rug.

It’s basically impossible to engage in meaningful voter suppression in a country where election results can be cross-checked against high-quality polling.

“Gerrymandering” also has no effect on Presidential elections. And in 2024, Republicans won a larger share of the House popular vote than their share of House seats.

Voter suppression is the act of limiting the pool of voters. That includes putting large swaths of the population behind bars or flagged as non eligible to voting, putting barriers to voter registration etc.

It can never be 0 and every country will have a minimum requirement, but the degree to which it is done in the US is far ahead of most western country.

Gerrymandering has an effect on the criteria for voter eligibility, the voting rules in the state etc. It's not direct but who's in power has a sizeable effect on who will have an easier time voting.

No, “voter suppression” is the act of preventing legitimate voters from voting. Society determining that categories of people shouldn’t vote (children, felons, non-citizens, etc.) isn’t voter suppression, it’s simply establishing qualifications for voting. The goal isn’t to get to 0 or try to get as close to 0 as possible. People who should vote should be able to vote, while people who shouldn’t vote shouldn’t be able to vote.

In the modern era, we should probably narrow the franchise, instituting civics tests and restricting voting to natural born citizens. Statistically, both of these would have hurt my party in 2024, so this isn’t self-interest speaking.

Voter suppression is suppressing voters one way or the other. Your idea of restricting by birth rights is of course another form of it.

It's fascinating to look at that proposition for a country that mostly got rid of its indigenous population.

Words have meaning. Setting qualifications is different than “suppression.” The former determines who are legitimate voters. The latter is an effort to keep legitimate voters from voting. Conflating legitimate qualification rules with “suppression” is fuzzy thinking in service of propaganda.

Restricting by birth right is simply an extension of the universal practice of restricting voting by citizenship. Every democracy decides who has sufficient stake in and familiarity with the society to be able to vote.

> Words have meaning

Well, yes. At this point we could as well get back to Wikipedia for at least a common interpretation of the concept:

> The disenfranchisement of voters due to age, residence, citizenship, or criminal record are among the more recent examples of ways that elections can be subverted by changing who is allowed to vote.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression

> universal practice of restricting voting by citizenship

Citizenship restriction is not universal BTW, and going from a civil status (can be acquired) to a physical one is an incredibly huge leap that is nothing simple.

Look, if you insist on using this term like this, it will make conversation and mutual understanding more difficult. If banning toddlers from voting is "voter suppression", then now we must distinguish between "good voter suppression", like banning votes from toddlers, and "bad voter suppression", like for example tactics to mendaciously make it harder to vote for people who are otherwise eligible.

The result is that "voter suppression" is no longer understood to be a bad thing. You lose the ability to drop this phrase and expect people to pick up that the implication is negative. For example, you said above:

> Democracy is not 2 parties doing voter suppression and gerrymandering as a filter to pass the result to an electoral college.

If "voter suppression" as a term now include things that are universally understood as good, like banning toddlers from voting, this sounds incoherent. Democracy very much is about doing voter suppression, and everybody agrees it to be a good thing!

If you don't like how it sounds, you need to stop including good and proper things under the "voter suppression" label. Rayiner tried to help you with that, by distinguishing between mendacious voter suppression, and good and proper setting of voter qualifications, but you rejected that.

> we must distinguish between "good voter suppression", like banning votes from toddlers

Banning votes from toddlers is not as clear cut a point as you make it look like.

As a thought experiment: imagine an extreme society made 15% of childless adults, 5% of young parents and 80% of toddlers.

Would it make sense/be fair if the 15% of childless adults could pass laws that remove voting rights for life from anyone that piss their pants in public whatever their age ?

You could end up in a situation where 20 years later 90% of the adults of the country have no voting rights. Finding a way (setting the 5% of parents as representatives ?) to mitigate these kind of issues is generally important, which is why there's no cut and dry "good" voter suppression, only compromises.

Your preoccupations seem to be centered on protecting the system from demagoguery and outside influences, which is a valid POV, but that can't be the only angle nor the central focus. Even if 80% of the population was provably dumb, you'll still need a system that takes their voice into account to avoid the country getting overthrown or become a dictatorship.

> universally

Honestly I don't like that word, and it removes a lot of nuance that is utterly needed for politics and ruling systems. There is almost nothing universal, especially when it comes to "good" and "bad".

I really don't see how this thought experiment is helpful in understanding anything. It would never happen in real world. We have long and well established tradition to disenfranchise specific classes of people, and it is not controversial at all. None of this addresses my point, which is that if you extend the "voter suppression" label to cover things that are universally considered to be good and proper, like banning votes from toddlers, you only make the conversation more difficult.

> Even if 80% of the population was provably dumb, you'll still need a system that takes their voice into account to avoid the country getting overthrown or become a dictatorship.

I really don't see how it follows.

Fundamentally a democracy's promise is leaders represent people's voice, and in exchange people follow the leaders.

Breaking that promise (e.g. cutting off "dumb" people from the process) means they'll have to find non democratic ways to express themselves. If they're in overwhelming numbers the shortest path is a revolution, and if a gov can just weather a popular uprising, it's a dictatorship.

And if the people who are cut off from the process are in the weak minority, and the majority agrees that it's good and proper to cut them off, then there will neither be revolution, nor dictatorship. This is the case with the people we typically disenfranchise today: children, foreigners, criminals. I don't understand why you keep coming up with these completely irrelevant hypothetical scenarios.

I was taking simpler to discuss numbers, but if you don't like hypotheticals:

Looking at 2020 numbers

> children

24% of teens or younger

> foreigners

13%

> criminals

23% of the US population has a criminal record

That's at least 50% of the population. That's a lot for a "weak minority".

Putting it as a separate response:

The weight of cognitively restricted people and non-citizens in the voting process is less and less a theoretical issue, and would merit a lot more discussions IMHO.

Countries like Japan or Korea are getting into demographic phases where elderlies account for about 30% of the whole population and their voting power is tremendous, but we probably have no idea how good or bad the result is, and just cutting their voting rights as they reach some level of impairment would also be a seriously dumb move IMHO.

And on the other side as the fertility rate plummets bringing in more foreigners is an obvious option. Except these foreigners might not want to give up a stronger citizenship (e.g. an EU passport is way more valuable than a Korean one) just to get voting rights in their resident countries, and their kids will have a stronger incentive to go abroad as soon as they can if the country makes their life harder yet.

Partly in reaction to that, Korea for instance gives voting rights to foreigners mostly by virtue of residency.

We're entering very tricky situations where there's more imbalance between the ones holding decision power and the ones bringing the most to the table, and there's just no simple solutions nor any direction that is straight "good" or "bad" or unthinkable.

> No, “voter suppression” is the act of preventing legitimate voters from voting.

Next you will tell us all how easy it is for all Americans to get drivers ids / similar licensing right?

> Statistically, both of these would have hurt my party in 2024, so this isn’t self-interest speaking.

Ah. There it is.

It's really pretty easy to at least get an ID card in the US. Taking a deep red state's requirements (Mississippi) [0]:

"""

Any persons six (6) years of age or older may apply to the Department of Public Safety for an identification card.

All applicants must provide the following:

- A completed and signed Application.

-Original Birth Certificate or any acceptable document. (No Photocopies Accepted)

- SSN Card or an official government correspondence displaying full 9 digits. (click here)

- Two proofs of Residency.

- Legal Documents are required if going by new name.

"""

These are all very standard. The only ones I could see people having trouble with is proof of residency, but the accepted forms[1] are very numerous (over 20). Anyone that isn't intentionally trying to stay off-grid should be able to provide at least two, especially because you're allowed to use proof for a parent, legal guardian, or spouse as long as you can establish your relationship to them. You can even get your roommates to attest that you live with them to use their proofs of residency.

[0] https://www.driverservicebureau.dps.ms.gov/Drivers/Identific...

[1] https://www.driverservicebureau.dps.ms.gov/node/303

This "IDs are hard to get by in US" narrative is really funny to anyone who lived in Europe, where IDs are harder to get by than in US, while being required for more purposes and activities. I have yet to see anyone saying that voter ID requirements are voter suppression to also bite the bullet and say that Europe is a totalitarian hellhole compared to the US, the land of the free.

> where IDs are harder to get by than in US

Is it ? If we're talking national IDs, most EU countries have it mandatory, so there's no requirement other than officially existing as a person.

If we're talking voting registration ID, many countries auto-enroll their citizen the moment they're adult or naturalize, and procedures are only required when your info changes or you explicitly get barred from voting (I don't even know when that happens, minor offences will not trigger that)

> Next you will tell us all how easy it is for all Americans to get drivers ids / similar licensing right?

91% of Americans have driver licenses. So apparently it's not that hard?

Not for nothing, but a requirement for American voters to present official ID at polling places would work to the benefit of the Democrats; increasingly so since 2018. That could change and, of course, there's a right answer here (voter ID is silly). But it's kind of a dumb conspiracy theory to hold.

How can someone talk about democracy peaking when the franchise was extended to a tiny minority of the population. You don't give a damn about individual liberties, you only care that the "right" people have liberty.

That poster is specifically arguing against democracy

Your right. I stand corrected. They don't give a damn about democracy or individual liberties.

Hmm. What if I told you that the parent was clearly in favor of the republic? Would that change your disposition? If not, why not.

Seems like US-centric view. Many countries had several iterations since then.

Ah yes, the wonderful time of enlightenment when all straight white Christian land-owning men's rights became recognized, not just the nobility's. Just a few short centuries from there, the rights of poorer white men, children, women, people of any other skin color, non-Christian, and LGBT people would be recognized too.

You jest, but skin in the game is argument is not irrelevant. It is called a franchise for a reason after all. You want a slice of the pie, you should be able to prove that you know what you are doing. Owning land was a good enough proxy then. We can argue what would be a good proxy now.

Having the laws of the nation apply to you means you have skin in the game when it comes to deciding what those laws are. Owning something, land or whatever else, doesn't give you even one iota more "skin the game" than those that don't.

I disagree, but lets for the sake of argument assume that I buy into your premise. In terms of degrees, do people who own land and have the laws of the nation apply to you ( which is a fascinating distinction by the way, which you may have not fully thought through, but I will leave it as a tangent unless you want to explore it further here ) have more skin in the game than those who only have laws of the nation apply to them?

No, they have the same amount of skin in the game. Given that the state can decide to kill you, or to force you to work, land is irrelevant in the grand scheme of the law's impact.

The response seems a little too emotional to be considered rational. Still, lets consider another perspective.

Would you agree that people with more money are treated differently from people with less money? Money is not exactly property or power, but would you agree that they stand more to lose than a person without either? If they stand to lose more, they automatically have more skin in the game. In fact, if we count money, we can give fairly definitive amount of skin in said game.

No, this is an absurd idea. People with more money have more options - including easily leaving the country if they don't like its laws. In contrast, people with less money have less options and are more dependent on the state, and more at the state's whims if it decides to turn against them. For example, a wealthy person may be able to appeal a wrongful conviction, even taking things all the way up to international courts. A poor person will likely have to accept the initial decision of any judge. An increase of 50% in taxes will cost a wealthy person much more in pure monetary terms, but will have a much, much higher impact in quality of life for a poor person.

So, since laws and governance have a disproportionate impact on those with less money, I would say that, if anything, those with less money have more skin in the game. But I wouldn't put it like that myself - my position is that every person who lives in a country and is subject to its laws for a long enough time has, on balance, the same amount of "skin in the game". The only distinction related to the right to vote should beade based on the ability to take rational decisions (that is, while they still have just as much skin in the game, some people shouldn't be allowed to vote because they lack the ability to rationally understand the vote - but this only applies to children and to those with severe mental disabilities).

<< People with more money have more options - including easily leaving the country

If the above is true, then your position that laws governing the country determine skin in the game is not valid, because those individuals pick, which skin they get to wear ( as in, it is not a factor at all for them ). The two positions are not compatible, which suggests that there is a facet to these factors that is not captured within the model you propose.

<< The only distinction related to the right to vote should beade based on the ability to take rational decisions

Careful now, you are dangerously close to suggesting people, who make irrational choices should not vote, which includes just about 99.9% of the voting population.

<< An increase of 50% in taxes will cost a wealthy person much more in pure monetary terms, but will have a much, much higher impact in quality of life for a poor person.

On the other hand, it costs poor person nothing to vote for themselves somebody else's money and with opportunistic enough a leader a ignorant enough a populace, the sky is literally the limit. Who has more skin in the game here, the person, who gets to lose 50% of their resources to taxes or a person, who was promised someone's taxes to trickle down to them?

Yes, I am setting you up a bit.

You’re saying that people who owned land (and humans) as property had skin in the game while everyone else did not. Just stop.

There is no reason to conflate the two. To be frank, I explicitly stated land ( and not property as a more generic term ), which makes me question how much of a good faith of a conversation this is. My point stands on its own merits, but you seem to want to rely on cheap rhetorical theatrics a good chunk of the audience here can see through.

Okay, owning land then. My bad. All humans existing in the nation have skin in the game by the fact that they exist there. How do landowners have more of a stake?

They have land that can be taken or voted away. I don't think only land owners should be able to vote, but it's worth noting worldwide having significant property is one of the most common ways for immigrants to qualify for a resident visa (other two common ways is job or business investment). Right or not it signifies enough skin in the game to many if not most societies to reflect reciprocated integration the community.

Remember in the early days there was almost no immigration control as well, so finding proxies for skin in the game might have been more challenging than today, when emigrating is almost impossible for the poor so they are stuck with their skin in America whether they like it or not.

> They have land that can be taken or voted away.

The assumption that these privileges would be voted away implies an eventual equal distribution of such thing. Then all would have equal skin in the game which would justify democracy under this bizarre definition of skin in the game.

> I don't think only land owners should be able to vote, but it's worth noting worldwide having significant property is one of the most common ways for immigrants to qualify for a resident visa (other two common ways is job or business investment).

That has got nothing to do with the political franchise.

> Right or not it signifies enough skin in the game to many if not most societies to reflect reciprocated integration the community.

No. It means that they want people with means. Same basic reason why some nations may want people with advanced degrees. Or for that matter poor people who are willing to work for low wages. They want to import people who will benefit the nation state.

<< They want to import people who will benefit the nation state.

You might be getting a little ahead of yourself. Yes, the nation state does what serves its interest, but we are not discussing what the nation state wants. We are not even discussing what the populace through small d democracy wants ( as the two are automatically aligned ). We are discussing, who is a part of the group that can want.

> You might be getting a little ahead of yourself. Yes, the nation state does what serves its interest, but we are not discussing what the nation state wants. We are not even discussing what the populace through small d democracy wants ( as the two are automatically aligned ). We are discussing, who is a part of the group that can want.

I was replying to someone who brought the issue up. For unknown reasons. I pointed out that that is an issue about what the nation state wants. Not about the political franchise (as in the right to vote).

Yes, it is completely irrelevant.

> We are discussing, who is a part of the group that can want.

Anyone who is not comatose.

Then we usually (us small-d democrats) might argue that all who are mature enough (like 18 years or older) should have the right to vote. Out of all those people.

>That has got nothing to do with the political franchise.

Until you consider getting resident visa is by far and away the most common way to franchise for immigrants, barring some exceptions like Argentina and citizenship by investment countries. It actually haze EVERYTHING to do with political franchise.

>The assumption that these privileges would be voted away implies an eventual equal distribution of such thing. Then all would have equal skin in the game which would justify democracy under this bizarre definition of skin in the game.

The implication is yours. We have had eminent domain, civil and criminal forfeiture, and fractional taking (property tax) for a long time, all of which has resulted in quite a bit of land seizure, although not significantly in the direction towards 'equal distribution' despite nearly universal franchise of citizens. Although admittedly mass-scale redistribution of land has happened some places.

>No. It means that they want people with means. Same basic reason why some nations may want people with advanced degrees. Or for that matter poor people who are willing to work for low wages. They want to import people who will benefit the nation state.

Yes of course nations choose the residency path that leads to franchise for immigrants with skin that they can put in the game.

> Until you consider getting resident visa is by far and away the most common way to franchise for immigrants, barring some exceptions like Argentina and citizenship by investment countries. It actually haze EVERYTHING to do with political franchise.

I have lost the plot I guess? The original comment was about who got to vote way back in the day.

> The implication is yours.

Okay I thought that was your implication. Then forget it.

> Yes of course nations choose the residency path that leads to franchise for immigrants with skin that they can put in the game.

I don’t know what you are talking about any more.

The original comment. See that. I cannot understand what you mean skin in the game is with regards to deciding who (back in the day) got to vote. I know that America is a nation of immigrants. This could be simplified to just people who have lived there all their lives.

You are incapable of seeing because you are blinded by an ideological rejection that property ownership can increase your skin in the game.

Go back and decide what is stopping you from seeing that. It is probably negatively affecting other parts of your life as well.

> Go back and decide what is stopping you from seeing that. It is probably negatively affecting other parts of your life as well.

What do you mean?

Whatbexactly are values you consider enlightened and did you ever bother to read history, specifically the parts about how society functions not just where armies went?

I assure you French prior, dueing and after French revolution was not pinacle of great governance. More like, the low.

> IMO peak enlightenment happened circa the 17th or 18th century

Hmmm... The time when most people were not able to read?

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I know that Harris put up zero fight about it. I infer that she believed it to be legitimate.

That's not definitive, to be sure. But it's sufficient for me to believe that we did this to ourselves. Now all we can do is figure out how we're going to get through it.

Maybe I'm too optimistic, but I think actual election fraud, big enough to steal an election, would be too big to miss.

Yes, it might only take a small number of votes in the right place, but either you somehow know the right place, or you have to move a lot of votes.

There's a reasonable discussion to be had along the lines of 'these guys seem to be doing everything they whine about', but could they get a big operation done without a) bragging openly about it, b) leaving a big trail, or c) having a falling out with a conspirator who then tells all.

Adding on, certainly gerrymandering and voter supression laws affect voting results, but I have trouble calling that stealing an election.

Points B and C are believable. Constant headlines about screw ups like the signal chats and sloppy handling of data from doge

Trump did thank that "very popular guy. He was very effective. And he knows those computers better than anybody. All those computers, those vote counting computers, and we won Pennsylvania in a landslide." If Biden or Obama had said something like that the nation would be in uproar.

https://www.youtube.com/live/kdvpXxXVyok?si=XALuK7No9-PLQBAr...

Also consider the circumstantial evidence of Musk illegally promising to pay people (via lottery) to vote, and then using the defense that the lottery was actually rigged.

If nothing else, that establishes a willingness to tamper with elections.

Democracy built lies, decide, and rejection of facts through propaganda.

Really need a viable means to fight it, say allowing an elected official's constitutes being able to sue them for no less than $10,000 for incidence of bearing false witness. Help erode the dark money networks.

Also having a 4th branch of Governments, the people with State and Federal binding resolution, would help. Only way to overrides those in power is to unionize the will.

The suing thing would be cool but the court system is slow by design. I can't see it working in practice however I'm also really fed up with the bullshit so i understand.

Good luck relying on a court of law when the President suspends courts and arrests judges. The latter is happening right now.

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If they were any good at it there would probably be less overt Russian sympathizing.

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They'd be the exact same.

It's like like Dugin's Foundations of Geopolitics was a wish list.

Except that's not coming from the top. Tens of millions of people wanted this.

Maybe this is indeed what Russia would do to us. But we're beating them to the punch by doing it to ourselves.

Why do you assume it has to come from just the top?

The Internet Research Agency explicitly focused on the masses.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency

Or they’re aiding it.

Well, considering they have a very high ranking guy in the Putin regime who considers that to be his full time job, google "Vladislav Surkov", they seem to be doing a fairly effective job of it so far.

Russia has a pretty high ranking guy in the US Government as well, google Krasnov.

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Yeah, everything about this administration makes perfect sense if we assume that Trump is a Russian asset. Of course billionaires like Thiel and Musk have their say as well.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see America sell weapons to Russia, and provide them military support in the future when they launch their next invasion.

Acting DC AG Martin has a history of sockpuppetry. Bought a sycophant a laptop and then ghostwrote Facebook posts attacking a judge in a case against Martin. Should have been disbarred.

https://www.propublica.org/article/ed-martin-trump-interim-d...

It's always projection with the MAGA crowd

Yeah... this Ed Martin? -- rhetorical question! " Martin was a CNN contributor in 2017.[38] From 2016 to 2024, Martin appeared more than 150 times on RT America and Sputnik, both of which are Russian state-controlled news agencies.[39] None of these appearances was disclosed to the Senate on a Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire asking for a list of all media interviews.[39] Nine days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine he said there was no evidence of military buildup on Ukraine’s boarders and critized U.S. officials as warmongering and ignoring Russia security concerns.[40] "

Time to archive a lot of snapshots.

I am not a lawyer but this sounds absurd. Even if everything in here were true it seems irrelevant to their non profit status. There are issue based non profits that do nothing but publishing information with an ideological slant. There is no restriction on a 501c3 being run by non-citizens let alone influenced. 501c3s can even engage in lobbying.

I know taking it at face value isn't the point but this claim is particularly galling.

Haven't read the article in full yet, but it reminded me of this nice excerpt on Wikipedia and truth and the best of what we know:

https://emilygorcenski.com/post/on-truth/

""But one of the most significant differences critical for moving from polarization to productivity, is that the Wikipedians who write these articles aren’t actually focused on finding the truth. They’re working for something that’s a little more attainable, which is the best of what we can know right now. "

I have a question on non-profits in general. What exactly is the advantage of being incorporated as a non-profit, when all you have to do to not be taxed as a for-profit corporation is spend all your money each year and not show any profit? It seems you'd have more privacy as a for-profit corporation, since you don't have to disclose donors.

If I donate to a 501(c)(3) organization, the donation gets very favorable treatment by the tax code, reducing my taxes (provided I have income that can be cancelled out by the donation).

hmm, please correct me if I'm wrong, but donations just decrease your tax liability by the amount you've donated. It's the same as if you donated your pre-tax dollars to 501(c)(3) org.

The second sentence is mostly accurate, but the first implies something else.

If your taxable income was $50,000 and you donate $10,000, and (some other conditions) your taxable income would now be $40,000; same as if you managed to move the money pre-tax.

However. If you donate aprechiated capital assets, you get two benefits. Your taxable income is offset by the value of the asset, and the capital gains disappear. It's much better than selling the asset and donating the proceeds; and it's handy if you don't have good records for your cost basis.

Sure, but my point is - I'm parting ways with my money (be it cash or an asset with monetary value) either way without anything in return. It's just from tax perspective it essentially looks like I never had those money.

I see your point about cost basis tho, I didn't think of this and definetly will use this from now on. Thank you.

Right but you get to choose where your money goes.

Charity non-profits -- 501c3 organizations -- have donations that are tax deductible for their donors. Other kinds of nonprofits have other advantages to their stakeholders, but usually the attention around "nonprofits" is specifically about 501c3 orgs.

Nonprofits have privacy too:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAACP_v._Alabama

That said, there are a lot of operational advantages to being a for-profit corporation. Chan-Zuckerberg is organized this way. Other nonprofits try to have it both ways where the for-profit entity operates the business while being owned by a nonprofit. It has not worked out great for OpenAI. Patagonia converted to this model recently.

Eligibility to receive grants & tax deductible donations, public perception & credibility

Seems relevant: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/endi...

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To be honest, many of the people who critize wikipedia.. just do not want to fork the content. it would be possible. they all like the work people put into it. but as soon as it does not fit the worldview anymore...

are there manipulations? sure. then more people should watch it. and wikipedia should have a better process on controversal topics in own areas.

but the whining is abysmal.

Justapedia has forked English Wikipedia almost three years ago and is doing good so far, even if they're still ignored by major search engines.

This suggestion ignores network effects.

Right, which is one of the most valuable parts about Wikipedia (or truly any product) and should be factored in.

The information on Wikipedia is important, but the existence of Wikipedia and you and I both knowing about it is more important. This is why building up existing institutions is almost always more valuable than the "burn it all down" populist mentality we see in politics today. Just the existence of the current thing represents some inertia, some energy, some goals, and that has value.

where do you draw the line between whining and legitimate concerns? forking wikipedia wouldn't address the core quality issues and how low quality content is syndicated to billions via search engines, LLMs, academic references etc.

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Letter should be thrown in the trash. Let him bring up charges if they feel a crime has been committed.

They aren't threatening with a crime, rather just revoking their tax-exempt status.

Wikipedia needs decentralized hosting infra, away from any single country. It is way too important.

Decentralization typically means instead of being subject to one crazy government you are subject to multiple and have to deal with all.

I think wikipedia's approach of centralizing in one place but allowing downloading backups and making all sourcecode and server config public is better. If the worst happens anyone can setup a fork.

The hosting isn’t important, it’s easy to move or have an offline copy already. The access to fundraising is much more important and more complicated.

I didn't immediately consider this, but I think I agree. In a weird way, the access and reach wikipedia has is a lot more valuable from that perspective. And if there is one thing that the US government can do is restrict that in ways that would effectively neuter it.

Start backing it up now. Partisan influence could be as minor as forcing some edits or as major as pulling their DNS. Every authoritarian in the world follows this same playbook. Over started looking into kiwix.

IA is at risk too.

You can download backups of Wikipedia articles at dumps.wikimedia.org. For the IA they had a plan to move to Canada back in 2017.

One of the few truly good sites remaining. I'm afraid decentralization will take away the credibility even further but also would be very sad to see it fall.

Moving to decentralized hosting would be extremely hard without compromising performance, reliability, or the ability to moderate effectively

This admin has no shame. They’re burning everything good/stable about the US because of an unstable, megalomaniac idiot happened to win the presidency.

He didn't just happen to win the presidency. He brought with him both houses of Congress on his coattails, and he had previously filled the Supreme Court (already heavily laden with his partisans).

He's not the one with no shame. It's tens of millions of Americans who are even now cheering this action on. Many of them on this web site.

If we have a megalomaniac idiot, it's because it reflects who we are.

> If we have a megalomaniac idiot, it's because it reflects who we are.

s/we/his voters

I don’t claim to have the same issues Trump or his MAGA base or his rich sycophants do. I voted for Kamala. Which was basically a vote to continue Biden’s policies. Had she won the world would have been a far different place.

So I’m unsure why the downvote. Emacs fans don’t like my vim-ism?

Let's remove nonprofit status from all churches. Because they are involved in politics

Are they though? I’ve seen people make this claim but I’ve never seen them coherently defend it outside of a rouge priest

Pretty much every evangelical church is heavily political.

I think you mean "rogue". The "rouge" priestess is a Game of Thrones character.

The US government cannot tax churches because of the first amendment. So they have a bit of a stronger claim than Wikipedia.

1A has nothing to do with tax status.

The US are no longer a safe country for volunteer projects.

You may want to elaborate a little ideally listing countries that would be a safe alternative. In short, it seems like an easy throwaway comment.

Obviously this would happen with the current administration in the USA.

The foundation should be moved to a country where the rule of law and neutrality are respected. Switzerland perhaps?

Sadly no country is immune from changes in rule.

It seems like in the worst case all Wikipedia would lose is their tax-exempt status. So it wouldn't even be the end of the world.

They'll need to delete those LTA pages first before they can move to Europe due to GDPR.

In my humble opinion Wikipedia is the single best thing thing to emerge from the Internet boom. Its name is a wordplay on one of the most important intellectual projects of the Enlightment.[0] The DC prosecutor letter reads like something straight out of the totalitarian playbook.[1]

Please donate now to show your support. It's time to fight back against this crap.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclop%C3%A9die

[1] "Show me the man and I'll show you the crime." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Give_me_the_man_and_I_will_giv...

Wikipedia isn't perfect, but it embodies the idea that knowledge should be built collaboratively and made freely available to everyone

Hi I don't know if you know it but Wikipedias not that poor or hard pressed... Atleast, the whole "donate or we broke" narrative that they build every few months is complete bullshit https://youtu.be/3t8GUbzVxmQ?si=sa_oHe3DA_QmpGcE

Neither is Google, yet there is still probably multiple ads on that video you linked.

the difference is Google isnt pushing the narrative that its about to stop existing if you don't watch this ad

my problem is with wikipedia lying to us by saying it will shut down if you don't donate: which is false because their situation simply isnt that dire

I'm fully aware of that. The reason they get donations is that it's worth supporting.

As much as a I agree with the first paragraph I don't think that is a reason to donate money.

What else would you recommend instead? Doing nothing is not a very compelling argument.

Reason and truth are the enemy of authoritarian regimes. They want you to believe that truth is subjective. Truth and reason provide alternative legitimacy to authority. If nothing is true, there is no basis on which to judge those in power.

There is a long legacy of authoritarian regimes attacking curious places, universities, historians, museums, books or any institution that grounds itself in reality which provides you a way to reasonably criticize authoritarian actions. Many authortarian regimes will "purge" as many of the country's intellectuals as they are able.

Wikipedia is absolutely the enemy of this administration and authoritarians everywhere in the world would love to see it's demise or collapse into chaos.

Whether the Wikipedia page for Israel says Gaza is a genocide or not, or that it's an ongoing debate matters. It matters because it influences what people think and therefore what they consent to or what they deem worth fighting for or applying resources to and that goes for just about any issue out there. If you can't read about the suffering that racism has caused, then how bad is racism really? If there are no examples of successful labor movements, then why would you hopelessly start one?

> Reason and truth are the enemy of authoritarian regimes. Truth and reason provide alternative legitimacy to authority. If nothing is true, there is no basis on which to judge those in power.

Well said.

Hannah Arendt wrote a great book about this, but it sounds like you might have already read it.

I haven't. I would imagine Timothy Snyder is an avid fan of, if not a major historian of, Hannah Arendt and I probably got that through Snyder. I had actually not heard of her specifically yet.

https://history.yale.edu/news/timothy-snyder-has-been-awarde...

Apparently Snyder received the Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought.

He quotes her here: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/04/preparing-for-an...

After the Reichstag fire, political theorist Hannah Arendt wrote that “I was no longer of the opinion that one can simply be a bystander.” Courage does not mean not fearing, or not grieving. It does mean recognizing and resisting terror management right away, from the moment of the attack, precisely when it seems most difficult to do so.

According to its cofounder, Wikipedia abandoned truth long ago.

https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/

It’s pretty clear from this blogpost that Larry Sanger has abandoned a pursuit of truth and neutral point of view and instead does not like how reality fails to conform to his personal biases and preferences about the way the world is.

If nothing else, the rambling about global warming and MMR vaccines makes it obvious. It’s not neutral to spread many times disproven lies. Especially how he wants to spread it, without saying that it’s not true, because that’s not neutral. He just forgot that saying that something is true is also not neutral.

I understand the caution, and we need to be more cautious in today’s world. And I do in controversial topics quite frequently. For example, giving points for women during university admissions just for being women in Norway seemed outrageous. And when I feel that way, I immediately start to check its validity, especially that the article “forgot” to mention how many points. At the end they give out 1 or 2 points on a scale of 50, and not to just women but also men, where they are underrepresented. The article just lied about that we should have outrage. It’s a lie.

Larry Sanger wants such lies on Wikipedia. He should be way more cautious when he’s outraged. Also 100% of people who commented under this article on Reddit should do the same.

What organizations, institutions, or media do you think have a greater commitment to truth, or even just a commitment to truth?

Organizations can't have commitments to truth. Only people can. And there is no mechanism that ensures that editors and admins have a commitment to truth.

OK, I can't argue with that. Timothy Snyder might make a similar correction, "markets can't be free, only people participating in the market can be free" is something he says frequently.

If only people can have commitments to truth, which organization, institution, or media do you think has a leader that seems to have a commitment to truth, especially truth in their institution? Who is our gold standard of "as good as it gets"?

I think for very scientific and technical matters that is entirely divorced from politics Wikipedia is fine, not great, but entirely serviceable.

For everything else I won't trust it, which sadly includes matters of war and history, as almost all causal claims about the world rests on counter factuals, and therefore does not merely depend on what is.

Politics also concerns what ought to be, not what is, and most editors of Wikipedia do not agree with me regarding what ought to be or even how one should determine what ought to be.

Wikipedia would do better if they could figure out a way to manage bias rather than try to eliminate it. I don't want to be overly critical. Wikipedia is useful, but it's really very far from ideal and I would not want my tax money going anywhere near it.

Wikipedia is a great point of entry for history.

Roughly ~20 years behind current academic research on most subjects, makes it 10 to 40 years more advanced than other encyclopaedia and school curriculums.

But its value is on the bibliography. You have research papers linked, which makes it infinitely better than most other sources. The only way to get closer to the truth in history is rigorous demonstrations, and those only exist in academic papers.

The view on Wikipedia on the French revolution are mostly Furet's views, which is 20 years behind, as it is the case in the Anglo world. Furet isn't the only one cited in Wikipedia though, and his point of view is nuanced with research from the 90s and 2000s, all with links to actual research. The last time I checked, research from JCM on the recently (late 2000s) discovered 'archives du comité' isn't discussed yet there, but all that makes it infinitely better than encyclopaedia brittanica. Infinitely.

Do you have any examples to show why I shouldn't trust it in regards to political topics or history?

You also really avoided the "what's better"/"what's a better model" question.

Social consensus, consent, and political mandate aren't ideas that can be hand waived away, they matter and they effect you and they are deeply impact by what people perceive to be true.

So the question still stands, if you mention a topic like Mao's cultural revolution, where should I go to get a primer and verify that the way you're talking about it appears to be grounded in reality.

Imagine sharing this link unironically thinking the content makes great sense.

> Reason and truth are the enemy of authoritarian regimes. They want you to believe that truth is subjective. Truth and reason provide alternative legitimacy to authority. If nothing is true, there is no basis on which to judge those in power.

I agree. Only thing I would add is that the 'seeking of truth' is also important. Academics get it wrong all the time, but self correction is built into the process. Finding and fixing errors is important.

Totalitarian mindset is not incompatible with the notion of absolute truth. It just want to be considered the single source of truth. You can believe whatever you want as long as it leads you to always comply to the government official statements, even in your most hidden intimacy. That, is totalitarism.

Wikipedia policy is verifiability and giving the reader a first step. Truth is something that the reader decide for themselves. Wikipedia are neither the enemy nor a friend for regimes or political movements.

It is not the role of Wikipedia to authoritative say if the war in Gaza is an genocide. Their role is to say what reliable source has reported, which in this case has so much reliable sources talking about it that there is a dedicated article about just it.

There more reliable sources are talking about a subject, and the more the subject gain notability, the more likely it will be included in Wikipedia. Editors can apply some common sense, but they are not the arbiters of truth, nor should they ever be seen as such. If a readers want simple and single truths that they can believe in then they are better served by whichever news papers that can cater to their particular world views.

So everything wiki mods believe is truth? What about those who never even got a chance to speak out?

It's always controlled by. Winners write the history. Now Americans decide what's truth and fact

Wikipedia has at least 15 million articles in languages other than English and around 7 million English articles.

Are you asserting that it is standard that Americans are writing and moderating all of these articles in other languages?

In my country, one section mentions English articles (written by amercans) to prove their point.

Then your country Wikipedia admins are idiots if they accept that, as Wikipedia isn't considered a primary source on Wikipedia.

Can you link an example?

>Now Americans decide what's truth and fact

what about evidence?

an encyclopedia is supposed to be broader than any other biased information source, so i think your last paragraph is false. people are supposed to make up their own mind

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia

Aren't you making their point though?

The ADL and other Jewish organizations have pointed out that aside from articles about Israel that articles about or mention Jewish topics generally have been editing with disinformation or that made Jews out to be the aggressors.

I agree with you that in order to believe in the ideals of liberal democracy that we must have a core belief in truth. And it's absolutely true that the Trump administration has taken a position that is deeply chilling on the issue of speech. It's clear they want to be the sole arbiters of what "truth" is and they want to use their power to manipulate the reality.

All that said, I cannot as a Jew ignore the fact that Wikipedia is not in itself neutral, and that "more eyes" does not negate systemic bias. What I've seen as a Jew is what the true meaning of marginalized minority is, which is to say that if you are truly a minority and truly marginalized then in a vote of "truth", your reality will be dismissed if it conflicts with the vast majority, and that Jews are only 0.2% of the world population.

While I brought it up, I am not debating the issue of antisemitic bias in Wikipedia[1] as anything other than an illustration of your point of objective truth being true, but also that we can't simply rely on the wisdom of the crowd to materialize that truth.

To preemptively address the issue that's bound to come up when I post this- I'm not arguing that the evils of silencing the entire Wikipedia project are equal to or a fair response to Wikipedia's antisemitic bias. I do believe Wikipedia needs to address its bias problem and that's best done through internal reform.

Two wrongs don't make a right, nor are two wrongs always of equal weight.

[1] Firstly because my point is separate, and secondly because I've encountered the exact issues I've found in Wikipedia elsewhere, which is why I'm sure I'll be voted down.

I agree 100%. It's exhausting fighting against antisemitic bias, and it feels like it's everywhere these days. My problem with Ed Martin is that what he is doing is clearly wrong. Hannah Arendt wrote a book about people like him.

At a time when students are having their visas revoked merely for writing Op-Eds critical of Israel, it's rather ridiculous to see the pro-Israel side acting like you're the ones being persecuted everywhere.

Since when do two wrongs make a right?

Your post proves my point quite exactly. Here you busy othering Jewish people by using language like "acting like you're the ones being persecuted". JEWISH PEOPLE ARE BEING PERSECUTED. I myself have been subject to anti-semitic treatment on/off throughout my entire life. I have been called the K word in the past. Current coworkers say things even though I am not even an Israeli citizen, and then are sure to add "of course Moshe we are not talking about you"...

I don't support what happened to Mahmoud Khalil. The Trump administration is evil. I might support Israel's right to exist, but I voted for Kamala because I support the US a hell of a lot more. None of the ordinary citizens of Israel or Palestine or the US is responsible for what's happening in Israel.

https://www.adl.org/resources/press-release/new-fbi-data-ref...

If you're not Jewish it might be a little difficult to understand. I know quite a few Jews who do not dare light a menorah in their window. Who don't dare fly an Israeli flag or identify themselves as Jews in any way. I am secular, but synagogues have to have armed security.

Jewish people != Israeli government.

By the way, Americans are absolutely safe traveling to Israel. You simple cannot say the same thing for almost any Arab country. Well, that's how Jews feel almost everywhere in the world.

The fact that my comment is -2 on HN is a great example of the problem.

I'm working on a solution to the effects of this isolation, but it's not ready for a big announcement.

Could one of you point me to antisemitic bias on wikipedia just so I have a concrete example at hand?

https://www.adl.org/resources/report/editing-hate-how-anti-i...

Read it for yourself.

I tried giving it a shot. It starts with an "executive summary", followed by an intro to how Wikipedia works. The very first link to any concrete evidence is by a guy who has a page on PragerU with gems like "Russian collusion hoax" and how the "mainstream media" is "fake news".

It's a pretty simple case of Wittgenstein's ruler for me. It tells me more about ADL as an org than the content.

The analysis there is not convincing.

It is obvious that Wikipedia admins communicate with each other. The fact that Aljazeera is referenced is also okay.

In fact, this is not the official Israeli narrative, it seems rather trustworthy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli%E2%80%93Palestinian_co...

Instead of posting another person's argument that contains your source can you be more specific?

This is like citing an entire book to prove a point.

The ADL destroyed any credibility they had worked to build when they started conflating criticism of israel with antisemitism.

Oh, that's VERY interesting. Thank you very much. Needs to be checked a bit more thoroughly, but the ADL report and the D.C. U.S. attorney's letter seem to have significant thematic overlap. It could well have served as one of the sources.

I'm not sure the organization that defended Musk's Nazi salute is a reliable source on antisemitism.

Basically, almost any time Zionists are mentioned, they're mentioned in a negative light and with genuine disinformation, such as that Zionism is the belief that Arabs needs to be destroyed. That is like saying the Civil Rights movement in the US was about killing white people.

They also position things in such a way that implies antisemitic things, such as saying that Zionism is only 200 years old, or discussing the Israel wars only or primarily through an Arab lens.

These biases around Jewish topics are small individually but large in aggregate, especially in how they present Jews and Jewish topics.

Multiple Jewish and civil rights organizations have done a more comprehensive job at discussing this, even organizations who don't usually agree on things. While they talk about "anti-Israel bias" Wikipedia articles on or mentioning Zionism (80% of Jews are Zionist) are IMHO just as, if not more damaging, and demonstrate the issue.

Most importantly though, talk to the Jews in your life about this. They will tell you.

https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/news/wikipedia-entrie...

https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/article-846563

https://cameraoncampus.org/blog/seven-tactics-wikipedia-edit...

https://www.adl.org/resources/report/editing-hate-how-anti-i...

https://www.standwithus.com/post/it-s-time-to-correct-wikipe...

https://www.piratewires.com/p/how-wikipedia-s-pro-hamas-edit...

Zionism, as a belief system and ideology, is one built on colonialism and manifest destiny. That's literally, plainly, what it is. Naturally, these have associations with bad things. Most colonialist movements in history were bad for the people getting colonized.

You cannot subscribe to a belief and simultaneously exempt yourself from all consequences of that belief. What I mean is, if you are a Zionist, then you believe some people should be displaced in a conquest for your people. What happens to them? You cannot say "well, we can do it without displacement" or "well, I don't believe that".

No. That is the consequence of what you belief, and you therefore MUST stand by it. You MUST believe you are entitled to the land and sovereignty of Arabs, whether you choose to articulate that belief or not.

This is something Zionists sometimes struggle to comprehend. They wish to live in an alternate reality, where they can keep their beliefs and magically get to an outcome they desire without anyone getting hurt. It doesn't work that way. If your belief hurts people, _that means you want to hurt people_.

>Basically, almost any time Zionists are mentioned, they're mentioned in a negative light and with genuine disinformation,

Your first statement is a sweeping generalization that you can't prove

I don't know if that statement is true or not, but it certainly seems like a specific enough statement that could be proved or disproved given enough effort.

Not an amount of effort in the realm of this discussion and that's all that matters

The question was about antisemitism (hatred of Jews or Semitic people), not about Zionists, and you completely failed to point to a single example of antisemitic bias on Wikipedia, which is what you were asked to do.

The vast majority of Jews are Zionists, and the two topics are inextricably linked. What would expect antisemitic bias on Wikipedia to look like? What would you accept as evidence?

I'm not sure what you're talking about. And I'd expect you to show some of the bias.

Most of the jews I know are through anti-genocide activism and they have a different view of this. I wanted to check because it is important to me that I not engage in antisemitism. Thanks for the info.

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No I mean literally we are part of an organization focused on preventing and ending genocide broadly. Israel-palestine is one of them but there are several others ongoing and several more that may escalate into genocide in the next few months or years. I do see why you have a hard time with wikipedia.

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Could you point me to an example of what you have in mind on wikipedia? I'm admittedly not as practiced at discerning subtle antisemitism as I am some other forms of discrimination. But also usually when it's being alluded to in the abstract like this people mean something closer to "criticism of israel's actions."

https://www.adl.org/resources/report/editing-hate-how-anti-i...

I didn't read that because the person asked for an example and you directed them to a 150 printed page article where you didn't specify which page(s)

This is the equivalent of stating that dinosaurs evolved into birds then when asked for one piece of evidence directing a person to a book, by another author, on how dinosaurs evolved into birds

Look, these people spent a lot of time and energy putting together a list. It's a lot better than anything I could put together.

OK yeah I've read that. Thanks.

Anti semitism or anti Zionist? Asking as the ADL doesn't seem to understand that there's a difference.

This is the same ADL that said that Nazi salutes are fine, but that protesting against genocide isn't? Why do we care what the ADL says about anything? They're fascist sympathisers.

It was not remotely okay that they did this, and I agree that refusing to speak out severely hurt their credibility. The next time I get a fundraising email, I'm going to tell them they can kiss something.

Demanding moral perfection from an organization in order to believe that discrimination exists is a standard that I don't believe is fair to any group.

I don't demand "moral perfection", but I draw the line at overt fascism. The ADL are fascist sympathisers.

Did you read the statement they put out later that day about Musk, or the day after?

I agree this was a terrible move on the ADL's part, and there have been others, but you're essentially labeling the oldest anti-hate group "fascist" because you disagree with one statement they made.

This dismisses any concerns they raise, or if someone else says the same as them, then they too must be pro-facist.

He also tweeted in approval of this tweet putting forward the "Jewish people planned it" antisemitic form of great replacement theory with "you have said the actual truth":

> Jewish communties have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.

> I'm deeply disinterested in giving the tiniest shit now about western Jewish populations coming to the disturbing realization that those hordes of minorities that support flooding their country don't exactly like them too much.

> You want truth said to your face, there it is.

Then a bit later Musk gives the heil Hitler salute twice in a row, once facing the crowd, then turned around and gave it facing Trump.

The stuff the ADL put out after the salutes was only after he added on jokes involving Nazi party members, right? Or was the one later that day before that?

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>The existence of Wikipedia is a convenience and perhaps not one that should be given tax free status.

Because it's a convenience?

Works where archive.is is blocked:

https://web.archive.org/web/20250425235105if_/https://www.wa...

The letter:

https://web.archive.org/web/20250427075702if_/https://www.wa...

So the issue is “allowing foreign actors to manipulate information and spread propaganda to the American public.” and they are going after wikipedia instead of say TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X?

It's 2 paragraphs... What's the substance of the allegation?

He doesn't have a leg to stand on and he knows it. Otherwise he would empanel a grand jury and wait for indictments. He is a partisan sadist and he loves to use the legal system to abuse people.

It’s a similar nonsense letter to the same ones he sent to several prominent medical journals. Speech chilling, 1st amendment violating unsubstantiated threats on DOJ letterhead. Of all the unfit people in this administration, he’s likely the most unfit. His entire career has been deeply unethical and partisan and often borderline illegal.

But what about The Twitter Files?! (cue X-Files intro music)

The allegation is the substance.

I once wrote an essay on how to deal with conflict of interest problems on Wikipedia.[1] It's not that hard. It's just work.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Hints_on_dealing_wit...

Wikipedia IS ideologically captured and a propaganda target. This is not up for debate.

What it needs now is a bipartisan, sybil resistant algorithm like X’s community notes’ in order to accept/reject edits.

> Wikipedia IS ideologically captured and a propaganda target. This is not up for debate.

What an absurd claim to make without any evidence. Citation needed.

Evidence is socially constructed. It's the view of the public that neckbeards and debate-bros should be expunged. This isn't a debate.

Lived experience. I am the source, lib. Why would you be against a bipartisan curation algorithm like the one employed by community notes if you didn’t subconsciously agree with me?

[dead]

Wikipedia has its share of issues, and anything political/controversial is never going to be perfectly balanced and there will always be a tug of war over content and complaints from all sides. I tend to stay away from articles on highly politicized people/topics.

But having an independent (not ad-driven therefore not subject to corporations), transparent (you can see edit history and authors), and funded by its users, is an amazing accomplishment and a great boon to mankind. One of the best sites on the internet.

Independent sources of information are a threat to autocrats and dictators, so it's no surprise that the Trump admin would attempt to kill Wikipedia or reduce its influence (and no better way than to hit its tax status and therefore reduce donations to it).

Wikipedia definitely isn't perfect - bias in editing is real, and it's fair to critique how reliable it is - but threatening their nonprofit status over it is wild.

90+% of the contributions do not go to wikipedia . They are scamming contributors who think they are paying for the encyclopedia

I've edited a page about my grandfather's accounting firm that was bought out by some iteration of Peat Marwick (I have the deets somewhere, just don't recall now). Referred to documentation and the edit was reverted.

Done some other edits, some stick, some are reverted. I don't have time to deal with this so as much as I'd like to contribute, I am doing stuff where I can actually contribute.

It's long due that we come up with an uncensorable, decentralized digital encyclopedia, with different versions for every article, each qualified perhaps by a voting or comment system of sorts, so we can work out biases and make up our own minds on any subject. That way, it'll also be truly nonprofit, afforded by its own users.

As a non american that edited wikipedia.

You guys control the servers, if anything you have the psyop advantage.

However, the librarians are very vocal about self determination and keeping wikimedia out of important decisions.

Same person also threatened the New England Journal of Medicine. Thought crime is real.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/25/health/nejm-prosecutor-le...

All US organizations should seriously consider moving out of the country, at this point; it might become harder to do it in the future

Wikipedia website even says your donation goes to other projects. As a 501c3, they are banned from making political contributions. They should change from 501c3 and break off their political arm into another appropriately categorized IRS recognized model.

https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/wikimedia-foundation/recipi...

no, it's about using the power of the state to attack and hopefully silence your political opponents

something commonly seen in e.g. Venezuela, South Africa, and now the US

I understand the sentiment but all they have to do is create a PAC for political stuff not under 501c3

Remember as you read more and more news like this that many of the owners of Y Combinator supported this.

The only YC figure who espouses any position on U.S. federal politics is Paul Graham, who loudly campaigns against the current administration almost every day on Twitter.

Hi Tom.

You're burning your credibility here fast as the new moderator. dang derived his respect as an admin from not getting into fights in the threads. It additonaly tarnishes your credibility as you're doing this in defense of your employer. You look like a rage-poster who has the same response copied and ready to go from thread to thread.

Please take a moment to step back and examine if this is the image you want to be projecting as the official representative of YC and HN.

Thanks for the comments.

Where we get it wrong, I'm happy for it to be pointed out so we can improve. That's always been the case with HN moderation, and it's what I like about the work. The community demands that we operate to a high standard, and is quick to call us out when we get things wrong. That's the way it should be.

Where it stops being OK is when people make false (or extrapolated-to-the-point-of-absurdity) claims about YC’s actions/intentions, and its influence on HN moderation (and thus HN’s integrity).

Where this happens, the least I can do is (a) provide some balancing context when claims/insinuations are made of, say, YC's leaders being in cahoots with the administration and HN moderators enabling it because it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it, and (b) ask people who accuse us of censorship to provide details of their claims so we can explain it or investigate further.

I know I'm not going to please or win credibility from everybody, especially those who seem motivated to portray HN moderation and YC management in the worst possible light.

But the problem is that if we let these claims/accusations sit there without any balancing context, people who are open-minded will read them and think they are accurate, then form a negative opinion of YC and HN, based on incomplete information or falsehoods.

I realised just how damaging this can be when I spent time around the YC offices in SF in the past month, for the first time in a few years, spending lots time with dang and in staff meetings and having casual chats with YC staff and partners and startup founders. I realised just how different the vibe and attitude is, and how different the orientation towards politics is, compared to how it is so often portrayed in HN comments.

I also saw how frustrated and dispirited dang is by being subjected to these accusations for so long. And it hit me that these kinds of comments have become so pervasive on HN for so long that even I – who has been behind the scenes at HN for years (but not in the office) – had started to believe them, and become disenchanted about YC. And only when I spent time in the office and in the meetings did I realise just how much of an inaccurate portrayal they are.

I don't for a moment think YC is perfect, and I have plenty of my own ideas about how it can be doing better. And it's still very much the case that HN is an independent arm of YC, and it's not the moderators' role to defend or advocate for YC management.

But I think it’s important that we can provide balancing context when assertions are made about HN moderation and YC's influence on our moderation practices.

(Edited 5th par to be less dismissive/accusatory.)

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Alternatively, hi tom, you're a human being with opinions and you're allowed to discuss whatever you like on this site just like anyone else.

i think dang is successful at moderation in part because he does have a reputation and track record of being fair and unbiased in his moderation, and i do agree showing bias in conversations can make people question moderation decisions more, but i'm not sure tom is showing bias by including information relevant to people he knows, and i think he can both discuss however he likes while also being transparent and genuine in unbiased moderation

tom has and does stay out of debates and in-depth conversations around HN related stuff. he's simply dropping some information in to dispel disinformation, which i think is reasonable

Administration and participation in arguments or opinion based debates should not coincide. Using a personal account for personal issues instead of using an administrator is more respectable in my opinion.

Other than routine moderation comments, my comments have all been focused on correcting falsehoods or misconceptions about HN moderation, including claims or insinuations about YC management’s explicit or implicit influence on HN moderation.

Can you point to a comment of mine where that's not the case? I'll happily have it pointed out so I can avoid it in future.

It's been better for HN for the mods to treat the people they interact with as people and vice versa.

It is not "getting into fights", and does not "look like rage-posting", to politely correct a falsehood.

Thank you. I do try to be polite and friendly about it. Maybe that doesn't come across to everyone.

That's such a weirdly blatant lie.

Jared Friedman endorsing DOGE

https://x.com/snowmaker/status/1886672263216504853

Garry Tan hanging with a DOGE flunky

https://x.com/jgebbia/status/1907181994695332295

Normally I'd rather not reply this kind of comment, but so as not to let it just sit here and be presumed to be the slam dunk it purports to be...

1) Yes, Jared posted (nearly three months ago) that DOGE reminded him of (and indeed is the same entity as) USDS, a program launched by Obama in 2014 – evidently a program that Jared liked and supported.

2) Yes, Garry was photographed with Joe Gebbia, a notable YC alum who is volunteering with DOGE.

The next day, Garry posted a photo of himself with prominent Democratic Senator Cory Booker:

https://twitter.com/garrytan/status/1907526506840003025

He also posted the full video of Sen. Booker giving a long, impassioned speech at a YC-hosted conference:

https://twitter.com/garrytan/status/1907537541550469410

People will make up their own minds as to whether the tweets cited by the parent pass the test of campaigning or advocating for the administration or any particular agenda.

They don't for me, given the full context.

Still, the relevant matter for HN moderation is the political signals that will influence us or cause us to be biased. The strongest signal is from pg and it’s in the opposite direction to what is being claimed in the comments that accuse us of bias. Of course we don’t want to be influenced in that direction either.

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Their silence now is cowardly.

In before this thread is also flagged for being "political".

The only moderator action taken on this submission was to prevent it from being downweighted by community flags – 5 hours ago.

The sheer amount of flagged and dead comments here - along with the vitriol I see in some responses to flagged comments that were not themselves flagged - makes me think this was a mistake.

There's a post that the FBI arrested a judge who helped an illegal immigrant avoid capture during a court proceeding.

900+ upvotes

- it has nothing to do with tech

- it's about a hot button political issue

- it helps the Republican cause.

Not flagged

I'm just curious why you think it helps the Republican cause? When I saw this reported in the media my feel was this is something Democrats are going to latch on to demonstrate the government is seeking to intimidate the judicial branch.

I guess it can have different interpretation.

Either way I'd really prefer not to see this stuff on Hacker News. We have enough things that push people buttons in other places.

HN has degraded a little since I joined some years ago. It is still better than most of the online fora out there, but you can feel the change in the posts.

Let me help degrade it further by asking what the purpose of this comment is and then asking if outside changes, like Trump, would be a more likely explanation for the change in tone

The purpose is the help understand current state of play. It used to be more purposeful, useful and meaningful for me to be here. If things will continue with its current trajectory, I will simply stop. I am not saying everyone will. We all have different lines after all. I am not sure what Trump has to do with this particular conversation though.

>I am not sure what Trump has to do with this particular conversation though.

Your original comment was about the change in tone, I'm giving what I think is the main reason. He spews hateful rhetoric and insults people constantly. Tens of millions voted for him to represent them in the highest position in the world.

>. It used to be more purposeful, useful and meaningful for me

I think the articles where you'll find the highest percentage of comments you'd dislike are obvious. Just don't click on them.

>The purpose is the help understand current state of play.

This is improved if the information is accurate right? Calling out those that might be lying helps.

I thought about what you wrote. I think I agree and I accept your argument.

This entire thread is worthless social media junk food.

Who, specifically, are you referring to; and what have they done or said to make you believe that they support this?

Wealthy people who could be coined liberal-tarians or just your average tech bro political grab bag largely backed Trump out of financial interest and who, imo, deluded themselves that the administration would be unsuccessful at "the bad stuff" much like his 2016 run.

No amount of shouting from the rooftops that this time was actually different convinced anyone. I can't really blame us collectively, we resoundingly voted for this— it's as much of a mandate you're likely to ever get in the US and we're in the find out stage of fucking around.

Looking back on old social media posts the theme is that everyone, supporters and not, were high on copium that Trump would do <list of things I like | aren't so bad> and the <list of truly terrible things> was just obviously crazy and wouldn't actually happen or were a joke.

Who specifically was the question.

This isn't really a hard list to compile.

* Paul Graham

* Mark Zuckerberg

* The Ghost of Elon Musk before he fell down the alt right pipeline and now is no longer liberal-tarian.

* Sundar Pichai

* Jeff Bezos

* Sam Altman

* Jensen Huang

* Tim Cook

A who's who of people who felt their businesses were being threatened by the Biden administration with a starry-eyed view of how this next round might benefit them and being in denial of the crazy.

> have they done or said to make you believe that they support this?

Most of those people are just cowardly bending to corruption, which is not the same thing as what was originally asked for.

Many of those probably wanted Biden to win but don't want to antagonize Trump after he won. If I had to guess there at least Sundar and Bezos didn't want Trump to win

Elon and his loud hangers-on in the VC community have made SV look a lot more MAGA than it is

Trying to psychoanalyze billionaires from afar is a losing game.

If we're going to judge these folks, judge them by their words and actions.

Most of them didn't have words one way or another during the campaign, the post I replied was suggesting they got what they want, I guess that was some psychoanalysis too

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> we resoundingly voted for this— it's as much of a mandate you're likely to ever get in the US

Trump received a minority of the popular vote. The 1.5% margin was slim compared to recent elections even.

Well, the good news is that there's a very convenient link at the bottom of the page here on HN for the AI startup school [1] which is host to a bunch of people that you should recognize.

[1] https://events.ycombinator.com/ai-sus

Not an answer to my question.

It is actually, unless you are unable to parse information without being spoon fed to you.

Ed Martin seems like a SME when he himself has been influenced by foreign agencies and spoke their case.

Curtis Yarvin has a riff that goes something like this: Liberal Wikipedia, Communist Wikipedia, and Fascist Wikipedia will all actually agree on the vast majority of topics: Physics, botany, the solar system, chemistry, math, statistics etc.

However they'll be worlds apart on history, economics, anthropology, sexuality, politics, previous leaders and so on.

Our Wikipedia is the world seen through the eyes of the New York Times + Harvard. Our Wikipedia is probably correct about Physics, botany...

Yarvin putting his intellectual mediocrity on display: the nazis, for example, dismissed relativity as "jewish science".

Quoting a parvenu like Yarvin is a sign of fanaticism. He sounds like a teenager on weed. The only reason he's gotten into the limelight is because some powerful people aligned with Project 2025 agree with him, and needed some philosophical sounding blather to cover their power lust.

Interesting, why do you say quoting Yarvin is a sign of fanaticism?

He says nothing of intellectual interest, yet is presented as some secret fountain of wisdom by hard core, US, extreme right-wing cult followers. I say presented, because I have the vague hope they don't believe it, but only use it as yet another layer of deception.

Source?

Ah yes, the anti-democracy comp sci guy that is inspiring some of the more powerful people in Washington.

Similar to TikTok, ADL were effectively banned from Wikipedia.

This coincidences nicely with all of this.

Well, why go after everything?

"Trump appointee Ed Martin accuses the online encyclopedia of “allowing foreign actors to manipulate information and spread propaganda to the American public.” April 25, 2025 at 6:54 p.m. EDT"

How about these wankers turn their attention to their own administration ...

Oh, pardon me ... what a ludicrous thing to suggest.

Wikipedia is a shining example of what the internet could have been. Before the internet was "Enshittified"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification

I am going to increase my monthly contribution.

He's just mad that there are references to Trump's facism on there. I hope Americans aren't stupid enough to think that nonprofits can only exist if they support MAGA propaganda and fascism. One such article that he has no doubt skimmed and turned red in the face at

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_and_fascism

How do I start worshipping Wikipedia so it can become a church?

> can become a church?

Now we're talking about something that needs its non-profit status revoked...

Wiccanpedia.

Remember when people pretended it was the scandal of all scandals that the IRS was reviewing PACs who were forbidden from doing political activity for political activity? And now many of those same people are cheering this, and the act blue ‘investigation’, and the threats against Harvard’s tax exempt status for nakedly corrupt reasons? Man I wish shame still had some stopping power.

[dead]

[flagged]

I don't think those accusations need to be taken seriously while they're being hyped by people like Jim Jordan. If they have evidence of wrongdoing they should forward it to the DoJ and write it up in an indictment, where it can be reviewed by a court and jury that will evaluate the claims made therein.

I have no idea who Jim Jordan is but your logical fallacy is nut picking.

Now imagine a sitting President personally saying 'the highest holders of my grift coin get a personal visit with me'. That would seem odd, wouldn't it?

[flagged]

Accusing others of whataboutism is a way to dodge the real point: if identical behavior is excused for allies but condemned for opponents, the outrage isn't about ethics it's about weaponized partisanship.

Edit in response: The broader conversation is about weaponizing government power against political opponents, ActBlue was just one example give in many being discussed. You narrowed to ActBlue to have something you felt you could condemn safely, while ignoring the larger pattern. That selective focus is the weaponization your argument is trying to distract from.

Edit: Stepping back and noting the pattern there is no need to go into specifics of ActBlue. Especially when this VERY administration is blatantly selling access with their shill coin. Your hyper focus is a weaponized distraction, a 'gotcha' from the larger discussion. The administration does not care about corruption in fundraising, they care about targeting their opposition and shutting down any influence they have via fundraising, via information/knowledge sharing on the web, via universities with students willing to challenge the status quo.

While ActBlue was the first example mikeyouse bought up, and it happens not reflect very well on the Democrats, we can just as easily discuss Harvard racially discriminating and violating title 9 to control campus admissions, hiring and speech if you like.

You started this (soon to be flagged to nonexistence) chain with whataboutism.

[flagged]

I’m sure you’d find the exact same thing if some grifty billionaire funded a fake investigation into those people who were contributing money to WinRed and yet, only one of the two is facing investigation.. it is so far past the time when this DOJ should be given the benefit of the doubt and steel manning their obvious corruption doesn’t make anyone seem scholarly, just credulous.

It's not true that only one of the two is facing investigation. Multiple state AGs are investigating WinRed, and rightly so - there's substantial evidence that they're using dark patterns to trick people into recurring donations when they intended to donate only once. The controversy is that a political official is ordering an investigation of ActBlue, not that political fundraising platforms ought to be above scrutiny.

Federally it certainly is true. And I agree, they shouldn’t be above scrutiny which is why it’s so important for the DOJ to maintain their independence and to avoid partisanship.. but Elon was loudly claiming they were funding the Tesla protests a few weeks ago and the rest of the administration got in line to encourage this pretextual nonsense.

[flagged]

Go ahead and read some of the thousands of 1-star reviews on TrustPilot for WinRed:

https://www.trustpilot.com/review/winred.com?stars=1

It turns out the name of the political donation game is recurring donations and spammy messages. I 100% believe people donated to some random cause via act blue and didn’t realize they were signing up for recurring donations through there —- like all political fundraising arms do as evidenced by all the people complaining that WinRed incessantly removes money from their account that they didn’t authorize. But again, only 1 of the 2 is being investigated and it’s obviously a corrupt investigation so here we are.

I have. People donate once and have trouble cancelling the donation. It’s bad but the people donating actually are republicans and have donated before - which is a different situation from the people who aren’t democrats, haven’t donated to democrats and have repeatedly been donating to ActBlue.

Likewise, I have not heard that winred don’t use CVVs, which HN, having many people with experience in handling online payments would agree is bizarre.

The scale of deep body trauma that has been done to the US will not seem clear today, but it will have dire consequences for the future trajectory of US. I am sad for this, for the current status quo I was born under, but I suppose History must happen.

I'm not sad for myself. I'm older and established. I'm scared for my cousins, nieces, nephews, and children for the fucking train wreck they're going to step into.

It was bad enough with 2001, 2008, and 2020. But this is next level.

The PhD institution I went to reduced their acceptance from 50 to 26. There is fear of not securing funding. The damage done is projects that are promising were cut. These projects will get picked up by other countries. The damage in the long term will be losing our edge in many regards, which will harm our economy. Where I did my undergrad just replaced their dean with an AIPAC member who has no experience in academia (a first in nearly two hundred years of this institution's). It is insane what is happening. A judge in Wisconsin was arrested today. There are those who believe America is resilient. The damage being done (I can promise you) will cause this great nation unbelievable harm in the long run, when this traitor in charge and his foreign allies (Putin and Netanyahu) which he promises allegiance to OVER our constitution and our moral values have long since passed. There is much noise, much of it as a distraction, but on the small level, many changes (most recently the NSF director leaving) are tangible changes that have a real impact that is certainly felt immediately in budget cuts, but will be even more drastic in its long term strategic impact. Also, I fly a bunch, and I see an immediate change in the respect America used to command abroad. Our values and reputation, which took over a hundred years in the making, became a laughing stock, and our closest allies no longer view America as a beacon.

There's always a choice to move somewhere else.

The US has not been a force for good in the world in some time, if ever.

Unfortunately for Americans, it has to get worse before it can get better. Much worse.

The institutions are deeply corrupt, and have been for decades. They must be destroyed and possibly replaced. It sucks, and it will hurt. It may even possibly require an entire revolution, as many of the deeply evil US institutions such as the CIA and FBI are so deeply and tightly integrated with the federal government that it may require destruction of the state itself.

The status quo has been comfy for a lot of Americans, but the world as a whole is not a better place because Facebook and Lockheed and the US CIA exist.

This has been pending for most of a century.

What comes after will be more transparent, more fair, and more integrated with society.

> but the world as a whole is not a better place because Facebook and Lockheed and the US CIA exist.

You've cherry-picked a few bogeymen.

What about Norman Borlaug, Bell Laboratories, the Gates Foundation, Margaret Sanger and the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology?

I’d have picked the Manhattan Project, ARPANET/Wikipedia, and aerospace development in the wake of the Wright brothers.

Many of the ones you’ve listed would likely have happened whether or not the USA-qua-USA existed. The Manhattan project and the current internet and the rush to build airplanes (first as weapons of war, of course) would probably not have happened the way they did without the USA.

You’re probably wrong about this but will never admit it.

This is because you have an ideological commitment and are backing into the answer that is orthodox to this commitment, rather than any real rationale or spirit of inquiry.

> What comes after will be more transparent, more fair, and more integrated with society.

Can you walk me through how you see this playing out, step-by-step?

I want to believe!

Revolutionaries tend to suffer from extreme naivete or arrogance. They don't understand that idealists like them usually get pushed aside or killed by the real crazies during the power vacuum stage, then the country becomes significantly worse. It's happened so many times in history. Until the US starts killing half of its population like Pol Pot did it can always get worse.

Over the last thousand years, humans have become more educated and more connected. Violent deaths have been steadily falling.

Over the last hundred years, American military and paramilitary forces, and their vendors, have subverted transparency and democracy to turn America into a military dictatorship.

There is nothing to suggest that the fall of the United States and subsequent replacement (with whatever may come) will reverse the thousand year trend of increased education and decreased violence.

The culture of the 3.6% of people who live in the current territory of the USA will be irreparably damaged, however. This may not be entirely a bad thing, given how significant an outlier the US lifestyle is compared to the rest of the world.

> There is nothing to suggest that the fall of the United States and subsequent replacement (with whatever may come) will reverse the thousand year trend of increased education and decreased violence.

We're talking about long-term cycles of change here so it is difficult to opine with certainty leaving a lot of room for differing opinions. Unfortunately, however, I think the end of Pax Americana will usher in increased conflict and violence, particularly in the West which has experienced a long period of peace due to American dominance.

> There is nothing to suggest that the fall of the United States and subsequent replacement (with whatever may come) will reverse the thousand year trend of increased education and decreased violence.

The US recently put the world on notice that everyone needs a larger military and should develop their own nukes if they can. I fail to see how that will continue to decrease violence.

There have been no large scale wars since the development of nuclear weapons. The data available thus far suggests that mutually assured destruction prevents total war.

I live in a county in which most people are armed. There are very few attempts at carjacking.

I’m not sure talking about guns in the US is proving what you want. The US has a much higher gun murder rate per capita than most other high income countries. It’s in fact near the top with active war zones.

When everyone has weapons, more people get shot. That’s a fact. When countries arm up there is a much higher chance of a conflict happening that can’t be rolled back.

> The US has a much higher gun murder rate per capita than most other high income countries. It’s in fact near the top with active war zones.

This is markedly untrue in most parts of the USA, including the most heavily armed ones. Almost all of the gun murders in the USA are in 3 or 4 extremely high crime (and high poverty) counties.

Dozens of other counties that have gun ownership rates 2-10x higher per capita have much much much less violence. It isn’t the guns unless you generalize entire USA to a single socioeconomic bucket.

The “more guns = more violence” narrative is simple and easy to understand. It’s also false. “more poverty = more violence” is actually correlated. Guns and violence are, if anything, loosely inversely correlated.

More people shoot themselves willingly and deliberately each year in the USA than are murdered by guns, to put it in perspective.

Not every phenomenon is only cause on one side and only consequence on the other side, multiplexed feedback loops are often more appropriate models.

More poverty, more fears, more will to be perceived as an unbeatable threat no one dare to attack, more actual aggression fueled by us vs them mentality, more tragedies. Rinse and repeat.

Also having bad outcomes of a social structure being geographically condensed doesn’t mean they are decoupled from causal inter-dependencies with the places where all the happy shiny outcomes is jealously isolated.

> What comes after will be more transparent, more fair, and more integrated with society.

No one is claiming that US been or will ever be perfect, but what are you smoking? Everything that's happened in the current administration has gone the opposite direction of transparent, fair, and integrated.

There is this mental creed that to reach something really better, a phase of total purge is an absolute requirement, and the resulting gap between the situation once everything was "completely cleaned" and the wonderful world of "everything is fabulous for everyone now" will spontaneously happen out of the sheer expression of the virtuous dynamics then put as new foundations.

Possibly in such a mindset it’s impossible to envision that destroying everything indiscriminately will generate a more challenging situation. One from which it will be far harder to build anything. And which will be far from leaving the world with more pure innocent souls willing to construct a better place for everyone. It won’t percolate into their conscientiousness that the process is just most likely going to create more traumatized people full of fear on the one hand, and people accustomed to impose unilaterally their cruel point of view with violent means on the other hands. And that none of this will be a fertile soil to foster cooperation and trust, things without which humans are unable to create anything worth lauding.

Regardless of all the nasty things US has done, if it goes down, it will get much worse for everyone else as well. Quite possibly worse than it will for Americans themselves. For one thing, it's such a big actor economically that its downfall will hurt everyone a great deal just from that alone. But secondly, when empires go down, they usually do so flailing at any real or perceived enemies around them - and given the sheer military strength of this country, it's not going to be pretty.

A "NOBUS" weapon. Any system (country/gov/para-...) needs the right 'tools' for people-manipulation and people-programming. And such weapons should not be allowed to be used against 'us'. Kinda like devices that must accept (and malfunction) but not cause interference.

So, for a "let people speak their mind - don't control information" the Trump side quickly goes to universities must teach only what 'WE' want, Wikipedia must mention only what 'WE' like. Hilarious if not pathetic and dangerous (very-very 1984-ish...)

Side-note: it has since amused me but apparently it's not often told/at all.. the absolute propaganda tool for Russia/Soviet was "Pravda" (the "Truth"). Imagine my amusement when Trump created "Truth Social". You can't make that shit up....

Now, as I've said before, I live in the EU and don't vote in the US, so you folks decide, and then we all get to 'share' the experience (since I do have some/plenty of SP500 and similar instruments).

Unrelated to the issue here, I remain disappointed with the Wikipedia redesign. I find it too like a mobile-first-page, and I'm put off whenever I go to the site in a browser where I'm not logged in.

Fascists hate knowledge, as is made apparent by Trump, Musk and co's repeated claims that Wikipedia is "radical-left woke DEI propaganda". I can only hope Wikimedia considers moving the bulk of their servers and organization to outside of the US before it is stolen by the evil bunch.

A worrying thing about this, along with a few other examples such as the case of Harvard, is how branches of the federal government are using tax regulations, legal structure status and grant rules as mechanisms for openly threatening certain types of tendencies and practices in what are basically independent organizations. I don't know how novel it is for the feds to do this, but it's a chilling technique that sets dangerous regulatory precedents on speech control in a legal system that "supposedly" protects free speech.

I could argue that it's ironic coming from the supposedly free speech-obsessed Trump government, but given how bloviatingly, mendaciously hypocritical that particular swine is, there's nothing surprising here at all.

Also, nice to see the WaPo actually covering this, considering Jeff Bezos more recent and not so subtle sucking up to Trump.

Edit: and Yes, this tendency I mention above is much more worrying than any idiotic authoritarian canard about "spreading misinformation and propaganda".

And why not give a contrary view to this particular and valid criticism, instead of downvoting like little children.