OK, I finally watched the whole two hours. It's a good report. Greenwald astutely recognizes that the current bias in Wikipedia isn't strictly left vs right, but establishment vs anti-establishment. Two examples he highlights is how Wikipedia treats the articles on Robert F. Kennedy Jr ad the Grayzone. Kennedy is a left-wing political figure and Grayzone is a left-wing blog. But, because both go against the current establishment narrative, their articles are extremely negative in tone.Cla68 wrote: ↑Tue Sep 05, 2023 5:28 pmHere's another link to the Greenwald Wikipedia expose', with Larry Sanger.
https://rumble.com/v33nemd-system-update-121.html
Once I have a chance to watch the whole thing (it's long), I'll post my take on it.
Greenwald notes that his BLP, until about 2016, had a positive tone, likely because he was considered to be supportive of the mainstream Democrat narrative. However, in 2016 Greenwald criticized the "Russiagate" narrative that the mainstream media was running against Trump, and he says that his Wikipedia bio was immediately attacked, and now includes criticisms and allegations of anti-Semitism, among other things.
Later in the presentation, Greenwald correctly identifies WP's treatment of "reliable sources" as the main way that they game their policies to promote the establishment narrative in articles. He notes that while most independent media outlets are banned from being used as sources in Wikipedia, Bellingcat is considered a reliable source even though it is independent. The reason appears to be that Bellingcat supports the establishment globaltarian line. He doesn't mention that Fox News is banned from being used for political articles, likely for the same reason that Fox doesn't always toe the establishment line.
Larry Sanger explains that he first started noticing bias creeping into Wikipedia around 2008, beginning with the global warming articles and then into the alternative medicine articles. He says that he found it striking how negative in tone the articles on alternative medicine were. He doesn't mention any names, but we know two of the main culprits for that are Guy/JzG and MastCell. Sanger describes the attitude as "scientism" which, around 2015 morphed into the liberal-establishment/globalist attitude which controls Wikipedia today.
Both explain that it's Google's promotion of Wikipedia that has created the current situation and that several leftist activist groups have openly called on their members to edit Wikipedia. Greenwald adds that the establishment is setting-up a "factchecker/disinformation experts" institution to try to control information it doesn't like on the Internet, and Wikipedia has gotten caught up in it. Greenwald briefly covers some of the known instances of paid editing in WP.
Sanger mentions his efforts to provide alternatives to WP, including an encyclopedia aggregator site called "EncycloSearch" or something like that.
All-in-all, it's one of the best and most comprehensive reports on Wikipedia that I've seen in the media.