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(Video Credit: Fox News)
Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger, who jumped ship over a decade ago, is beyond disgusted with the site and its current leadership who have ostensibly allowed leftist media and political operatives to destroy the user-edited online encyclopedia he worked so hard to build.
Sanger gave an interview on Fox Nation’s “Tucker Carlson Today,” detailing the site’s devolvement and his consensus with critics who claim that the database has primarily become a compilation of left-wing advocacy essays. He recalled the beginning of the venture and how in the early years there was an actual commitment to neutrality. He also stated that he believes his degree in philosophy helped him shape the site.
“We promulgated a policy, the neutrality policy. And it was very clear in the beginning. And I think I really hammered it a lot. In the two years that I was with the organization, I really drove that neutrality policy. And I articulated a defense,” Sanger claimed.
When he removed his oversight from the company and departed, Sanger contended his “influence was forgotten and it just gradually became watered down.”
A snippet of Tucker’s interview with me from yesterday. https://t.co/Wbv7rb9ye4
— Larry Sanger (@lsanger) March 30, 2022
“There isn’t an open system anymore,” he asserted, “and therefore, the kinds of people that are allowed to have any influence on Wikipedia have been narrowed down greatly to essentially people who agree with the establishment left.”
Wikipedia used to claim that “anyone can edit,” opening it up to contributions from all. Over the years, the site’s validity has been mocked for its lack of reliability. It is the 13th most popular website in the world according to Alexa’s web rankings. But the leftist ideology injected into the database is evident with pages on socialism and communism being prime examples of it.
“The left, frankly, is relentless when it comes to stating their point of view and using the organs of mass media and Wikipedia is part of their mass media I think to shape the world,” Sanger noted. “And so it became another one of the institutions that they had to capture.”
Amazing how many topics are controversial…
— Larry Sanger (@lsanger) March 31, 2022
Back in July of 2021, Sanger stated, “Wikipedia seems to assume that there is only one legitimate defensible version of the truth on any controversial question. That’s not how Wikipedia used to be.”
“If only one version of the facts is allowed then that gives a huge incentive to wealthy and powerful people to seize control of things like Wikipedia in order to shore up their power. And they do that,” he charged.
“Wikipedia, like many other deeply biased institutions of our brave new digital world, has made itself into a kind of thought police that has de facto shackled conservative viewpoints with which they disagree. Democracy cannot thrive under such conditions: I maintain that Wikipedia has become an opponent of vigorous democracy,” Sanger bluntly contended.
Wikipedia is less credible today than it was twelve years ago, at least on topics of any socio-political import (and it's not always clear to non-specialists which topics those are). Will it become even less credible in the future? Hard to say. pic.twitter.com/vuPoI8QihA
— Larry Sanger (@lsanger) March 31, 2022
A recent stark example of the manipulation of Wikipedia involves SCOTUS nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. A former law clerk named Matteo Godi was caught editing her Wikipedia page to “paint her in a more favorable light for a liberal audience” while altering those of her Supreme Court vacancy competitors to make them look worse.
That is just one example. Many high-profile conservatives have also reportedly had their pages modified to one extent or another. To date, it is hard to discern what is factual on the site and what isn’t but it appears to have skewed severely to the left.
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