
Facebook, Axios and NBC Paid to Whitewash Wikipedia Pages - danso
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/wikipedia-paid-editing-pr-facebook-nbc-axios_n_5c63321be4b03de942967225
======
ilamont
_A few people, however, have figured out how to manipulate Wikipedia’s
supposedly neutral system to turn a profit._

Neutral system? A few?

Let's not kid ourselves here. Wikipedia is filled with bias. Yes, there are
some informative articles and it's great that some people have spent a sizable
chunk of time tending to the garden. But there's a lot of stuff missing, and
the problems of new contributors being shut out or shut down is well-
documented ([https://www.technologyreview.com/s/520446/the-decline-of-
wik...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/520446/the-decline-of-wikipedia/)).

As for paid/planted content, it's easy to spot certain types (fawning
celebrity or corporate profiles) but others are far more subtle. And sometimes
when I'm reading an apparently well-researched article on a technical,
historical, or scientific topic, I wonder if some contributor way down the
line had an axe to grind or is outright messing with audiences by inserting
bogus information.

~~~
_Codemonkeyism
Basically every history article is heavily biased, just compare the different
language versions.

~~~
gabbygab
Pretty much every political or corporate sensitive topic has heavy bias. Even
biology related topics are subject to external pressure from journalists,
politicians and activists. There have been huge fights over how fetus, gender,
sex, etc are defined on wikipedia.

And it isn't just wikipedia, it's all of social media and pretty much all of
the internet. From silly nonsense like movie reviews to serious matter like
war footage, if it has political or financial impact, it is subject to heavy
censorship and bias.

~~~
umvi
Reminds me of when Bradley Manning's wiki page turned to Chelsea Manning
within seconds of the announcement. It was unreal. It was like there were an
army of activists ready to pounce as soon as the announcement was made and the
article was quickly locked.

I've seen other, more important, news take much longer to update (hours) on
their main pages.

~~~
tim333
The way Wikipedia works you don't need an army of activists - just one
enthusiast to edit it. The important news probably took longer because no one
was very interested. That's how it works with volunteers.

------
IronWolve
Wikipedia reflects what people believe to be the Truth, so historical or news
are often filled with mistakes and half-truths. My favorite wikipedia deletion
was an armchair historian who would correct common myths, such as Canada did
not have Troops in the Vietnam war. He would even link to the Canadian
military site that listed medals to soldiers station in Vietnam.

He kept getting all his updates reversed, as the perceived fact was the only
one allowed. His proof was discarded.

He finally gave up, and only updated his personal comment page. And then the
wikipedia did a personal page purge to stop searches from showing personal
pages. Coincidence? I doubt it.

Those who control the history books they say.

------
deathhand
If people are this open and brazen about it then ultimately we have passed the
point of usefulness. This can be seen in social media vote farms where you pay
for exposure. Once they start appearing en masse then it is the death knell of
the platform.

This also has a chilling effect on free speech and what an individual is
allowed to know about an organization, person, company etc. As any 'trusted'
source of information is now spoiled.

The way we get ahead of this is do what the internet forefathers wanted to do
to any problem... re-route. There are wiki clones and methinks their
popularity will only grow now.

This should be the chief concern for Jimmy Whales and the Wikimedia foundation
if they actually cared about providing 'an encyclopedia for all' because they
are no longer providing a platform for learning but rather just another
corporate blog.

~~~
oblio
> The way we get ahead of this is do what the internet forefathers wanted to
> do to any problem... re-route. There are wiki clones and methinks their
> popularity will only grow now.

It's wishful thinking. In the software and internet world, once something is
entrenched, it's rarely removed from first position unless it no longer serves
its primary purpose to its main audience. Which Wikipedia does.

It's a bit like Facebook vs Mastodon. Ask your non-techie friends about
Mastodon and they'll probably go: that was a sort of elephant or dinosaur,
wasn't it?

~~~
xondono
I’m amazed of how many people share this “once stablished things never change”
mentality in this forum.

Most of the people reading here are either thinking of or trying or actually
becoming living proof that this way of thinking is wrong.

Maybe instead of asking non-techie friends about mastodon we should be asking
kids about myspace..

~~~
oblio
Myspace popped up before the market was mature and it definitely didn't have
80% market share all across the globe.

Facebook might fall on its own due to user fatigue. But it will still have 1
billion users 20 year's from now :)

------
jessriedel
Can someone link to a particularly egregious example of an untrue/non-POV/non-
verifiable Sussman edit, or an in-bad-faith comment? So far the ones I see are
basically reasonable.

~~~
alexandercrohde
Yeah that's kindof a weak argument.

That's like saying "Did the judge who took a bribe say anything unreasonable
in their ruling?" or like saying "Did the academic study that was paid for a
big corporation without disclosing make any logical leaps?"

Any paid, undisclosed influence is wrong, period. And almost certainly against
TOS.

~~~
jessriedel
> That's like saying "Did the judge who took a bribe say anything unreasonable
> in their ruling?

In fact, it's much more like the _attorney_ is paid, which is considered fine
in courts. Indeed, having contributors who are potentially biased, but who
each argue their point and agree to a method of conflict resolution, is
considered one of the most powerful methods of seeking truth. It's also used
in academics, where each researcher bring their own biases to the table.

> Any paid, undisclosed influence is wrong, period.

I guess you didn't read the article? The paid influence was disclosed.

~~~
viivaux
>In fact, it's much more like the attorney is paid, which is considered fine
in courts.

In theory (though tbf not in reality) everyone has the right to an attorney.
AFAIK there is no corresponding right to a paid Wikipedia editor.

>> Any paid, undisclosed influence is wrong, period.

>I guess you didn't read the article? The paid influence was disclosed.

“But the plans were on display…” “On display? I eventually had to go down to
the cellar to find them.” “That’s the display department.” “With a
flashlight.” “Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.” “So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?” “Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did.
It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused
lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”

Wikipedia articles with significant edits from paid PR hacks need a big red
warning sticker.

------
lordlimecat
>casual racism depository Nextdoor

I think Sussman is getting edits approved because (at first glance) they're
substantially better written and still fall within the bounds of dispassionate
writing.

Maybe Huffington Post could use some lessons in that, if their idea of
journalism is to randomly drop not-dispassionate digs at Nextdoor with neither
context nor justification.

~~~
altfredd
Sussman isn't "getting edits approved". He is literally bribing other editors
in open.

Ever wrote anything on Wikipedia talk pages? Unless you are commenting on
article with hundred thousands of daily views, your comments will remain
ignored for years. Nobody is going to "implement your suggestions" or "accept
corrections", —at best you will be ignored, and at worst you will be told to
f##k off in Wikipedia's politically correct newspeak.

Who are the people, implementing his changes to pages? A certain number are of
course bots and sock puppets. But relying on those exclusively is risky, and
he would eventually get discovered and singled out by mods and check-users. So
_some_ of his editors got to be real people. Does he have an actual team of
editors working on keeping articles updated full time through series of
proxies? Probably not, — would be too expensive and also prone to ban.

Let's perform a mental experiment: you are a poor sod in Cambodia/North
Korea/Thailand etc. who have recently discovering a beauty of Wikipedia. You
look at the talk page of "Facebook" article and stumble upon comments of some
guy, who says, that he is a representative of dedicated PR company. You make
some quick calculations: your daily wage is several orders of magnitude
smaller than average US wage, and the guy is probably getting paid A LOT of
money by Facebook and the likes; going to darknet to regularly buy a new bunch
of "proxies" (hacked computers in US residential areas) will costs you $XX per
month; if you get him to pay you $YY, the rest of money will be your net
profit...

You can guess the rest.

------
Thorondor
Sussman's Wikipedia contribution history is available here:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/BC1278](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/BC1278)

~~~
deathhand
That you know of. Who knows how many sock puppet accounts they may have.

Heck it could even be an additional fee 'well for an extra 10k I will create a
new personality that isn't tied to anything'

~~~
djmips
That's what I would suspect. The main thrust is above board but why not tip
the balance by corrupting Wikipedia editors or having a shadow stable of
editors.

------
booleandilemma
The problem is that all sources of information are biased. And it’s worse than
that. People you meet on the street are biased. Your own friends are biased.
I’m biased. People that claim they’re unbiased are _definitely_ biased.

Everyone has an angle, everyone has their own personal and cultural historical
baggage that’s going to color their perception of everything from commercials
to politics.

It’s up to you to think critically, get information from multiple diverse
sources, and form your own (biased) opinion, and always, always, be skeptical.

~~~
minikites
That requires a level of media and information literacy that is evidently
uncommon in the general public.

------
sneak
For seven years, what I strongly suspect is paid astroturfing has been up on
wikipedia for one of the largest hotel/casino conglomerates on the Las Vegas
strip:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Las_Vegas_Sands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Las_Vegas_Sands)

It surprised me that nobody had added the “reads like an advertisement”
template in all that time, so I did. Get out there and be vigilant.

~~~
tim333
Wikipedia works quite well in spite of that though.

The Sands article looks like it was written by a company employee / PR which
I'm not sure is quite astroturfing. Depends on your definitions I guess.

It reminds me of a page I put up on the company Algenol which I thought
interesting as it was trying to make ethanol direct from algae and sunlight
and saying it would be cheaper than regular fuel. Then the whole thing got
rewritten by someone like Algenol's PR and someone flagged it but I couldn't
be bothered to re-edit the whole thing - takes ages. Then Algenol kind of
failed, fired the boss and went on to other things. Not sure how the page is
now.

------
harry8
What a defence "I'm not the bad guy for robbing people's houses, the real bad
guys rob _and_ assault the occupants..."

------
mlthoughts2018
I’m surprised Wikipedia doesn’t simply ban any communication through the
Wikipedia platform itself between a person awaiting edit approval and others
who could approve it.

Similarly, why not put a strict word count limit on discussion on Talk pages.
If you can’t make a rebuttle succinctly, then the risk of Talk page
filibustering is too high and mitigating that risk matters more than letting
people write diatribes of objections to decisions about edits.

~~~
l9k
I disagree. I was surprised the conversations were public and visible on the
website itself.

What would be more scary, and probably happens already in other cases, is if
nefarious editors organized via private channels.

------
badhatter
This has been going on a very long time. Just take a look at any politicians
Wikipedia page.

~~~
Dahoon
If you really want to see history rewritten on Wikipedia look at articles on
US wars. Especially those about WW2 japan or war crimes by US GIs.

------
babyslothzoo
Does anyone take Wikipedia seriously at this point?

Calling Wikipedia 'neutral' is comical, it's full of opinion, ideology, bias,
misinformation, disinformation, astroturfing, and other nonsense noise and
utter garbage.

~~~
unethical_ban
I wouldn't bet my PhD on it, or get the entirety of my education on a complex
subject from it. Though it has a TON of factually correct statements. It is a
good starting point for a ton of stuff, and I would never wish it to be gone.

------
Rebelgecko
There's been a couple times that I've revisited a Wikipedia article and
noticed that someone had erased a negative section about a person or
organization. I've always wondered if it was organic or part of a larger for-
pay effort

------
saltvedt
My project, the news aggregater Cited News
([https://cited.news/](https://cited.news/)), uses Wikipedia references as
source for news.

~~~
aboutruby
Cool project, but I don't see the link with the article apart from being
related to Wikipedia. It might be better off as a Show HN.

~~~
saltvedt
I tried adding it:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Facebook&type=rev...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Facebook&type=revision&diff=887903150&oldid=887791830)

The article is dated on 14. of March though, so it should not appear on the
front page but here:
[https://cited.news/wikipedia_pages/date/2019-03-14](https://cited.news/wikipedia_pages/date/2019-03-14)

------
fvjft
Blindly trusting what you read on Wikipedia is like blindly trusting what you
read on the media. And I don't think there's much we can do to avoid it.
Because conventional wisdom says more education will fix it. But wasn't there
a study that showed that even highly educated people believe anything that
confirms their biases?

~~~
cjslep
I'm currently reading _Manufacturing Consent_ which to me shows how dangerous
blindly following the mass media can be in a rigorous manner without requiring
one to become a conspiracy theorist.

There's certain ways to effectively critically read newspaper articles that I
was taught at a young age and it's definitely a learned skill that I wish the
US education system did better with.

~~~
wongarsu
> without requiring one to become a conspiracy theorist.

People conspire all the time, so shouldn't any sane person suspect some
conspiracies?

Hijacking the word "conspiracy theorist" to mean nut job seems like exactly
the twisting of reality you are advocating to avoid.

~~~
Vinnl
In this context, I interpret "conspiracy theorist" as someone who thinks there
are relatively large groups of people conspiring, without the majority of
people being aware of that. A small conspiracy when playing Diplomacy is
believable, but e.g. one in which everyone behind mass media has agreed to put
forward a certain message is not.

Thus (not having read it myself), Manufacturing Consent could show how
emergent properties of mass media might lead to them pushing a certain
incorrect world view, rather than proposing a theory that requires the teams
behind them to all agree to conspire and none of them to make that public
knowledge.

~~~
herbstein
> Thus (not having read it myself), Manufacturing Consent could show how
> emergent properties of mass media might lead to them pushing a certain
> incorrect world view, rather than proposing a theory that requires the teams
> behind them to all agree to conspire and none of them to make that public
> knowledge.

That is right. Chomsky proposes 5 filters through which this process happens.
These filters operate, according to Chomsky, not just in media, but in all of
society. From kindergarten to our deadbeds.

I think this was best illustrated with Chomsky's 1996 interview in "The Big
Idea" on BBC by Andrew Marr. Chomsky is outlining how the filters make sure
certain viewpoints are popularized, and Andrew Marr asks "How can you know
that I'm self-censoring?". To which Chomsky replies "I'm not saying you're
self-censoring. I'm sure you believe everything you're saying. But what I'm
saying is, if you believed something different, you wouldn't be sitting where
you're sitting."

The 30 minute episode[1] is well worth a watch, but the three minute clip of
the above exchange is also available[2].

[1]: [https://youtu.be/GjENnyQupow](https://youtu.be/GjENnyQupow) [2]:
[https://youtu.be/lLcpcytUnWU](https://youtu.be/lLcpcytUnWU)

------
l0b0
Here's a suggestion: _Allow each user to do only a certain amount of editing
within a time period._ Of course there are technical difficulties with this,
but if done right this would pretty much guarantee that edit farms and paid
actors are much less useful. Wikipedia as a whole would probably be much more
useful in the long run, since there are an absolutely massive long tail of
experts in every conceivable field.

~~~
josephg
There's a long tail, but my understanding is that there's a core wikipedia
contributor community who contribute a staggering number of edits[1]. If
wikipedia limited the number of edits that each user could do, they would
anger their core community. It would be similar to youtube putting a limit on
the number of views each video was allowed to get. It would be suicide via the
destruction of their tribe.

And I don't even know if it would work that well. Per-IP edit limits would
only stop PR companies with deep pockets for so long. They would do what the
russians do, and just make account farms.

[1] Or so I've been told. I'd love to see actual stats on this. It probably
follows a Pareto distribution; but with what power?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution)

~~~
Dahoon
>They would do what the russians do, and just make account farms.

I'm sure whitehatwiki.com would have been called exactly that if it were from
Russia or China.

