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Wikipedia works as a tool for propaganda: Read how ex-CEO of Wikimedia Foundation conceded that information on ‘the free encyclopedia’ is not based on truth

During a TED talk in August 2021, Katherine Maher revealed that the information disseminated through Wikipedia is not based on truth. She even dubbed truth as a 'distraction.'

In November last year, the Modi government sent a notice to Wikipedia pointing out the biased and inaccurate information published by the ‘free  encyclopedia.’

The notice was issued by the Union Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Ministry. It highlighted the hegemony of a small group of editors and their control over its content.

The Modi government has asked Wikipedia why it shouldn’t be treated as a publisher instead of an intermediary. It is important to mention that OpIndia highlighted the same issue in its 187-page dossier published on 9th September 2024.

In this context, let us analyse two key speeches of the former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Wikimedia Foundation Katherine Maher and the functioning of Wikipedia as a tool for vicious propaganda.

Katherine Maher on how ‘truth is a distraction’

During a TED talk in August 2021, Katherine Maher inadvertently revealed that the information disseminated through Wikipedia is not based on truth.

She claimed that despite low public trust in the press and science, people reposed their Faith in Wikipedia. Maher attributed this trust to the ‘voluntary’ editing of information by ‘ordinary people.’

OpIndia’s dossier highlighted how a handful of people have the ultimate say in what content is added to Wikipedia and what isn’t.

It is also a handful of people who have the power to ban edits, ban editors, decide disputes, delete pages, lock pages, override content etc. There are merely 435 active administrators across the world who have sweeping powers.

Contrary to Katherine Maher’s misleading claims about openness and transparency in the functioning of the free encyclopedia, Wikipedia has a solid hierarchy, just like any other publishing house, with strict editorial control and editorial lines.

In her TED talk, the former CEO of Wikimedia Foundation had stated that the information on Wikipedia is based on what “most of us feel is reasonable and fair.”

She went on to claim that seeking the truth and convincing others of the truth was not the priority of Wikipedia. Maher even dubbed the truth as a ‘distraction.’

Maher emphasised, “That perhaps, for our most tricky disagreements, seeking the truth, and seeking to convince others of the truth, might not be the right place to start. In fact, our reverence for the truth might be a distraction that’s getting in the way of finding common ground and getting things done.”

She further pointed out that those who write articles on Wikipedia are not focused on the truth at all. “The people who write these articles, they’re not focused on the truth. They’re focused on something else, which is the best of what we can know right now,” Maher emphasised.

The ex-CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation suggested that there are ‘many versions of truth’ and that the raw pursuit of it could ‘divide people’.

One of the things that we could all acknowledge is that part of the reason we have such glorious chronicles to the human experience in all forms of culture is because we acknowledge there are many different truths,” she had stated.

Our truths come from where we come from. And then we’re focusing on what divides us instead of what we can agree upon.And that allows us to start having conversations about the truth in a way that focuses on what we believe rather than what can be known. And that is a definition that is deeply divisive and harmful,” Maher brazened out.

She said that the way forward for shared understanding was not using ‘one truth as a baseline’ but depending on ‘minimum viable truth’ instead.

Katherine Maher pointed out, “We shift from focusing on one key truth to instead finding minimum viable truth. Minimum viable truth means getting it right enough, enough of the time to be useful enough to enough people. It means setting aside our bigger belief systems and not being quite so fussy about perfection.”

All the word salad in her TED speech was meant to communicate that Wikipedia would propagate the version of the truth which they deem fit was palatable to the common public.

Besides complete disregard for truth, the ex-CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation called for ‘diversifying’ the voices on Wikipedia. Maher admitted to tweaking the system to suit a different kind of bias.

When Wikipedia first started, the majority of its authors were Western white men, which led to some really significant biases and gaps in the types of articles that were written, and the slant of those articles.Recognizing this by being intentional about undoing some of these systems that were actively excluding people and doing the hard work of actually rebuilding them so that more people would feel welcome in the conversation,” she stated clearly.

Wikipedia isn’t exactly the truth: Katherine Maher

In November 2021, Katherine Maher appeared at the signature gathering of House of Beautiful Business ‘Concrete Love’ and gave a sneak peek into Wikipedia’s handling of truth.

She made it clear that Wikipedia is not a direct representation of the truth. The ex-CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation emphasised –

“We found ourselves in the middle of this sort of global crisis of truth. One of the questions that I often heard during this period was what is it like to be responsible for the truth? And every time I got that question, I thought, wow, you’re putting way too much on Wikipedia and on me. But also, I think you don’t necessarily have an understanding of what Wikipedia is. Because Wikipedia isn’t exactly the truth.

The truth, the idea of a firm and final resolution to reality isn’t really congruent with the way that Wikipedia works. Or the way that we as humans come to understandings about the world. Or use that information to make decisions.In other words, the idea of the truth is complicated. It’s evolutionary. It’s unstable.

She cited examples of Martin Luther, Copernicus and even Galileo Galilei to rationalise Wikipedia’s disdain for objective truth and lend credence to the notion that ‘truth evolves with time.’

And perhaps we should also remember, in the spirit of Galileo and Copernicus, that the search for truth is not easy, or swift, or without consequence. And yet, for some reason, the harder truth is to discern, it seems, the more intent these days we are upon finding it. So much of our public dialogue is about the truth, who has it, who betrays it, and whether to believe it,” Katherine Maher claimed.

She however acknowledged that Wikipedia is wrought with biases and inaccuracies. “For all my love for Wikipedia, I’m not here to sell you on its perfection. I do view it as pretty flawed. It is mostly accurate, yes, but it can also be inaccurate and incomplete at times. More importantly, though, it’s as biased as we all are,” the ex-CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation pointed out.

Maher postured Wikipedia as a disseminator of ‘free knowledge’ and doing ‘things right while not pretending to be truth.’

Our disagreements tend to erupt over what the truth of the issue actually is. Conversations about politics and religion are difficult conversations on Wikipedia, too. 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 truthThey are working for something that’s a little bit more attainable, which is the best of what we can know right now,” she conceded.

Katherine Maher labelled truth as ‘a fickle mistress’, which has many ‘sublime chronicles of the human experience.’

“I know that the truth exists for each of you in this room. It also probably exists for the person sitting next to you. But the thing is, the two of you don’t necessarily have the same truth,” she claimed.

The ex-CEO of Wikimedia Foundation alleged that truth is personal and one should use them to work collectively and reach a middle ground (although it may not be completely representing the truth).

And if we start going back and forth about whose truth is the best, suddenly, we find ourselves further apart than when we started, caught up in questions of values and identity, we start focusing on what we disagree on, rather than what connects us,” she said during her speech.

Katherine Maher suggested that collaboration between Wikipedia editors holding divergent views was more important than the actual propagation of truth. She claimed, “We need a truth for a cooperative existence, consensus and action.

I’d argue that we need to shift from focusing on one unifying truth to just finding enough agreement to move forward. Rather than resolving everything, we focus on the incremental. At Wikipedia we strove to get it right enough to enough people to be useful enough, enough of the time,” she exposed the underlying working of the free encylopedia.

Maher then mouthed platitudes about neutrality on Wikipedia. To lend credence to her claims, she said, “”Wikipedia assumes that we’re all inherently biased. It’s one of the reasons you’re not allowed to write articles about yourself, because it would be probably pretty difficult to be neutral about how brilliant and remarkable you actually are.

Wikipedia’s pronounced ideological bias has been carefully and structurally cultivated. There is existing research, including the analysis of Wikipedia’s co-founder Larry Sengar, which has detailed how Wikipedia is not neutral.

The research cites three prior researches to bolster its case. Research by the Manhattan Institute published in June 2024 by David Rozado concluded that Wikipedia heavily leans towards the Left.

The Critic Research focuses on two internet policies of Wikipedia – Neutral Point of View and Reliability. The research concludes that it is
the editors who decide which sources are reliable to be cited and which are not.

Those considered reliable lean Left and Right-leaning are blacklisted. Therefore, a Neutral Point of View merely means that ‘reliable sources’ are represented thoroughly. Not that all points of view would be represented.

Third is Larry Sengar who has widely criticized Wikipedia for being Left-leaning, unreliable and biased.

OpIndia exposed Wikipedia and Wikimedia Foundation

In a detailed dossier prepared in September 2024, OpIndia found that Wikipedia is not a free, editorial intervention-free encyclopaedia which relies on the voluntary work of thousands of unpaid, passionate volunteers across the globe, as claimed by the Wikimedia Foundation.

Wikimedia Foundation has intimate financial connections with the clandestine Tides Foundation, which is accused of funding the pro-Hamas protests in US Universities along with George Soros. Wikimedia and Tides Foundation also fund several organisations which specifically work against the interest of India and undermine its sovereignty on various levels. 

Connections between the Wikimedia Foundation and Tides Foundation have been found with dubious organisations like Hindus For Human Rights, Equality Labs, Art+Feminism, Access Now, the Hindenburg hitjobs against Indian industrialists and others. 

In India, the Wikimedia Foundation has no presence. The presence they had in the form of a registered society was closed in 2019.

Despite folding in India, the Wikimedia Foundation not only collects lakhs from India in the form of donations but also funds NGOs in India which furthers the business interest of the Wikimedia Foundation. All of these organisations funded by the Wikimedia Foundation and Tides Foundation are Left organisations. 

As far as the content on  Wikipedia is concerned, it is found in this research that a small group of editors and administrators skew the content in India, including one editor who has been booked in the state of Manipur for spreading disaffection and creating strife.

The editors often stonewall attempts to add inconvenient facts and a different perspective to the Wikipedia articles.

Further, there is a specific anti-Hindu and anti-India bias which is perpetrated by the editors, reflected in the content which defines the subjects due to the partnership between Google and Wikimedia Foundation. 

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OpIndia Staff
OpIndia Staffhttps://www.opindia.com
Staff reporter at OpIndia

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