Early in 2017, just months before 2020 Democratic Presidential candidate Andrew Yang announced his resignation as head of his non-profit firm Venture for America, the organizations’s Marketing Manager, Katie Bloom, created his Wikipedia page. No affiliation was disclosed, potentially violating the site’s Terms of Use.
Slate reported in December that the Wikipedia article for 2020 Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg was created by Neehar Garg, a former volunteer for one of his state campaigns. While Garg admitted to Slate that he operated the accounts responsible for Buttigieg’s page, Wikipedia administrators used their advanced privileges to censor mentions of the report from both Buttigieg’s article and other parts of Wikipedia, claiming it was to protect Garg’s identity.
Wikipedia’s GamerGate article has long been subjected to biased editing by opponents of the anti-corruption movement in gaming. They have been aided by major media sources that spent years defaming the movement, which had paid particular attention to press corruption. Breitbart News has found that many of these outlets, including BBC News, USA Today, the Daily Telegraph, and the Los Angeles Times have sometimes relied on Wikipedia itself for their false characterizations of GamerGate without crediting the online encyclopedia.
China critics the Epoch Times and conservative outlet the Gateway Pundit have been banned from use as reliable sources on Wikipedia in the latest cases of news outlets that support President Trump being banned from the online encyclopedia. The Epoch Times ban proposal cited NBC’s hit piece on the site over its coverage of improprieties in the Russia investigation, commonly called Spygate, which prompted smear efforts against the outlet on Wikipedia. Gateway Pundit was proposed for a ban shortly after Epoch Times.
Five years ago Wikipedia got sucked into the controversy over GamerGate, the anti-corruption movement in gaming. The narrative found on Wikipedia, like many others about GamerGate, is a lie. Wikipedia’s treatment of GamerGate foreshadows the site’s treatment of many political issues during the Donald Trump presidency.
Numerous high-profile pages on Wikidata, a data site affiliated with Wikipedia, contained long-standing defamatory vandalism according to criticism site Wikipediocracy. This included First Lady Melania Trump, who was labeled a “former sex worker and porn star” on Wikidata for more than a week. Many Wikipedia-affiliated sites use Wikidata’s information, so the description consequently appeared at her page on Simple Wikipedia, whose target audience expressly includes children, and remained for over a week.
As reports circulated identifying Eric Ciaramella as the alleged “whistleblower” driving efforts to impeach President Donald Trump, Wikipedia editors attempted to mention him in articles on the site. However, Wikipedia admins used their advanced privileges to delete records of his name, block creation of pages on Ciaramella, and even banned his name completely.
As controversy over President Donald Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy continues, Wikipedia editors likewise continue their efforts to slant related articles in favor of Democrat talking points. This has included falsely labeling allegations of Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 election in favor of the Democrats as “conspiracy theories” and claiming as fact that Trump used military aid as part of a “quid pro quo” with Ukraine.
In June, the Foundation that owns Wikipedia banned “Fram” who was one of the site’s veteran administrators, prompting an editor revolt with administrators resigning en masse and some using their advanced privileges to override the Foundation’s actions. The Foundation eventually backed down and allowed Wikipedia’s community-elected Arbitration Committee to review the ban, which they lifted, giving the revolt a notable victory — but Fram’s adminstrator privileges were not restored.
Echoing media outlets covering President Trump’s controversial July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and the resulting impeachment inquiry by Congressional Democrats, the intro to Wikipedia’s article on the controversy focuses solely on Trump supposedly demanding an “investigation” into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son. Both the media and Wikipedia have ignored or minimized that President Trump’s biggest concern was Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election helping spark the discredited “Russiagate” investigation.
After NBC News published a hit piece on news outlet the Epoch Times and its association with the Falun Gong, a spiritual movement persecuted by China’s government, the Wikipedia page for the outlet was vandalized and filled with attacks sourced to the piece. One editor involved has a history of attacking Falun Gong and defending Chinese communist figures such as Mao Zedong.
The Wikipedia page on Quillette journalist Andy Ngo was repeatedly vandalized in response to his reporting on the most recent Antifa-related violence in Portland. Although most vandalism was removed within minutes, some stayed up for hours before being removed.
Wikipedia’s list of “concentration and internment camps” was updated two months ago with a section for ICE detention facilities on the U.S.-Mexico border. A month-long discussion has since been closed in support of having the facilities listed on the page based on Democrats including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez using the terminology.
Following the Antifa assault on Quillette journalist Andy Ngo in Portland and the terrorist attack on a Tacoma ICE facility, Wikipedia editors added these incidents to the Wikipedia page on Antifa, but left-wing editors removed them in just the latest case of Wikipedia editors protecting Antifa. Several editors, including an open Antifa supporter, subsequently made mocking comments about Ngo and one praised the attack on ICE.
After the Wikimedia Foundation, which owns Wikipedia, took the unprecedented action of banning a veteran administrator from the site for a year, the site’s editing community revolted with mass resignations and repeated efforts to overturn Wikimedia’s actions. The Foundation, at the urging of its board, has relented by referring the ban back to the Wikipedia community-elected Arbitration Committee for review.
Google’s Jigsaw research division and the Wikimedia Foundation collaborated on an automated “harassment detection” tool called Detox to help identify hostile comments on Wikipedia. Users recently found the tool would rate comments directed at women as more hostile than the same comments directed at men. Foundation staff shut down the tool after it was also found to treat people identifying themselves as gay to be hostile.
In an unprecedented move mid-June, the foundation that owns Wikipedia banned one of the site’s long-time administrators for one year over unspecified complaints of harassment. Many of the site’s most influential users accused the Wikimedia Foundation of undermining the editorial independence of the traditionally self-regulating online encyclopedia and called for the ban to be lifted, including by attempting to remove the ban themselves.
After learning Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election found neither collusion with the Trump campaign nor President Trump obstructing the investigation, anti-Trump editors on Wikipedia downplayed the investigation’s conclusions.
A report in Huffington Post recently revealed the case of Wikipedia editor Ed Sussman, who was paid by media clients such as NBC and Axios to help diminish critical material. Paid editors operating in a similar manner to Sussman have worked on behalf of CNN contributor Hilary Rosen and the CEOs of Reddit and Intel, among other clients.
A Wikipedia discussion has been opened on having Breitbart News formally “deprecated” as a source, meaning it could not be treated as a “reliable” source. The discussion has seen overwhelming numbers of left-wing editors showing up to support the ban, citing the example of a similar ban on The Daily Mail imposed early last year.
Editors on Wikipedia added President Trump to a list of advocates for the “white genocide conspiracy theory” due to his recent tweets about South Africa farm attacks and government land expropriation. Other prominent conservatives were also on the list such as Donald Trump Jr., Tucker Carlson, and Ann Coulter.
The recent exposure of anti-white comments by New York Times editorial board member and bigot Sarah Jeong on Twitter prompted Wikipedia editors to attempt to mention the controversy on Jeong’s page. After repeated removals led to the page being locked, leftist editors rigged discussion about the controversy, leading to a summary favoring Jeong.
Fandom, which hosts fan-run wiki sites on the Wikia domain, briefly banned the term “SJW,” an abbreviation of “Social Justice Warrior,” across its sites. Contributors to any Fandom-hosted wikis who used the term or any term containing the letters together, such as in a quotation, were unable to complete their edits. The ban was in place for several days before it was apparently lifted.
In the midst of the controversy over the detention of illegal immigrants and characterizations of it as a “family separation” policy, Wikipedia editors added a section about detention facilities for illegal immigrants to a page listing “concentration and internment camps.” Although the section violated several of the site’s policies, favorable coverage from Gizmodo and Vice followed three days later.
Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales believes the Wikipedia model can help salvage journalistic integrity, but in the year since Donald Trump took office as President of the United States, the online encyclopedia has instead proven unable to even restrain its own biased editing community.
Kickstarter-funded tabletop game Rising Sun by CMON Limited included a supposed monkey spirit from Japanese folklore named “Kotahi” as a backer-exclusive “stretch goal” piece. A year later, as the game began arriving to backers, it was learned that the “Kotahi” was actually a Wikipedia hoax named after a New Zealand teen.
Last month a preview article shared by WikiTribune, the recently launched London-based journalism project of Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, was criticized for blatant anti-Trump bias in its coverage promoting a conference on the United Nations-linked Global Goals campaign.
The day after Ted Cruz posted a reference to conspiracy theories claiming he is the Zodiac Killer on Twitter, an IP tied to the U.S. Congress made edits writing out “Ted Cruz is the Zodiac Killer” in articles related to the Kennedy Assassination.
Following Breitbart’s previous coverage of edits made to the Antifa Wikipedia page downplaying the group’s violence, a discussion including several Antifa supporters led to the removal of language from the group’s Wikipedia entry intro noting DHS and FBI have categorized Antifa violence as terrorism.
Wikipedia featured a petty article about President Trump’s handshakes on its front page, viewed by 15 million people a day.
After President Trump condemned violence by both sides in Charlottesville, a recently-created Wikipedia article about antifa highlighting the group’s violence and far-left ideology saw a spree of edits downplaying both aspects of the group.
Wikipedia editors are scrambling to purge the site of any material that supports ex-Googler James Damore’s claims about gender.