Siri

Who Is Big Tech’s ‘Arbiter of Truth’? More than Ever, It’s a Corrupt, Orwellian Wikipedia

Even as the criticism of Wikipedia’s left-wing political bias intensifies, including from the site’s co-founder Larry Sanger, the major tech platforms continue to use the online encyclopedia in their services and rely on it as a model for addressing “fake news” concerns. Rather than improving their services, the integration of Wikipedia into Big Tech platforms has, instead, made them disseminate false or biased information.

Jimmy Wales

First Lady Melania Trump Labeled ‘Porn Star’ on Wikimedia’s Wikidata Site

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.

First lady Melania Trump (L) arrives in the East Room to deliver remarks during the White

Virgil: The New Frankensteins 

As he scans the news about tech abuses—from violating privacy, to manipulating the news, to mowing down pedestrians with driverless cars—Virgil is reminded that this year marks the 200th anniversary of the publication of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, Frankenstein.  

frankenstein-amazon-uber-siri-getty-ap

Butt Dials Overload San Francisco 911 Dispatchers

San Francisco’s 911 call center has been burdened with a “painful” problem. A surge in butt dials over the past three years (28% increase between 2011 and 2014) has been cutting into valuable time for operators who are forced to work longer hours as they seek to determine whether each butt, or pocket, dial is a true emergency.

Butt Dial