“One of the most dangerous websites on the internet”

Many Wikipedia manipulators are editing articles almost all day and every day, indicating that they are either highly dedicated individuals, or perhaps operated by a group of people.

Moreover, articles edited by these personae cannot easily be revised, since the above-mentioned administrators can always revert changes or simply block disagreeing users altogether.

Many of these covert campaigns attempt to promote establishment and industry positions and destroy the reputation of critics. Because of its influence, German watchdog group WikiRadar described Wikipedia as “one of the most dangerous websites on the internet”.

Particularly affected by this kind of systematic and covert manipulation are Wikipedia articles about political and geopolitical, commercial, societal, medical and some historical topics as well as biographies of non-compliant academics, journalists, and politicians.

In some cases, relentless defamation campaigns on Wikipedia drove victims into suicide.

The “Skeptics” movement

In addition to PR firms and state actors, several activist groups also play an important role in editing and manipulating Wikipedia articles.

One of the most influential but least known activist groups on Wikipedia are the so-called “Skeptics”, an obscure and cult-like organization whose members are “skeptical” not of official establishment positions, but of people challenging such positions. Thus, the “Skeptics” essentially serve as “cyber warriors” for political and corporate interests.

The “Skeptics” originally focused on esoteric topics such as UFOs, homeopathy and parapsychology (hence the name “Skeptics”) but have since expanded their online and offline activities into far more complex political, medical and scientific fields.

Although most “Skeptics” aren’t professional scientists themselves, they often defend an alleged scientific “consensus” or “authority” and vilify critics of an official position as “cranks” or “conspiracy theorists”. Typical examples include debates on medical and pharmaceutical questions, global climate change, or intelligence operations.

One the one hand, “Skeptics” keep real and sometimes dangerous quackery off of Wikipedia, but on the other hand, they also suppress legitimate debates on complex issues.

In 2010, the “Skeptics” launched an initiative called “Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia” (GSOW) to train their members in aggressive Wikipedia editing. Their global Wikipedia activities have since been coordinated on a dedicated “Project Skepticism” website.

In a 2019 comment on nutrition studies, a British member of the “Skeptics” confidently declared that “the Skeptics will always run Wikipedia”.

During the coronavirus pandemic (2020-2022), too, members of the “Skeptics” movement played a central role on Wikipedia by asserting official but mostly false positions and by defaming dissident researchers, doctors and journalists. Thus, to name but two examples, a lab origin of the virus was dismissed as a “conspiracy theory” and vaccine protection was greatly exaggerated.

In 2022, an anonymous Wikipedia editor and “Skeptic” was exposed as a Texas-based FBI informant specializing in “online marketing” and working for the “InfraGard” program. This might indicate that some members of the “Skeptics” movement do in fact act on behalf of intelligence services.

Other activist groups

Another activist group that is very active in editing and manipulating various social and political topics on Wikipedia is the so-called “Antifa” movement. Unlike traditional left-wing movements, the modern “Antifa” movement supports Western military interventions and Israeli foreign policy.

In 2021, leaked documents showed that a leading member of the American “Antifa movement” was in contact with British and American intelligence services and attacked both conservative and traditional left-wing publicists and politicians who were critical of US and Israeli foreign policy.

In 2016, a German investigation revealed that many Wikipedia articles on political and historical topics were written by the same lead author: a piano teacher and “Antifa” member who used several different usernames and spent several hours per day editing Wikipedia.

A more recent investigation showed how a single pseudonymous Wikipedia author used a single newspaper article to add the term “right-wing extremist” to the very first sentence of twenty Wikipedia articles about state associations of a conservative German political party.

On the complex topic of global climate change, too, various activists try to assert the official view and vilify dissenting scientists. Some of this activity is sponsored by governments, such as the “project for improving communication of climate change knowledge through Wikipedia”.

In 2019, investigators found that German Wikipedia articles on global warming, climate change, climate change denial, science denial, wind energy, solar energy, and Greta Thunberg, all had the same lead author: a member of both the Green Party and the “Skeptics” organization.

Wikipedia and the WEF

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has repeatedly defended the current architecture and operation of Wikipedia. Wales is a friend of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair – in 2012, Wales even married Blair’s former diary secretary – and a “Young Global Leader” of the Davos World Economic Forum.

Speaking of Davos, Wikimedia has itself amassed a fortune of more than $160 million, donated in large part not by lazy students, but by major US corporations and influential foundations, a situation that has given rise to some significant conflicts of interest.

Despite its millions in foundation assets, every year Wikipedia asks its readers for donations, creating the misleading impression that it is a reader-funded platform.

Former Wikimedia CEO Katherine Maher (2016-2021) previously worked at the influential US Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) as well as at a subgroup of the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a CIA front organization specialized in global influence operations and regime changes.

Katherine Maher is also a WEF Young Global Leader, a Senior Fellow at the NATO-linked Atlantic Council, and a member of the US State Department’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board. In 2016, a Tunisian politician stated that Maher may in fact be a US intelligence asset.

Wikimedia Germany, too, is closely interlinked: its former Managing Director previously was Vice President for Corporate Communications at the Bertelsmann Media foundation and later became a State Secretary in Berlin. Media giant Bertelsmann is a corporate member of NATO think tank “Atlantic Bridge” and operates the so-called “content moderation” for the German Facebook.

Geopolitical aspects

The fact that Wikipedia is influenced by Western and Israeli intelligence services may help explain why articles on geopolitical topics, such as Russia and Iran, are usually aligned with Western geopolitical interests.

Moreover, many leading authors of the Russian Wikipedia are located not in Russia, but in Ukraine, Germany, and the United States. Similarly, many leading authors of the Persian Wikipedia are located not in Iran, but in the United States, Canada, France, and Germany.

In 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Wikimedia and the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs started a collaborative campaign “to create and improve articles about the culture and people of Ukraine in as many language editions of Wikipedia as possible.”

The lack of control over Wikipedia editors may also explain why some non-Western countries decided to block access to Wikipedia altogether. Even Nato member Turkey blocked access to Wikipedia between 2017 and 2020 to “protect national security”, after political links to a terrorist group were mentioned on the platform.

Finally, US search engines and social media platforms increasingly refer to Wikipedia to outline or suppress “controversial topics”. The revelations discussed above may help explain why.

“I no longer trust the website I created”

In a 2021 interview, Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger revealed that he no longer trusted the website he had created. In particular, Sanger noted that any topic or controversy that didn’t appear in the “center-left mainstream media” wouldn’t appear on Wikipedia.

Indeed, Wikipedia accepts almost only establishment media outlets as “reliable sources”, while independent media outlets, regardless of their quality, remain largely excluded. Even some conservative establishment media outlets have been banned as “unreliable sources”.

In a 2023 interview with US journalist Glenn Greenwald, Sanger argued that Wikipedia had become an “instrument of control” in the hands of the American establishment and intelligence services, adding that “no encyclopedia has ever been as biased as Wikipedia”.

Sanger emphasized that “a great part of intelligence and information warfare is conducted online, on websites like Wikipedia”, and that intelligence services “had learned the Wikipedia game and push what they want to say with their own people”.

Sanger has since helped launch two alternatives to Wikipedia, Justapedia and the Encyclosphere, both of which strive for objectivity, neutrality, and civility. Other Wikipedia alternatives include WikiSpooks (deep politics), Scholarpedia (scientific topics), and Metapedia (conservative).

Conclusion: WikiWho?

As detailed in this article, Wikipedia may have started as a community project and open encyclopedia two decades ago, but it has since increasingly become a covert propaganda platform influenced by corporations, state actors, and activist groups.

To add at least some degree of transparency, German researchers have developed a free web browser extension called WikiWho that lets readers color code just who edited what in Wikipedia. In many cases, the result looks as discomforting as one might expect.

Figure: Editors of the Wikipedia article on the “war on terror” (WikiWho)

Who edited what? (WikiWho)

Annex

Videos

Literature

General

Skeptics

Wikipedia Alternatives

Tools

Wikipedia about SPR

In May 2020, two months after the first publication of the above analysis, a Wikipedia article about Swiss Policy Research was created that tries to misrepresent SPR as a “fake news website”. Most of the English version was written, anonymously, by one Mason Pelt, an FBI informant (InfraGard) and “Skeptic” from Dallas, Texas, who specializes in “online marketing”.

Additional input was provided by Thibaut Laurent Payet, a long-time Wikipedia administrator who used a fake account (“OKTalker”) to add defamatory statements about SPR. Payet lives in Geneva, Switzerland, and has been linked to a private intelligence firm specializing in online defamation campaigns on behalf of governments and corporations.

Other authors include a US political activist (“Gobonobo”), an English missionary (“Anna795bc”), and a Hungarian “Skeptic” (“MrFringilla”). The German Wikipedia article about SPR was written by well-known political activists like “Ghormon”, “KurtR” and “Anidaat”. Needless to say, almost all of the claims made in the two Wikipedia articles on SPR are false or misleading.

See also

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