The co-founder of Wikipedia recently made a stunning revelation regarding persistent suspicions of US intelligence meddling and manipulation on the famous collaborative online encyclopedia. Larry Sanger, the site’s co-creator, discussed the well-known “information warfare” tactics employed by US intelligence in an interview with journalist Glenn Greenwald on his “System Update” podcast. According to Sanger, these efforts have, to some extent, turned Wikipedia into a tool of “control” for the left-liberal Washington deep state.
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There have been observers who closely monitored and documented the US government’s engagement with major social media platforms and Wikipedia. Some of these observers commented, “the CIA is running Wikipedia, Wow, what a shocker.” During Greenwald’s show, Sanger stated, “We do have evidence that, as early as 2008, that CIA and FBI computers were used to edit Wikipedia,” and then asked, “Do you think that they stopped doing that back then?”
Sanger provided insight into the intelligence agencies’ tactics, stating, agencies “pay off the most influential people to push their agendas, which they’re already mostly in line with, or they just develop their own talent within the community, learn the Wikipedia game, and then push what they want to say with their own people.”
“A great part of intelligence and information warfare is conducted online,” he remarked, before going on to say, “on websites like Wikipedia.” Sanger refers to it as “the most biased encyclopedia” in history for this reason, among others addressed in the conversation.
According to him, US intelligence has been manipulating the vast platform and information repository for over a decade, as Wikipedia was established and appeared online in 2001.
On the Biden-Ukraine conspiracy hypothesis in particular, Greenwald cited Wikipedia and noted that “there is a mountain of evidence showing that Hunter Biden was paid $80,000 a month by Burisma executives.” It is well known that executives from Burisma were “getting a lot in value in the way of access to Joe Biden, the most important US official on Ukraine,” according to Greenwald. “And yet, according to the Wikipedia article, this evidence doesn’t exist, it’s just a complete conspiracy theory.”
Greenwald sarcastically remarked, “Remember, this is supposed to be an ideology-free, neutral encyclopedia.”
Russia has previously fined Wikipedia for spreading misinformation after Wikipedia failed to erase five problematic articles.
To see the complete interview with the Wikipedia co-founder, please watch the following video:
In the Sanger interview transcript, Greenwald strongly criticizes Wikipedia’s handling of the entire Biden-Ukraine scandal. He expresses his disapproval of how the platform addresses the issue:
“The very first sentence reads ‘The Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory is a series of false allegations that Joe Biden, while he was Vice President of the United States, engaged in corrupt activities relating to his son, Hunter Biden, who was on the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma.”
“As part of efforts by Donald Trump and his campaign in the Trump–Ukraine scandal, which led to Trump’s first impeachment, these falsehoods were spread in an attempt to damage Joe Biden’s reputation and chances during the 2020 presidential campaign,” the Wikipedia entry still reads.
“So notice: The Biden-Ukraine scandal is – according to Wikipedia – the ‘Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory’ but the Trump controversy involving Ukraine is ‘the Trump–Ukraine scandal’. Everything is written to comport with the liberal world view and the Democratic Party talking points.”
Both of them concurred on the fact that Covid-related entries were significantly influenced by propaganda and biased information:
“Let me tell you a fact,” Greenwald said. “The view of the leading scientists in the US Department of Energy as well as the FBI is that the most likely explanation for how the Covid pandemic emerged is through the research that was being funded by the United States and conducted in the Wuhan lab. You would have no idea that was true – on one of the most important questions of the last decade: Where the Covid pandemic came from.”
“Every word (on Wikipedia) is designed to suggest that only right-wing conspiracy theorists would invest any plausibility in the theory that the virus came from a (lab) leak and not from a naturally occurring event, even though the top virologists in the world wrote to Dr. Fauci at the start of the pandemic and were adamant that the evidence was consistent with manipulation in a lab.”
“If you asked Joy Reid to comment on the Covid pandemic, that’s exactly what she would tell you. And that’s true of almost every entry. It shocked me when I started looking at (Wikipedia) over the last six months, how blatant it has become.”
Wikipedia “used to be kind of anti-establishment” a decade ago, according to Sanger, but it subsequently appeared to be hijacked. “Between 2005 and 2012 or so, there was this very definite shift to Wikipedia becoming an establishment mouthpiece. It was amazing. I never would’ve guessed that in 2001,” the site’s co-founder concluded.
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