Self-Education vs Behavior Modification
An Exploration Of The True Nature Of Some Of The Most Dominant Online Platforms In The World
The age of information has given us the impression that the answer to any question we might have is right at our finger tips if we just type it into google, but is that really true?
Google and Wikipedia are some of the most frequently visited websites globally. These online services have become a prominent go to facet of everyday life in the western world when we are curious to learn more about something. The idea of being able to type in a few key words on a smart phone and get access to pages and pages of information on a given topic appears very efficient and convenient at first glance, but I feel it is important that we keep in mind that we live in a time of corporate hyper-consolidation, massive government corruption/conflicts of interest and AI bot systems dominating the internet. Thus, I feel it would be wise for us to strive to exercise a keen sense of discernment when using these services to research and seeking to educate ourselves.
The article below provides some of the many reasons we should take google search results, Wikipedia articles and material from other sources such as facebook and youtube ‘with a grain of salt’. While in the past these online resources/networks may have (in some cases) been a great way to get access to unbiased studies, network with like minds and tap into citizen scientist info, that is rarely the case any longer. We live in a time in which search results on google are being custom tailored with the intent of behavior modification, social engineering and the suppression of pertinent scientific data and discoveries being censored (because they do not align with the narrative being pushed by the dominant institutions/corporations). This trend towards censorship and behavior modification is becoming very prevalent in YouTube as well now (with entire channels being taken down simply because the users were sharing data that did not support the dominant big pharma narrative). The so called “fact checkers” on facebook are another such expression of this phenomenon where big tech companies are moving away from facilitating people connecting and more towards intentionally manipulating perspectives, behaviors and access to data to perpetuate the status quo.
According to research done by We Are Social, the average internet user spends over 6 and half hours online every day.
The internet is both a blessing as a curse. On the one hand, it gives us access to knowledge and technology that improves our lives, but on the other hand, it’s an addictive and dangerous mind-control tool that can be exploited to influence your choices and manipulate your thinking.
Be careful how much time you spend on facebook and how you interact with that platform. At it's core, this is not a product created by a corporation for advertising (and certainly is not about facilitating online socializing) rather, its core purpose is behavior modification (with tertiary functions of data mining and mass surveillance). It is also a platform that was designed specifically to be addictive.
The feed you scroll through on facebook is custom tailored to serve a specific purpose (just like the results you get when you do a google search are). Some of the commenters you may engage with (especially on posts that cover "controversial" subject matter) may in fact be posted through fake accounts being run by government and/or corporate shills. Thus, I implore you to exercise discernment and keep in mind that when you are scrolling on social media platforms like facebook, you are being targeted by psychological operations operatives and weaponized psychological manipulation algorithms (and troll bots) designed to shape your behaviors and perspectives in a way that serves to perpetuate the status quo.
Wikipedia is no exception to this emerging pattern of dominant online platforms disseminating corporate propaganda (labelled as “science” or “expert consensus”) and being involved in behavior modification initiatives (intended to perpetuate the status quo). Wikipedia, which Google (Alphabet Corp.) relentlessly promotes, normalizes conflicts of interest by giving the impression that it is an unbiased encyclopedia while taking money, via the Wikipedia Foundation, from drug giants (including Bristol Myers Squibb and Merck), weapons contractors (BAE and Boeing), Big oil (BP, Exxon), Big Tech monopolists (Microsoft and obviously.. Alphabet corp) and banks (Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan). In 2011, donors to the Wikimedia Foundation — -the entity that enables Wikipedia — — included Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. When one uses Google to find out about a particular subject, the Wikipedia entry for the given topic usually ranks within the top three returns, along with a mainstream media article along with the given subject’s website (if one exists and if that website is not on Google’s “blacklist”). This is a powerful echo chamber: A tech giant (Google) directs users away from content its programmers consider “unwholesome” (suppression) and towards approved sites (ranking). Researchers Lee and the team note that “Wikipedia articles are a constituent of 95% of all Google searches. Even poor quality pages in Wikipedia get millions of hits because they benefit from the popularity of the site”.
Founded in 2001, the English-language Wikipedia now has over six million entries, or “articles”; as “Wikipedians” call them. Around one-third of them were allegedly written by a single man: Steven Pruitt, a contractor with the US federal government (Customs and Border Protection), whose parents met at the Lackland Air Force Base Defense Language Institute’s Russian Department, San Antonio, Texas. In addition to these ties to the military–industrial complex, it is worth noting Wikipedia’s increasing reliance on automation. Reportedly in his spare time and using AutoWikiBrowser, a semiautonomous tool, Pruitt became Wikipedia’s №1 editor with 2.5 million entries to his (and his robot’s) name. Corporate media promoted Pruitt’s achievements, with Time magazine naming him one of the most influential internet users in 2017.
By that year, Wikipedia’s entries totaled nearly 40 million across 291 languages. Each day, around 860 new articles are added. Edits number 817 million and average over 21 per page. In one month alone (June 2015) over 374 million people visited Wikipedia. If published as books, Wikipedia’s entries would have totaled 15,930 volumes by 2013. The Wikimedia Foundation operates under US law, is directed by a board of trustees and raises money for Wikipedia’s servers and equipment. Between 2006 and 2009, the Foundation morphed from a volunteer-led organization to a global institution with a centralized HQ and paid staff. With early supporters dropping off in protest over the Foundation’s centralization, the Wikimedia Foundation is compared by Professor José van Dijck to the US Corporation for Public Broadcasting and to the Public Broadcasting System/Service (PBS) in terms of its corporate-like structure within the supposed remit of providing a public service. Until 2006, the notion of a massive collective of contributors simply did not apply, with just two percent of editors making over 70 percent of the edits.
Beginning 2006, elite usage declined but hierarchies remained. The lowest in the pecking-order are blocked users, unregistered users, new users and autoconfirmed users. The middle classes are the administrators, bureaucrats, stewards, and bots. It is interesting that bots are higher on van Dijck’s scale than humans. The elite of Wikipedia are the developers and system administrators.
By 2010, 16 per cent of all edits were made by bots. “The most active Wikipedians are in fact bots” writes van Dijck, who compares this power concentration to other user-generated content platforms. By 2010, the system administrators consisted of just ten people. Ten out of 15 million users. Introduced in 2002 to save on administration work, Wikipedia’s editors employ an army of bots (457 in 2008) to make automated edits: 3RRBot, Rambot, SieBot, TxiKiBot, and so on. There are generally two kinds of bots: admin bots and co-authoring bots. Admin bots block spam, fix vandalism, correct spelling, discriminate between new and anonymous users, ban targeted users, and search for copyright issues and plagiarism.
Tools that alert human editors include Huggle, Lupin and Twinkle.
The co-authoring bots began with Derek Ramsey’s Rambot, which pulled content from public databases and fed it into Wikipedia. Between 2002 and 2010, Rambot created 30,000 articles by pulling data from, among other places, the CIA’s World Factbook — another example of Wikipedia’s ties to the military–industrial complex. Compared to proprietary algorithms such as EdgeRank and PageRank, Wikipedia’s licenses are open, yet new editors are welcomed only “tactically”. Within this system is a techno-elite that designs and operates the system that manages the myriad users. This prompted organizational controls, including the distribution of permission levels and the expansion of exclusion and blocking protocols. The growth of hierarchy resulted in rising complaints about what became a cumbersome bureaucracy, with the writer Nicholas Carr denouncing the supposed egalitarian expression of collective intelligence as a “myth”.
Meatbot is a pejorative computer geek term for a human. On Wikipedia, the English-language version contains the WP:MEATBOTS shortcut, which redirects to a subsection of its Bot Policy, which ironically has been edited by at least 38 bots. The policy demands human editors “pay attention to the edits they make” and not sacrifice quality for quantity. The policy holds the given human responsible for the errors of the bot. Coded by Wikipedian programmers known as Pythons, bots have their own anonymity, in some respects. Pythons have developed a bot-building tool known as pywikipediabot (Python Wikipediabot Framework).
Their edits as distinct users in MediaWiki software do not appear. The bots help to dump all language material into a data repository called Wikidata. As noted, bots are charged with a variety of tasks, including having power over human users. R. Stuart Geiger questions the morality of attempting to put a bot on Wikipedia’s Arbitration Committee, which deals with disputes, such as entry content, vandals, and the banning of repeated rule-breakers.
It might not be news to everyone that Wikipedia — especially in the EN version — has issues with editors using Wiki articles to spread political propaganda and libeling innocents, sometimes being bribed to do so. Most of Wikipedia readers should have noticed that articles related to anything controversial are heavily biased if not purely propagandistic. This puts shame on the rest of Wikipedia, and on the work of honest editors who spend their free time making unbiased articles. There is compelling evidence proving Wikipedia has a problem with wild, biased, and even bribed editors.
Intelligence and military interests are also involved in using wikipedia for propaganda. People using CIA and FBI computers have edited entries in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia on topics including the Iraq war and the Guantanamo prison, according to a new tracing program.
Also in 2007, researchers found that one of the most active and influential English Wikipedia administrators, called “Slim Virgin”, was in fact a former British intelligence informer.
More recently, another highly prolific Wikipedia editor going by the false name of “Philip Cross” turned out to be linked to UK intelligence as well as several mainstream media journalists.
Even in Switzerland, unidentified government employees were caught whitewashing Wikipedia entries about the Swiss secret service just prior to a public referendum about the agency.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, a friend of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and a “Young Leader” of the Davos forum, has repeatedly defended these operations.
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.
To add at least some degree of transparency, German researchers have developed a free web browser tool 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.
With all that being said, I also acknowledge (and have personally confirmed on occasion) that there are indeed bastions of accurate scientific data presented on platforms like Wikipedia. These ‘Islands of truth in an ocean of misinformation’ are spaces where relevant, accurate, honest and actively updated scientific inquiry and data (which a few dedicated citizen scientists who have managed to become ‘approved editors’ relentlessly and fastidiously protect and correct). I do not discount the value of such spaces for serving as ‘jumping pads’ to launch into specialized areas of research, however, I do caution that we should not allow the little bit of accurate data which is present there give us the impression that such platforms are a safe space to learn and confirm/disprove subject matter.
This trend towards censorship and behavior modification is becoming very prevalent in YouTube as well now (with entire channels being taken down simply because the users were sharing data that did not support the dominant big pharma narrative). The so called “fact checkers” on facebook are another such expression of this phenomenon where big tech companies are moving away from facilitating people connecting and more towards intentionally manipulating perspectives, behaviors and access to data to perpetuate the status quo.
"The US Department of Defense had spent roughly $20 million conducting studies aimed at learning how to manipulate online behavior in order to influence opinion. The initiative was launched in 2011 by the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, otherwise known as DARPA. The program is best described as the US media's effort to become better at detecting and conducting propaganda campaigns via social media. Translation: When anti-government messages gain ground virally, Washington wants to find a way to spread counter opinion."
"If the thought process that went into building these applications—Facebook being the first of them to really understand it—that thought process was all about "How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?" And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever, and that's gonna get you to contribute more content and that's gonna get you more likes and comments. So it's a social validation feedback loop. I mean it's exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you're exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology. And I think that we—the inventors/creators, you know, it's me, it's Mark, it's Kevin Systrom at Instagram, it's all of these people—understood this consciously and we did it anyway." - Sean Parker (from “Facebook Exploits Human Vulnerability (We Are Dopamine Addicts)”
The DARPA document that details the Pentagon's plans for influencing opinions in the social media space is called "Social Media in Strategic Communication." DARPA's goal, according to their own website, is "to develop tools to help identify misinformation or deception campaigns and counter them with truthful information." https://www.darpa.mil/program/social-media-in-strategic-communication Rand Walzman, the program's creator, admitted last year that the project lasted four years, cost $50 million and led to the publication of over 200 papers. The papers, including "Incorporating Human Cognitive Biases in a Probabilistic Model of Retweeting," (source: https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.00582 ) "Structural Properties of Ego Networks," (source: https://arxiv.org/abs/1411.6061 ) and "Sentiment Prediction using Collaborative Filtering," (source: https://www.isi.edu/~galstyan/papers/icwsm-CF.pdf )
The Pentagon's also utilizes a plan involving the use of fake social media accounts to counter anti-government messages in cyberspace. It involves buying software that will enable the American military to create and control fake online personas—fake people, essentially—who will appear to have originated from all over the world. The plan is being undertaken by CENTCOM (US Central Command). CENTCOM has hired a software development company called "Ntrepid," and, according to the contract, the California-based company will initially provide 50 user licenses, each of which would be capable of controlling up to 10 fake personas. US law forbids the use of this type of technology, called "sockpuppets," against Americans, so all the personas will reportedly be communicating in languages like Arabic, Persian and Urdu (though evidence has come to light that these "sockpuppets" are indeed being used to target people in North America in psychological operations as well).
The Canadian government is also weaponizing social media platforms in an attempt to inculcate an unsuspecting public and induce compliance for their corporate bosses. One of their programs is called “Behavioral Science for Better Health.”
The description for the round table tabulated that we must transform global health by utilizing “behavioral sciences [to] focus on understanding why specific behaviors and decision-making processes occur.”
Canada’s very own defunct public health responder, Theresa Tam, was one of the panelists. She commented on “An initiative to mainstream and increase the use of behavioral sciences to complement a biomedical focus on public health challenges was launched by WHO Director-General (that’s Dr. Tedros) at the end of the year 2019. This strategic roundtable provides the opportunity to share WHO’s progress in this area and to discuss the way forward, specifically on how to better integrate behavioral sciences into the global health agenda through WHO’s work and that of Member States.”. The panel discussed how behavior modification techniques can promote compliance with public health measures by “nudging” the population with instructions, “social norms,” and targeted marketing strategies.
As per the moderator/journalist Chika Oduah’s introduction of Dr. Tam, Canada has already been conducting this scheme for decades. In her address, Tam mentioned the COSMO system and the aggressive “My Why” marketing campaign to “nudge” compliance with synthetic mRNA injection messages pushed by the government.
More on this here: https://www.rebelnews.com/watch_the_canadian_psyop_an_exercise_in_behavior_modification_techniques
These operations are only the visible and publicly-admitted front of a vast array of military and intelligence programs that are attempting to influence online behaviour, spread government propaganda, and disrupt online communities that arise in opposition to their agenda.
That such programs exist is not a matter of conjecture; it is mundane, established, documented fact.
In 2014, an internal document was leaked from GCHQ, (source: https://theintercept.com/document/2014/02/24/art-deception-training-new-generation-online-covert-operations/ ) the British equivalent of the NSA. The document, never intended for public release, was entitled "The Art of Deception: Training for a New Generation of Online Covert Operations" and bluntly stated that "We want to build Cyber Magicians." It then goes on to outline the "magic" techniques that must be employed in influence and information operations online, including deception and manipulation techniques like "anchoring," "priming" and "branding" propaganda narratives. After presenting a map of social networking technologies that are targeted by these operations, the document then instructs the "magicians" how to deceive the public through "attention management" and behavioral manipulation.
In 2008, Cass Sunstein, a law professor who would go on to become Obama's information "czar," co-authored a paper entitled "Conspiracy Theories," in which he wrote that the "best response" to online "conspiracy theories" is what he calls "cognitive infiltration" of groups spreading these ideas. (source: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1084585 )
"Government agents (and their allies) might enter chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises, causal logic or implications for political action. In one variant, government agents would openly proclaim, or at least make no effort to conceal, their institutional affiliations. [...] In another variant, government officials would participate anonymously or even with false identities."
Therefore, I would like to re-iterate the importance of exercising a keen sense of discernment whenever we are using the internet (and especially when we use platforms like Google, Wikipedia, Youtube or Facebook for research, socializing or ‘entertainment’). If such platforms are our only sources of information we risk create the potential for a situation where empowering truths and scientific discoveries may be obscured from our path, hindering our personal growth, distorting valuable knowledge and potentially crippling our potential to engage in creating the more regenerative future we all want to make a reality.
The reason I share this information and my concerns is not to say that one cannot effectively educate themselves via the internet or use social media to connect, inform and co-create, but rather to say that we should exercise discernment with what online services we use and the data these services are showing to us on our screens. In many cases our ‘search results’ are not representative of just a list of relevant articles based on the words we chose to type in, but rather are a collection of links provided with the explicit purpose of shaping public perception to align with certain politics (and obscure some information if it does not align with perpetuating the status quo).
I choose to see this world through the lens of permaculture. In the spirit of this I would like to conclude by sharing some thoughts that arise when I look at the subject matter described through that lens guided by the patterns of nature and the permaculture ethical compass.
Just as we must be conscious of potential pathogens, parasites and toxins in the soil/environment as we design and care for our gardens, so to must we strive to protect and tend to our “inner garden” (the mind). This involves helping it (the mind) to become resilient and immune to that which is detrimental to its well being. Self care or (“Zone Zero”) is an essential part of being an effective agent for regenerative change.
In a time when there are malignant aspects of society working tirelessly to re-direct our focus, shape our opinions and manipulate our emotions (with the intended purpose of the consolidation of material power and wealth) being aware of (and thus rendering one’s self immune to) such attempts is of paramount importance. This begins by looking inward to reacquaint ourselves with our intuitive capacities and it means applying our critical thinking capacities and a healthy dose of skepticism when we are researching online. The predatory systems of propaganda described above (and those who perpetrate pushing them onto the world) need not be demonized, we only need see these systems (and their architects) with clarity for what they are, so their efforts can be peacefully rendered inert, and we can move beyond their reach towards building the future of abundance, regeneration, equality, truth, and prosperity that we all want to create.
“Apart from education systems, the second main source of information for many people is the conduits of opinion known as television, internet, movies, magazines, and billboards. The tools of the media establishment mold society`s perspectives, creating value systems that define desires, limit awareness, and craft artificial needs for products or protection. Just as pubic schooling teaches students what to think, the media instructs their audience on what to want and what to avoid. The media shapes the information webs of society, just as bulldozers and chainsaws destroy the ancient mycelial networks of the world.
Just as the mycelial network must defend itself from unhealthy substrates and infections, so must the media critic learn to discern between what is true and what is false in the variety of opinions presented on screens and in print. The analysis begins with recognizing where lies are being perpetrated in the media and spreads out to determine how the media constricts a culture's knowledge web. Just as fungi relentlessly work to break free of artificial containers, the media critic must look at how the entire media apparatus shapes the world, beyond the topical issues of a singular movie or song”
-Peter McCoy (Author of Radical Mycology)
“In an information war, it is essential to be able to distinguish education from propaganda. Unfortunately, it is not always easy. Today’s citizens are swamped with manipulative information, and often crave truly educational environments that they can trust. In this, the second paper of our series on information warfare, we argue that propaganda can be thought of as the “evil twin” of education. They often look the same, but with some careful examination, their differences become apparent. Exploring the historical dynamics of propaganda and considering its various forms helps us understand the telltale signs of coercive, manipulative, and propagandistic information. Understanding the difference between propaganda and education, and how complicated the distinction can be at times, allows for better situational awareness. Clarity about the difference allows us to protect both ourselves and our communities from being casualties of the information war. This is an essential step toward creating a healthier epistemic commons for everyone.”
- Daniel Schmachtenberger (from an article called “Education, Propaganda, and How to Tell the Difference” https://bit.ly/3KDNx0o )
"Facebook. Twitter. YouTube. Snapchat. Instagram. Reddit. "Social media" as we know it today barely existed fifteen years ago. Although it provides new ways to interact with people and information from all across the planet virtually instantaneously and virtually for free, we are only now beginning to understand the depths of the problems associated with these new platforms. More and more of the original developers of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter admit they no longer use social media themselves and actively keep it away from their children, and now they are finally admitting the reason why: social media was designed specifically to take advantage of your psychological weaknesses and keep you addicted to your screen." - James Corbett ( from https://www.corbettreport.com/deletesocialmedia/ )
For those interested in learning more and researching what was described above for themselves, here are some links to info and evidence that pertains to what was described above:
— How Google and Wikipedia Brainwash You: Internet giants cover-up for Big Pharma, suppress alternative medicine and bury inconvenient facts : https://off-guardian.org/2021/07/12/how-google-and-wikipedia-brainwash-you/
— Sean Parker, Chamath Palihapitiya - Facebook is 'Ripping Apart Society':
— More About Wikipedia’s Corruption: https://strategic-culture.org/news/2018/05/23/more-about-wikipedia-corruption/
— Episode 332 - The Weaponization of Social Media (by James Corbett) : https://www.corbettreport.com/socialmedia/
— Military leaders saw pandemic as unique opportunity to test propaganda techniques on Canadians, Forces report says: https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/military-leaders-saw-pandemic-as-unique-opportunity-to-test-propaganda-techniques-on-canadians-forces-report-says?fbclid=IwAR2e5Yk64mpCCkFoDZdHMwtGo1F2ghcNq0g7FN5qayKpu8xUSJ6YpzFT3mc
— Why social media bosses don’t use social media: https://www.gulf-times.com/story/579755/Why-social-media-bosses-don-t-use-social-media?fbclid=IwAR02zmcB4UNbHF_bwzdyZ-PDpTF7vIbdwgK4JDiF1JGMhQN69ALhMXSmRIw
— Larry Sangar is right, Wikipedia has become the establishment thought police – just look at my entry on there: https://ingaza.wordpress.com/2021/07/12/larry-sangar-is-right-wikipedia-has-become-the-establishment-thought-police-just-look-at-my-entry-on-there/?fbclid=IwAR0LQMqykilF269aPis38e3MC7ja6gZ8Wm5HeAkb-m6SqP6JQYBsJgEQPu8
— https://nexusmagazine.com/product/the-new-ministries-of-truth/?v=3e8d115eb4b3
— Time Flies: U.S. Adults Now Spend Nearly Half a Day Interacting with Media: https://www.nielsen.com/insights/2018/time-flies-us-adults-now-spend-nearly-half-a-day-interacting-with-media/#:~:text=American%20adults%20spend%20over%2011,dedicated%20to%20consuming%20this%20content
— Is Wikipedia Reliable? - Questions For Corbett #056 : https://www.bitchute.com/video/XX0fcjS75zE/
— Wikipediocracy : (From the website description: We exist to shine the light of scrutiny into the dark crevices of Wikipedia and its related projects; to examine the corruption there, along with its structural flaws; and to inoculate the unsuspecting public against the torrent of misinformation, defamation, and general nonsense that issues forth from one of the world’s most frequently visited websites, the “encyclopedia that anyone can edit.” http://wikipediocracy.com/
— A Compendium of Wikipedia Criticism : https://wikipediocracy.com/2015/08/16/a-compendium-of-wikipedia-criticism/
— Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman: https://archive.org/details/amusingourselves0000post
— Investigation finds Google ‘blacklists’ entire sites from search results: https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/techwatch/corinne-weaver/2019/11/18/investigation-finds-google-blacklists-sites-results
— Google Inexplicably Denies Access To Medical Sites Offering Critical Health Information– Key Cancer Terms Are Blacklisted: https://www.survivornet.com/articles/google-inexplicably-denies-access-to-medical-sites-offering-critical-health-information-key-cancer-terms-are-blacklisted/
— Where does your Wikipedia donation go? The same people dishing out Wikimedia's millions of dollars in grants are directly benefiting from them: https://www.dailydot.com/debug/sue-gardner-log-rolling-corruption-wikimedia-chapters/
— Wikipedia: A Disinformation Operation? : https://off-guardian.org/2020/03/07/wikipedia-a-disinformation-operation/
— CIA, FBI computers used for Wikipedia edits : https://www.reuters.com/article/us-security-wikipedia/cia-fbi-computers-used-for-wikipedia-edits-idUSN1642896020070816
— The Philip Cross Affair: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/05/the-philip-cross-affair/ and The “Philip Cross” MSM Promotion Operation Part 3: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/05/the-philip-cross-msm-promotion-operation-part-3/
— Ruling in German Wikipedia Trial: https://swprs.org/ruling-wikipedia-trial/
— Wikipedia Slashes Spanish Flu Death Rate (From 20% to 2% is a quite a drop). What’s going on? https://off-guardian.org/2020/03/09/wikipedia-slashes-spanish-flu-death-rate/
— Wikipedia and the Intelligence Services (OhMyNews, 2007)
I am glad you find it interesting :)
I tried to find up to date stats on how much of Wikipedia is edited (and/or authored?) by bots at present day but that information seems to be illusive. I did manage to dig up few other data points from a few years 2014-2017-ish back that I thought you may find interesting though. Personally, I do find it kind of unnerving that some of authors of the articles I am linking below refer to the more modern Wikipedia bots as "benevolent".
"𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗵𝗮𝗱𝗼𝘄𝘆 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱 𝗼𝗳 𝗪𝗶𝗸𝗶𝗽𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗮’𝘀 𝗘𝗱𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗕𝗼𝘁𝘀 :
𝗠𝘂𝗰𝗵 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗲𝗱𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 𝗼𝗻 𝗪𝗶𝗸𝗶𝗽𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗮 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗼𝗼 𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗱-𝗻𝘂𝗺𝗯𝗶𝗻𝗴𝗹𝘆 𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗲𝘁𝗶𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗵𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻𝘀, 𝘀𝗼 𝗮𝘂𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗯𝗼𝘁𝘀 𝗱𝗼 𝗶𝘁 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗱." : https://www.technologyreview.com/2014/02/13/112291/the-shadowy-world-of-wikipedias-editing-bots/ (published February 13, 2014)
from the article linked above: "at the time of writing, across all language version of Wikipedia there are 10,407 edits being carried out by Bots and 11,148 by human Wikipedians. So that’s a 49/51 split between bots and humans.. ..And on Wikidata, 77 percent of the 15,000 edits are being done by bots."
"𝗪𝗶𝗸𝗶𝗽𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗮 𝗯𝗼𝘁𝘀 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘀 𝗳𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘀𝗶𝗹𝗲𝗻𝘁, 𝘁𝗶𝗻𝘆 𝗯𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵 𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿:
𝗔𝗻𝗱 𝗻𝗼 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗲𝗱" https://www.popsci.com/wikipedia-bots-fighting/ (PUBLISHED FEB 27, 2017)
'𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝘂𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗯𝗼𝘁𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲 𝗵𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻𝘀, 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗳𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀 𝗹𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘀' https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2017-02-24-computer-bots-are-humans-having-fights-lasting-years
and https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170223142117.htm
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗕𝗼𝘁𝘀 𝗪𝗵𝗼 𝗘𝗱𝗶𝘁 𝗪𝗶𝗸𝗶𝗽𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗮 (𝗔𝗻𝗱 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗛𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻𝘀 𝗪𝗵𝗼 𝗠𝗮𝗱𝗲 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗺) https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/bots-edit-wikipedia-humans-made/
— Spies in Wikipedia (Computerra Magazine, 2007, archived)
— Wikipedia and the Spooks – The Remake? (Intel Today, 2018)
— The Mystery Wikipedia Editor Targeting Anti-War Sites (ML, 2018)
— Wikipedia: Rotten to the Core (Helen Buyniski, 2018)
— Time to ditch Wikipedia? (Five Filters Analysis, 2018)
— Wikipedia Editing Scandal Continues (Neil Clark, 2019)
— Education, Propaganda, and How to Tell the Difference: https://consilienceproject.org/we-dont-make-propaganda-they-do/
— CEO’s GRILLED over Whistleblower Evidence of De-platforming and Censorship Collusion Between Big Tech:
— https://www.technowize.com/how-google-facebook-turned-into-behavior-modification-empires/
— Shoshana Zuboff on surveillance capitalism “Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff wrote a monumental book about the new economic order that is alarming. “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism,” reveals how the biggest tech companies deal with our data. How do we regain control of our data? What is surveillance capitalism? “ | VPRO Documentary:
— The Media Matrix (2022) by James Corbett : https://www.corbettreport.com/media/
— https://www.ted.com/talks/jaron_lanier_how_we_need_to_remake_the_internet
— For more information on hot AI Bots are manipulating and engaging in behavior modification of human beings, read:
— How BlackRock Conquered the World — Part 3: Aladdin's Genie and the Future of the World : https://www.corbettreport.com/how-blackrock-conquered-the-world-part-3/
— Blackrock’s “Aladdin” (the AI program that controls the majority of the economy on Earth):
— How Facebook’s ‘Fact Check’ Feature Suppresses Truth And Promote Falsehoods: https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/facebooks-fact-check-suppresses-truth-promotes-falsehoods-covid/
It's a dichotomy, that's for sure. I think we all (or at least many of us) realize just how unhealthy all of this time-sucking-Internet-information-gathering is. And, yet, here we both are, on Substack, sharing information. I have really honed my intuition over the past few years as it has become increasingly more difficult to discern what's true and what's not. What I love to do most, is close my laptop, turn off my phone, and go walk in the woods. When/if it all crashes, I will be just fine. That being said, thanks for your well-researched share, Gavin. :)
Lot of extremely disturbing facts, Thank You!
just one remark: that's why wike-leaks and the resulting treatment of JA...
ANd it gets equally scary, when you try to browse these days through academic thesis works.. The new trend: wiki citations, all over. WIthout even going though all of them, can say for sure, no PhD thesis will have wiki-leaks citation these days! If you work for the gov you will loose your job when you try to browse wiki-leaks on an official computer systems watched by..., IBF. The last word read backwards.