Sept. 29, 2025 - The Tucker Carlson Show
01:33:33
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Larry Sanger, thank you for doing this. | ||
| Um I think about you all the time. | ||
| Literally, I know it's a little creepy. | ||
| Um, because I think that Wikipedia is um uh you can't overstate the importance of Wikipedia in shaping our collective memory. | ||
| And a collective memory really is a culture, a civilization. | ||
| Who are we? | ||
| Um and Wikipedia is the answer to that question. | ||
| Like, who are we? | ||
| Oh, it's on Wikipedia. | ||
| And it's so embedded in search that um I mean it shapes America. | ||
| Wikipedia shapes America. | ||
| And because of its importance, it's an emergency, in my opinion, that Wikipedia is completely dishonest and completely controlled on questions that matter. | ||
| So thank you for coming back. | ||
| And um I'd love to start the beginning. | ||
| Like you you created Wikipedia. | ||
| How did that happen? | ||
| And what were your intentions when you did that? | ||
| So Jimmy Wales had um registered newpedia.com, the domain name, um, and simply had the idea of a free um public contributed encyclopedia. | ||
| And uh he hired me. | ||
| That was like my assigned job to get it started. | ||
| That happened in early 2000. | ||
| So I worked on Newpedia for about a year, and it was going very slowly. | ||
| And um so uh a friend told me about wikis, and it was uh it was uh a revelation, this idea that uh somebody could just put up essentially a bulletin board, a blank bulletin board, | ||
| invite other people to edit uh uh the text in real time, and it would become something actually useful, and it wouldn't be just a lot of you know, curse words and graffiti and so forth. | ||
| Um what does wiki mean? | ||
| Uh it actually comes from a wiki wiki web. | ||
| Um and that in turn comes from um the wiki wiki taxis at the Honolulu Airport, I guess. | ||
|
unidentified
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What? | |
| Yes. | ||
|
unidentified
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Really? | |
| Yes. | ||
| Like headed to Wiki Key? | ||
| Yes, I didn't come up with this. | ||
| It's it's um Ward Cunningham. | ||
| Um he invented the first wiki in 1995, I believe. | ||
| Um so uh so basically um a friend told me about wikis, and I was I was amazed at at uh the the basic idea and just a thought that it could uh work. | ||
| And I thought, well, this would be a way to make uh the problems with uh newpedia go away, be a lot more articles coming into the system, and then newpedia could be like the um, you know, beat them into proper shape. | ||
| Um but it didn't work that way. | ||
| Wikipedia um the newpedia editors wanted nothing to do with a wiki, anything that was so uncontrolled, essentially. | ||
| Um so it took on a life of its own. | ||
| We um launched it originally it was the newpedia wiki, um, and then on January 15, we relaunched on what's that? | ||
|
unidentified
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Of what year? | |
| January 50. | ||
| 2001. | ||
| 2001. | ||
| We launched under uh Wikipedia.com. | ||
| So I coined the name Wikipedia and a lot of the other sort of basic jargon like Wikipedia and then various other things. | ||
| I came up with with a lot of the original policies, like the neutrality policy, which actually started with Newpedia. | ||
| Um the requirement that uh original resour research may not be you know published for the first time in the encyclopedia. | ||
| Um and a number of other things, of course. | ||
| Uh I should say for those who don't know, you come from a philosophy background. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| You're a philosopher, um, which is a kind of a great background uh for this job. | ||
| Why these policies, for example, why would you ban the publication of original material on Wikipedia? | ||
| It's supposed to be a summary of uh what we all take ourselves to know, essentially. | ||
| And especially if it's a neutral encyclopedia, then it it's supposed to canvas all of the views that um can be found in humanity on every question, essentially, at a very high level, generally speaking. | ||
| Um, of course, specialized encyclopedias can get into the real nitty-gritty. | ||
| And uh my hope with Wikipedia in the beginning was that eventually it would become that specialized. | ||
| So it would be um the equivalent of you know uh bookshelves worth of uh uh articles, and well, I guess it did work out that way. | ||
| It's it replaced libraries, it replaced books, it replaced everything to a great extent. | ||
| I think you're right. | ||
| Um for a lot of people. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Uh-huh. | ||
| Basically for a period until LLMs came out a couple of years ago, um, people used Wikipedia to look up quick answers about uh practically everything. | ||
| I actually I would I would say until Siri started giving Wikipedia answers quickly, but it was still using Siri. | ||
| And for that matter, LLMs, you know, AI chatbots are also um trained on Wikipedia now. | ||
| So it continues to be relevant. | ||
| Well, not just relevant. | ||
| I mean, of course, its power expands exponentially once it's tethered to this new technology, AI, right? | ||
| I think that's a very that's very safe to say I think that's true. | ||
| Um LLMs are trained on a lot of different data, not just Wikipedia, of course, but uh there's a lot of questions because I use LLMs all the time now. | ||
| Um and I can tell you um I've looked up, you know, specialized questions. | ||
| Large language models. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Um I've looked up a lot of questions in theology because I'm into theology now. | ||
| And uh there are some um places where I I just know the only the only source for that particular factoid that I could find online outside of the LLM itself is Wikipedia. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| So it's it's institutionalized it. | ||
| Um Google did, of course, did that in the most profound way when it tied its search to Wikipedia, put Wikipedia at the top of its searches. | ||
| Um so these questions, these core questions, like you know, what do you put on Wikipedia? | ||
| What do you exclude? | ||
| Questions that you wrestled with 24 years ago. | ||
| Uh, these are like questions that affect every human being on the planet now. | ||
| Kind of scary thought. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| It's scary, but it's true. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And so few things matter more than this from my perspective. | ||
| How we understand ourselves in the world around us, that's like the central human task. | ||
| Like that's that's what we're here to do, is to figure that out and to act accordingly. | ||
| And Wikipedia controls that more than any other force. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| So I'm not blaming you. | ||
| Um but some people do. | ||
| So, but walk us through like how you how Wikipedia went from what you created it to be to what it is now. | ||
| Like when how did when did you start to see changes? | ||
| What were the debates? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Um in the early years, we really did take neutrality seriously. | ||
| Um, and it it wasn't just a requirement of being unbiased, right? | ||
| It was uh the aim was to bring people together, enable them to work together, even though they were from all parts of the world, different religions, different viewpoints. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes. | |
| And and then to essentially record their knowledge. | ||
| So I intended it, and I think Jimmy Wales is on the record in a few places saying that he intended neutrality as being a way of bringing people together. | ||
| Yes, right. | ||
| Which it is. | ||
| Well, but um I want to read um the the current definition of neutrality to show you what it has evolved into, Which it did very gradually, right? | ||
| Um so here's how how the neutral point of view page begins. | ||
| All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia must be written from a new neutral point of view, N P O V. So far so good, which means representing fairly proportionately and as far as possible without editorial bias. | ||
| So far, it's great. | ||
| All the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic. | ||
| So I see two modifiers in that sense. | ||
| Two modifiers that are very important. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And and uh let me go on, because uh if you look farther down on the page, they go on to discourage giving equal validity to quote minority view, fringe theory or extraordinary claims, right? | ||
| So um, and that such views should be labeled that way. | ||
| So the neutral point of view policy essentially uh dictates that Wikipedians must write articles in a biased way, of course. | ||
| We're sorry to say it, but this is not a very safe country. | ||
| Walk through Oakland or Philadelphia, yeah. | ||
| Good luck. | ||
| So most people, when they think about this, want to carry a firearm, and a lot of us do. | ||
| The problem is there can be massive consequences for that. | ||
| Ask Kyle Rittenhouse. | ||
| Kyle Rittenhouse got off in the end, but he was innocent from the first moment. | ||
| It was obvious on video, and he was facing life in prison anyway. | ||
| That's what the anti-gun movement will do. | ||
| They'll throw you in prison for defending yourself with a firearm. | ||
| And that's why a lot of Americans are turning to Berna. | ||
| It's a proudly American company. | ||
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| They've sold over 600,000 pistols, mostly to private citizens who refuse to be empty-handed. | ||
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| Well, the inclusion of the of the term fringe tells me right away that you're a freaking liar. | ||
| A liar if you use that word. | ||
| Because it's a word like terrorism and so many words, racism, that we can't really define and don't care really to define. | ||
| Like what does that mean? | ||
| And if the whole policy turns on the word, then it's fair to demand a precise explanation of what it means, but we never get one. | ||
| What is fringe? | ||
| They can't tell you. | ||
| Yes, yes. | ||
| Or it's simply a new view that is going to become dominant in 10 years or something. | ||
| Happens all the time. | ||
| Happens all the time in the history of ideas. | ||
|
unidentified
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No. | |
| Right. | ||
| So that's so obvious, even a child understands that. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Right. | ||
| The key is the definition. | ||
| And if you can't come up with a definition, then we have to take the word out because it's it can only about lying. | ||
| So how did that get in there? | ||
| Well, um I think it happened like this. | ||
| I think Wikipedia developed in uh sort of in tandem with the development of media. | ||
| So basically, as media from the founding of Wikipedia 2001 to about 2012 or so, um, was it became solidified in a center-left um establishment um standpoint. | ||
| So if you were to read Wikipedia from 2012 or so, 2010, uh it read a lot like the New York Times or the BBC. | ||
| I remember saying that at the time. | ||
| Um, and then especially around about uh 2016 and maybe a few years before that, the the media landscape uh changed uh almost overnight. | ||
| Um, so that once stayed mainstream sources became totally biased. | ||
| They they stated in their own voice that the president was lying and so forth. | ||
| Kind of racist, a racist, exactly. | ||
| Um Tucker Carlson is a conspiracy theorist. | ||
| So uh for example, um, and uh And that, of course, then was echoed in Wikipedia. | ||
| So Wikipedia feels perfectly free to say that Donald Trump is telling lies and that uh various pundits are conspiracy theorists. | ||
| Here's my question. | ||
| I mean, so Wikipedia became a weapon of ideological theological war used to you know destroy its enemies, of course. | ||
| That's and that's what it remains. | ||
| But someone had to allow that. | ||
| And that's so far from what it was created to be. | ||
| In fact, it's the opposite, the mirror image of what it was created to be. | ||
| That you have to ask, like, was there a fight over that? | ||
| Who allowed it? | ||
| Like if you're getting to the point where you're disallowing, quote, fringe theories or conspiracy theorists or some other term made up by the CIA to hide its secrets. | ||
| Someone has to like okay that. | ||
| Who what was that process? | ||
| It's a good question. | ||
| Um you can look at it from an organic point of view. | ||
| I can't tell you what was going on behind the scenes, if there were any, you know, puppet masters that were controlling the process. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| What I can tell you is that over the years, conservatives, libertarians were just pushed out. | ||
| Um they in many cases, well, um there is uh a whole, you know, army of administrators, hundreds of them, who are constantly blocking people who that they have ideological disagreements with. | ||
| Um that's not new. | ||
| Um, so if somebody really does become a problem from their perspective, then they can be simply gotten rid of on uh a pretext. | ||
| It's very difficult now. | ||
| It's possible, it's possible, but it's very difficult for conservatives to get into Wikipedia and and actually play the game. | ||
| But you have to play the game. | ||
| And that means you have to act uh have to walk on eggshells. | ||
| So the point is it wasn't always like this. | ||
| Over the years, basically the left consolidated its power. | ||
| The way I like to put it is that um, you know, the the left has its uh marched through the institutions, and when Wikipedia appeared, it was one of the institutions that they marched through. | ||
| The difference is it's brand new. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So like I'm you know, I grew up in this country, I've never believed in Harvard. | ||
| It's absurd. | ||
| I've always thought it was absurd. | ||
| I really believed in Wikipedia. | ||
| I send money to, I'm on, I mean, you can check the records. | ||
| I have sent money, like significant money to Wikipedia because I was so thrilled by its existence. | ||
| So thrilled. | ||
| And so it wasn't always this. | ||
| And now it's like the leading source of dishonesty, or I would say disinformation. | ||
| I mean, most topics in Wikipedia seem totally straight to me. | ||
| But if you go to anything that intersects any topic that intersects with theology, politics, ideology, power, and you know something about the topic, and in my case, a couple of topics like I have firsthand knowledge, direct knowledge of it, they lie. | ||
| They leave out key information, they load up the top of the entry with either superlatives or insults that are not they're totally subjective and insane. | ||
| Far right conspiracy theorist with a straight face. | ||
| Like if you're calling someone a far-right conspiracy theorist before even explaining to me who this person is, then you're a propagandist, you're a liar. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No, I agree. | ||
| I I described it as propaganda beginning around uh 2020. | ||
| Before that, I don't know that I would have given it that word. | ||
| It was already emerging, you know. | ||
| I agree. | ||
| No, no, this has happened before our eyes. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| So when did you leave and why? | ||
| Oh, long time ago. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| 20 uh 2002. | ||
| So no, yeah, I was only there for the first two years of the project. | ||
| I got it off the ground. | ||
| Um, I said a lot of the original policies, and then um so the the company that launched Wikipedia, Bomus Inc., so Jimmy Wills was the CEO of of that. | ||
| Um, and he had a couple of partners. | ||
| Um so it was my job to to start it. | ||
| Um I did, and then the bottom fell out of the tech market, you know, that's sure. | ||
| Yeah, back in 2000. | ||
| Um, so they lost a big contract with I think it was Google. | ||
| Um, and so they they weren't able to pay people anymore. | ||
| I was laid off. | ||
| Um, and I decided, I made the decision to, you know, just step back from my role. | ||
| I was I would have been welcome uh to continue on, but I decided not to basically devalue my professional labor. | ||
| But with distance in 2002, I saw that um Jimmy Wales was essentially allowing um uh troublemakers, leftists really to take over. | ||
| And uh, and they did. | ||
| Um as as early as that. | ||
| Uh it took them time, I think, to really consolidate their power and and create sort of internal processes and institutions and policies that really consolidated their power. | ||
| But um, yeah. | ||
| Who is Jimmy Wales and what's he like? | ||
| Jimmy Wales um is uh uh the other co-founder of Wikipedia. | ||
| He's got a finance degree. | ||
| Um let's see. | ||
| He comes from Alabama. | ||
| He went to a private school in Alabama, I think. | ||
| I knew him from um uh uh, you know, online debating forums about Ayn Rand uh in the mid-1990s. | ||
| I actually met him face to face um on a little junket that I took to visit my uncle. | ||
| So I just made a stop over in Chicago when he was living there. | ||
| Uh so I met him before. | ||
| Um he hired me to start Wikipedia. | ||
| Um but uh he's uh he's a very personable person, actually. | ||
| Uh if you if you meet him for the first time and you don't know anything about him. | ||
| What are his views? | ||
| I don't know, actually. | ||
| That's a good question. | ||
| Um I'd like to know. | ||
| Uh they used to be uh uh broadly libertarian. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Uh but he's now associated with the left. | ||
| He has got a lot of lefty pals. | ||
| Um and so I I think he would probably say he still is, you know, a believer in classical liberalism or something like that, but I don't know if I believe it. | ||
| We'll look at the results. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I mean, it's uh it's an authoritarian enterprise. | ||
| And it's a it's a proper, you know, it's his vestia. | ||
| And uh, but with much greater reach and a much more profound effect, and it's one of the worst things about our society, actually. | ||
| But let's be let's be fair to Jimmy Wales here. | ||
| Um it isn't clear that he approves of the the current approach that Wikipedia is taking. | ||
| I've never spoken to Jimmy Wales other than to send him money years ago. | ||
| Um and let me ask you about the money. | ||
| So I is it a pro it's a nonprofit, correct? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Can you make money from it? | ||
| Oh, of course. | ||
| You know, uh just like any big nonprofit that's raising hundreds of millions of dollars, you know, you you can um essentially transfer money through grants, and now they are a grant-making institution. | ||
| So um, I mean I certainly don't need to explain to you how um really big foundations work, right? | ||
| Um, but uh money can uh uh can change hands, large amounts of money can change hands um through institutions like the Wikimedia Foundation. | ||
| That's that's the name of the legal entity that owns the platform. | ||
| So the First Amendment is the one truly distinctive thing that makes America America. | ||
| It makes this country great. | ||
| You are a citizen. | ||
| That means you can speak openly and honestly without fear about what you actually believe. | ||
| The government doesn't own you. | ||
| You own the government. | ||
| That's the premise. | ||
| And for 250 years we've lived it. | ||
| We hope to keep living it. | ||
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| So can you describe how the process works? | ||
| So we've got you know Wikipedia entry on you, let's just say. | ||
| How is that? | ||
| And I haven't actually read your Wikipedia entry. | ||
| I'm sure it's hostile in a subtle way. | ||
| But it's actually okay. | ||
| It's okay. | ||
| I've never read my own Wikipedia entry, not one time. | ||
| Because I don't want to. | ||
| You gotta blame you. | ||
| Don't want to go crazy. | ||
| Uh, because I am an expert on that subject, so I feel like I feel like I, you know, could probably compare their description to what I know to be true, and it would just make me angry, and I don't want to be angry. | ||
| But um, but I have no doubt that it's hostile, right? | ||
| It'd piss you off. | ||
| Oh, is that true? | ||
| Oh, yeah, I'm pretty sure. | ||
| Have you read it? | ||
| Uh I think I've read the first paragraph anyway. | ||
| Pretty tough, huh? | ||
| Uh I think so. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| I'm not I'm I'm I'm not just saying this. | ||
| Anyone who knows me knows it's true. | ||
| I've never done this before. | ||
| But um, I'm gonna look it up right now, and I'm just gonna read the first paragraph. | ||
| This could be I promise I've never uh I don't even know where it is. | ||
| Oh, there it is right there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Uh huh. | |
| Oh, I knew I was gonna use the first paragraph. | ||
| It basically just says I'm a conservative political commentary. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| But I'm a leading voice of white grievance politics. | ||
| White grievance politics. | ||
| Okay, I thought I was gonna be mad. | ||
| I'm amused. | ||
| I don't even know what that is. | ||
| White grievance politics. | ||
| Um, okay, so then you click on white grievance politics, and it cites columnist Michael Gerson, who I happen to know. | ||
| Not someone who I think has passed away. | ||
| I'm sorry, I don't want to make fun of him. | ||
| Um, but he's not uh a reliable, I mean, he was an ideologue, okay, uh big-time ideologue. | ||
| And it quotes his quote, non-primary source needed, it says in brackets, uh that the Republican Party has been swiftly repositioned as an instrument of white grievance. | ||
| I guess it was a column attacking me, with no doubt about that. | ||
| So they call me in the first paragraph a leading voice of white grievance politics. | ||
| Not how I describe myself. | ||
| I've never thought of myself that way. | ||
| Um I don't really care. | ||
| But and in order to call me basically, they're calling me a Nazi, of course. | ||
| They cite a Washington Post columnist who hated me. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And that's the citation. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| That's that's pretty much it. | ||
| If they were following a genuine neutrality policy, then they they might say that if they if that was what your detractors were really focused on, and perhaps it is, but they would certainly, certainly quote you in response to that. | ||
| And they would give examples. | ||
| I mean, it wouldn't be ad hominem. | ||
| It would be, you know, quoting me saying white people are angry. | ||
| We have a lot of grievances and they're justified. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| There he is, you know, espousing white grievance politics. | ||
| Uh-huh. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I don't think I've done that. | ||
| Though I do think that, by the way. | ||
| So maybe I am a white grievance politicist. | ||
| But whatever. | ||
| I don't even care. | ||
| But it's just interesting. | ||
| They Don't care either. | ||
| The point is to make you sound scary and Hitler-like. | ||
| Right. | ||
| No, that's right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I I don't know what white grievance politics is, and I'm pretty sure you're not into it. | ||
| I uh I'm actually not into it. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| I mean, I do think white people have been completely mistreated and they have every reason to be mad about it, but I don't want them anyone to be mad about anything, and I definitely don't want racial conflict. | ||
| I've never wanted that. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So um, but whatever, but that it's not about me, and I'm sort of sorry I even brought that up. | ||
| Uh that's all I'm ever going to read in my Wikipedia entry. | ||
| But um that's kind of the point. | ||
| How is it allowed to use subjective terms with no clear definition in someone's entry? | ||
| Those are that's a political term. | ||
| That's a term of propaganda. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's a term designed to discredit, not to illuminate or explain, but to attack. | ||
| That's very common in political language, if that is political language, but how is that? | ||
| How is no editor like, wait a second? | ||
| We don't even just we don't even define white grievance politics. | ||
| How can we accuse someone of engaging in it? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Um it's there's a lot of history and uh there, and uh we could take it in many different directions. | ||
| I mean, we've already talked about the policy that um permits it. | ||
| Um we could also talk about the sources that are permitted. | ||
| Like if you look at only the sources that are permitted to be used in Wikipedia, so mostly secondary sources, and they are mostly left wing or center, generally speaking, | ||
| there is now a blacklist called the perennial sources page, um that contains uh uh lists uh of of dozens of conservative sources that are just not allowed. | ||
| Um and uh so if the only defenders of Tucker Carlson um can be found in those other sources, then you won't be defended in the article about you, and they will call the article about you neutral. | ||
| That's quite amazing. | ||
| Who makes the decision on the blacklist? | ||
| Um so there is a reliable sources group, essentially, that debates it. | ||
| Now there are people who spend the most time um, you know, uh probably are working full-time for somebody on Wikipedia. | ||
| Um they build up a lot of clout. | ||
| What does that mean working full-time for somebody on Wikipedia? | ||
| Well, um, there are PR firms, just for example, that uh do nothing but edit articles on Wikipedia in order to be able to um insert desired factoids according to um how people pay them, essentially. | ||
| So it's a thing. | ||
| Oh yes. | ||
| Wikipedia PR firms, essentially. | ||
| Um, and this is not allowed officially. | ||
| It's called paid editing, a big no-no. | ||
| Um uh and if you do do it, then you have to announce yourself. | ||
| Um a lot of people do it and they don't announce themselves, of course. | ||
| Um my point then to answer your question is that there are a lot of people who have built up clout over the years in the Wikipedia system. | ||
| Um a lot of them have been made into uh the leaders of the project. | ||
| Um there are 833 administrators as they're called. | ||
| So these are sort of the rank and file cops. | ||
| Um then you've got 16 bureaucrats who can name the cops. | ||
| And you've got 49 Czech users, and these are accounts that can identify the IP address of accounts. | ||
| And then there are 15 members of an arbitration committee, which is sort of like the Supreme Court of Wikipedia. | ||
| Um deals mostly with behavioral issues as opposed to editorial. | ||
| Um so now here's an interesting thing. | ||
| Do we know who these people are? | ||
| That's what I was about to answer. | ||
| Of these, this power 62, because if you add up all of those uh uh accounts and there's overlap, there's 62 such accounts. | ||
| Only nine, 14.5% are named. | ||
| So 85% of the most powerful accounts on Wikipedia on the editorial side are anonymous. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So it's true. | |
| So again, these are the people who are shaping Americans' understanding of the world of their own country of themselves, of reality itself. | ||
| And we don't know who they are because their identities are hidden. | ||
| That's correct. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| They can libel people with impunity as they as they do you. | ||
| Um, and there is no legal recourse because they are anonymous. | ||
| And and the Wikimedia Foundation enjoys Section 230 immunity, which means it can't be sued in the United States. | ||
| So we've done a lot of segments over many years attacking college. | ||
| Most of them are not worth sending your kids, they're definitely not worth paying for. | ||
| In fact, they're counterproductive. | ||
| They're the source of a lot of this country's problems. | ||
| But that doesn't mean that all colleges are bad. | ||
| We've looked far and wide for good ones, and Grand Canyon University is near the top of the list. | ||
| It's a private Christian university located in the Arizona Mountains, the best part of Arizona. | ||
| Grand Canyon believes that every one of us is endowed by God with inalienable rights. | ||
| Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, right? | ||
| It's not something that politicians give us, rights are something they are sworn to uphold and defend. | ||
| It's a totally different way of looking at the world. | ||
| And GCU purpose starts with service equipping students to affect their families, communities, and the world for good, whether you're called to business, education, ministry, whatever it is, Grand Canyon University helps you honor that calling while glorifying God through your work, real purpose in life. | ||
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| It's private, it's Christian, it's affordable.edu today. | ||
| So my question is there's nothing that can be done. | ||
| They're protected by 230 immunity. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So they can't be sued into better behavior. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But presumably they can be shamed and reasoned with. | ||
| And the first so the first step in that is just asking the question on what grounds are you keeping the identities of some of the most powerful people in the country secret? | ||
| Why can't I know who's making these decisions? | ||
| Who's blacklisting entire news organizations on the basis of their politics? | ||
| For example, who's responsible for the slander? | ||
| Why can't I know their names? | ||
| What would Wikipedia, the foundation, say if I asked that question? | ||
| They would say that according to the policies of the editorial side of their organization, which they're not responsible for, um, people can participate anonymously at all levels, right? | ||
| So you could be the most powerful person on the editorial side, and you don't need to reveal your identity. | ||
| Um, that's it's a it's a matter of policy. | ||
| Now, you know talk about a non-answer. | ||
| Um they're hiding their identities because they're allowed to. | ||
| Okay, got it. | ||
| Well, yes. | ||
| But why are they allowed to? | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So I think the answer is basically it goes back to like the the zeitgeist of um 1990s hacker culture when people went on like these funny names, um uh uh nicknames handles, um, not their real names, and that has continued, it never stopped all across Wikipedia. | ||
| People use these sort of cutesy names, um, and they like to portray themselves to the public as just you know, mop-wielding janitors of the of the site. | ||
| Um, and and of course it's ludicrous, right? | ||
| But it's just uh as as far as I can tame uh can tell, it's it's a game that they're playing. | ||
| They're they're putting on the air of being like harmless college students that are only interested in comma placement and that sort of thing. | ||
| So why do you need to know my identity and so forth? | ||
| But uh I'll tell you, people they just haven't pressed them on this question. | ||
| Well, and they should be pressed immediately. | ||
| And I mean, because just in practical terms, as you said, it's ludicrous. | ||
| Who has more effect on Americans or the world's understanding of history, the seven history departments of the Ivy League or Wikipedia? | ||
| It's not even close. | ||
| It's not even close, not in the same universe. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| But if all of a sudden every history professor at Harvard Yale, Princeton Columbia, Dartmouth, Cornell, et cetera, decided I'm not telling you my name as I as I teach your kids about the Renaissance or whatever, um, we would say that's freaking nuts. | ||
| We just have to know your name. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| And uh, you know, uh traditional uh uh media organizations, they name their editors and their journalists, of course. | ||
| They have real world reputation to live up to. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| And and if they do bad reporting, then uh they they can be fired. | ||
| They can uh that they experience career consequences, and that simply doesn't happen on Wikipedia. | ||
| Now, uh, you know, people they can mess up on Wikipedia and and be kicked out, they can lose their administratorship, whatever that happens, I suppose, but it it's not real world consequences, is it? | ||
| Not really. | ||
| No, it's not. | ||
| And I so here's okay, so I'm I'm sort of getting to one of my core concerns. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Um, which you you've made me think is something to be concerned about, which is the influence of intelligence agencies on the work product of Wikipedia. | ||
| It's very obvious to me, having been around that world a lot um that they're influencing some of the answers, some of the entries on Wikipedia. | ||
| It's just super, super obvious. | ||
| It's part, it's part of the propaganda campaign, which is the real war, the info war. | ||
| Um m's have thought of that when you were building this thing. | ||
| Like, man, you know, the Intel agencies could get involved and start changing the way people understand what they did, for example. | ||
| Uh no. | ||
| You didn't, you never thought of it. | ||
| No, I had no such idea. | ||
| Not in 19 uh not in 2001 in 2000, uh, 2002, no. | ||
| Right I mean, um I I was a babe in the woods. | ||
| Um yes, it it it wasn't until like I think it was 2006, 2007, um, Virgil Griffiths did master's research. | ||
| Um he came up with a tool called Wiki Scanner that enabled people to look up the um the IP addresses of people who had done edits, um, and like who had edited which articles. | ||
| And so they were able to find all a whole bunch of edits uh coming from Langley. | ||
| No. | ||
| Oh, I didn't even know that. | ||
| No, it's true. | ||
| Not to brag, I could just tell by reading it. | ||
| Like I know what that is, right? | ||
| So I I since have learned differently and learned much better. | ||
| Um I I don't have the the background that you have, um uh but uh it's it's also very clear to me what we are told about the way that intelligence works now is that um of course there's the old-fashioned cloak and dagger um spying going on, but uh a large part of their remit of intelligence today is uh to manipulate public opinion in various ways. | ||
| And uh uh Wikipedia is like just a gold mine for the intelligence agencies of the world because uh it's like a one-stop shop. | ||
| You know, you can just like type in the things that you want people to believe, I suppose. | ||
| Now, how that works, like which agencies are involved, how how the heck should I know? | ||
| Well, you can tell by reading it. | ||
| You can tell instantly by reading it, some of what's going on. | ||
| I mean, you never know the whole story, of course, but it's super obvious to me, some of the players in this, very obvious, and they're the big ones, of course. | ||
| So um, but I my question, and everything you've said makes sense. | ||
| My question, however, is like how is this allowed? | ||
| So if you're not allowed to edit Wikipedia for pay on behalf of, say, a PR agency, how are you allowed to do it on behalf of an intelligence agency. | ||
| That's a good question. | ||
| I actually asked Elon Musk and President and the President to use Doge or other government resources to investigate what United States employees were actually editing Wikipedia. | ||
| And, you know, perhaps stop that. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Maybe maybe we shouldn't. | ||
| Maybe there's reasons, uh legitimate reasons for government employees to do this. | ||
| But uh at least Elon Musk did retweet that. | ||
| Um and uh got a lot of support. | ||
| So um anyone do anything about it? | ||
| What's that? | ||
| Did anyone do anything about it? | ||
| Um not to my knowledge, except now there is a congressional investigation. | ||
| Uh I don't know if my tweet had anything to do with the start of that. | ||
| I don't think so. | ||
| I think it had more to do with the uh uh reporting of um Ashley Rinsburg. | ||
| Um, of course, Israel um and I would add uh Hindus um are very bothered with the way that their ethnic groups are treated um in Wikipedia. | ||
| Both of both of them, both both uh a whole bunch of Jews and a whole bunch of of uh Hindus have been after me in the last couple of years saying you've got to speak out, you've got to help us. | ||
| Um, you know, and I've said, I don't really know a lot about the situation. | ||
| I mean, there isn't a whole lot that I could do. | ||
| Will they be accused of Indian or Israeli grievance politics? | ||
| Probably not. | ||
| No, sorry. | ||
| Just thinking like No, I uh that was a bitter sardonic aside. | ||
| Um I no, excuse me, I I take that back. | ||
| I don't want to be a grievance person. | ||
| Um, of course, but the answer, what you're really saying is people who are organized have a way to push back against the line. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| I think that that um if uh like Israeli intelligence for for example uh got together and uh made a real concerted effort to um to f fight uh against the uh this group of uh 40 um Muslim uh activists um that Ashley Rinsburg identified. | ||
| They might be able to make some inroads. | ||
| What do you think? | ||
| You think they might be able to do that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| They might. | ||
| Yeah, it really depends. | ||
| It's possible. | ||
| I'm just throwing that out there. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I uh here's here's the thing. | ||
| I actually think um concurrently, we're we're gonna talk about the nine theses here, I assume. | ||
| So um uh I would like to encourage people to at least the waters. | ||
| Don't like don't go to Wikipedia and uh be a jerk and get yourself kicked out right away, because they will kick you out for sure if you're if you are not playing by the rules. | ||
| But uh go there and maybe not all at once, but uh, you know, over the next few weeks, make some some real efforts to do to make good faith edits to Wikipedia and build up some credibility within the community. | ||
| You can make a difference there. | ||
| I think it's a good idea for to to give it a try. | ||
| You know, um one thing that has never been tried um is to simply get all of the libertarians and all of the conservatives and and the Jews and the Hindus and the Christians and and whoever else has grievances against Wikipedia, organize them. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Um and and uh descend on Wikipedia and actually try to make a change. | ||
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| That never occurs to most conservatives. | ||
| Their first instinct is to uh I'll speak for myself. | ||
| My first instinct is run away. | ||
| I don't want to deal with this horrible. | ||
| I hate these people. | ||
| And this is my internal monologue. | ||
| And if I'm mad enough, we should start something better. | ||
| It never occurs to your average conservative to take back the institution that's been perverted and corrupted. | ||
| It never occurs to them, well, maybe I should I don't know, try to join the faculty at Harvard and stop lying, you know. | ||
| Or why don't I fix Wikipedia? | ||
| And I think that's you're right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So I I think it was either the first or second interview that you did of me was in 2019 when I started uh something called uh the social media strike. | ||
| Um and um it actually went pretty well, but it always struck me that first of all, I could have followed it up. | ||
| And uh second of all, it could have been much bigger, like if I had organized it properly, but it was but mostly mostly just me and my blog, you know, and still there were like a half a dozen or 10 different media sources uh that covered that this social media strike. | ||
| Um so maybe we should organize something similar with regard to uh I think part of the problem is that most non-liberals have just no patience for bureaucracy. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And liberals, because they, you know, as Ted Kaczynski famously wrote, the whole point of liberalism is safety in numbers. | ||
| These are people who are hollow and afraid inside. | ||
| And so they seek each other out and they create these institutions so they can feel safe. | ||
| And non-liberals just don't feel that way at all because they're not, you know, because they believe in something and they're not ruled by fear. | ||
| And so the average conservative, when told to sit through like a PTA meeting or join the Wikipedia, you know, editor's process or something like goes crazy, can't deal with it. | ||
| Right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Do you notice this? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And and and there's another um sort of practical uh problem that that stands in the way of this. | ||
| There's uh you're not allowed to do what's called brigading on Wikipedia. | ||
| So brigading means organizing editing of a particular article off the wiki. | ||
| So if you're caught doing this, then you can be um you can be blocked. | ||
| So if I were to tell everybody to go to the article about Larry Sanger, um, please don't do that. | ||
| Uh but if I if I were to try to organize that like on this show right now, then I might be blocked for brigading. | ||
| But it's cool for like Saudi intelligence or Massad or the CIA to do it. | ||
| For sure. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, this is so bonkers for for sure. | |
| Okay. | ||
| No, it's got it. | ||
| Yeah, got it. | ||
| And it's so obvious. | ||
| I mean, it's it's it's an obvious thing for them to do. | ||
| They wouldn't be doing their job if they weren't doing it. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Right? | ||
| I mean, they're supposed to be shaping public opinion. | ||
| That's part of their remit is the intelligence committee or community now, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And and um the way to shape uh uh public opinion, one of the main ways is to make sure that Wikipedia reads the way you want it to read. | ||
| And yes, then they can organize secretly behind the scenes, and they do. | ||
| Yeah, they're such a lot. | ||
| I mean, I just happen to know some of the topics. | ||
| Like I was there for not many things, but some things, and you read about you know, something that you just happen to have direct knowledge of, and it's the account of it is so intentionally distorted. | ||
| Such a lie. | ||
| And then people you know, you read about it's like, wait, I I remember when you had a DUI arrest or or whatever, and it's gone. | ||
| Um if they can't even keep the paid PR people out, then that suggests to me that the people who edit Wikipedia are probably making money on this. | ||
| Like the fastest way would just be to bribe them, right? | ||
| If you are really good at playing the Wikipedia game, and you're like one of these this uh power 62 and you're not in the pay of somebody, then you're just leaving money on the table. | ||
| But that seems obvious to me. | ||
| Well, and if we can't even know their names, then what would be the disincentive? | ||
| Like and and that would be one of the reasons why we don't know their names. | ||
| And that actually is one of the main reasons why I say we should know their names. | ||
| So I'm just calling on WikiLeaks, you know, or Julian Assange, where are you? | ||
| I I I cannot, I cannot agree. | ||
| I don't I I don't uh I don't think that we should dox the the power 62. | ||
| Um this is what I call By docs, what do you mean? | ||
| Does that mean like home address or is that just mean name? | ||
| Name a name is enough. | ||
| That would be doxing them. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Um in the Wikipedia system, they are um uh basically anyone who reveals their name and if they don't want their name revealed, would be immediately blocked for doxing, and it would be an a permanent block for sure. | ||
| Um so it's a very serious offense on Wikipedia. | ||
| So I'm I am not encouraging people to do this. | ||
| That that okay, that's fair. | ||
| I I r respect the fact that you've thought about this a lot and much more than I have, and you're decent. | ||
| Um and so you're probably right. | ||
| I'm just frustrated. | ||
| But I wonder, is there it seems to me knowing the names of the people making these decisions is in the public interest, that's for sure. | ||
| These are not just random Twitter users, okay? | ||
| They're shaping history. | ||
| They are the authors of history, certainly the gatekeepers of history. | ||
| So and they're libeling. | ||
| We need to talk about that. | ||
| Well, they certainly they are, you know, obviously. | ||
| And I say this as Mr. Wake Grievan's politics. | ||
| Uh um they I can't, I'm yeah. | ||
| Uh they certainly have libeled a lot of people I know. | ||
| Yes, literally libeled, like saying things that are untrue about them, yeah. | ||
| And there's no there's no recourse, right? | ||
| So this this is the problem, right? | ||
| Um John Siegenthaler Sr. | ||
| Um called me up in 2005. | ||
| He's a newspaper editor from Tennessee. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| He was a longtime publisher and editor of the Tennessean, one of the founding board members, I believe, of USA Today. | ||
| So very important newspaper man. | ||
| And kind of a center-left liberal, I would say. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Um and he um the article about him said that he had been under suspicion of being responsible in some way for the assassination of RFK. | ||
| And he was livid, of course, because he had actually like worked on RFK's campaign and things like that. | ||
| Um and uh he blamed me. | ||
| Uh and like I kind of didn't, you know, uh blame him for doing so. | ||
| Um and uh he opened my eyes to just how reputations can be harmed by uh people's Wikipedia articles. | ||
| And I have heard from dozens and dozens, maybe over a hundred different reasonably famous people um since then uh with grievances about the Wikipedia articles and they're like at their wits' end, they know I'm long gone from Wikipedia, and they don't know what to do, right? | ||
| So I've kept abreast of of um uh this issue on Wikipedia quite a bit, and it bothers me because I take sort of personal responsibility. | ||
| I I feel personal responsibility, which is one of the reasons why I came up with the nine theses in the first place. | ||
| But was just so like what did Siegenthaler do? | ||
| Like, was he able to get that off Wikipedia? | ||
| He was able to get satisfaction. | ||
| I don't think he got an immediate response and and um immediate reversal. | ||
| Um, but uh reasonably quickly, but I I I can't remember if it was before or after they had changed his article that he called me, but he wanted me to know, right? | ||
| And and I don't blame him. | ||
| And and another time, Philip Roth, the famous journalist, um Philip Roth the novelist? | ||
| The novelist, yes. | ||
| He he contacted me also and was uh complaining that um the the story of the the origin of the inspiration of the human stain was wrong on Wikipedia. | ||
| He had gone to the Wikipedia talk page and said, Hi, I am Philip Roth, and uh you've got the story wrong, and here's the real story, and they said, sorry, we can't use that, you're a primary source. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, it's ridiculous, of course. | |
| Uh and I mean, uh, just uh what kind of person do you have to be to uh like uh to take that sort of uh disrespectful stance to to somebody like Philip Roth and to twist your own rules in that way for almost a petty reasons? | ||
| There's a lot of petty power players on on Wikipedia, I find. | ||
| And I believe that. | ||
| The people behind this, they hide behind their anonymity. | ||
| So there is no legal recourse when somebody is seriously libeled, so that you know their career is damaged. | ||
| I've heard from people whose careers were materially damaged. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, well, I'm I'm sure I'm one of them by Wikipedia. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Uh yeah, I mean, my recourse has just been to, you know, stay cheerful, focused on God and my family, you know, like not get mad, I think is kind of the only, that's the only thing I've been able to do about it and not read it, don't marinate in that. | ||
| But I don't think it's just petty power, it's like global power because they're aligned with Google, the biggest search engine, the search monopoly that dominates English language search completely, has a monopoly on it, and they have somehow made a deal with Google that allows them to be the top search results. | ||
| So, for example, I just Googled myself for the first time ever. | ||
| And Wikipedia is the first result. | ||
| Now, why would Wikipedia be the first result of me? | ||
| I still work, I still have a job. | ||
| So, like they're why would that be number one? | ||
| Why would a bunch of anonymous editors get to be the first result of my name because they have a deal with Google? | ||
| Well, I I can explain it. | ||
| I you very well could be right. | ||
| Um at my house on it, but well, look, um in the early days, Wikipedia was the only source of information on a whole bunch of topics. | ||
| Okay, and then the way that the Google algorithm worked back then, um, if you ended up being the first source for a lot of topics, then your your uh Google page rank score w was higher. | ||
| And so Wikipedia just shot to the top of Google's page rank algorithm, or at least this is the story they tell, right? | ||
| Um and uh so uh one of the reasons why Google or Wikipedia rather took off so quickly uh is this this um feedback loop that that it had with Google, right? | ||
| So you know, Wikipedia would write a hundred articles that never had any coverage by Google before. | ||
| They would appear on Google, people would start for those topics, and they would come to Wikipedia, and then the number of contributors would expand and blather writts repeat, and uh and there was exponential growth. | ||
| Well, so I think we're saying the same thing. | ||
| I mean, you're describing the mechanism by which Wikipedia is the guaranteed first response to any query on a fact about a person or history. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I mean, that's to say it doesn't matter kind of what the mechanism is, it's the results is the same. | ||
| Yes, yes, yes. | ||
| And they know that. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And I guess what I'm saying is if there was an actual deal from the beginning, it would be From the beginning. | ||
| And I wouldn't rule that out. | ||
| I'm enough of a conspiracy theorist to to uh to say that's that's not totally impossible. | ||
| In fact, the the uh uh how many startups can you say were the first reviews by any news source was the New York Times and MIT Technology Review. | ||
| But those were the first reviews that were published by any mainstream source of Wikipedia. | ||
| Amazing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That was in September of 2001. | ||
| So we were immediately on the establishment's um of course. | ||
| Well, I mean, it's Wikipedia is a servant to the ruling class, obviously, um, which is corrupt. | ||
| So Wikipedia is itself corrupt, the most corrupt. | ||
| Um yeah, you can't over and it I must say my last editorial comment that I want to get to what we can do to make this better, but um, and you've written extensively about it, but my last comment is that when people grouse about the media or corrupt news media, they're always referring to like companies that really don't matter, like CBS or NBC or CNN or Fox News. | ||
| It's like who cares? | ||
| They're all going away. | ||
| They're totally discredited. | ||
| Everyone knows that. | ||
| And they won't even be here in 10 years. | ||
| Wikipedia has a much greater effect on how people understand the world than any of those media outlets. | ||
| Wikipedia is a media outlet, and it's never included in the list of corrupt media outlets. | ||
| And that just bugs me. | ||
| Well, could it push back slightly? | ||
| Of course. | ||
| Um people our age and older still do take CNN and uh uh NBC and all the rest uh very seriously. | ||
| So, you know, not the conservatives, but basically centrists, you know, my mother votes Republican and she still watches you know the mainstream media and and uh it still defines her reality, essentially, you know. | ||
| So um it's a generational thing. | ||
| It it is. | ||
| I'm just saying that the actuarial tables tell us that this is has a limited shelf life. | ||
| So that's right. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| And just looking for extrapolating forward, you know, 10, 15, 20 years. | ||
| You know, that that stuff is not it's not meaningful. | ||
| Digital media is very meaningful, and Wikipedia is the most meaningful. | ||
| That's my only point. | ||
| And I just think that someone should say that out loud. | ||
| I I agree. | ||
| No, I think that's true. | ||
| It it's it's probably Wikipedia by itself is uh more influential more influential than the New York Times or any other single media source. | ||
| And it works in tandem with the New York Times. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Um any chance of getting the New York Times blacklisted uh Wikipedia. | ||
| So you laugh. | ||
| I don't think so. | ||
| Well, I know for a fact that I'm more honest than New York Times. | ||
| I mean, I take take a live tech. | ||
| I really believe that I am, but I'm blacklisted and they're not. | ||
| So like I just think that's not neutral. | ||
| Um, whether I'm right or wrong. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| You have you know, following the example of our beloved German monk 500 years ago written some theses that you want to nail to the front door of Wikipedia. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| What are they? | ||
| All right. | ||
| Um let's go through the list, right? | ||
| Um this should take about five minutes, maybe. | ||
| So take your time. | ||
| This is I just want to restate if you're coming to the video right now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| This is the creator of Wikipedia explaining how Wikipedia can be saved from corruption. | ||
| Yes, nobody has ever actually um made a thoroughgoing reform proposal of Wikipedia. | ||
| This is the first time anybody has done that, and it's uh certainly the first time I have done that. | ||
| There's been a lot of piecemeal reform proposals, but this is thoroughgoing. | ||
| And I'm trying, just as Luther did, I'm trying to start a conversation, right? | ||
| So this is not a question. | ||
| I hope this starts a reformation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I hope this starts what Luther started. | |
| Right. | ||
| A return to honesty. | ||
| We'll we'll be the the Protestant uh Wikipedians. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So the nine theses begin this way. | ||
| Number one, end decision making by consensus. | ||
| So Wikipedia pretends to make difficult Editorial decisions based on a process they call consensus. | ||
| Um, but it's a sham because this allows ideologues to silence dissent um by falsely claiming uh uh in effect uh unanimous agreement, but of course there isn't unanimous agreement. | ||
| So the scientific consensus on climate change would be a perfect example of this. | ||
| It would be a very good example. | ||
| Um the consensus, I say, as a description of how they arrive at difficult editorial decisions should be abandoned. | ||
| Now, what they replace it with, that's a good question, but let's begin there. | ||
| And decision making by consensus, because it allows an aggressive faction to overwhelm the skeptical faction. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| It's really a cynical uh institutional fiction. | ||
| It has to end. | ||
| They they can't call what they're doing consensus anymore. | ||
| That's not a consensus at all, especially if they claim to be an open global project. | ||
| Period. | ||
| Right? | ||
| Period. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I agree. | ||
| Number two, enable competing articles. | ||
| So this is this is a little bit out there, but I think it's a good one. | ||
| Since true neutrality is impossible, as we've been discussing under the current editorial monopoly, Wikipedia should allow multiple competing articles written from different declared perspectives, each striving for neutrality within its own framework. | ||
| So let the people write alternative articles. | ||
| And I and for this, let me quickly tell you about what I think that's not far out. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I it really shouldn't be. | |
| Yes. | ||
| I mean, why not just allow you know, there can be multiple articles titled Donald Trump, right? | ||
| So you could have, you know, special report on Fox News, or you could have the CBS Evening News, and you could also have Joe Rogan. | ||
| Because that's what alternative media is. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| Why not? | ||
| And and people can decide what they believe. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So um fine. | ||
| Number three. | ||
| Abolish source blacklists, which we've already talked about this quite a bit. | ||
| Um Wik Wikipedia maintains a list of perennial sources, which serves as an ideologically one-sided blacklist of media sources. | ||
| All right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Um Can I ask what the what is the justification for that? | |
| And like internally, we just don't believe them. | ||
| They're not real. | ||
| What are the criteria for determining authenticity of a news source? | ||
| That's pretty much it. | ||
| No, I mean my opinion. | ||
| They they well, they don't say it's just their opinion. | ||
| You say they say, as a matter of objective fact, we have um I gotta start doing that. | ||
| You know, studies show the New York Times lies, therefore, you know, I'm just banning it. | ||
| Well, uh you would think that that would that that that would hold some weight with an objective analysis. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, definitely I can tell you it's yes, yes, yes. | |
| Okay. | ||
| Um you can't cite the New York Post, Fox News, or you on Wikipedia as a source. | ||
| Um I am making the modest proposal that this blacklist should be abolished. | ||
| It was established in 2017. | ||
| It's fairly new. | ||
| Right after Trump. | ||
| What's that? | ||
| The year Trump gets inaugurated. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| They decide that we're just not going to hear from certain news organizations just because objectively they're bad. | ||
| Wikipedia may not cite the um, well, for example, the New York Post uh and and um we should actually investigate whether that decision was made at about the time that the Hunter Biden laptop story was was breaking, right? | ||
| Is this public, by the way? | ||
| Can you can I go on the Wikipedia site and find out what's blacklisted? | ||
| Sure, just just type in perennial sources, Wikipedia into any search engine, and the first result will be this page. | ||
| And it it names them the blacklist. | ||
| Oh, yeah, of course. | ||
| Yeah, it's all so color-coded. | ||
| Green. | ||
| Um you have the list. | ||
| Do you mind if I do that really quick? | ||
| Uh go right ahead. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So it's let me just do I just I'm testing your thesis. | ||
| So it's perennial. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| Uh source. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| List Wikipedia, right? | ||
| Well, you're doing that. | ||
| Oh, I'll um give you some fully pro approved sources. | ||
| New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, The Nation, Mother Jones, GLAD. | ||
| Come on. | ||
| These are all green lit, fully green lit. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| The blacklisted sources are Breitbart, Daily Caller, Epic Times, Fox News, New York Post, The Federalist. | ||
| So you can't use those as sources on Wikipedia. | ||
| Oh wow. | ||
| Well, they've got, of course. | ||
| So is red, I'm looking at it now. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Red means it's blacklisted. | ||
| You cannot cite it as a source of facts. | ||
| Maybe as a source of opinion, but generally that works out. | ||
| Anti-defamation league gets a green light. | ||
| Uh only for some. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| If you're actually reporting about the uh about the Arab uh the Israeli conflict, yes, yes. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| You may not cite them. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| So you can't you can't find the Jewish perspective on the war so easily anymore on Wikipedia. | ||
| Wikipedia. | ||
| Uh yeah. | ||
| Catholic hierarchy celebrity. | ||
| This is interesting. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| There's a serious academic encyclopedia of Christianity. | ||
| Um that is uh not allowed on Wikipedia. | ||
| I was surprised to find that counterpunch is not allowed. | ||
| Oh, they're naughty. | ||
| They're naughty. | ||
| Daily caller not allowed. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| Oh, you started. | ||
| Yeah, I did start it. | ||
| Um I've got nothing to do with it now, but I did start it. | ||
| That's interesting. | ||
| Well, this is kind of incredible. | ||
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I never hear about this. | |
| And we don't know who made this decision. | ||
| Mr. X is the name of his account. | ||
| Oh. | ||
| Now he it's edited, of course, as Wikipedia pages are by a whole bunch of other people. | ||
| Life site news not allowed. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Of course, the pro lifers. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's interesting. | ||
| I'm gonna see if this no one talk about this. | ||
| Oh, Sputnik, of course, not allowed. | ||
| Tucky man. | ||
| Search me. | ||
| I don't know why people aren't talking about it. | ||
| It's it's obviously huge news. | ||
| Um, I think it's uh it's simply embarrassing for the left. | ||
| Um, and so the left aren't going to report about it, and uh the the right has been reporting about it. | ||
| TV guide allowed. | ||
| The uns reviewed not allowed. | ||
| TV guide. | ||
| Totally cool. | ||
|
unidentified
|
UNS V Dare not allowed. | |
| It's so funny. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is amazing. | |
| Okay. | ||
| All right. | ||
| You've amused me deeply. | ||
| Okay, I'm so sorry. | ||
| I just had I'm sorry for the uh it's just it's all so incredible to me. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Uh so you number three. | ||
| Right. | ||
| All right, shall I go on then? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Um and I will not interrupt. | ||
| I just can't. | ||
| So to conclude the discussion of number three, um the blacklist should be abolished. | ||
| Diverse sources should be cited um with acknowledgement of how different groups assess their credibility if necessary. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Number four, revive the original neutrality policy. | ||
| Wikipedia must return to genuine neutrality by refusing to take sides on controversial issues. | ||
| Even when one view dominates Wikipedia, uh, well, academia and um mainstream media. | ||
| So um I suppose that one is fairly straightforward. | ||
| That the uh and we've already discussed it quite a bit, that uh the neutrality policy right now um uh defines neutrality in terms of uh what are called significant views um and uh the reliable sources and significant views are significant views according to you know the faculty members of Hobbit and things like that. | ||
| Um and and if if you uh your view is held only at you know conservative seminaries, for example, or other bastions of of uh conservatism, then they're not significant. | ||
| At least that's how it's treated on Wikipedia right now. | ||
| So that needs to be um uh Wikipedia should be a big tent as it used to be, enabling many, many different people to come together, you know, in a a big I just think of it as like old fashioned liberal kumbaya, you know, people should be able to come together and and um talk to each other from radically different points of view and just make sure that their views are all respected on the same page. | ||
| Yeah, it shouldn't just be the most reactionary views, NBC, Harvard, you know, only the most kind of stalwart defenders of this broken project. | ||
| Um it shouldn't just be the College of Cardinals voting here, right? | ||
| So in my opinion. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Yes, yes. | ||
| There's a good way to characterize uh the uh currently um only permitted viewpoint on Wikipedia, uh, and that is with the with the acronym GASP, um, which stands for globalist academic, secular, and progressive. | ||
| Uh and and each one is necessary, and together they just uh give a perfect picture of the viewpoint of Wikipedians today, of most Wikipedians. | ||
| Do they know that they're like representing selling the views of say the Aspen Institute of the Atlantic Council or the CIA or the Washington Post editorial board, like such a tiny minority of the globe's population. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| But the most powerful people in the world, like they're they are the Praetorian Guard protecting the powerful. | ||
| Do they see that? | ||
| I think they do. | ||
| I think a lot of uh of course it's a it's a fairly big group of people, you know, uh in the single digit thousands of regular editors these days. | ||
| I think a lot of those people do know that and they take pride in it, frankly. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| In oppressing the rest of the population on behalf of the richest and most powerful. | ||
| They don't think they're doing that, but yeah. | ||
| That's exactly what they're doing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| By lying to people you oppress them. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Right. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Then number five. | ||
| So just a little throat clearing here, um, a short little uh proposal. | ||
| Repeal ignore all rules. | ||
| So um there is a policy called ignore all rules, which I came up with in the first few days of the project. | ||
| Uh originally I meant it as a joke to encourage newcomers, right? | ||
| So, like if rules make you nervous and uh like you're not sure what to do, then just ignore them and go about your business. | ||
| That's essentially what I said. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's a good rule for responsible, honest people. | ||
| And and this became essentially a cargo cult, you know, over the years, people uh started using this to shield insiders from accountability. | ||
| Um so I made this rule, and so I now declare uh that it should be repealed. | ||
| How has it been used to protect corruption? | ||
| Well generally what happens is if somebody can't think of a covering rule in a special case, but it just seems plausible to the people who are working on an article. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| So this really ought to be against the rules or but whatever, just ignore all rules and they'll just say that, you know, and it's and they usually say in a kind of tongue-in-cheek way, But in in a way that's serious enough to actually have an effect, right? | ||
| But you know, a lot of uh lesser contributors, um, they wouldn't be able to get away with that sort of thing. | ||
| So there's one guy who um said uh at the height of COVID, if there is one serious application of ignore all rules, it should be now. | ||
| Um we should uh be able to ignore all the rules regarding whatever, um, in order to get people to believe that COVID is serious and they they should be jabbed. | ||
| And the vax is the only answer to it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So basically we should if you when you ignore all rules after a while, you're ignoring all principles. | ||
| And they're doing it again in the service. | ||
| Yes, selectively, in the in the service of like the most powerful people in the world. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Um number six, reveal who Wikipedia's leaders are. | ||
| So we said that number one. | ||
| I like that one. | ||
| Um, yes. | ||
| So Wikipedia's most powerful editors remain overwhelmingly anonymous despite wielding enormous influence over one of the world's most powerful media platforms. | ||
| These leaders must be publicly identified for accountability and given liability insurance um as you know uh as um uh volunteers of nonprofits often are. | ||
| So there's no reason why they shouldn't do this. | ||
| If you're wielding real power, I think it's and by the way, I like anonymity online a lot of the time because I think it helps the underdog tell the truth. | ||
| And so I am for anonymity on social media, for example. | ||
| I don't think you should have to register with the government to give your opinions, just to be clear. | ||
| But if you're wielding real institutional power, I think it's fair to require people to say who they are. | ||
| Just like Supreme Court justices have to give their real names, right? | ||
| Right. | ||
| It's it's uh it's a no-brainer. | ||
| If there is one thing that might get the attention of the mainstream media, it seems to me it might be this one. | ||
| I don't think it's widely known that 85% of the uh most powerful accounts on Wikipedia are anonymous. | ||
| How is that allowed? | ||
| No, I know. | ||
| I couldn't agree more. | ||
| It's just disgusting. | ||
| And by the way, there are consequences to having your identity known, I can tell you, and they're not great. | ||
| On the other hand, you know, that's the that's the price that you pay for having influence. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| That's fair. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And and by the way, I don't want those people to be doxxed. | ||
| I'm gonna say it again. | ||
| And and uh, and I'm not saying that the people who are there should be forced to re reveal their identity or anything like that. | ||
| They can resign. | ||
| I agree. | ||
| And then new people can be brought on board and uh and and then maybe if necessary, you could uh pay them a little stipend and uh for their trouble. | ||
| Um they've got they're raising I think something like 200 million dollars a year now, right? | ||
| It's a huge amount of money. | ||
| Because I said I was a donor. | ||
| Yeah, now I get it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Um let the public rate articles. | ||
| That's number seven. | ||
| Wikipedia should implement a public rating and feedback system allowing reader readers to evaluate articles. | ||
| They can't do that now. | ||
| We call it that that's the comment section, but they don't have a comment section. | ||
| They don't have a comment section, they don't have any sort of rating section. | ||
| There are no metrics that they can use. | ||
| They've metricized everything, you know, books on Amazon and you know, thumbs up on um X and um uh, you know, YouTube and whatnot, but not Wikipedia. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And and if there's one thing that's I've never thought of that. | |
| That's so smart. | ||
| Yeah, well, and and look, if there's one uh place where in an actual rating system would matter and actually be important, it would be Wikipedia, because uh we I think you and I agree that Wikipedia does have some decent articles. | ||
| Some great articles. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And and you want to learn about the Falkland Islands? | ||
| You want to learn learn about some bird species? | ||
| Yeah, it's amazing. | ||
| It's ought that's why it's so frustrating. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So so I mean, wouldn't it be nice if there were some independent reviews independent of Wikipedia that um would uh uh you know give the public an a notion of whether they can actually trust the information and uh I actually think that you should be able to identify and even rate the raiders and say, | ||
| okay, these accounts who have rated the uh Trump article very highly are mostly Democrats, and uh those that uh rate the article uh very poorly are mostly Republicans. | ||
| Um, and then you should there should be a system that would enable you to go and and learn what uh the best articles are, um, especially if they're competing articles again um from anybody's point of view. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Um I love that would be nice. | ||
| Let's see. | ||
| Um thesis number eight, end indefinite blocking. | ||
| Wikipedia's practice of blocking accounts permanently is unjust and ideologically motivated. | ||
| So I did uh a little personal investigation last June in a period of two weeks, 47% of the blocks that had been done by Wikipedia were indefinite, which means permanent. | ||
| And uh you can sort of understand some of them because you're reblocking the same people who have already been blocked because they made new accounts, those are called sock puppets, it's still a very, very high number, right? | ||
| And they do, as I have said, block willy-nilly, and they will block permanently. | ||
| I mean, there are people online who who complain um that they were blocked for making grammar corrections, you know. | ||
| Um, I've seen I don't know, three or four uh cases of just that. | ||
| Um I I quote a few in the essay. | ||
| So each of these uh theses, by the way, has a whole essay to go with it, which I very carefully wrote over the last nine months. | ||
| And where can interested people find that? | ||
| They can find it on my user page on Wikipedia. | ||
| Um so just go there. | ||
| I don't know if it'll be on the user page or maybe it will be linked from the user page, but it'll it'll be on Wikipedia itself. | ||
| So I actually want to take the debate to them, you know. | ||
| I still have an account in good and good standing for now. | ||
| We'll see if they block me over this. | ||
| I'm not sure. | ||
| Um, but uh uh but I would like to start a debate there. | ||
| Um so that's why I've posted it there. | ||
| I also have a version of the nine theses on my blog. | ||
| Um, and uh it's it's identical, but it also has links to archived versions of all the resources that I cite. | ||
| So they can't like take anything down um without people knowing. | ||
| Um let's see. | ||
| So um I think that basically indefinite blocks should be extremely rare. | ||
| They should require multiple administrators to agree, because right now one person can for arbitrary reasons practically block another account, um, an account in good standing that might have had like thousands of edits, um without really any meaningful recourse, right? | ||
| So at least let's have a panel of people convened if you want to block somebody permanently. | ||
| Um and of course, uh you should be able to uh appeal your permanent block if you are permanently blocked every maybe three, six, maybe twelve months, right? | ||
| So the the idea is it's only fair to give people the opportunity to say, well, I've reformed, I'm not going to do what I've done uh before. | ||
| People you remember the um the movie Escape from Alcatraz. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Um there's a character in it, um who's befriended by Clint Eastwood's character, uh, who's this great painter, and he makes uh a painting of the uh warden. | ||
| The warden sees a copy of this as he's snooping around in a cell. | ||
| Um, and uh it's an unflattering picture of the warden. | ||
| So um that man's uh his painting supplies are taken away by the the warden, and they have so few joys in this place, it's like living death. | ||
| Um and so the uh the painter then commit suicide. | ||
| Um a lot of people feel very strongly about Wikipedia, because it is a significant hobby in some cases, you know, in the way that like I play Irish fiddle, that's like my one of my big hobbies, and I don't know, you're fly fishing, I guess. | ||
| If you're to take this away uh from people forever, you know, just disallow them, then you know it can be really upsetting to people. | ||
| One person, there's a story I I quote in the essay of of a guy who uh came close to suicide when his account was blocked. | ||
| And you know how they responded. | ||
| Uh they responded, Wikipedia is not therapy. | ||
| There's an essay to this effect, you know. | ||
| Um Wikipedia is not therapy. | ||
| No, it's cruelty, obviously. | ||
| That's basically what they're implying. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Okay. | ||
| Right. | ||
| It's a right, it's a way to hurt people. | ||
| So that that should stop. | ||
| They should be nicer, frankly, to the people who are spending so many hours on uh uh the system. | ||
| Number nine, adopt a legislative process. | ||
| So if you take all eight um together, you might very well ask, how can these changes be made? | ||
| So Wikipedia is extremely institutionally conservative. | ||
| It's hard to change from within. | ||
| It's the DMV, I noticed. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So what I propose is that because they lack any method of uh major reform, there is nothing like an editorial council on Wikipedia. | ||
| Um because it needs major reform now, especially, it needs an elected editorial legislature with real powers, powers to implement reforms established through Wikipedia's first constitutional convention. | ||
| So Wikipedia should treat itself as a kind of polity, which until now has been a strange mixture for for years and years I have said this. | ||
| It is a strange mixture of oligarchy and anarchy, right? | ||
| Like America itself. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Um so and what they really need to do is have a serious uh constitutional convention, take their own governance, editorial governance seriously. | ||
| And I'm not saying this would be run by the Wikimedia Foundation. | ||
| It would be run by the volunteers. | ||
| Of course, the Wikimedia Foundation would pay for the Constitutional Convention and also for the travel expenses of people who later come together in an editorial assembly, which would meet face-to-face. | ||
| Right, because these people have to be uh identified, one person, one vote. | ||
| And for that matter, I also say that uh if you vote for the people in such an editorial assembly, then you have to be identified, not necessarily publicly, but to someone to ensure that there is indeed only one person one vote. | ||
| Because right now that's one of the big problems about voting in the Wikipedia community, because Wikipedia is anonymous. | ||
| It's only too possible for people to run multiple sock puppets, or they run separate accounts that they pretend belong to different people, right? | ||
| And then that gives them more than one vote. | ||
| That's not fair. | ||
| No. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So it should be uh the the editorial assembly, I'm saying, should be run face to face, you know, can meet in different pace uh places in the world. | ||
| And um, you know, people could be paid a stipend um for for both travel and just like an ordinary legislature. | ||
| I would donate to that. | ||
| I donate in a real way to that. | ||
| Because what you're, I think what you're really saying, which is what Martin Luther was really saying, is this is really serious. | ||
| This is worth reforming because it it matters. | ||
| Yes, it really matters. | ||
| It's not all bad. | ||
| By the way, the idea of Wikipedia is a beautiful idea, an important idea. | ||
| You know, broadcasting truth at scale, like that's just always a good thing, right? | ||
| And so it's worth saving. | ||
| It's imperative to save it. | ||
| And like running it like out of your garage without the safeguards that you've described, just makes you prey, of course, to the worst people in the world. | ||
| Pure firms, intelligence agencies, paid liars. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| Um I think that uh if there is one of all of these theses, if there is one that uh the mainstream media and governments around the world might be able to get behind, it is this idea that they need to get their house in order and um start um uh have a council of people that take responsibility for the shape of policy. | ||
| That's exactly right. | ||
| That's exactly right. | ||
| I mean, because like if you don't like Google, you could say, well, you know, it's Sandar Pashai's fault. | ||
| If you don't like any publicly traded company, at least you can identify the person making decisions or responsible for the decisions. | ||
| But here you have this shadowy, incredibly influential institution. | ||
| Um, and you there's no recoil. | ||
| You can't even be mad at someone because you don't know who they are. | ||
| Right? | ||
| Larry Sanger, I so appreciate the seriousness with which you take this, the brilliance that allowed you to create this in the first place. | ||
| And I hope that people listen to you. | ||
| I hope they understand how much it matters. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I appreciate it. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Good to see you again. | ||
| I guess the third time we've done an interview. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Fourth, actually. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Fourth. | |
| Okay, okay. | ||
| I care about this. | ||
| So I hope other people start to care too. | ||
| Say a second time uh in person. | ||
| So yes. | ||
| You're making me feel crazy. | ||
| Um I'm obviously obsessed. | ||
| But there's a reason I am, and it's nothing to do with me. | ||
| It has to do with history and the collective memory, which is another way of saying your civilization. | ||
| It can't exist unless it understands itself. | ||
| I I appreciate your interest and your support. | ||
| I I um I'm very grateful for it. | ||
| Well, I mean it. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| So it turns out that YouTube is suppressing this show. | ||
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| That's what they do, but on another level, it's shocking with everything that's going on in the world right now, all the change taking place in our economy and our politics with the wars on the cusp of fighting right now. | ||
| Google has decided you should have less information rather than more. | ||
| And that is totally wrong. | ||
| It's immoral. | ||
| What can you do about it? | ||
| Well, we could whine about it. | ||
| That's a waste of time. | ||
| We're not in charge of Google, or we could find a way around it, a way that you could actually get information that is true, not intentionally deceptive. | ||
| The way to do that on YouTube, we think is to subscribe to our channel. | ||
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