11 votes

Facebook, Axios and NBC paid to manage their reputation on Wikipedia

5 comments

  1. [2]
    talklittle
    Link
    Reddit has done this as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Reddit#Request_to_update_History
    • Exemplary
    5 votes
    1. Deimos
      (edited )
      Link Parent
      Interesting, the editor that wrote that is Rhiannon and they said "As I do have a financial conflict of interest, since I'm making this suggestion on behalf of Reddit as part of my work at Beutler...

      Interesting, the editor that wrote that is Rhiannon and they said "As I do have a financial conflict of interest, since I'm making this suggestion on behalf of Reddit as part of my work at Beutler Ink, I won't make any edits to the article myself."

      Their user page includes:

      I work at Beutler Ink with User:WWB Too, User:Inkian Jason and User:Danilo Two (and previously worked with User:ChrisPond, User:Morzabeth and User:Heatherer), and like those accounts, I've set up this one only for making contributions to articles or topics where I may have a financial conflict of interest or vested interest.

      Beutler Ink calls themselves the "top Wikipedia Agency in the US".

      Edit: they also proposed a large number of rewrites to sections of Steve Huffman's page, rewriting pretty much the entire article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Steve_Huffman#Request_to_update_Career_section

      3 votes
  2. [2]
    vaddi
    Link
    Why does everything on the Internet have to be corrupted and turned for someone's profit in the end? I still remember when my middle school teachers continously warned students to not cite stuff...

    Why does everything on the Internet have to be corrupted and turned for someone's profit in the end? I still remember when my middle school teachers continously warned students to not cite stuff from Wikipedia because anyone could had written it. Fast forward to the present, lots of university professors say that the mathematics pages on Wikipedia are really good starting points to learn about a topic. And now it seems that by the time I have children of my own I will have to warn them to read the Talk page of any Wikipeadia article before consuming the information there. This is just scary.

    5 votes
    1. Amarok
      Link Parent
      We've put profit on a pedestal and foolishly declared that greed is good. That might turn out to be humanity's worst, and potentially final, mistake. Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.

      Why does everything on the Internet have to be corrupted and turned for someone's profit in the end?

      We've put profit on a pedestal and foolishly declared that greed is good. That might turn out to be humanity's worst, and potentially final, mistake.

      Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.

      1 vote
  3. SourceContribute
    Link
    I keep getting emails that land in the spam box that are basically offering the same services. I've had someone hire me for web design and then one day ask me to update their wikipedia page as...

    The vast majority of the people who propose and make changes to Wikipedia are volunteers. A few people, however, have figured out how to manipulate Wikipedia’s supposedly neutral system to turn a profit.

    That’s Sussman’s business. And in just the past few years, companies including Axios, NBC, Nextdoor and Facebook’s PR firm have all paid him to manipulate public perception using a tool most people would never think to check

    I keep getting emails that land in the spam box that are basically offering the same services. I've had someone hire me for web design and then one day ask me to update their wikipedia page as well. Wikipedia is a powerful source for fact-checking and knowledge and defending it needs to be a priority. There should be more outreach and courses on what's appropriate in terms of editing.

    2 votes