Facebook and Google must do more to support Wikipedia

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From Wired:

The digital commons has become a common problem, clogged by disinformation, stripped of privacy and squeezed by insatiable shareholders. Online propagandists stoke violence, data brokers sway elections, and our most intimate personal information is for sale to the highest bidder. Faced with these difficulties, big tech is increasingly turning to Wikipedia for support.

You may not realise how ubiquitous Wikipedia is in your everyday life, but its open, collaboratively-curated data is used across semantic, search and structured data platforms  on the web. Voice assistants such as Siri, Alexa and Google Home source Wikipedia articles for general knowledge questions; Google’s knowledge panel features Wikipedia content for snippets and essential facts; Quora contributes to and utilises the Wikidata open data project to connect topics and improve user recommendations.

More recently, YouTube and Facebook have turned to Wikipedia for a new reason: to address their issues around fake news and conspiracy theories. YouTube said that they would begin linking to Wikipedia articles from conspiracy videos, in order to give users additional – often corrective – information about the topic of the video. And Facebook rolled out a feature using Wikipedia’s content to give users more information about the publication source of articles appearing in their feeds.

In one sense, we at Wikimedia are happy to see technology companies recognise the value created by Wikipedia’s non-commercial, voluntary model. After all, Wikipedia’s mission is all about making it possible for everyone to learn and share what they know, and that includes helping people debunk nonsense on the internet. But free knowledge isn’t free. Building Wikipedia takes time, labour and resources.

. . . .

But at a deeper level, Wikipedia works because people are generous. Millions of people have contributed their time and effort to create and curate tens of millions of articles simply to share knowledge with the world. And they want that knowledge to be free for everyone. But even the most altruistic creator appreciates a nod for their work and the resources to keep going. Everyone knows the difference between tending a community garden for the use of their neighbours, and tending it for a company to throw a corporate picnic.

According to the Internet Health Report, issued by the Mozilla Foundation (the non-profit that builds the open, privacy-respecting web browser Firefox), “more people are opening their eyes to the real impact the internet has on our societies, economies and personal wellbeing.” As a society, we’re finally beginning to understand the negative side of our connected society: how much our personal data is exposed, how widely it is used and abused, and the impact that exploitation has on our lives and our societies.

This wasn’t the internet in which Wikipedia came of age, and we don’t believe it needs to be the internet of our future. Like public parks and free museums, the internet was built as a common resource, on open standards, with an ambition to connect people and share knowledge. But like any commons, it was vulnerable to overuse, exploitation and commodification. If we want to reverse this trend and restore the internet to the public interest, we must act together.

As companies draw on Wikipedia for knowledge – and as a bulwark against bad information – we believe they too have an opportunity to be generous. At Wikimedia, we already love and deeply appreciate the millions of people around the world who make generous charitable contributions because they believe in our values. But we also believe that we deserve lasting, commensurate support from the organisations that derive significant and sustained financial value from our work.

. . . .

But this work isn’t free. If Wikipedia is being asked to help hold back the ugliest parts of the internet, from conspiracy theories to propaganda, then the commons needs sustained, long-term support – and that support should come from those with the biggest monetary stake in the health of our shared digital networks.

The companies which rely on the standards we develop, the libraries we maintain, and the knowledge we curate should invest back. And they should do so with significant, long-term commitments that are commensurate with our value we create. After all, it’s good business: the long-term stability of the commons means we’ll be around for continued use for many years to come.

Link to the rest at Wired

10 thoughts on “Facebook and Google must do more to support Wikipedia”

  1. “Facebook and Google must do more to support Wikipedia”

    Why is Wikipedia going to give them more control over what’s on Wikipedia in exchange?

    While I ‘trust’ Wikipedia slightly more than I do PayPal (no, I don’t and won’t be doing PayPal until they are regulated more like an actual bank), the fact that Wikipedia has people going in and changing the ‘facts’ they don’t like means it’s not always the safest counter to falsehood (that’s if it ever had the correct info in the first place as you have non-experts putting in what they ‘think’ might be right about a subject).

    .

    Famous last words: “Wikipedia says it’s editable …”

  2. Trusting wikipedia on anything important is for morons. It should be assumed that they are censoring content for propaganda purposes. Maybe use them for things where there is no credible way to tell a lie, but be aware that they are an unreliable source.

    All information gathering should be done with an eye for sources and methods.

    Paranoid rumor would be much less plausible if the mainstream media had done a better, more disciplined, job of sticking to credible lies. The ‘trustworthy news sources’ made the space for these other disinformation problems. A pathological liar will create credibility issues for themselves because people will add things up, sometimes even when they are in willful denial. If the news media had adjusted their fraud to the new environment, a lot of us would still be at the ‘is it me’ stage.

    A bunch of competing disinformation sources with contrary agendas is probably better. Even if a huge pain to deal with.

    I’m not a fan of Facebook or Google.

    If 100k in Russian ad buys on Facebook is a big deal, what about foreign entanglement with or stakes in Google, Facebook, Wikimedia, Disney, and so forth? Should companies providing information services to Americans be required to be 100% American owned, and without any financial or business ties to any foreign government? Or is that too great a burden, and too difficult to implement?

  3. Facebook, Google, and Wikipedia – and Wired – are all politically far left, and the first three are known for censoring or deplatforming anyone not in line with their agenda. And Facebook and Google pay the Southern Poverty Law Center, itself a hate group, to police “hate speech.”

    “Sure, seems legit!”

    • How can privately owned companies sensor anyone.
      If you don’t like Facebook Google Wikipedia, you can always go somewhere else, such as a number of blogs and other Conservative online platforms.

      • It’s not that hard. They simply refuse to allow certain views to be expressed on platforms they control.

        • So?
          People with different political orientations Should start their own websites if they feel a need is being neglected, it could become quite lucrative if handled well .
          The only reason companies like Facebook and Google are so important in the first place is because of customer loyalty, that can change and I would argue, in the case of Google, that already is changing.
          There have also been a number of attempts to start a Wikipedia like site with less bias, though im not sure how well they’re doing.
          I guess my point is that instead of complaining about censorship, groups and organisations should start their own platforms to counter what they see as liberal bias and this will eventually lead to the downfall of the Mega tech giants.

    • Pravda backing up their stories with those on Izvestia. Sure, that will make everything credible.

      Why not just link directly to The Huffington Post, Vox, Slate, etc.? The writers are the same.

  4. So now YouTube is going to start putting links on videos which it deems to be guilty of spreading conspiratorial misinformation. Who the hell made YouTube the judge of that?

    • No, they’ll just add links to those pointing the way they like, those they don’t like they’ll simply find/make up a reason to pull …

  5. Wikipedia is a feeble source of factual information, and well-slanted whenever there is the least excuse.

    They are better than nothing in the items furthest from political abuse, but that’s not really saying a great deal. Whenever you look at a topic for which you yourself have reasonable expertise, you will usually find much to make you shake your head.

    Hard to beat the famous 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica for anything not outmoded by current technology. Now there was evenhanded, erudite, and accessible material by the experts in their fields.

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