He generally shows most of the signs of the misinformation accounts:

  • Wants to repeatedly tell basically the same narrative and nothing else
  • Narrative is fundamentally false
  • Not interested in any kind of conversation or in learning that what he’s posting is backwards from the values he claims to profess

I also suspect that it’s not a coincidence that this is happening just as the Elon Musks of the world are ramping up attacks on Wikipedia, specially because it is a force for truth in the world that’s less corruptible than a lot of the others, and tends to fight back legally if someone tries to interfere with the free speech or safety of its editors.

Anyway, YSK. I reported him as misinformation, but who knows if that will lead to any result.

Edit: Number of people real salty that I’m talking about this: Lots

    • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOP
      3·
      2 months ago

      Yeah, there’s kind of a Poe’s Law situation.

      A lot of the sincere tankies, though, at least want to talk about what they’re into, and have elaborate reasons why it’s all true. The low-effort “I can’t even be bothered to try to mount a defense, I just wanted to say Wikipedia is doxing its users and kowtowing to fascist governments, and now that I’ve said it my task is done” behavior is a little more indicative of a disingenuous propaganda account in my experience.

      • Serinus@lemmy.world
        1·
        2 months ago

        elaborate reasons why it’s all true

        Usually it’s “just read these 10 hundred-year-old books” that they absolutely have not read.

        And if you ask them to make a point from those books, they can’t. Apparently they’re only comprehensible as a whole.

    • socsa@piefed.socialEnglish
      1·
      2 months ago

      I am pretty convinced that .ml is legitimately used as a Russian troll training ground before they get promoted to Facebook and reddit.

      • dx1@lemmy.world
        0·
        2 months ago

        Meanwhile, at .ml:

        Since Pi is infinite and non-repeating, would that mean any finite sequence of non-repeating numbers should appear somewhere in Pi?

        • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOP
          1·
          2 months ago

          That’s actually a really good way to illustrate what is wrong with lemmy.ml.

          On math stack exchange:

          Let me summarize the things that have been said which are true and add one more thing.

          1. 𝜋 is not known to have this property, but it is expected to be true.
          2. This property does not follow from the fact that the decimal expansion of 𝜋 is infinite and does not repeat.

          On lemmy.ml:

          0.101001000100001000001 . . .

          I’m infinite and non-repeating. Can you find a 2 in me?

          You can’t prove that there isn’t one somewhere

          Why couldn’t you?

          Because you’d need to search through an infinite number of digits (unless you have access to the original formula)

          And:

          Not just any all finite number sequence appear in pi

          And:

          Yes.

          And if you’re thinking of a compression algorithm, nope, pigeonhole principle.

          All heavily upvoted.

        • vga@sopuli.xyz
          01·
          2 months ago

          Meanwhile actually at .ml: let’s deify a murderer because he killed somebody we don’t like and he’s fucking gorgeous. Nevermind that he’s a rich antiwoke Musk-lover, murder is cool.

  • beefbot@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    1·
    2 months ago

    DOWNLOAD A COPY OF WIKIPEDIA NOW. RIGHT NOW. DO NOT WAIT.

    WIKIPEDIA WILL BE RUINED IN (just guessing) THREE MONTHS (I hope I’m wrong)

    • webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
      2·
      2 months ago

      Do download a copy of Wikipedia but give them some credit. This isn’t the first nor last attack on information freedom (see internet archive)

    • M600@lemmy.world
      1·
      2 months ago

      Can I get a TLDR. I’m on the page about downloading it, but there are so many files to download which makes me think I am looking at the wrong stuff.

      • ChogChog@lemmy.world
        1·
        2 months ago

        Wikipedia is pretty large now, even for text only versions. So the most recommended option to download/read an offline version is by using “Kiwix”.

        Kiwix is a reader designed to open and operate archived websites like Wikipedia that are stored in a .zim (think z-file compression but for websites).

        Kiwix is open sourced and readers can be installed on your pc, phones, self-hosted as a website, etc.

        You can check out their Kiwix library for a list of curated zim’s beyond Wikipedia that are updated on a schedule

        You can also use their zimit tool to archive websites on your own as well.

        It took a day for me to grasp all these concepts since they were designed mostly for Wikipedia archival purposes but it’s amazing how robust the tools and community are.

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
    1·
    2 months ago

    The misinfo crowd has been twiddling their collective thumbs since the election and trump winning. Can’t make up bs about egg and gas prices anymore. They’re half-ass trying to incite intergenerational conflict between X, Z, millenials, etc. Guess they found a new target. Exact same MO. Repeat the claim ad nauseam, refuse to acknowledge any contrary argument, their argument is objectively false.

  • Shelbyeileen@lemmy.world
    1·
    2 months ago

    I do the research and script writing for a documentary company. In 2023, I noticed that the pages of serial killers I’d been researching, started mentioning political affiliation in the top paragraph… but they all said Democrat (or socialst, communist sympathizer, anti-fascist, etc). Then, one of the murderers I was researching, who was literally a Republican politician who killed his wife , said Democrat and I had a team investigate. It got corrected, but we have no idea if it was one person or a group that changed the pages. Someone out there wants murderers to be associated with democrats.

  • Supervisor194@lemmy.world
    0·
    2 months ago

    Interesting all this WP news I’m hearing today. Last week I downloaded the entirety of Wikipedia. Anyone can do it, the base archive (no pictures) is only about 25G, although the torrent is slow AF, took me… almost 2 weeks to download it.

    I did this because I feel like this might be the last chance to get a version of it that has any vestige of the old order in it, the old order being “trying to stick to ideals and express truth rather than rewriting history to the fascists’ specifications.”

    I’d love to be wrong, but if I’m not, I feel like it will potentially be a good reference in the future if needed.

    • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOP
      1·
      2 months ago

      This is in the news because Wikipedia is refusing to rewrite history to the fascists’ specifications.

      https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdrdydkypv7o

      It’s possible that India will succeed at eroding by a little bit Wikipedia’s resistance to having things rewritten because of various powerful people demanding it. But, if you’re looking for an organization that’s resistant against those demands, I don’t think you will be able to find one that is anywhere near the equal of Wikipedia in terms of the scale at which it operates combined with the resistance it puts up when people do this.

  • socsa@piefed.socialEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    On lemmy, this is far more likely to be some weird tankie shit about western propaganda. Though it is definitely noteworthy that the far right and far left seem to push a lot of the same misinformation on here.

    Also, in general lemmy trolls are super easy to spot because they don’t do anything else. All they do is whine about democrats or post Russian propaganda and never engage on any other topics.

    • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
      0·
      2 months ago

      Yeah horseshoe theory is an actual thing and it shows hard here on Lemmy. Same lies, same taxticts, different extremists.

  • 4am@lemm.ee
    0·
    2 months ago

    It’s funny that most of the .world posts are like

    1. That didn’t happen, you’re lying for internet points
    2. Actually let’s talk about how tAnKiEs don’t actually read theory lmao
    • catsarebadpeople@sh.itjust.works
      0·
      2 months ago

      If by “most” you mean something I’ve never seen then yeah. You just made something up cuz your butt hurts. Not surprising in the least.

      • 4am@lemm.ee
        1·
        2 months ago

        Maybe I misspoke; I meant “the commenters in this thread” because I was definitely reacting to some comments i saw here

  • RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    I don’t know exactly what is going on with WikiPedia right this moment, mostly because I am neither glued to the news nor to WikiPedia, and I have no idea who this user you talk about is or what they are saying. However, WikiPedia isnt exactly a 100% trustworthy source, and it never really was.

    Calling WikiPedia a “force for truth” is kind of silly, in my opinion. It can be helpful with basic information or finding potential sources, but it is definitely not something you should just immediately take everything on the site at face value. Within the last maybe 10 years or so, the credibility of its sources have started to come into question, at least on some of their recently authored/edited articles. It certainly doesnt help that literally anyone can edit most pages, and that WikiPedia is not a verifiably neutral information source on most things. What I mean by this is that, WikiPedia might list both positive and negative reception about a certain film or video game, for example, but they usually wont mention whether the negative points are outliers or whether there is overwhelmingly more positive reception except if there is a controversy section. This gives a surface appearance of being neutral, but actually skews toward whichever side is the dissenting opinion. For video games and film, they at least list reviews which can kind of mitigate this, but on articles regarding history or art, you cant exactly put reviews on historian/artist opinions. This can lead (and has lead) to some instances of sources quoting themselves (which I think is against WikiPedia rules?) and other hilarity.

    • stinky@redlemmy.comEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      It brings tons of information to the masses, all over the world, in every language, for free, without ads. Shut the fuck up.

      • RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        Yes it does. But not all of that information is always true. Wikipedia pages are vandalized all the time, people quote sources that are later revealed as made up or not credible, these are all things that happen everywhere, WikiPedia is not immune to this. That is why I said WikiPedia is not a “force for truth.” It can be correct, but can you guarantee that every time you go to WikiPedia, the information on any given page will always be 100% correct? This is all I meant.

        • BlackRoseAmongThorns@slrpnk.net
          0·
          2 months ago

          i would call being resistant to misinformation, being a force against misinformation, is that enough to warrant calling it a force for truth?

          They do it for free, too, what more you can ask for? Well you can unreasonably ask them, these people, humans, fallible biological machines, to “be” correct 100% of the time, even when moderators may not be available, even when people didn’t yet report misinfo, something you’d never ask anyone else to do or be.

          Oh wait you did ask that, so I think there’s a very good reason to believe you don’t really care for what you preach.

          • RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            2 months ago

            Do you ever go back to a WikiPedia article after you read it to check if it has been updated? Yeah, didn’t think so. Most people don’t. Thats why there is danger in just believing everything on WikiPedia because its on there and its free. Its not a bad resource, but it isn’t always a good source either.

            But obviously you and others have some weird fetish regarding WikiPedia, so I guess this is where the conversation stops. People here be making it out like I am saying WikiPedia is evil and that is definitely not what I am saying, but I suppose on Lemmy it doesn’t really matter. People believe whatever they want to regardless.

  • technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    0·
    2 months ago

    Wikipedia is just another website run by some privileged dickheads and their mods.

    I’m not bothering to argue whether it’s better or worse than other websites.

    But only a fool would trust it or believe that it’s inherently “good”.