Rightguide
Prof Triggernometry
- Joined
- Feb 7, 2017
- Posts
- 67,069
I've mentioned this in the past but now the subject is being pursued in detail:
Where Fake News Is Born: How Wikipedia Spreads Hoaxes
T.D. Adler5 Aug 2020
As Big Tech suppresses conservative views in the name of fighting “fake news,” tech titans like Google and Facebook turn to Wikipedia to provide another “fix” to the problem. Despite messaging from Wikipedia’s owners encouraging this trend, over the years, Wikipedia and its sister sites have pushed hoaxes and false information into the media and academia.
There are multiple notable cases in which media reports and academic studies copying off Wikipedia were used to support the claim on the online encyclopedia in a form of circular sourcing named “citogenesis.”
Ever since its inception, Wikipedia has sold itself as the online encyclopedia “anyone can edit” and its owners have attributed the site’s reputed reliability to this factor. Past academic studies have presented Wikipedia as a reliable source of information and Silicon Valley has seized on this reputation to assuage concerns about their platforms being used to disseminate false information. However, various incidents in Wikipedia’s history show that its open-editing model not only has an abysmal track record for preventing long-running falsehoods, but also that it has been a source of fake news itself. There are notable cases in which media reports and academic studies copying off Wikipedia were used to support the claim on the online encyclopedia in a form of circular sourcing named “citogenesis.”
Breitbart News has collected examples of hoax data on Wikipedia that then became fake news in the media, in some cases even in medical journals:
Read the fake news list here:
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/08/05/where-fake-news-is-born-how-wikipedia-spreads-hoaxes/
Where Fake News Is Born: How Wikipedia Spreads Hoaxes
T.D. Adler5 Aug 2020
As Big Tech suppresses conservative views in the name of fighting “fake news,” tech titans like Google and Facebook turn to Wikipedia to provide another “fix” to the problem. Despite messaging from Wikipedia’s owners encouraging this trend, over the years, Wikipedia and its sister sites have pushed hoaxes and false information into the media and academia.
There are multiple notable cases in which media reports and academic studies copying off Wikipedia were used to support the claim on the online encyclopedia in a form of circular sourcing named “citogenesis.”
Ever since its inception, Wikipedia has sold itself as the online encyclopedia “anyone can edit” and its owners have attributed the site’s reputed reliability to this factor. Past academic studies have presented Wikipedia as a reliable source of information and Silicon Valley has seized on this reputation to assuage concerns about their platforms being used to disseminate false information. However, various incidents in Wikipedia’s history show that its open-editing model not only has an abysmal track record for preventing long-running falsehoods, but also that it has been a source of fake news itself. There are notable cases in which media reports and academic studies copying off Wikipedia were used to support the claim on the online encyclopedia in a form of circular sourcing named “citogenesis.”
Breitbart News has collected examples of hoax data on Wikipedia that then became fake news in the media, in some cases even in medical journals:
Read the fake news list here:
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/08/05/where-fake-news-is-born-how-wikipedia-spreads-hoaxes/
