Hold on to your keyboards, folks, because Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia we all know, just got a whole lot spicier! Larry Sanger, the co-founder of Wikipedia, dropped a bombshell recently, revealing that intelligence agencies have been tinkering with Wikipedia articles since as far back as 2007.
It seems like the CIA and FBI have been playing a game of online Mad Libs, but this time, it’s not for fun.
In an eye-opening conversation with journalist Glenn Greenwald on the ‘System Update’ podcast, Sanger lamented how the platform he helped create has turned into a puppet of the left-liberal establishment, with the CIA, FBI, and other intelligence agencies pulling the strings. Forget just editing for typos or inaccuracies; these guys are playing “information warfare.”
According to Sanger, the evidence points to CIA and FBI computers being used to sneakily edit Wikipedia articles way back in 2008. But don’t be fooled into thinking they’ve stopped; oh no, this is a classic case of “once a Wiki-editor, always a Wiki-editor.”
Remember Virgil Griffith, the programming student with a talent for sleuthing? In 2007, he released WikiScanner, a tool that could track Wikipedia editors’ IP addresses. What did he discover? The CIA, FBI, and a slew of corporations and government agencies were hard at work clearing the encyclopedia of any potentially damaging information. How many people died in the Iraq War? Scrubbed. Guantanamo Bay aerial and satellite imagery? Erased. Even previous CIA directors couldn’t resist the urge to give themselves a virtual high-five with some self-congratulatory modifications.
Sanger makes no apologies for suggesting that intelligence organizations snuggle up to the powerful actors, easily selling their agendas. If they can’t find a willing spokesperson, they’ll simply train their own Wikipedia warriors.
Think again if you thought this was a unique incidence. Earlier this year, X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk released a trove of documents showing how the platform’s former executives colluded with the FBI to remove content the agency wanted hidden, assisted the US military’s online influence campaigns, and censored “anti-Ukraine narratives” on behalf of multiple US intelligence agencies.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also admitted that Facebook, the biggest social media platform on Earth, censored accurate information that was damaging to President Joe Biden’s 2020 election campaign at the direct request of the FBI.
So there you have it, people. The free world has been preoccupied with shadow games and information warfare. Who knew Wikipedia was a battleground, with us all caught in the crossfire? What is the story’s moral? Always have your skepticism goggles on when browsing the web, because you never know who is changing the facts.
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