World’s richest person wanted to ‘purge’ propaganda from Wikipedia, so he created a compendium of racist disinformation

World’s richest person wanted to ‘purge’ propaganda from Wikipedia, so he created a compendium of racist disinformation

Entries in Elon Musk’s new online encyclopedia variously promote white nationalist talking points, praise neo-Nazis and other far-right figures, promote racist ideologies and white supremacist regimes, and attempt to revive concepts and approaches historically associated with scientific racism, a Guardian analysis has found.

The tech billionaire and Donald Trump ally recently launched xAI’s AI-generated Grokipedia with a promise that it would “purge out the propaganda” he claims infests Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia that Musk has often attacked but that has long been a key feature of the internet.

Grokipedia, now with more than 800,000 entries, is generated and, according to a note on each entry, “factchecked” by Grok, xAI’s large language AI model.

  • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    8 hours ago

    Well, more funding for sure.

    I’m sure if the people that started Conservapedia largely because they were incensed about the academic versions of dates [1] that didn’t center their little book club - CE/BCE - had much more funding they’d have the same level of conspiracy theories and racism.

    [1] In their own words:

    Conservapedia, launched on November 21, 2006, is a conservative, family-friendly Wiki encyclopedia. It was founded by teacher and attorney Andrew Schlafly with the help of several students from his fall 2006 World History class. In May 2008, Schlafly and some of his homeschooled students appeared on the CBC news program The Hour (see: Videos on Conservapedia).

    When a student handed in her paper using the date-markers “BCE” and "CE” from Wikipedia, Schlafly realized that Wikipedia, despite its claim of neutrality, contained bias against the achievements of Christianity and conservatism. Other occasions of liberal bias, including the reversion of factual edits about the 2005 Kansas Evolution Hearings, led to the creation and launch of Conservapedia.

    Emphasis is mine to highlight just what fucking snowflakes we are dealing with here. I’m sure fElon’s motivations have a very similar snowflake quality.

    • xyzzy@lemmy.today
      6·
      4 hours ago

      What’s really egregious is how we’ve abandoned the Code of Hammurabi. Despite the claims of impartiality, it’s clear that the US judicial system contains bias against Babylonians.

      Botanical gardens don’t even mention the Hanging Gardens anymore as the source of their inspiration! Marduk help us