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Russia Poisons Wikipedia

Russia Poisons Wikipedia

exceptione

Comments (153)

  • regularization
    Look back to the earliest version of the history and information of various countries on Wikipedia. They say themselves they were from US State department or CIA histories of those countries.I was editing a page on the US massacre of civilians in No Gun Ri, Korea with some IP at CENTCOM removing my edits. I spend my off tine trying to send in facts of what happened, my taxes from my on time pay for some propaganda arm of the US armed forces to remove it.As the US kidnaps the president of Venezuela and his wife, blockades Cuba, bombs Iran and on and on, great to know someone else is smearing Russia to further my tax dollars funding the endless war on their borders too.
  • pet_the_bird
    I think the article tried to refer to this link https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.10663 As I understand from scanning the paper, the authors attempt to determine differences between the Russian wikipedia articles and the articles on the Russian fork. They show that articles on the fork that were that differ from RU wikipedia have a significantly higher number of edits on RU wikipedia. The authors suggest that these may be signs of manipulations, however, it may not have affected the quality negatively (as stated in the discussion).I do not find state sponsored activity on Wikipedia unlikely, but I am not convinced there is clear evidence that Russia poisoned wikipedia succesfully.
  • the-mitr
  • tim333
    A problem with Russia in particular is they put so much money into that stuff. Estimate here>[According to] Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, Russia spends some $2bn a year on cognitive warfare https://ecfr.eu/publication/from-shield-to-sword-europes-off...
  • recursivedoubts
    Thank goodness my government would never stoop to such levels.
  • jancsika
    > Yesterday, I read a Wikipedia page for a book I’m about to review.Without buying a new copy of that Wikipedia page on Amazon and comparing it to an old copy from Ebay, there's just no easy way to verify this.It'd be neat if there were a way to take every letter of these different versions of the Wikipedia articles and pretend they are numbers. Then subtract them from each other, and collate all the ones that don't come out zero.The author would still have to publish this "difference article" to Amazon so we could universally locate the resource. So I totally understand why they didn't do that expensive work. It's just frustrating nobody has solved this rocket science-level problem in 2026.
  • esbranson
    Too bad they can't really remove entrenched information about their government systems, which are becoming easier to gain understanding of, often with official assistance. It is only going to increase despair in their country and without as knowledge of its formal descriptions get more detached from knowledge of actual federal subject governance, with no democratic outlets for change. Though I'm sure in the central okrug, and even in the Pecherskyi raion, they don't realize this.
  • Isamu
    Genuinely interesting strategy, the term “poison” should really apply more to AI that depend on Wikipedia for training>This strategy, in a likely attempt to evade global sanctions on Russian news outlets, is now poisoning AI tools and Wikipedia. By posing as authoritative sources on Wikipedia and reliable news outlets cited by popular large language models (LLMs), Russian tropes are rewriting the story of Russia’s war in Ukraine. The direct consequence is the exposure of Western audiences to content containing pro-Kremlin, anti-Ukrainian, and anti-Western messaging when using AI chatbots that rely on LLMs trained on material such as Wikipedia.
  • CrzyLngPwd
    Why hone in on Russia, when practically every country does it?
  • giardini
    Well, back to Britanica!
  • britta
    I want the equivalent of Mythos for Wikipedia - I want world-class tooling that helps human editors efficiently find, prioritize, and mitigate attempts to add deceptive and low-quality content - and I know it's possible to build this kind of thing. A whole bunch of long-time editors, including myself, are excited about building better tools, trying a range of experiments. This is one of the really fun parts about a community-built encyclopedia: you can help build tools too! A few interesting experiments - you can also use these as a Wikipedia reader (some require logging in):* Cite Unseen (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cite_Unseen): show icons in an article's References section that indicate what the Wikipedia community knows about that source, such as whether a website is a known unreliable source - such as whether a source is banned on Russian and/or Ukrainian Wikipedia. [https://gitlab.wikimedia.org/kevinpayravi/cite-unseen]* AI Source Verification (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alaexis/AI_Source_Verific...): use LLMs to help check whether the citations in an article support the claims, providing a summarized report. [https://github.com/alex-o-748/citation-checker-script]* Suggestion Mode (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor/Suggestion_Mode): provide automatic in-line edit suggestions, including using small language models to detect potential tone issues. Demo: https://www.tiktok.com/@wikipedia/video/7634591061553237266?...* Microtask Generator (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Micro-task_Generato...): provide a list of prioritized edit suggestions based on the editor's choice of category. [https://gitlab.wikimedia.org/toolforge-repos/microtask-gener...]* WikiTask Pro (https://nethahussain.github.io/wikitask-pro/ + https://github.com/nethahussain/wikitask-pro) - another approach to integrating signals to recommend potential edits to editors.There are also interesting conversations happening about developing and maintaining better data about questionable sources - check out this amazing compilation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kuru/fakesourcesSome places to stay in touch with these things if you're interested: https://www.wikicred.org/ + https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_AI_Tools (not all of these kinds of tools involve AI, but it's a component of various things people are working on). If you’re in the SF Bay Area, come to our meetups: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bay_Area_Wikipedians...
  • cbondurant
    What an interesting article that definitely isn't pulling incredibly obvious red scare tactics. I'd be quite interested to know what damn article it was that was apparently so out of touch with reality that it left this author reeling in shock and horror.Perhaps they neglected to mention what Wikipedia article it was, because they knew that if people were able to visit the page, look through its edit history, and inspect the content of its talk page, they would be able to come to their own conclusion that the author's claims are overstated, sensationalist fearmongering? In a time where the US federal government is trying its hardest to undermine the freedoms of its own people, I find any accusations of foreign actors to be laughable.You know its funny, I think I'm less worried about people on the other side of the planet stealing my personal data and trying to influence the way I think than I am about the people in the same country as me. Since, you know, not only would it be easier for them to, since we are in the same country, but also they stand to gain a lot more from it as well!
  • anon
    undefined
  • euphetar
    No link to edits or specific article. Disappointed. This shouldn't be front page as it contains no substance besides speculation
  • delichon
    Wikipedia should be more like Github, such that topics can be forked ad hoc, and we can get a truly diverse set of viewpoints on everything. Then auto-generate a summary page that highlights the agreements and disagreements.Or someone else should do it. If you build it I will come.
  • empressplay
    Disinformation isn't about convincing you that something is true; it's about convincing you that nothing is true. If information is considered to be unreliable, you are less likely to act on it decisively.
  • Bender
    Every site that can be random-user-edited or allow comments are infested with shills, grifters, astroturfers, scammers, spammers, propagandists within minutes. This only increases as the site gains popularity. What each site turns into depends on how it was engineered, how it is moderated and actively managed it is. To me personally I think that Wikipedia may have been purpose designed to let this happen or it would have stopped happening a long time ago. I am certain everyone here could each think of a dozen ways to minimize this behavior.Just as one example if it were up to me the edited version invisible until a panel of moderators gives the edit a +1. If a sub-set of moderators give it a +2 (override) everyone can see who did that. Moderators would have to show real names and their country of origin and current country of residence. A watchdog group must be able to vote out moderators. If users try to overwhelm the moderators then they get perma-banned. I would probably not allow edits from wireless devices. Edits must be treated like changes to the Linux kernel and I want the original abrasive version of Linus back for this but that's just my personal preference.
  • shevy-java
    Russia is hardly the only one trying to put propaganda into Wikipedia.Wikipedia is great in general, but the quality of articles often is lacking. And some do have a lot of details and, to some extent, quality, but Average Joe - including me - often does not understand anything. I have this issue with mathematics on Wikipedia; on other websites it is often better explained. Wikipedia needs to improve here.
  • ibaikov
    I, uh, read the title as 'Russian poisons wikipedia', as if there is a list of poisons Russia uses...
  • piokoch
    Well, not only Russia, there is a number of other countries that also do this. So don't count on wikipedia on any topic that might be politically difficult for someone.
  • Applejinx
    You would think they'd run out of money. They are, but clearly this sort of thing is economical, especially in the age of AI: you don't even need banks of cellphones on little stands anymore, that was years ago.Technology evolves. The interesting part is not that this is happening, but the means and extent to which it happens. Who expects Wikipedia to be more resilient than, say, network television?
  • Teever
    I’ve been watching people in /r/balticstates talk about how Russia has been actively changing the birth places of Estonian officials to say Russia instead of occupied Estonia.https://united24media.com/latest-news/pro-russian-narratives...https://news.err.ee/1609903256/estonian-volunteers-strugglin...It’s rather devious
  • nashashmi
    Can someone do another research article of similar nature for Wikipedia articles in any way related to Israel? There is a similar disinformation campaign happening there.
  • oomuinio
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  • engineer_22
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  • justin66
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  • demek2016
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  • paganel
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  • dyauspitr
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  • lpcvoid
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  • cryptoegorophy
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  • anotherviewhere
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  • aboardRat4
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  • bijowo1676
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  • wheelerwj
    This is the shit LLMs are trained on.
  • jampekka
    I don't doubt this happens, but given all the wolf crying about clandestine Russian operations, it's hard to assess what the scale and influence of these are. Especially as this is based on an analysis by Atlantic Council, which is essentially a NATO think tank.This will probably read to many as me being a useful idiot for Putin or something. And maybe I am, hard to say definitely.
  • fortran77
    Wikipedia is full of various large disinformation campaigns. Not just Russia, but Iran, Qatar, North Korea, etc. Unless I'm looking at the history of DB-9 connectors or early Simpsons episode summaries, etc, it's not a reliable source.
  • anon
    undefined
  • loweritnow
    Ehh, Wikipedia is already poisoned already
  • casey2
    The Russian government is so all powerful that they control the minds of the majority of Americans and their leaders. I applaud the brave windmill fighters.
  • tryauuum
    BTW, the page about the 2022 Russia-Ukraine war in russian wikipedia was surprisingly good. No "special military operation" crap
  • qezz
    The article is very one-sided and emotionally charged. The usefulness of it drops significantly because of that.
  • fabiopicchi
    Pretty silly to point the finger at Russia when their firepower is obviously much smaller than Western state actors such as the United States and Britain.https://thegrayzone.com/2020/06/10/wikipedia-formally-censor...