'Nobody should trust Wikipedia,' its co-founder warns: Larry Sanger says site has been taken over by left-wing 'volunteers' who write off sources that don't fit their agenda as fake news
Wikipedia can no longer be trusted as a source of unbiased information since the online encyclopedia's left-leaning volunteers cut out any news that doesn't fit their agenda, according to the site’s co-founder.
Larry Sanger, 52, co-founded Wikipedia in 2001 alongside Jimmy Wales, said the crowdsourcing project has betrayed its original mission by reflecting the views of the ‘establishment.’
He said he agreed with the assessment that ‘teams of Democratic-leaning volunteers’ remove content that isn’t to their liking, including information about scandals linked to President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.
When asked by Unherd.com if Wikipedia can be trusted, he replied: ‘You can trust it to give a reliably establishment point of view on pretty much everything.
Wikipedia can no longer be trusted as a source of unbiased information since the online encyclopedia has left-leaning volunteers cut out any edits meant to provide balance, according to the site’s co-founder, Larry Sanger (above)
Sanger, 52, co-founded Wikipedia in 2001 alongside Jimmy Wales (seen above in 2017), said the crowdsourcing project has betrayed its original mission by reflecting the views of the ‘establishment’
Sanger said he agreed with the assessment that ‘teams of Democratic-leaning volunteers’ remove content that isn’t to their liking
‘Can you trust it to always give you the truth? Well, it depends on what you think the truth is.’
Sanger cited the entry on Joe Biden, which he says is a sanitized version that doesn’t include arguments from a GOP perspective.
‘The Biden article, if you look at it, has very little by way of the concerns that Republicans have had about him,’ Sanger said.
‘So if you want to have anything remotely resembling the Republican point of view about Biden, you’re not going to get it from the article.
‘And there is a paragraph - and it is quite a long article so there should be at least a paragraph - about the Ukraine scandal.
‘Very little of that can be found in Wikipedia.’
Sanger added: ‘What little can be found is extremely biased and reads like a defense counsel’s brief, really.’
Sanger cited the entry on Joe Biden, which he says is a sanitized version that doesn’t include arguments from a GOP perspective
The Wikipedia passage in question that Sanger cites as biased in favor of Biden reads: ‘In September 2019, it was reported that Trump had pressured Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate alleged wrongdoing by Biden and his son Hunter Biden.
‘Despite the allegations, as of September 2019, no evidence has been produced of any wrongdoing by the Bidens.
‘The media widely interpreted this pressure to investigate the Bidens as trying to hurt Biden’s chances of winning the presidency, resulting in a political scandal and Trump’s impeachment by the House of Representatives.’
The passage continues: ‘Beginning in 2019, Trump and his allies falsely accused Biden of getting the Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor Shokin fired because he was supposedly pursuing an investigation into Burisma Holdings, which employed Hunter Biden. Biden was accused of withholding $1 billion in aid from Ukraine in this effort.
‘In 2015, Biden pressured the Ukrainian parliament to remove Shokin because the United States, the European Union and other international organizations considered Shokin corrupt and ineffective, and in particular because Shokin was not assertively investigating Burisma.
‘The withholding of the $1 billion in aid was part of this official policy.’
In a blog post, Sanger noted that the entry on Biden doesn’t include any mention of the fact that Hunter Biden received $600,000 per year to serve on the board of a Ukrainian energy firm, Burisma, from 2014 until 2019.
Hunter Biden was appointed to the board despite not having any experience in the energy sector.
The Joe Biden entry on Wikipedia also makes no mention of Hunter Biden’s laptop.
The president’s son forgot his 2017 MacBook Pro laptop at a computer repair shop in Wilmington, Delaware in April 2019.
The contents of the laptop were released, though the Bidens and other Democrats claimed it was part of a ‘Russian disinformation campaign.’
The contents of the laptop were authenticated by a cyber forensics expert commissioned by DailyMail.com.
The laptop surfaced publicly in October when The New York Post reported on emails that it said had come from Hunter Biden’s laptop and that it said it received from Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer.
Social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook did not allow users to share links to the Post story, prompting accusations that they were engaged in censorship motivated by a pro-Democrat bias.
On October 14, the New York Post ran a front-page story with the headline: BIDEN SECRET EMAILS.
Inside they published a few emails relating to Hunter's business dealings in the Ukraine and alleged links to his father. Joe and Hunter Biden have denied any impropriety.
In a blog post, Sanger noted that the entry on Biden doesn’t include any mention of the fact that Hunter Biden received $600,000 per year to serve on the board of a UKrainian energy firm, Burisma, from 2014 until 2019
The Joe Biden entry on Wikipedia also makes no mention of Hunter Biden’s laptop. The president’s son forgot his 2017 MacBook Pro laptop at a computer repair shop in Wilmington, Delaware in April 2019. The contents of the laptop were released, though the Bidens and other Democrats claimed it was part of a ‘Russian disinformation campaign.’ The images above were found on the laptop
Even when Tony Bobulinski, a former US Navy serviceman and ex-wrestling champion who was Hunter's business partner, went on Trump-supporting Fox News to confirm he had emails verifying those on the laptop, the story was largely ignored.
Sanger said that plenty of Republicans use Wikipedia and would be eager to go into articles and make editors to bring a semblance of balance to the stories.
But the site won’t allow it, he claims.
‘There are a lot of people who would be highly motivated to go in and make the article more politically neutral but they’re not allowed to,’ Sanger said.
‘It’s quite remarkable considering that the neutrality policy is still in place.’
Sanger added: ‘If only one version of the facts is allowed then that gives a huge incentive to wealthy and powerful people to seize control of things like Wikipedia in order to shore up their power.
‘And they do that.’
Sanger said that Wikipedia is similar to many media entities in that it ‘seems to assume...that there is only one legitimate defensible version of the truth on any controversial question.
‘Of course, that’s not how Wikipedia used to be.’
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