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853 points coloneltcb | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.781s | source
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jjmarr ◴[] No.43799721[source]
The English Wikipedia is a massive target for influence campaigns. I don't think there are any other communities as resilient as it. Just an example:

There's certain individual or group that edited under the name "Icewhiz", was banned, and now operates endless sockpuppet accounts in the topic area to influence Wikipedia's coverage on the Middle East. One of them was an account named "Eostrix", that spent years making clean uncontroversial edits until one day going for adminship.

Eostrix got 99% approval in their request for adminship. But it didn't matter, because an anonymous individual also spent years pursuing Eostrix, assembling evidence, and this resulted in Eostrix's block just days before they became a Wikipedia administrator.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investiga...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration_Com...

It's a useful contrast to a place like Reddit, where volunteer moderators openly admit to spreading terrorist propaganda or operating fake accounts when their original one gets banned. You don't get to do that on Wikipedia. If you try, someone with far too much time on their hands will catch you because Wikipedia doesn't need to care about Daily Active Users and the community cares about protecting a neutral point of view.

Not denying the existence of influence campaigns. There have been several major pro-Palestinian ones recently, which is probably why this letter has been sent. But the only reason you know about them is because Wikipedia openly fights them instead of covering them up. Most social media websites don't care and would rather you don't bring it to their attention. That is why Reddit banned /r/bannedforbeingjewish.

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PeterStuer ◴[] No.43802473[source]
Keri Smith, a former hardcore SJW activist, has documented how she and others daily targeted people through Wikipedia edits for preparing a cancel. It's quite fascinating the extend of organization and process they used.

For instance, they would not directly edit the target's page, but start working 2 links removed from it, compromise the "friend of a friend of a friend", and then work towards the actual target and finally try to cancel the target through "association with " accusations.

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maigret ◴[] No.43802526[source]
What is SJW? Please avoid using unclear acronyms.
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1. plorg ◴[] No.43805079[source]
It's a term for anyone from a centrist liberal to a Greenpeace activist, with the implication that having left-of-median politics and understanding race and demography as anything other than biological essentialism makes you an utter loon. It is really only used by people who would describe themselves as "anti-woke".

The person he's referencing, specifically, got really pilled by evangelical Christianity and believes that anyone advocating for liberal causes has created a religion out of nebulous cultural values, unmoored from god. She blames the "cult of SJW" for the kind of character assassination she claims to have done, that it was the force of rootless bolshevism that was responsible for her supposedly destroying lives and careers by making up(?) relationships and cultural crimes on whole webs of Wikipedia articles.

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2. moomin ◴[] No.43805166[source]
I’m calling Frank Abnagale on this woman until proven otherwise.