Wikipedia survives while the rest of the internet breaks

There has been this trend recently of calling Wikipedia the last good thing on the internet.

And i agree its great, i spend an inordinate amount of my time on Wikimedia related things.

But i think there is a danger here with all these articles putting Wikipedia too much on a pedestal. It isn't perfect. It isn't perfectly neutral or perfectly reliable. It has flaws.

The true best part of Wikipedia is that its a work in progress and people are working to make it a little better everyday. We shouldn't lose sight of the fact we aren't there yet. We'll never be "there". But hopefully we'll continue to be a little bit closer every day. And that is what makes Wikipedia great.

I would say that OpenStreetMap is also a pretty good thing on the internet. Maybe not quite as impactful, and I'd say less well run, and rougher around the edges, but it's largely resisted being taken over by evil corporations or heavily influenced in bad directions.

Torrents are also a good thing on the internet.

Me getting free movies and music, piracy good

Meta getting free books to train an LLM, piracy bad

Powerful entities getting a pass, bad.

Individuals getting a pass, good.

See, it just depends on how you slice the Venn diagram. With a bit of imagination you'll be able to start connecting the dots by yourself in no time.

I've already connected the dots of the HN zeitgeist. Besides this was done by a few individuals at Meta, or are you thinking they had a board meeting and shareholder vote on it?

even if we completely ignore organizational structure, do you truly believe not holding companies accountable for a few rogue employees is a good call? Is it too difficult for higher-ups to blame the rank-and-file and arrange scapegoats in the opaque black box that is a corporation? and even still, we can ignore this potential precedent and focus on motivation only: if an employee uses illegal means as a tool to reach their work goals, isn't an investigation into said work goals and culture warranted?