That's a great question. I think about this all the time when encountering GoodSpeak: spittle-flecked True Believer -- or cynical (paid) shill?
As a believer (of another sort) myself, I typically assume the former, unless there's a clear indication of the latter. The kind of intensity and grinding perseverance people like Gerard demonstrate strikes me as deeply internally-motivated. Paid shills wouldn't put in that kind of effort.
I also know people like Gerard; I'm sure they're not getting paid. They burn with Yeatsian passionate intensity.
There was a big scandal in South Korea in the mid-2010s, about an influential political figure who ran a "farm" of thousands of fake Internet accounts. He used them, with effect, to influence opinion and may well have even shifted vote-totals among that notoriously mania-driven political-culture.
The kingpin behind this operation was a political partisan himself, I think. But the thousands of fake accounts, and the millions of fake comments that operation generated, etc, they were not real. The scandal was named after the Internet-handle of the kingpin, "DruKing" (if anyone wants to look more into it). If we encounter specific cases of "biased content," the question of "real or not real" may be really difficult to answer, now more than ever.
That's the next question. We would need to get the real identities of the editors then examine their bank accounts. Tracing the money is extremely difficult without that rudimentary exercise. And of course, we as the general public, as non-police and non-prosecutors, would find such an exercise extremely difficult to accomplish.
We used to have these things called "investigative reporters" who did that. But lately all they do is be stenographers for Joe Biden's handlers.
But don't be snarky. The amount of time and effort these guys spend controlling Wikipedia's political articles isn't pro bono it just couldn't be---they couldn't make a living or even play nerd games like D&D. Controlling the information flow is always critical to controlling the population. 1984 pointed that out. As did Luttwak in his writings.
The problem is that many NGOs are pretty good at routing the money to 3rd parties and/or labeling such grants under different names.
Plus then we get back to the whole problem of identifying the editors being key. After all, if an NGO says it gave $5000 last month to a guy in NC for "research" and it turns out it was paying him to camp out on Wikipedia, how would we know unless we identified the guy as a Wikpedia editor?
And, again, the Deep State is doing this kind of thing itself through contractors and directly, and all would be shrouded in either "classified" or else under boring titles like "internet monitoring."
Rather than theorize about how they are keeping it a secret, why don't you first check whether somebody is boasting of it: e.g., "The Shapiro Family Foundation is proud to make David Gerard its first Anti-Misinformation Fellow. He combats misinformation by editing unreliable sources and fringe pseudoscience out of Wikipedia." (Note: that's not a real quote. I just made it up. But why not look for something like that?)
For the same reason I know these Wikipedia guys aren't doing this for free.
We both have to make money.
Anyway, I'm not theorizing, its pretty clear how to keep it secret; none too complicated. It wouldn't take much to uncover it if I or anyone had governmental powers--- get some warrants, get some computer geeks trace the IPs, get some more warrants for those IPs bank accounts. Six months tops.
If we had investigative reporters it would take longer---you'd have to bribe a guy on the inside at Wikipedia and then get some private computer geek to trace the IPs and then get some NSA guy working off the clock in Mexico to get the bank accounts. And then double check all of the money coming in to see the main sources.
But for the average guy on the internet doing this pro bono? Good luck.
Has any research been done on how paid advocacy on Wikipedia is done? My guess is that the right probably try as much as the left, but the demographics of Wikipedia editors may mean that it's more jarring and more likely to be found out. Paid editing of Wikipedia dies seem to be an area where a small amount of money could have an outsize if hard to measure effect on downstream politics but is done remarkably little, like subsidising opinion journalism.
Outside some non mainstream areas (and I accept the effect on these areas may be immense) I suspect paid editing doesn't have an appreciable effect compared to the core influence of the biases and assumptions of nerdy first world Anglo single underemployed men. Like most web culture it's those demographics that are key
Its one thing to troll a bit. Its another thing to make it your life's work. But people need to eat. If these guys are camped out 8-10 hours per day editing Wikipedia, it ain't for free.
You think its all Rockefeller and Kennedy kids doing this? I mean, you really think the black sheep/nerd loser third cousins of powerful families are the ones doing this?
A few guys like that, fine. There are always true believers. But the sheer number required here, along with their hours, along with all their politics being coordinated, is too high for that.
Most of the guys with axes to grind also would be doing other things, such as watching porn, YouTube, etc.
How are you sure there aren't that many? You think there isn't a vested interest by many rich people/entities to make sure certain political Wikipedia entries are written in their favor?
There's also the question of whether it is one guy per IP. After all, if an NGO wants someone camped out on a page 24/7, they could pay multiple people to be on the same IP to make it less suspicious---like a entire room of folks working on it, like Gawker used to have or like David Brock supposedly had at Media Matters.
We don't know how many of these jokers are controlling it.
Fair enough, but Wikipedia is a sprawling mess of content, and it would take a lot of effort and money to coordinate its 'maintenance'.
On the other hand, I'm far from unwilling to consider there being strange -- and possibly conspiratorial -- connections and arrangements out there these days. Here's a good example. Billionaire conspiracy king scion Alex Soros is 38. He's just gotten engaged! That's nice -- to whom? A bikini model? A gorgeous young post-colonial studies grad student?
"Fair enough, but Wikipedia is a sprawling mess of content, and it would take a lot of effort and money to coordinate its 'maintenance'."
Disagree. You set up a few guys to make sure any page linked to a certain page matches the tone of the page you're protecting. Then you pay the guy "overseeing" the editors to always approve of your editors edits and reject any pro-right wing edits. They even have bots set up to stop "vandalism" of certain pages---which they define almost exclusively as wrongly-toned political edits.
The point is getting a chokehold on management, and then the lower-level editors are de facto empowered to control content. A rebel editor is going to get his stuff deleted.
Yeah, that's a reasonable point. I suppose also the number of 'Who cares?' content pages on Wikipedia is vast and uncounted, whereas the number of politically-sensitive pages is far fewer. But there would still be a lot.
Yeah, again, not for the time and effort these guys are putting in. And coordination among them---grandma isn't paying dozens of these guys to work 10 hour days to make sure, say, Ann Telnaes's page doesn't contain a single reference to her cartoon comparing Trump supporters to rats for challenging the 2020 election.
Are you seriously incapable of seeing that the targeted, directed takeover of the political sections of Wikipedia would require an organized group of like-minded people deliberately spending years controlling the narrative and getting into positions of power -- that by definition needs funding?
Or do you believe its all just coincidence how these left-wingers managed to independently all get into control of political sections of Wikipedia solely by spending 8-10 hours per day pro bono to do so, and then, shockingly, they all had the same ideology?
> Are you seriously incapable of seeing that the targeted, directed takeover of the political sections of Wikipedia would require an organized group of like-minded people deliberately spending years controlling the narrative and getting into positions of power -- that by definition needs funding?
No. At the time Wikipedia was founded the Zeitgeist was rather leftist. So it wouldn't require an organization. Just people who supported a more radical version of the Zeitgeist to take power and then keep it. Neither of those are particularly hard.
"At the time Wikipedia was founded the Zeitgeist was rather leftist. So it wouldn't require an organization. Just people who supported a more radical version of the Zeitgeist to take power and then keep it. Neither of those are particularly hard."
lol. Just lol.
Ok, it was just all happenstance they took over and have maintained a chokehold. Absolutely no coordination, all independent of one another, all radical communist in outlook. and have worked in tandem to maintain such power and control and leftist POV. Also, all done voluntarily and without pay for 8-10 hours each per day for more than a decade.
See my comment re: Mike Judge. Your question is valid, but I see someone like Gerard as being a Silicon Valley type weirdo neckbeard. They too eat, but it's mostly Fage yogurt and ramen.
He's not the only one. He couldn't be; WIkipedia has hundreds of articles he's never touched that have the same bent.
And as to the funds, again, from whom?
Look: politics need funding. Even though all political movements are made up of true believers at the bottom willing to live in squalor or impoverished to see their particular worldview come true, any level of success requires some kind of income. The believers need to be fed, housed, transported, and be provided with internet access, flyers, megaphones, rental space, parade permit $$$, etc. So some donors have to be found and convinced to drop money on the operation, or else it peters out.
Or take an extreme example: terrorist groups. While terrorist foot soldiers are always true believers willing to die for their cause, they still need money for ammo, weapons, explosives, safe houses, training, etc. So many either get a big rich donor (e.g. Osama Bin Laden) and/or turn to drug dealing and pimping for the cash.
So the question is: who are these Wikiepdia foot soldiers, and where are they getting paid from?
N.B. The "political/terrorist groups need money" angle is how the FBI/CIA/NSA find and radicalize folks to be terrorists. One classic sign of a person being a fed is when they start dropping tons of money on the group: buying food and recreational drugs, suddenly getting caches of weapons, etc. The FBI/CIA/NSA knows such folks need money and are only too happy to provide to buy their trust---only to betray later.
I think you really misunderstand what motivates leftists like this guy. HeтАЩs a mid-50s тАШpoly, goth, queerтАЩ nerd - and not the new kind of nerd with social cachet and money, the old kind whoтАЩs just sort of a sad-sack loser.
His politics are his life and inflicting pain on his enemies (who is more despised than the apostate?) is now his lifeтАЩs work - made all the more implacable because heтАЩs no doubt convinced himself heтАЩs acting righteously.
I think this is a very plausible profile. It's his faith, and there are a lot of people throughout history who have gotten a lot done in response to what they believe they are called to do.
They are doing it independently. There are a lot of weird obsessives out there.
The anti-SSC has a lot to do with Sailer, of all things. Steve was a regular commentator and a faction tried to get him banned. Alexander said no, Sailer is polite and can back up his assertions. It went on forever.
Trace was a participant of the subreddit mentioned in his piece, r/drama . As was I because it was the only funny place on reddit. He and his friends managed to pull off some pretty good media hoaxes. I am pleased with his success, he is a great guy.
Scott has always been frustrated that I tend to be good empirically but also bad at managing my career. He wants to be good at both. God bless him, I hope he achieves that.
Steve, honest question, do you really believe these commie commisars are independently doing this at Wikipedia?
Or is it more likely they have been paid to do so?
And why would you ever believe the former?
A number of them have been Gaslighted into the Bubble, IMHO>
That's a great question. I think about this all the time when encountering GoodSpeak: spittle-flecked True Believer -- or cynical (paid) shill?
As a believer (of another sort) myself, I typically assume the former, unless there's a clear indication of the latter. The kind of intensity and grinding perseverance people like Gerard demonstrate strikes me as deeply internally-motivated. Paid shills wouldn't put in that kind of effort.
I also know people like Gerard; I'm sure they're not getting paid. They burn with Yeatsian passionate intensity.
Of course the answer is often "both."
There was a big scandal in South Korea in the mid-2010s, about an influential political figure who ran a "farm" of thousands of fake Internet accounts. He used them, with effect, to influence opinion and may well have even shifted vote-totals among that notoriously mania-driven political-culture.
The kingpin behind this operation was a political partisan himself, I think. But the thousands of fake accounts, and the millions of fake comments that operation generated, etc, they were not real. The scandal was named after the Internet-handle of the kingpin, "DruKing" (if anyone wants to look more into it). If we encounter specific cases of "biased content," the question of "real or not real" may be really difficult to answer, now more than ever.
Who is paying them?
That's the next question. We would need to get the real identities of the editors then examine their bank accounts. Tracing the money is extremely difficult without that rudimentary exercise. And of course, we as the general public, as non-police and non-prosecutors, would find such an exercise extremely difficult to accomplish.
We used to have these things called "investigative reporters" who did that. But lately all they do is be stenographers for Joe Biden's handlers.
But don't be snarky. The amount of time and effort these guys spend controlling Wikipedia's political articles isn't pro bono it just couldn't be---they couldn't make a living or even play nerd games like D&D. Controlling the information flow is always critical to controlling the population. 1984 pointed that out. As did Luttwak in his writings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_d%27%C3%89tat:_A_Practical_Handbook
But we already know the CIA and FBI are camping out on pages. So its the Deep State.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-security-wikipedia/cia-fbi-computers-used-for-wikipedia-edits-idUSN1642896020070816/
Or you could start at the other end: find an NGO or government agency or whatever that is paying Wikipedia editors.
For example, the Hasbara Fellowships organization pays young people to put pro-Israel propaganda on social media:
https://hasbarafellowships.org/
It's not a secret, they are proud of what they do.
The problem is that many NGOs are pretty good at routing the money to 3rd parties and/or labeling such grants under different names.
Plus then we get back to the whole problem of identifying the editors being key. After all, if an NGO says it gave $5000 last month to a guy in NC for "research" and it turns out it was paying him to camp out on Wikipedia, how would we know unless we identified the guy as a Wikpedia editor?
And, again, the Deep State is doing this kind of thing itself through contractors and directly, and all would be shrouded in either "classified" or else under boring titles like "internet monitoring."
Rather than theorize about how they are keeping it a secret, why don't you first check whether somebody is boasting of it: e.g., "The Shapiro Family Foundation is proud to make David Gerard its first Anti-Misinformation Fellow. He combats misinformation by editing unreliable sources and fringe pseudoscience out of Wikipedia." (Note: that's not a real quote. I just made it up. But why not look for something like that?)
For the same reason I know these Wikipedia guys aren't doing this for free.
We both have to make money.
Anyway, I'm not theorizing, its pretty clear how to keep it secret; none too complicated. It wouldn't take much to uncover it if I or anyone had governmental powers--- get some warrants, get some computer geeks trace the IPs, get some more warrants for those IPs bank accounts. Six months tops.
If we had investigative reporters it would take longer---you'd have to bribe a guy on the inside at Wikipedia and then get some private computer geek to trace the IPs and then get some NSA guy working off the clock in Mexico to get the bank accounts. And then double check all of the money coming in to see the main sources.
But for the average guy on the internet doing this pro bono? Good luck.
Here is David Gerard's website:
https://davidgerard.co.uk/
You could contact him and ask him how he makes a living.
R.G. Camara isn't interested in doing actually research, he just likes to imagine he's the victim of an all-powerful conspiracy.
He seems like a high IQ, high energy guy who could make a certain amount of money in a limited number of hours per week.
Kinda sloppy, though -- he can't even be bothered to get the images of his book covers equally sized.
Just the sort of fellow to whom western civilization should entrust its most sensitive knowledge.
I believe during his LW days, he mentioned his "loved one" was some kind of preacher in the Church of England.
Well I've certainly seen organized Wikipedia-editing days/workshops to "remove structural bias", I'm paraphrasing from memory.
I even distinctly remember a poster for one that showed people of varied skin colors and unnatural hair colors siting in front of computers.
Has any research been done on how paid advocacy on Wikipedia is done? My guess is that the right probably try as much as the left, but the demographics of Wikipedia editors may mean that it's more jarring and more likely to be found out. Paid editing of Wikipedia dies seem to be an area where a small amount of money could have an outsize if hard to measure effect on downstream politics but is done remarkably little, like subsidising opinion journalism.
Outside some non mainstream areas (and I accept the effect on these areas may be immense) I suspect paid editing doesn't have an appreciable effect compared to the core influence of the biases and assumptions of nerdy first world Anglo single underemployed men. Like most web culture it's those demographics that are key
Because they enjoy it. Sense of power.
Its one thing to troll a bit. Its another thing to make it your life's work. But people need to eat. If these guys are camped out 8-10 hours per day editing Wikipedia, it ain't for free.
Maybe. But there is a fair amount of family money around.
You think its all Rockefeller and Kennedy kids doing this? I mean, you really think the black sheep/nerd loser third cousins of powerful families are the ones doing this?
Or, an adjunct professor in nowheresville get a few thousand per month from his grandma.
Or a guy on permanent disability for any number of physical or mental reasons . . . .
A few guys like that, fine. There are always true believers. But the sheer number required here, along with their hours, along with all their politics being coordinated, is too high for that.
Most of the guys with axes to grind also would be doing other things, such as watching porn, YouTube, etc.
But there aren't that many. The point of this article, for example, is how much damage has been done to Wikipedia by one guy, David Gerard.
How are you sure there aren't that many? You think there isn't a vested interest by many rich people/entities to make sure certain political Wikipedia entries are written in their favor?
There's also the question of whether it is one guy per IP. After all, if an NGO wants someone camped out on a page 24/7, they could pay multiple people to be on the same IP to make it less suspicious---like a entire room of folks working on it, like Gawker used to have or like David Brock supposedly had at Media Matters.
We don't know how many of these jokers are controlling it.
Fair enough, but Wikipedia is a sprawling mess of content, and it would take a lot of effort and money to coordinate its 'maintenance'.
On the other hand, I'm far from unwilling to consider there being strange -- and possibly conspiratorial -- connections and arrangements out there these days. Here's a good example. Billionaire conspiracy king scion Alex Soros is 38. He's just gotten engaged! That's nice -- to whom? A bikini model? A gorgeous young post-colonial studies grad student?
Nah, he's marrying Anthony's Weiner's ex, i.e. the ultra-connected Huma Abedin, who's 47 and pretty much owning that maturity (see photos here: https://pagesix.com/2024/07/10/gossip/huma-abedin-and-billionaire-alex-soros-are-engaged/).
Key quotation: "тАЬThe best way I can describe the relationship is effortless,тАЭ a friend of AbedinтАЩs for over 15 years tells Page Six."
Hmmmmm.
Why would he marry her? Maybe true love, sure, but still . . . .
Anthony Weiner was a sex pervert. Maybe Huma has some hoover-like skills in the bedroom....
"Fair enough, but Wikipedia is a sprawling mess of content, and it would take a lot of effort and money to coordinate its 'maintenance'."
Disagree. You set up a few guys to make sure any page linked to a certain page matches the tone of the page you're protecting. Then you pay the guy "overseeing" the editors to always approve of your editors edits and reject any pro-right wing edits. They even have bots set up to stop "vandalism" of certain pages---which they define almost exclusively as wrongly-toned political edits.
The point is getting a chokehold on management, and then the lower-level editors are de facto empowered to control content. A rebel editor is going to get his stuff deleted.
Yeah, that's a reasonable point. I suppose also the number of 'Who cares?' content pages on Wikipedia is vast and uncounted, whereas the number of politically-sensitive pages is far fewer. But there would still be a lot.
Yeah, again, not for the time and effort these guys are putting in. And coordination among them---grandma isn't paying dozens of these guys to work 10 hour days to make sure, say, Ann Telnaes's page doesn't contain a single reference to her cartoon comparing Trump supporters to rats for challenging the 2020 election.
> Yeah, again, not for the time and effort these guys are putting in.
Are you seriously incapable of imagining someone doing things for any motivation besides money?
Are you seriously incapable of seeing that the targeted, directed takeover of the political sections of Wikipedia would require an organized group of like-minded people deliberately spending years controlling the narrative and getting into positions of power -- that by definition needs funding?
Or do you believe its all just coincidence how these left-wingers managed to independently all get into control of political sections of Wikipedia solely by spending 8-10 hours per day pro bono to do so, and then, shockingly, they all had the same ideology?
> Are you seriously incapable of seeing that the targeted, directed takeover of the political sections of Wikipedia would require an organized group of like-minded people deliberately spending years controlling the narrative and getting into positions of power -- that by definition needs funding?
No. At the time Wikipedia was founded the Zeitgeist was rather leftist. So it wouldn't require an organization. Just people who supported a more radical version of the Zeitgeist to take power and then keep it. Neither of those are particularly hard.
"At the time Wikipedia was founded the Zeitgeist was rather leftist. So it wouldn't require an organization. Just people who supported a more radical version of the Zeitgeist to take power and then keep it. Neither of those are particularly hard."
lol. Just lol.
Ok, it was just all happenstance they took over and have maintained a chokehold. Absolutely no coordination, all independent of one another, all radical communist in outlook. and have worked in tandem to maintain such power and control and leftist POV. Also, all done voluntarily and without pay for 8-10 hours each per day for more than a decade.
Incidentally, would you like to buy a bridge?
See my comment re: Mike Judge. Your question is valid, but I see someone like Gerard as being a Silicon Valley type weirdo neckbeard. They too eat, but it's mostly Fage yogurt and ramen.
One guy could not make Wikipedia this way. This required multiple people, and they need to eat.
ItтАЩs one guy. He could easily have another source of funds.
He's not the only one. He couldn't be; WIkipedia has hundreds of articles he's never touched that have the same bent.
And as to the funds, again, from whom?
Look: politics need funding. Even though all political movements are made up of true believers at the bottom willing to live in squalor or impoverished to see their particular worldview come true, any level of success requires some kind of income. The believers need to be fed, housed, transported, and be provided with internet access, flyers, megaphones, rental space, parade permit $$$, etc. So some donors have to be found and convinced to drop money on the operation, or else it peters out.
Or take an extreme example: terrorist groups. While terrorist foot soldiers are always true believers willing to die for their cause, they still need money for ammo, weapons, explosives, safe houses, training, etc. So many either get a big rich donor (e.g. Osama Bin Laden) and/or turn to drug dealing and pimping for the cash.
So the question is: who are these Wikiepdia foot soldiers, and where are they getting paid from?
N.B. The "political/terrorist groups need money" angle is how the FBI/CIA/NSA find and radicalize folks to be terrorists. One classic sign of a person being a fed is when they start dropping tons of money on the group: buying food and recreational drugs, suddenly getting caches of weapons, etc. The FBI/CIA/NSA knows such folks need money and are only too happy to provide to buy their trust---only to betray later.
I think you really misunderstand what motivates leftists like this guy. HeтАЩs a mid-50s тАШpoly, goth, queerтАЩ nerd - and not the new kind of nerd with social cachet and money, the old kind whoтАЩs just sort of a sad-sack loser.
His politics are his life and inflicting pain on his enemies (who is more despised than the apostate?) is now his lifeтАЩs work - made all the more implacable because heтАЩs no doubt convinced himself heтАЩs acting righteously.
I think this is a very plausible profile. It's his faith, and there are a lot of people throughout history who have gotten a lot done in response to what they believe they are called to do.
They are doing it independently. There are a lot of weird obsessives out there.
The anti-SSC has a lot to do with Sailer, of all things. Steve was a regular commentator and a faction tried to get him banned. Alexander said no, Sailer is polite and can back up his assertions. It went on forever.
Trace was a participant of the subreddit mentioned in his piece, r/drama . As was I because it was the only funny place on reddit. He and his friends managed to pull off some pretty good media hoaxes. I am pleased with his success, he is a great guy.
Scott has always been frustrated that I tend to be good empirically but also bad at managing my career. He wants to be good at both. God bless him, I hope he achieves that.