Ella Kenan (co-founder of the organization Here4Good, she leads content creation and research on the impact of foreign actors on public opinion through social networks and artificial intelligence models, and on exposing disinformation campaigns and networks.))
a comment
This week, Wikipedia marks 25 years since its founding. It
once symbolized the internet’s great promise: free, collaborative knowledge
accessible to all. But in 2026, that dream is steadily unraveling. Wikipedia is
no longer just an information repository. It has become an ideological
battleground in which organized interest groups succeed in distorting, deleting
and rewriting history, sometimes in a systematic and deliberate way.
If you think Wikipedia is just another website that has become less relevant in the age of AI, you are missing one of the most dangerous arenas of influence of our time. It is among the most visited websites in the world, with between 3.5 and 4 billion visits a month, and a source that almost always appears at the top of Google search results. Beyond that, Wikipedia is one of the central knowledge sources on which artificial intelligence systems such as ChatGPT are trained. The implication is clear: a distortion or outright falsehood that takes root in a Wikipedia entry does not stay there. It is replicated and spread through AI engines and quickly becomes “knowledge” in the eyes of millions of users worldwide, who use it on social media, in academic work and as general reference. In this sense, Wikipedia is now one of the most influential mechanisms for poisoning knowledge in the digital age.
This is a real danger to states, communities and public
figures. It is important to stress that this is not a legitimate dispute
between differing opinions, but the erasure of documented history and the
spread of false narratives under a veneer of “neutrality.”
English-language entries dealing with the State of
Israel, Zionism, Jewish history and archaeology in the Land of Israel have
undergone systematic rewriting. Behind the scenes, organized groups promote a
specific narrative, delete established facts and block editors who try to
introduce balance, sometimes through votes that lead to articles being locked.
This is not a theory. It is a documented reality. Only
recently, Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia’s co-founder, addressed the English-language
entry “Gaza genocide” and acknowledged that it was locked for editing due to
severe bias and failure to meet the site’s standards. Editors who tried to
balance the content found themselves removed or silenced. When it comes to the
number of casualties in Gaza, Wikipedia states that the figure reaches about
680,000 people, a number that even Gaza’s Health Ministry, which is fully
controlled by Hamas, does not claim.
There are many other troubling examples. Jerusalem,
Israel’s capital, is not defined on English Wikipedia as a city in any country,
but as a city in the “southwestern Levant.” Even after Wales’ personal
intervention, the biased definition returned.
Beyond this, there is a systematic erasure of Jewish
history. The historical connection to the Jewish people to Israel was erased,
and the narrative reshaped.
For full article go to https://www.ynetnews.com/opinions-analysis/article/rkn0tawrwx
No comments:
Post a Comment