He generally shows most of the signs of the misinformation accounts:

  • Wants to repeatedly tell basically the same narrative and nothing else
  • Narrative is fundamentally false
  • Not interested in any kind of conversation or in learning that what he’s posting is backwards from the values he claims to profess

I also suspect that it’s not a coincidence that this is happening just as the Elon Musks of the world are ramping up attacks on Wikipedia, specially because it is a force for truth in the world that’s less corruptible than a lot of the others, and tends to fight back legally if someone tries to interfere with the free speech or safety of its editors.

Anyway, YSK. I reported him as misinformation, but who knows if that will lead to any result.

Edit: Number of people real salty that I’m talking about this: Lots

  • OccamsRazer@lemmy.world
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    2 hours ago

    As long as people keep in mind what Wikipedia is, there should be no issue. There’s a reason teachers never allow it as a source, but it is great as an introduction to any topic, from which point you can further your own research.

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    Wikipedia is just another website run by some privileged dickheads and their mods.

    I’m not bothering to argue whether it’s better or worse than other websites.

    But only a fool would trust it or believe that it’s inherently “good”.

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    18 hours ago

    DOWNLOAD A COPY OF WIKIPEDIA NOW. RIGHT NOW. DO NOT WAIT.

    WIKIPEDIA WILL BE RUINED IN (just guessing) THREE MONTHS (I hope I’m wrong)

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    Lemmy is too small to be a worthwhile target for musk-like campaigns. It’s usually just people escaping their echo chambers to get their rage fix. If you’re able to think for yourself, there’s really no negative impact and scrolling past is a great solution.

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    The misinfo crowd has been twiddling their collective thumbs since the election and trump winning. Can’t make up bs about egg and gas prices anymore. They’re half-ass trying to incite intergenerational conflict between X, Z, millenials, etc. Guess they found a new target. Exact same MO. Repeat the claim ad nauseam, refuse to acknowledge any contrary argument, their argument is objectively false.

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      They’re half-ass trying to incite intergenerational conflict between X, Z, millenials, etc.

      That’s not even new.

      Dismissively saying “OK boomer” has been around for several years.

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        3 hours ago

        Not the same.

        I mean actively blaming specific generations for political and financial issues. Yeah, we blame the boomers for a lot, but now the complainers are shifting focus.

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      12 hours ago

      The politically elite are so used to puppeteering public sentiment with ease, and so confident in their efforts to suppress education in America that they have stopped trying to be sneaky. All American ‘news’ is propaganda and the this is a blatant attempt to divide the public on one of the last free resources for factual information**. Free as in non-criminalized. These types of posts by EM are to incite division in order to amp-up for the criminalization of information. And it’s not very difficult to see.

      **factual when readers uphold its integrity through critical consumption and editing.

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        9 hours ago

        The ability to control the narrative of public discourse is one of the first things that needs to dismantled. The propaganda machine and it’s made up culture war/distraction needs to go.

        And the fact that it’s escalated to the point of wealthy elites trying to dismantle public access to information should be deeply alarming for all of us… because then all we have for information is what they tell us… and that’s a dystopia i have no intention of experiencing.

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      16 hours ago

      Those tactics won’t really work here but if there’s a small army of them on super low IQ platforms their lies can spread.

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    There are major issues with wikipedia, I say this as someone with thousands of edits. But I know exactly who you are talking about and they spread pure BS.

    The last time I saw them their account was called “ihatewikipedia” or “fuckwikipedia” or something like that lol and they were just spreading conspiracies. Or useless drama. Like they were going on about how wikipedia “invades your privacy”, it IP blocks people and tracks IP’s linked to editing.

    • lunarul@lemmy.world
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      it IP blocks people and tracks IP’s linked to editing

      Unless something changed, this part was at least partially true at one point. But only for anonymous edits iirc. Usually happened for IPs shared by a lot of people like from a campus or some VPNs, probably due to a lot of vandalism from such IPs.

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    1 day ago

    On lemmy, this is far more likely to be some weird tankie shit about western propaganda. Though it is definitely noteworthy that the far right and far left seem to push a lot of the same misinformation on here.

    Also, in general lemmy trolls are super easy to spot because they don’t do anything else. All they do is whine about democrats or post Russian propaganda and never engage on any other topics.

    • dx1@lemmy.world
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      Thinking of the most recent so-called “far left” thing I saw about Wikipedia, it was a video by BadEmpanada talking about the different portrayals of the Uyghur situation in China. A pretty balanced take btw, looking pretty impartially at all evidence and questioning the mindset of people with different perspectives on it. The discussion of WIkipedia there was that it does naturally take on some bias due to a reliance on Western media as authoritative or reliable sources. I think that is a fact. There’s a process to determine something as fact which I think is too quick, the second there’s something of a perceived consensus of experts or authoritative sources, something is stated as fact. In hard sciences, that’s typically fine, but in politics or recent history, IMHO you need a much more meticulous approach, because you’re in dangerous territory the second you start treating any propaganda narrative as fact.

    • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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      1 day ago

      Yeah horseshoe theory is an actual thing and it shows hard here on Lemmy. Same lies, same taxticts, different extremists.

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          14 hours ago

          Dammit. That’s too funny and I want someone to share this with but nobody i know is the right mix of wierd to get it

        • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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          11 hours ago

          Yeah that’s just horseshoe theory with extra steps and gymnastics to be able to say that far left is okay, really, they never do anything wrong, trust me!

          Unless they do as tankies ARE the far left

          • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOP
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            11 hours ago

            It’s not any kind of judgment about right or wrong. It’s just an observation that some nutty behaviors like kicking someone out of your web forum the instant they dissent in any way, or openly defending your chosen government even when it’s killing people like they’re spraying for weeds in the garden, are unique to far-right individuals and tankies, and unknown and abhorred pretty much everywhere else.

      • socsa@piefed.social
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        1 day ago

        In this case it’s not so much horseshoe theory as it is that most tankies on lemmy are just trolls, or teenagers parroting trolls.

        • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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          11 hours ago

          Yeah, far right says the same and I’m not buying it from them either

    • Valmond@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      There was a big “information” campaign against donating to wikipedia say 6 months - 2 years ago, anyone know what happened/why?

      • antonamo
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        It is about the wikimedia content creators not getting a proper share while the wikimedia foundation acts basicly like Peta, Green Peace and other “Charity”-Buisnesses by using drastic and guildinducing ads even in third world countries. The server activty is funded for aprox the next 100 years and the content is created for free. Most of the money is therefore actually going to around 700 employees in the adminstration, that work on new projects, lobbying or ideas like wikimedia enterprise. But this in turn is not what the ads imply.

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      Last time I heard about wikipedia’s donation campaign (maybe 2 4 years ago or so), it was notorious for advertising in such a way as to imply your funds would be used to keep wikipedia alive, whereas the reality was that only a small part of Wikimedia Foundation’s income was needed for Wikipedia, and the rest was spent on rather questionable things like funding very weird research with little oversight. Did this change? If it didn’t, I wouldn’t particularly advise anyone to donate to them.

      • ubergeek@lemmy.today
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        3 hours ago

        and the rest was spent on rather questionable things like funding very weird research with little oversight

        Was this “weird research” basically research into things like “Why are white, wealthy males the ones most likely to be WP editors?”

      • DigitalDilemma@lemmy.ml
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        20 hours ago

        I actually took a look at Wikipedia’s accounts last week as I remembered that campaign when I saw the latest campaign and did some due diligence before donating. I didn’t donate, but I’m still glad Wikipedia exists.

        What I remembered: That hosting costs were tiny and Wikimedia foundation had enough already saved up to operate for over a hundred years without raising any more.

        What I saw: That if that was true, it isn’t any longer. It’s managed growth.

        I don’t think they are at any risk of financial collapse, but they are cutting their cloth to suit their income. That’s normal in business, including charities. If you stop raising money, you stagnate. You find things to spend that money on that are within the charity’s existing aims.

        Some highlights from 2024: $106million in wages. 26m in awards and grants. 6m in “travel and conferences”. Those last two look like optional spends to me, but may be rewards to the volunteer editors. The first seems high, but this is only a light skim

        Net assets at EOY = $271 million. Hosting costs per year are $3million. It’s doing okay.

        If you’re curious; https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/financial-reports/

        • lukewarm_ozone@lemmy.today
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          11 hours ago

          Thanks for the link! Yeah, $3M for hosting out of their massive budget is what I was talking about - Wikipedia could lose 90% of their cashflow and not be in any danger of going offline. I don’t see how to estimate how much of that “salaries” part is related to Wikipedia rather to their other business. But even taking the most optimistic possible reading, I think it’s still true that the marginal value of donations to Wikimedia foundations will not be in support of Wikipedia’s existence or even in improvements to it, but in them doing more unrelated charity.

          (If you want to donate specifically to charities that spread knowledge, then donating to Wikipedia makes more sense, though then in my opinion you should consider supporting the Internet Archive, which has ~8 times less revenue, and just this year was sued for copyright infringement this year and spent a while being DDOSed into nonfunctionality - that’s a lot of actually good reasons to need more money!).

          • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOP
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            11 hours ago

            Wikipedia could lose 90% of their cashflow and not be in any danger of going offline.

            Is it your impression that paying the people who work for you is optional for a technology company?

            The salaries mostly are in the $100k-350k range, maybe up to $500-700k in the C suite. They’re perfectly reasonable by the standards of a San Francisco tech company that operates at the scale that Wikipedia does. The full list of exact salaries and recipients is listed in their form 990 filings if you want to read them for yourself.

            Edit: Phrasing

            • AlDente@sh.itjust.works
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              Is it your impression that paying the people who work for you is optional for a technology company?

              What a bad-faith argument. You seem willfully obtuse towards any data presented to you and unnecessarily hostile in all of your comments. I took a look at the most recent 990 form you reference, and it lists compensation for a mere 13 individuals, with a total compensation just over $4-million in sum. This is in no way counter-evidence that spending (ultimately due to the decisions of these executives) is at runaway levels. Salaries and wages have increased 22% compounding year-over-year for the last four years on average. This is a 120% increase in only four years (from $46,146,897 to $101,305,706).

              These trends have been continuously called out for almost a decade now, but this exponential growth continues nonetheless. All while expenses for core responsibilities remain flat. Wikipedia should be setup to succeeded indefinitely at this point if it weren’t for these decisions.

              • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOP
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                2 hours ago

                Thanks for the link! Yeah, $3M for hosting out of their massive budget is what I was talking about - Wikipedia could lose 90% of their cashflow and not be in any danger of going offline.

                Is it your impression that paying the people who work for you is optional for a technology company?

                What a bad-faith argument.

                I’m just going to let that little exchange stand on its own.

                I took a look at the most recent 990 form you reference, and it lists compensation for a mere 13 individuals, with a total compensation just over $4-million in sum.

                Hm, you’re right. I had looked at some kind of summary that listed people for every year, and somehow thought that it was breaking down salaries for everyone, but it’s only the top people.

                Let’s look a different way. https://foundation.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AWikimedia_Foundation_2021_Form_990.pdf&page=9 says that there are 233 people who earn more than $100k (so basically, full-time people in a white-collar role). So if you make a ballpark estimate that for each one of those people, there’s one other person doing janitorial work or similar that makes average $50k/yr, and average out the $88M they spent on salary in 2022 over all those 466 people, you get $327k per year for the white collar people. Presumably there’s also some amount on part-time work, or grants, or something like that. But the point is, it’s not that there is some absurd amount of money going missing. It’s just that they employ a few hundred people and pay SF-tech-company salaries.

                This is in no way counter-evidence that spending (ultimately due to the decisions of these executives) is at runaway levels. Salaries and wages have increased 22% compounding year-over-year for the last four years on average. This is a 120% increase in only four years (from $46,146,897 to $101,305,706).

                These trends have been continuously called out for almost a decade now, but this exponential growth continues nonetheless. All while expenses for core responsibilities remain flat.

                Didn’t you just get super offended that I pointed out that paying the people who work for you is, in fact, a “core reponsibility”, and so this argument doesn’t make sense?

                I’m happy with Wikipedia paying their people. If there was one person making $5M per year, then I’d be fine with that, even though there isn’t. If there was one person making $50M per year, maybe I’d have some questions, but nothing like that is happening.

                Wikipedia should be setup to succeeded indefinitely at this point if it weren’t for these decisions.

                You said I sound hostile. Stuff like this is why. I’ve been dealing with maybe 5-10 different people who all have some kind of different reason of bending their way around to the conclusion “and so Wikipedia sucks.” I don’t think spending money that’s coming in, on paying people to do Wikipedia work, spells doom for Wikipedia. I don’t think that makes any sense. And, there’s been such a variety of “and so that’s why Wikipedia sucks” comments I’ve been reading that all don’t make any sense if you examine them, that it’s made me short-tempered to any given one.

                I like Wikipedia. I think it’s good.

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          Love that everyone on this thread is a financial analyst and a 501c consultant.

          For-profit companies have the margins they do because they’ve successfully detached humanity from their spending obligations. Wikipedia does not need to do quarterly global lay-offs or labor off-shoring when their technology doesn’t meet release deadlines. They are a nonprofit. They exist to bring factual, accessible information to the world. If you support for this cause, donate. If you don’t, don’t donate or don’t use. If you care for the cause but want the CEO to take a paycut, well, find them one who will stick around for more than a few years on less than the average mega CEO salary. Because most of them have not.

          • DigitalDilemma@lemmy.ml
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            10 hours ago

            Love that everyone on this thread is a financial analyst and a 501c consultant.

            So people shouldn’t have an opinion unless they’re professionally qualified? I’m not sure that’s how the internet works.

            And also, people absolutely should check how their money will be spent when they consider donating. It’s their money, remember.

            If you support for this cause, donate. If you don’t, don’t donate or don’t use.

            I get that, and it’s often true I think. But when the thing that they do that you use and like is such a tiny part of their spending, is it still true?

            I care about Wikipedia’s website. I would donate to that. I don’t care about the other 90% of the things they would spent my donation on. Should I still donate?

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              1 hour ago

              If you’re asking that question because you’re genuinely conflicted about donating and you’re not just here spreading divisive nonsense on behalf of Elon Musk, you could do a deeper delve into the entire foundation or look up the Wikipedia page on Income Statements.

              You seem to be hung up on the operating expenses. That’s just a finance term for the certain operational costs like the electricity bill and insurance. It does not mean the total of what it costs to run the organization and that everything else is in excess. Similarly, salary expenses includes everyone from the HR department to the custodians, not just the rich CEOs.

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        22 hours ago

        This perspective is very common in online communities about any sort of charity or non-profit.

        “Don’t donate money to whatever charity, they just waste the money on whatever thing”

        Truthfully, it’s just an excuse to assuage the guilt arising from refusing to support these organisations.

        • DigitalDilemma@lemmy.ml
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          20 hours ago

          Truthfully, it’s just an excuse to assuage the guilt arising from refusing to support these organisations.

          Sometimes.

          Sometimes it’s a pretty accurate statement.

          I used to run a medium-large charity. I have a fair bit of experience in fundraising and management. Most donators would be shocked at how little their donation actually achieves in isolation. Also at the waste that often goes on, and certainly the salaries at the upper tiers.

          And I could also say that guilt is exactly why people donate. It’s to feel good about themselves, they’re buying karma. Central heating for the soul. I won’t say that’s a bad thing, but it is a thing. It’s also exactly how charities fundraise, because it works. That’s why your post and tv adverts are full of pictures of sad children crying. Every successful charity today is that way because it knows how to manipulate potential supporters. Is that always wrong? Of course not, charities couldn’t do good things without money. But sometimes the ethics in fundraising are extremely flexible.

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        22 hours ago

        Well, that’s definitely a super trustworthy thing, not at all relevant to the question of whether there is misinformation floating around that is targeted at Wikipedia.

        I looked up their financial reports somewhere else in these comments when talking to someone else, and long story short, it’s not true. Also, just to annoy anyone who’s trying to spread this type of misinformation, I just set up a recurring $10/month donation to Wikipedia. I thought about including a note specifically requesting that it be used only for rather questionable things and funding very weird research, but there wasn’t a space for it.

        • lukewarm_ozone@lemmy.today
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          12 hours ago

          I wondered when writing my comment whether people would combine this with the vague statement in the opening post and conclude “aha, I will now take this as misinformation without checking”, but then I looked at your other comments and saw you were actually talking about some India-related conspiracy I heard nothing about. Yet apparently you nevertheless think my comment is intentional misinfo?? That isn’t very coherent, is it now?

          • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOP
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            11 hours ago

            I was talking about your comment. The idea that because they pay people salaries, including a few hundred K per year for the people at the top, they’re drowning in money and there’s no point in donating as long as they can pay their hosting bills and nothing else, is wrong. Furthermore I suspect that at least some of the bunch of people who suddenly started coming out of the woodwork to say a few variations on that exact same thing are part of some kind of deliberate misinformation, just because it’s kind of a weird conclusion for a whole bunch of people to all start talking about all at once. Doubly so because it isn’t true.

            There’s a whole separate thing where one of the other commenters sent me an article saying Israel is attacking Syria with nuclear weaponry and I only don’t know about it because I consume hopelessly pro-Western propaganda sources like Wikipedia, and he sent me India.com as his backing for it. That’s nothing to do with you, though.

            • lukewarm_ozone@lemmy.today
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              11 hours ago

              The idea that because they pay people salaries, including a few hundred K per year for the people at the top, they’re drowning in money and there’s no point in donating as long as they can pay their hosting bills and nothing else, is wrong.

              I in fact don’t think that - to get the sort of people you want to be running your company, a good salary is necessary. I suspect a lot of the people that wikimedia employs are unnecessary because this is way too much money to be spending on salaries overall, but I have no way of checking it since they don’t provide a breakdown of the salaries involved. I do think, however, that a company that’s not drowning in money wouldn’t be giving a bunch of generic research grants.

              Furthermore I suspect that at least some of the bunch of people who suddenly started coming out of the woodwork to say a few variations on that exact same thing are part of some kind of deliberate misinformation, just because it’s kind of a weird conclusion for a whole bunch of people to all start talking about all at once.

              That’s valid, though I note that in the worlds where I am a normal person and not an anti-wikipedia shill, the reason why I’m saying these things now and not at other times is because I saw this post, and you wrote this post because you saw other people talk about some India-related Wikipedia conspiracy theory, and one reason why you’d see these people crawl out of woodwork now is because wikipedia ramps up their donation campaign this time of year, prompting discussion about wikipedia.

              The main issue I take with your opening post is its vagueness. You don’t mention any details in it, so it effectively acts as a cue for people to discuss anything at all controversial about wikipedia. And the way you frame the discussion is that such narratives “are fundamentally false” because Wikipedia “is a force for truth in the world that’s less corruptible than a lot of the others” - that’s assuming the conclusion. It’s no surprise that this results in your seeing a lot of claims about Wikipedia that you think are misinformation!

              P.S. Rethinking my previous comment a bit, it’s probably good overall that reading my comment made you donate to charity out of spite - even a mediocre charity like Wikimedia most likely has a net positive effect on the world. So I guess I should be happy about it. Consider also donating to one of these for better bang on your buck.

              • Wiz@midwest.social
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                55 minutes ago

                I do think, however, that a company that’s not drowning in money wouldn’t be giving a bunch of generic research grants.

                To clarify, you don’t think not-for-profits should fund grants for things that (by vote of the board) aligns with their mission?

                I’m trying to figure out your beef with them.

              • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOP
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                11 hours ago

                but I have no way of checking it since they don’t provide a breakdown of the salaries involved

                Yes they do. It’s named by the individual, their position, and the exact salary they earned in each year. Look up the form 990s.

                The main issue I take with your opening post is its vagueness. You don’t mention any details in it, so it effectively acts as a cue for people to discuss anything at all controversial about wikipedia.

                Completely true. I decided that being vague wasn’t great but it was better than brigading against the person I had in mind when that wasn’t the point. I figured people who had seen the stuff would know what I was talking about and figure it out, which mostly turned out to be accurate.

                The narrative that led me to make the post was that Wikipedia is doxxing its editors to any fascist government that asks. I talk more about it here:

                https://ponder.cat/post/1100747/1312503

                And the way you frame the discussion is that such narratives “are fundamentally false” because Wikipedia “is a force for truth in the world that’s less corruptible than a lot of the others”

                Not quite. Personally, I think WP is a force for truth in the world, but that wasn’t why I am justifying this, it’s just me talking.

                Also, I had legit forgotten that the government that WP has been fighting in court not to dox its users to, is India. I connected it to a later person who sent me a source from India.com, after spending so much time talking to people who think Israel is nuking Syria or Wikimedia is skimming $300 million of “excess” money off every single year (see the link above where someone references that misinformation and then I address it). Part of the reason I am short-tempered about false claims that make Wikipedia sound bad is that I’ve been talking with people who are making 4 or 5 different big ones just in these comments alone, and they all turn out to be bullshit, but the sum total of all of them getting repeated, I think, can be significant.

                Just to be clear, I’m not necessarily saying you are one of those misinformation people. But the claim that Wikimedia has so much money that donations are unnecessary, putting “salaries” they’re spending donations on in quotes, things like that, is definitely one of those misinformation claims.

        • planish@sh.itjust.works
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          16 hours ago

          That’s not allowed on Wikipedia, you have to use verifiable information from reliable secondary sources instead.

      • Aslanta@lemmy.world
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        13 hours ago

        Pathos is a simple marketing mode that is one of three used by every company and I don’t really see a problem with it. It’s intentionally contrary to the one for-profit companies use to gain revenue—fear.

    • TriflingToad@sh.itjust.works
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      24 hours ago

      really wish there was a way to pay with “Google play” because I found a way to get Google play money by lying to google lol

      • helloyanis@jlai.lu
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        23 hours ago

        Well, Google takes 15 to 30% off the in-app purchases made through Google Play, so you would probably be giving back Google their own money anyways, plus it would fool many people who might think they’re giving 10€ when actually they’re only giving 8,50€ or 7€ to Wikipedia and the rest to Google.

        • m-p{3}@lemmy.ca
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          15 hours ago

          Better than letting that survey money expire and staying 100% with Google.

  • douglasg14b@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    It’s likely this is a bot if it’s wide spread. And Lemmy is INCREDIBLY ill suited to handle even the dumbest of bots from 10+ years ago. Nevermind social media bots today.

    • kava@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      To be fair, it’s virtually impossible to tell whether a text was written by an AI or not. If some motivated actor is willing to spend money to generate quality LLM output, they can post as much as they want on virtually all social media sites.

      The internet is in the process of eating itself as we speak.

      • douglasg14b@lemmy.world
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        23 hours ago

        You don’t analyze the text necessary, you analyze the heuristics, behavioral patterns, sentiment…etc It’s data analysis and signal processing.

        You, as a user, probably can’t. Because you lack information that the platform itself is in a position to gather and aggregate that data.

        There’s a science to it, and it’s not perfect. Some companies keep their solutions guarded because of the time and money required to mature their systems & ML models to identify artificial behavior.

        But it requires mature tooling at the very least, and Lemmy has essentially none of that.

        • kava@lemmy.world
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          23 hours ago

          yes of course there are many different data points you can use. along with complex math you can also feed a lot of these data points in machine learning models and get useful systems that can perhaps red flag certain accounts and then have processes with more scrutiny that require more resources (such as a human reviewing)

          websites like chess.com do similar things to find cheaters. and they (along with lichess) have put out some interesting material going over some of what their process looks like

          here i have two things. one is that lichess, which is mostly developed and maintained by a single individual, is able to maintain an effective anti-cheat system. so I don’t think it’s impossible that lemmy is able to accomplish these types of heuristics and behavioral tracking

          the second thing is that these new AIs are really good. it’s not just the text, but the items you mentioned. for example I train a machine learning model and then a separate LLM on all of reddit’s history. the first model is meant to try and emulate all of the “normal” human flags. make it so it posts at hours that would match the trends. vary the sentiments in a natural way. etc. post at not random intervals of time but intervals of time that looks like a natural distribution, etc. the model will find patterns that we can’t imagine and use those to blend in

          so you not only spread the content you want (whether it’s subtle product promotion or nation-state propaganda) but you have a separate model trained to disguise that text as something real

          that’s the issue it’s not just the text but if you really want to do this right (and people with $$$ have that incentive) as of right now it’s virtually impossible to prevent a motivated actor from doing this. and we are starting to see this with lichess and chess.com.

          the next generation of cheaters aren’t just using chess engines like Stockfish, but AIs trained to play like humans. it’s becoming increasingly difficult.

          the only reason it hasn’t completely taken over the platform is because it’s expensive. you need a lot of computing power to do this effectively. and most people don’t have the resources or the technical ability to make this happen.

      • ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net
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        1 day ago

        spend money to generate quality LLM output, they can post as much as they want on virtually all social media sites.

        $20 for a chatgpt pro account and fractions of pennies to run a bot server. It’s really extremely cheap to do this.

        I don’t have an answer to how to solve the “motivated actor” beyond mass tagging/community effort.

        • kava@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          $20 for a chatgpt pro account and fractions of pennies to run a bot server. It’s really extremely cheap to do this.

          openAI has checks for this type of thing. They limit number of requests per hour with the regular $20 subscription

          you’d have to use the API and that comes at a cost per request, depending on which model you are using. it can get expensive very quickly depending on what scale of bot manipulation you are going for

        • douglasg14b@lemmy.world
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          23 hours ago

          Heuristics, data analysis, signal processing, ML models…etc

          It’s about identifying artificial behavior not identifying artificial text, we can’t really identify artificial text, but behavioral patterns are a higher bar for botters to get over.

          The community isn’t in a position to do anything about it the platform itself is the only one in a position to gather the necessary data to even start targeting the problem.

          I can’t target the problem without first collecting the data and aggregating it. And Lemmy doesn’t do much to enable that currently.

      • vga@sopuli.xyz
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        22 hours ago

        But something like Reddit at least potentially has the resources to throw some money at the problem. They can employ advanced firewalls and other anti-bot/anti-AI thingies. It’s very possible that they’re pioneering some state-of-the-art stuff in that area.

        Lemmy is a few commies and their pals. Unless China is bankrolling them, they’re out of their league.

    • Willy@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      Ur a bot. I can tell by the pixels unicode.

      Edit: joking aside you bring up a good point and our security through anonymity cultural irrelevance will not last forever. Or maybe it will.

      • douglasg14b@lemmy.world
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        22 hours ago

        Unfortunately it won’t, assuming Lemmy grows.

        Lemmy doesn’t get targeted by bots because it’s obscure, you don’t reach much of an audience and you don’t change many opinions.

        It has, conservatively, ~0.005% (Yes, 0.005%, not a typo) of the monthly active users.

        To put that into perspective, theoretically, $1 spent on a Reddit has 2,000,000x more return on investment than on Lemmy.

        All that needs to happen is that number to become more favorable.