this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2024
471 points (92.7% liked)
Fediverse
17724 readers
71 users here now
A community dedicated to fediverse news and discussion.
Fediverse is a portmanteau of "federation" and "universe".
Getting started on Fediverse;
- What is the fediverse?
- Fediverse Platforms
- How to run your own community
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Wikipedia also releases all content for free download under a permissive license, so I don't think it's fair to say that the US government is a meaningful threat to its quality of information, especially over non-English languages that are managed by an independent set of volunteers who could pack up their bags and move everything over wherever they want at any point.
Still a cool project and technological diversity is good though.
What? How are these two points related at all?
Anyone can fork at any time. The US gov could theoretically hold Wikipedia's brand and servers hostage, but the actually valuable stuff is already mirrored in a decentralized fashion that is completely unrestricted under US and international law.
EDIT: Maybe you meant that the US could covertly vandalize Wikipedia? Maybe, if they keep it very low-key. Editors are used to this kind of stuff though, it happens all the time from all governments since they can just, y'know, edit it. Anything actually impactful will be noticed by the editors which will just cause a fork.
Many of the editors are themselves neoliberal American cultural imperialists and proud of it. The issue isn't direct control so much as an army of useful idiots.
That statement ITSELF is American cultural Imperialism. There are a bunch of languages other than English on Wikipedia...
Also [citation needed].