In this episode, we talk to Larry Sanger, one of the founders of Wikipedia, about how Wikipedia exemplifies the trend towards censorship, from open source and collaboratively achieved information, and how it can be used as a thermometer for a changing global climate when it comes to establishment intervention, censorship, authoritarianism and centralisation. We also discuss the role of Wikipedia as a proxy for the establishment, and the role it plays in shaping the global narrative, as well as the influence of deep state agencies and corporate interests on the information flow on the internet. This episode was produced by YouWakingWonders and edited by Alex Blumberg. It was produced and produced by Tall Tales Productions. Additional audio mixing and mastering by Matthew Boll. We are working on transcribing this podcast and putting it on a website. Please be kind enough to leave us your comments and suggestions for future episodes. We do not claim ownership of the music used in this podcast. Thank you so much for all your support, it means a lot to us and we appreciate it greatly. You Awakening Wonders is a project of You Waking Wonders. - our mission is to help awaken the world to a better, more informed and more connected world. Your support is invaluable, and we thank you for all the support you all show us your support. If you like what you see here, please consider pledging a small monthly donation. We can't wait to see what you're listening to us on TikTok, We'll be looking out for you in the next episode! in the coming weeks, we'll be giving you a shoutout! We're looking forward to hearing from you! - we're listening out for all of your support in the rest of the world, too! Timestamps: - The Awakening Wonders Podcasts: . . . , and . , and of the Awakening Wonders podcast: - Thank you for your support is much appreciated, Thankyou, and your support will be much appreciated! (Thank you, you're all the more important than you can have a chance to be heard by us in the world thank you, and you'll get a better understanding of what we're hearing from us, too much more in the future? - Timestay me in the podcast? ) - Your support really means the world is much more than enough.
00:00:02.000If you're watching us on YouTube, we'll be there for a few minutes before being exclusively available on Rumble because, obviously, this is a time where we have to be supported and we have to be incredibly cautious about the way we talk about an omni-crisis across the world where there is so much suffering, so much conflict, so much doubt.
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00:00:27.000We're talking, of course, about the ongoing crisis in the Middle East and America's potential role in arming the world.
00:00:35.00050% or 57% of the world's autocratic nations have been sold arms by the American military-industrial complex.
00:00:41.000Additionally, we're talking to Larry Sanger, one of the founders of Wikipedia, about how Wikipedia exemplifies the trend towards censorship from open source and collaboratively achieved information.
00:00:58.000Larry, thank you so much for joining us today.
00:01:01.000You must have started Wikipedia as, I'm imagining, a fresh-faced idealist, full of potential and possibility, believing that Wikipedia would become an open source of knowledge collaboration, perhaps creating a consensus around a variety of complex topics.
00:01:18.000Can you tell me How Wikipedia changed from the vision you originally had to it and how it can be used as a kind of thermometer for a changing global climate when it comes to establishment intervention, censorship, authoritarianism and centralisation.
00:02:55.000For any of the issues that we like to refer to as the narrative, or whatever the current thing is.
00:03:06.000So as I say, around like maybe 2016, when the Brexit debate was happening and Donald Trump's first election, that I think is what really made the switch for the major news media.
00:03:20.000And I think that at the same time is what I have a bunch of questions based on what you've already said.
00:03:34.000With social media sites like Facebook or Twitter, now X, it's understood that these sites can be used to form consensus through communication and we're aware as a result of the Twitter files that deep state agencies were sort of embedded within Twitter.
00:03:51.000Certainly they were spending money, they were directing content, they were Pre-emptively asking for certain types of content, even true information to be suppressed.
00:03:58.000Most of our audience will be familiar with those practices now.
00:04:02.000But when it comes to those social media sites, they're communicative tools that create a consensus around news.
00:04:08.000Wikipedia is a different type of resource.
00:04:12.000It's in fact the only one of the top five that isn't, I suppose, other than Google, which encompasses different types of social media sites, I suppose.
00:04:20.000So can you tell us, what is the distinction, and post Brexit and Trump, how did you see that neutrality being impeded upon?
00:04:28.000Was it because of intervention of deep state agencies?
00:04:32.000And can you give us a couple of examples of topics that were previously been collaboratively and somewhat objectively conveyed, becoming more biased and clearly subject to, as you say, a particular narrative?
00:04:45.000I have cited a number of examples in a series of blog posts, and it's hard to pick one, especially because after I make these blog posts, they'll go to the articles and try to clean them up to some extent, so they're not quite as embarrassing to them.
00:05:08.000But you ask a very interesting question.
00:05:12.000Basically, What is the difference between the techniques used for information control by Twitter and Facebook and Instagram, whatever, and on the one hand, and Wikipedia on the other?
00:05:34.000Well, I think the difference is for X or Facebook, They are literally throttling the views that they don't want people to share.
00:05:47.000I myself, I used to have a blue check, but I now have less traffic than I had before I got my blue check on my posts,
00:06:03.000and this back in 2019. And so it's really, it's very
00:06:09.000Now, on Wikipedia, on the other hand, it's actually much more straightforward.
00:06:14.000They simply don't allow certain points of view to be introduced.
00:06:21.000Now, from the outsider, or even people who are working and not even thinking about what's going on behind the scenes, It's what it looks like is just a bunch of random people who are anonymous, mostly, debating on what's called the talk page of Wikipedia, negotiating about what the article will be, and just a whole bunch of people who are really, really left wing or really, really, because it isn't necessarily the left, right?
00:07:02.000And they are all, you know, pushing a certain point of view.
00:07:06.000And if you try to give voice to any sort of, you know, skepticism about the jab, just for example, then they will shut you down and block you.
00:07:22.000But I think what's going on is that any number of prominent players in the media landscape, and by that I mean not just, you know, I'm not talking about the, you know, network anchors or anything like that, I'm just talking about whoever is influencing the media, whoever cares.
00:07:48.000And that includes especially like PR firms, and quite frankly, a variety of government agencies that make it their business to direct these things, as we have learned in the last couple of years, especially in the Twitter files, right?
00:08:06.000I hope your viewership is aware of the Twitter files.
00:08:14.000We've had Matt Taibbi, Michael Schellenberger, Barry Weiss, David Zweig, all of these people come on our show and very much inform our perspective on how deep state agencies and corporate interests have co-opted big tech, how there's been a sort of formation of new elites, how the online space essentially could be conceived as a new Territory opening up, much like the discovery of what was somewhat dismissively regarded as the New World, which was subsequently being colonised by various sets of interests.
00:08:50.000The once organic space that afforded the advent of Napster and the changes that that created, or the Arab Spring, has necessarily become co-opted and controlled in the same way that We would have assumed, and continue to assume, that legacy media outlets like the BBC, CNN, ultimately see independent media now as their competitors rather than one another.
00:09:17.000We understand that there is an agenda, that the function of the legacy media is to amplify
00:09:22.000the agenda of the powerful and normalize the agenda of the powerful.
00:09:27.000And they increasingly are encroaching on the spaces that afforded actual dissent, independent
00:09:35.000thinking, independent conversation, their publishing of counter-narratives.
00:09:39.000I suppose what's interesting about Wikipedia is because it was so successful and effective,
00:09:45.000it became the de facto resource for everybody from school children to, well let's face it,
00:09:50.000media, like new media, like we look at Wikipedia still.
00:09:54.000And I suppose there's a difference from looking at, like, Henry VIII and, like, oh, did he have six wives?
00:10:00.000And seeing potential inflections that might not have been available to Tudor philosophers imposed by more modern perspectives.
00:10:10.000And that's, you know, that's all part of progress.
00:10:14.000But if you can't say why did Pfizer why were Pfizer afforded an indemnity agreement?
00:10:20.000Why are they not publishing those results for 75 years?
00:10:23.000What is the relationship between vaccine injury and myocarditis?
00:10:27.000How effective and what clinical trials were conducted For children and pregnant women.
00:10:31.000What are the studies that suggest that breastfeeding women can safely take the vaccine?
00:10:37.000That is where you're precisely where you're saying there will not be open conversation.
00:10:41.000And again, the coronavirus pandemic is more a lens rather than a unique, whilst it was unique in many ways, I primarily myself have started to regard it as a opportunity to see how institutions and power Always function.
00:10:56.000Where do their interests converge and how are they trying to establish new elites?
00:11:00.000Now, recently, Larry, perhaps we had on the show Dr. Robert Epstein.
00:11:04.000You've maybe heard of him and the studies he does of Google activity and how new and how reality is ultimately curated, cultivated and imposed through Google's ability to manipulate ultimately news feeds, I suppose.
00:11:18.000Now, is it true that Google makes significant donations to Wikipedia And as a result are able to manage and control the reality because I suppose the way I see Wikipedia, you know it's a pretty simple and obvious metaphor I suppose or at least analogy, is like it's like a library and if you have control over what's in that library and what's not in that library, you control the knowledge base itself.
00:11:43.000You are able to, that's why we live in this siloed and bifurcated cultural space, is because half of the world are not gaining access to any counter narrative.
00:11:53.000They're receiving hyperbole and bombast and consuming it as facts.
00:11:56.000In particular, what is the relationship between Google and Wikipedia?
00:12:01.000And is it true that there are paid consultants managing Wikipedia?
00:12:06.000And so how is it ultimately that financial interests are managing the information you see in Wikipedia?
00:12:14.000Well, I think Google has contributed to Wikipedia in a couple of different ways that are really important.
00:12:22.000They have given millions of dollars, but Wikipedia gets tens of millions of dollars per year now in donations from various sources.
00:12:34.000I'm not sure that a really significant amount of that comes from Google, but it doesn't matter, because Google's main contribution by far is the massive amount of traffic that they send to Wikipedia.
00:12:55.000And there is, you know, what internet theorists have called for a long time, the long tail of topics.
00:13:03.000And Wikipedia, if you want to look up an article about, I was looking at this Civil War general, Sylvester Morris, or something like that.
00:13:17.000And there's only one encyclopedia article about this Civil War figure, and it's from Wikipedia.
00:13:28.000You won't find a separate standalone article about that guy.
00:13:33.000And there's literally millions of topics like that that Wikipedia has the only article about.
00:13:42.000I noticed back in the beginning, back in the day, how each month, because it happened on a monthly basis, the Google bot would come through and it would spider a new set of articles, and we'd get a new influx of traffic and a new influx of editors as a result.
00:14:09.000That pattern continued on for years and years.
00:14:13.000So as a friend of mine likes to put it, Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that Google built.
00:14:23.000And I think there's something to that.
00:15:42.000There are a lot of other encyclopedias, and if you do search for articles, for encyclopedia articles on any topic, Even Google will still give you articles from other encyclopedias.
00:15:59.000Wikipedia is usually the first result, right?
00:16:04.000But if there are more, and especially if people are going to other sites more, Wikipedia, I think, will not be pushed as heavily by Google and other sources.
00:16:18.000So there's a couple of things that we need to do.
00:16:20.000I talked about the long tail of articles.
00:16:24.000All of you people out there need to start writing encyclopedia articles, and you need to start putting them on your blogs.
00:16:30.000And I mean about like that Civil War general, the long tail.
00:16:34.000There are a lot of specialized topics that you have knowledge about that other people don't know things about.
00:16:41.000should be writing encyclopedia articles about them and putting them on your blogs. We actually have,
00:16:49.000so when I say we, I mean the Knowledge Standards Foundation.
00:16:52.000We have a plugin for WordPress that will allow you to push an article that is only on your
00:16:59.000blog to the encyclosphere. What the encyclosphere is, is a free collection of all the encyclopedias,
00:17:06.000or at least that's what it will be when we're finished collecting them all. It takes time to
00:17:11.000collect them all. We've got 35 encyclopedias.
00:17:14.000We're going to be doubling that number soon.
00:17:19.000So Encycloreader and Encyclosearch, those are two different encyclopedia search engines and readers.
00:17:29.000You should be using those instead of Wikipedia if you want to look at Wikipedia.
00:17:34.000In fact, there's another thing that we do.
00:17:36.000We have a plugin for Chrome or Chrome-based web browsers like Brave, which is what I use.
00:17:45.000And if you do a search on any topic that is in the encyclosphere, which is most of them now, then it will come up with some search results above the Google results, if you're using Google or, I think, DuckDuckGo.
00:18:06.000And if you click on those results, or if you click on a Wikipedia result inside of the results, instead of going to Wikipedia, it will load the article directly in your browser.
00:19:29.000And soon the Justopedia articles will also be automatically included in the Encyclosphere.
00:19:39.000So I don't think that people are going to start using like EncycloReader or EncycloSearch anytime soon, but if we organize all of the other encyclopedias in one giant database, that's what we are doing, right?
00:19:55.000And then we make it available to other search engines like Brave, for example.
00:20:01.000I've talked to the CEO of Brave, Brendan Eich, And he's interested in using our content.
00:20:43.000Also, it's very surprising to see that you're a kind of a real-life Neo navigating the matrix, organizing renegades, Trying to create rebellion against centralised information.
00:20:58.000And in a way, Larry, it seems like you're reviving the spirit of the early internet, where there was this kind of utopian moment that everyone's collective knowledge could be shared, that communities that were geographically disparate but shared an interest could form, that actually the necessity for authoritarianism and centralisation is itself diminished.
00:21:22.000by the ability for communities to come together around what might be regarded as niche issues.
00:21:29.000In a sense, the advent of this technology could be used to, in a way I suppose, enhance
00:21:37.000our anthropological origins as a tribalised but not necessarily oppositionist and conflict-strewn
00:21:46.000There was a time where there was true diversity where we wouldn't expect people in Iceland to have the same culture as the people in Senegal and we would glory in the truly distinct cultures around food and religion and ideology and now there is this homogenizing force that doesn't Well, masquerading as, like, we're interested in diversity.
00:22:08.000Even when people use the term, like, left, I think, well, is it about redistribution?
00:22:14.000Is it about the real support of various communities?
00:22:21.000I'm sure you're familiar with Martin Guri's analysis that the terms left and right are becoming almost redundant as a new dynamic between centralising authority, establishment authority, and peripheral dissent is becoming the root.
00:22:35.000That's why there are these extraordinary alliances.
00:22:37.000That's why someone like me, I'm more inclined to think that Donald Trump is going to provide
00:22:55.000Even though what you're undertaking is a vast enterprise, it alludes to and infers an even
00:23:01.000greater possibility for decentralisation.
00:23:04.000How significant do you think those principles are, and particularly what you said, unified but decentralized?
00:23:09.000Do you think that's something that could be mapped onto political ideals?
00:23:12.000Is that something that you, because plainly it's an ideal of yours, so if a real ideal is like, is a principle, and principles can be applied almost universally?
00:23:26.000I remember I was once asked to speak to the intelligence community back in like 2008, and they were asking me, you know, would it be possible to create a wiki for intelligence?
00:23:48.000And that is actually kind of what you just said, It's immediately brought that to mind.
00:23:59.000In other words, there is something about the notion of trying to organize organic, naturally occurring behavior that militates against freedom, okay?
00:24:20.000So let me say this, though, before I try to attack your question a different way.
00:24:33.000I think some of your viewers might be worried that by collecting all of the encyclopedias, unifying them, as I say, that we would then be giving them all a single neck to cut off.
00:25:02.000All right, is that there is a standard for encyclopedia articles now.
00:25:10.000We call it the ZWI or zipped wiki file format.
00:25:17.000Well, all of those encyclopedia articles that I described have been represented.
00:25:24.000They have been captured in the ZWE file format.
00:25:29.000And there's also a standard way of organizing the articles in a database so that different organizations that manage different aggregators of different collections of encyclopedias They can exchange articles via these files, all right?
00:25:54.000It is the fact that there is a technical standard that no one is in control of, that everyone sort of agrees to use organically, right?
00:26:07.000That is the thing that enables Freedom on the internet.
00:26:13.000The reason I'm going on this, I know it sounds very wonky, I know it sounds like irrelevant and and merely technical, but it's not.
00:26:23.000This is the core of the issue of internet freedom, and a lot of non-techies don't realize this, but I'm telling you, it's the thing that enables freedom and always has on the internet, the thing that made the internet free in the first place, were Standards, okay?
00:26:43.000And I mean technical standards, communications standards.
00:26:48.000And when there are standards, Well, that means that you actually have to build clients that connect with a network, which is necessarily amorphous and existing in many different places.
00:27:04.000And so for example, we have two different aggregators started by two different programmers using
00:27:12.000two different programming languages, and they are exchanging their files between them.
00:27:18.000And we're encouraging others to-- another guy wrote one out of the blue, not part of our organization,
00:27:28.000So the thing that we need to be doing, the real solution here
00:27:35.000to the technical problems, actually involves things like--
00:27:42.000I'm not saying that Blue Sky is the answer.
00:27:44.000It probably isn't, and there are other things, but Blue Sky is an example of the sort of thing that I'm talking about.
00:27:51.000So Blue Sky on social media is this project that was started By the former CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey.
00:28:05.000It basically aims to enable people to host their own data, to host their own lists of followers and people they follow, so that you could actually own your own presence online And interface with others via standards.
00:28:33.000So even the Knowledge Standards Foundation has started a project like this, and I'm not saying that ours is the best solution either, but we use the RSS standard.
00:28:44.000We actually are built on top of the blogging network.
00:28:49.000And so it is actually a plugin for WordPress.
00:28:53.000That's the sort of thing that I'm talking about.
00:28:55.000In other words, if you really, really want decentralization online, and if you want to make that a reality, then you have to adopt standards, and you have to adopt free clients that are easy for grandma to install, That plug into those networks.
00:29:18.000If you just start creating alternate websites like Rumble, for example, that's just another, it's just another competing centralizing force.
00:29:29.000So, now, okay, to address your question about, you know, how I mean, it's called freedom, right?
00:29:51.000I mean, I would think rather that we are taking pre-existing political concepts, self-determination, freedom, individual rights, and applying them to the sphere of tech.
00:30:16.000I mean, I'm a conservative libertarian.
00:30:20.000Conservatarian, as we call them in the United States, right?
00:30:25.000Right. So, but I mean, we must not lose sight of the fact that
00:30:37.000so much of our governance now takes the form of technology.
00:30:44.000Right, we are the The policies that something like Twitter more directly affects my life than a thousand laws passed by Congress or Parliament or whatever.
00:31:01.000So, in other words, the technology policy matters a lot.
00:31:08.000Yeah, I understand, Larry, what you're saying, and I can see where these ideas mesh together.
00:31:12.000Ultimately, there's a requirement for standards and principles, and that those have to be indefatigable, enshrined and clear.
00:31:20.000And when you start to culturally mess with ideas like freedom of speech, of free speech, Then you facilitate and now through technology are able to execute forms of previously unimaginable tyranny.
00:31:36.000So what you're saying is the principles that preceded online spaces have to be applied in them and there has to be a consensus around what they are and you've explained to us very lucidly and clearly what the Tissue is that connects these ideas that there are ways to govern these spaces that are in alignment with values that we used to consider to be important.
00:31:59.000We still claim that we consider important, but everywhere we see them trespassed against.
00:32:07.000Is there before before we leave, What is the function of the Knowledge Standards Foundation?
00:32:13.000Is this something that's beyond what you're describing in terms of the aggregation of these various encyclopedias, or is that part of that same deal?
00:32:23.000Well, we've got a lot of different things going.
00:32:26.000The most important task that we have is to aggregate all of the encyclopedias, make them available via search engines and readers, but even that isn't as important as simply aggregating them, making all of the data available And encouraging developers to build on top of that in order to, again, have a decentralized but unified collection of encyclopedias that together is greater than Wikipedia.
00:33:03.000Larry, thank you for being so clear about a subject that's very, very important and sometimes so vast it's difficult to contain without anchoring it to a simple principle like freedom.
00:33:14.000And the phrase, unified but decentralised, is one I'll remember for a long time.
00:33:28.000Send your viewers, please, to encyclosphere.org.
00:33:33.000The name of the network is the Encyclosphere, so it's called encyclosphere.org, and there you will find links to EncycloSearch and EncycloReader and our other projects.
00:33:45.000Couldn't you think of a name that was more difficult to spell?
00:33:48.000Why don't you call it Encyclo-Sphinx Establishmentarialism?