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Wikipedia Communications The Internet Youtube

Wikipedia Had No Idea YouTube Was Going To Use It To Fact-Check Conspiracy Theories (gizmodo.com) 136

Yesterday, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki announced that the company would drop a Wikipedia link beneath videos on highly contested topics. We have now learned that Wikipedia did not know about this move prior to the announcement. Gizmodo reports: In a Twitter thread asking the public to support Wikipedia as much as it relies on it, Wikimedia executive director Katherine Maher first suggested that the organization was unaware of YouTube's plans. When asked whether this new module would only apply to English Wikipedia pages, Maher responded, "I couldn't say; this was something they did independent of us." In a statement to Gizmodo, the Wikimedia Foundation confirmed that the organization first learned of the new YouTube feature on Tuesday. "We are always happy to see people, companies, and organizations recognize Wikipedia's value as a repository of free knowledge," a Wikimedia Foundation spokesperson said in a statement. "In this case, neither Wikipedia nor the Wikimedia Foundation are part of a formal partnership with YouTube. We were not given advance notice of this announcement."
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Wikipedia Had No Idea YouTube Was Going To Use It To Fact-Check Conspiracy Theories

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  • by Chris Katko ( 2923353 ) on Wednesday March 14, 2018 @04:38PM (#56261737)

    This means the WIKIPEDIA articles will start to huge a huge influx of people who aren't normally wiki editors. And you know what Wikipedia is? Free for ANYONE to edit.

    So what does that do? It means Wikipedia articles that get linked will 1) Have huge bandwidth costs thanks to YouTube, and 2) get edited by people who love conspiracies and end up way shittier.

    Thanks, YouTube!

    Ever think that Rage Against the Machine's Evil Empire album came out like... 15 yeas too early? If they had any idea how big Facebook and Google would become, they would have come up with another 5 albums worth of content.

    • Fuckin' typos + Slashdot no edits. >:(

      > will start to huge a huge influx

      Will start to HAVE a huge influx

      • by Anonymous Coward
        you also misspelled "yuge"
    • Let's hope that Youtube will donate some money to Wikipedia for the extra traffic.

      The linked articles will probably be locked fast.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      No it won't. Most of these "highly contested" topics aren't contested at all by people who make reasoned decisions based only on measurement and not feelings or "instincts". The people who are viewing them are not generally the type who will follow a link to a site that isn't speaking in an inflammatory fashion. They are drama seekers who "know" everything better than the people who spend a lifetime studying it because they have what they term "common sense" which seems to correspond way too much to selfish

    • YouTube is part of Google, now called Alphabet. This is another example of bad management by Alphabet, in my opinion.
    • by The MAZZTer ( 911996 ) <megazzt.gmail@com> on Wednesday March 14, 2018 @05:14PM (#56261949) Homepage
      YouTube could mitigate this by linking to specific revisions of the articles. So it will deincentivize people to vandalize them snice YouTubers won't see it.
    • by epine ( 68316 )

      Have huge bandwidth costs

      Somewhere a Netflix engineer is laughing his ragged ass off.

      A sober assessment is that there will soon be a far larger number of articles semi-protected.

      If we can somehow figure out how to mass produce the Jordan Peterson mind-meld, Wikipedia might even be able to make constructive use of this influx of outrage and youthful energy.

      (That last paragraph wasn't part of the sober assessment, just in case your mental parser is invisibly fond of scope creep.)

    • No worries, the unemployed squatters will just revert those edits immediately and issue ban threats.
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Wikipedia can deal with this. They have measures like temporary protection, which can be anything from only allowing editors with accounts to make changes to freezing the article completely until the storm blows over.

      Anyway, most of the viewers of the video won't actually go to Wikipedia. They will read the snippet and leave it at that. I expect the conspiracy videos will start featuring carefully cherry-picked parts of the Wikipedia articles in them, so that viewers are mislead and don't bother check the a

    • So what does that do? It means Wikipedia articles that get linked will 1) Have huge bandwidth costs thanks to YouTube,

      Wikipedia has plenty of money. They have so much that they waste it on all kinds of bullshit rich media presentations that statistically nobody consumes. They can spend it on bandwidth.

      and 2) get edited by people who love conspiracies and end up way shittier.

      Most people will not edit Wikipedia. They will be scared off long before they even get to the edit page, and if they actually do submit an edit, they will be scared off when it's reverted.

    • So, you're saying that the site that bills itself as 'the encyclopedia that anybody can edit' will be made worse by having more people edit it?

      I mean, don't get me wrong, I've known that for years, but I'm glad more people are coming to the realization that Wikipedia's basic concept is flawed on it's face.

  • ..does that mean they're going away for as long as Youtube is using Wikipedia?

    Cuz seriously, if I knew that donating to Wikipedia would've garnered so much email spam, I'd never have donated in the first place.
  • Hopefully YouTube (Alphabet/Google/whatever they're called this month) will be making big donations to the Wikimedia folks to cover all the extra traffic this will generate.
  • In the past we had to worry about ads pushing malware.
    Now political activist US brands want to push their side of US party politics onto your browser?
    Time for a script that blocks US party political big brand alterations of your search results.
    The ads go blocked.
    The party political propaganda as results can be blocked too.
    Just say no to big brand activists pushing their partisan political results all over your browser.
    It is time to take back our browsers- and make the Internet great again.
    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Aighearach ( 97333 )

      Its funny, we've both been users for a long time, and you used to sound like a native English speaker.

      Now you speak some sort of weird political creole.

      Let this serve as a cautionary tale about what happens when you sink too deep into the echo-pit.

      • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
        Think of the nice GUI and fast browser experience.
        Without outside servers pushing party political results all over the content the user wanted to find.
        Browsers had to protect users from ads, pop ups, loud ad audio and unwanted video ads.
        Now browsers have to consider links to other sites getting placed over content.
  • Good Lord! (Score:5, Funny)

    by wonkey_monkey ( 2592601 ) on Wednesday March 14, 2018 @05:50PM (#56262137) Homepage

    One site showing links to another site, without even asking? Good grief. Is this what the internet has come to?

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Google isn't well known for acquiring consent before utilizing the resources of others. They are basically the corporate equivalent of rapists, have been for years. They found a way to monetize Wikipedia! Naturally Wikipedia won't see a dime of that profit.

  • And, who cares? Does Youtube need permission? The is a huge "who fucking cares?" moment.

  • Wikipedia is a fine tool for verifying information. Assuming 1) the Wiki article is correctly sourced and 2) you actually go check and verify THOSE SOURCES. Just using it by itself.
  • Every time YouTube links to Wikipedia. They should a) include a donation link as well b) share a portion of the ad revenues to support Wikipedia.

    Then it becomes a win-win scenario.

A committee takes root and grows, it flowers, wilts and dies, scattering the seed from which other committees will bloom. -- Parkinson

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