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Why Wikipedia Matters in Big Tech Bias & Censorship Battle
Wikipedia can’t be trusted, can it? An entire generation of Americans was brought up through school being told not to implicitly rely on the so-called online encyclopedia because just about anyone could get on it and create their own post, or even make edits to the pages of a well-known business, a historical event or an important political figure.
But times have changed, haven’t they?
Rather than downplaying information that can be altered at will by anonymous editors, the globe’s media and information gatekeepers (Big Tech) are siphoning up, regurgitating and, in many cases, outright rubber-stamping Wikipedia content.
Big Tech companies routinely elevate Wikipedia in search results.
Take Google for example. MRC has repeatedly exposed Google for elevating Wikipedia in its search results. In one study, MRC caught the search behemoth hiding X owner Elon Musk’s Grokipedia and instead promoting leftist Wikipedia. In two other studies, MRC revealed how Google elevated Wikipedia articles in search results to smear President Donald Trump’s allies: In one instance, Google repeatedly elevated the overtly biased Wikipedia page for Trump Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller; and in another instance, Google promoted leftist Wikipedia links in searches for Trump allies like Libs of TikTok creator Chaya Raichik, podcast host and Navy intelligence officer Jack Posobiec and The Daily Wire podcast host Matt Walsh.
General search isn’t the only problem though. Artificial intelligence chatbots are also pointing people to leftist Wikipedia. According to Pew Research Center, “Wikipedia links are somewhat more common in AI summaries than in standard search pages”—two times more common, in fact.
In order to train AI, chatbots are given datasets to devour and set loose to scour the internet to hoover up data and information to pull from for their responses. And guess what one of the most prominent data sources for training AI is? You guessed it: Wikipedia. This is not surprising, though, given the fact that the AI-powered search engines chatbots rely on are relentlessly pushing Wikipedia.
The phrase, “You are what you eat,” seems most apt here.
MRC studies bear that out, too. In one recent study, MRC researchers queried chatbots on the recent government shutdown. Three AI chatbots (ChatGPT, Grok and Meta AI) astonishingly—and inaccurately—blamed Republicans for the shutdown, citing leftist media sources like Wikipedia, National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting Service in doing so.
Another MRC study exposed Google’s AI for running cover for a reporting failure on the Hunter Biden laptop scandal. In two separate searches, Google’s AI denied that NPR and PBS hid the Biden laptop scandal, citing Wikipedia, which downplayed NPR’s “delayed” reporting and PBS’s initial “caution.” In yet another MRC study, AI relied on sources like Wikipedia to suggest that elitist media outlets should not give up on smearing Trump as antisemitic or fascist despite his successful mediation of a peace deal between Israel and Hamas.
All this makes clear that Wikipedia is perhaps more influential now than ever before. But why is that a bad thing?
Wikipedia’s overt anti-conservative bias distorts media and information, propagandizing to the masses, and thereby distorting reality. Former Vice President and Democrat Party candidate for president Kamala Harris said the quiet part out loud when discussing the importance of AI inputs in training.
On how AI can be used to nudge individuals in a preferred direction, Harris said, “And so, the machine is taught—and part of the issue here is what information is going into the machine that will then determine—and we can predict then, if we think about what information is going in, what then will be produced in terms of decisions and opinions that may be made through that process.”
Wikipedia Citation Disparity Evidences Effective Blacklist of Right-Leaning Media
Just how biased is Wikipedia against conservatives?
A December 11 MRC study underscored just how biased Wikipedia is. MRC analyzed Wikipedia citations across all languages and found that it cites left-leaning media outlets nearly 20 times more often than right-leaning media outlets.
From the study:
“Wikipedia overwhelmingly favored left-leaning media sources (5,320,017 citations versus 292,250), with editors citing radical leftist outlets such as MSNBC, Mother Jones, The Associated Press, The Daily Beast, The Nation, The New York Times, 18.2 times more than right-leaning sources like the New York Post, Real Clear Politics, The Daily Wire, The Federalist or the Washington Examiner.
“In head-to-head comparisons within regional markets, the results were much the same. Wikipedia cited left-leaning outlets like The New Yorker and The Washington Post significantly more than their right-leaning counterparts like the New York Post and The Washington Times.
“Wikipedia’s obvious favoritism of elitist media in its citations underscores MRC’s previous reporting, which showed that Wikipedia uses an effective blacklist to suppress right-leaning media on its pages.”
Wikipedia’s Vast Leftist Editing Power
Wikipedia’s anti-conservative bias does not end with its citations. The so-called encyclopedia’s leftist slant is also powered by its base of “volunteer” editors.
Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger has made clear in numerous interviews that there exists a group of editor accounts, the “power 62,” that wield an immense amount of power on the website, 85% of which are anonymous.
But the well of Wikipedia’s depraved bias goes deeper still.
As MRC Free Speech America VP Dan Schneider wrote in an op-ed, Wikipedia has waged a hidden war on truth. “Our recent investigation shows that Wikipedia and its educational partner, Wiki Education, have developed a vast, little-known system for shaping, and increasingly weaponizing, the content millions of Americans rely on every day,” wrote Schneider on The Daily Wire. “What we found is not simply concerning; it reveals the quiet architecture of an ideological project. It is also possible that, in attempting to hide its operations, Wikipedia has crossed legal lines that could carry serious consequences.”
Wiki Education brags that since 2010, it has been responsible for 120 million words on Wikipedia, amassing millions of views. It further adds that it has infiltrated 7,650 classes, impacting 145,000 students nationwide.
Apparently Big Tech Didn’t Get the Message
Wikipedia’s influence appears clear, as Big Tech hoovers up information from its pages, trains on its data and pushes it all out for unsuspecting masses to consume. Its societal impact, though, has perhaps not yet been realized. “Remember, students, don’t cite Wikipedia,” we were told by our teachers and professors. Maybe Big Tech didn’t get the message?
But conservatives and free thinkers are beginning to learn the truth about Big Tech companies and their leftist war chest of harvestable digital information (Wikipedia). With MRC Free Speech America research revealing Wikipedia's staggering bias—citing left-leaning outlets nearly 20 times more often than right-leaning ones—and with Big Tech platforms elevating its distorted content in searches and AI responses, the threat to truthful discourse is undeniable.
Conservatives, pro-free speech activists and lawmakers on Capitol Hill must act decisively: demand transparency and accountability from Wikipedia and Big Tech giants, push for congressional investigations into ideological censorship and support alternatives that restore balance to the information ecosystem before leftist gatekeepers fully monopolize public knowledge.