I see a lot of posts lately, mainly in ‘world news’ communities, that when I investigate their source, I cannot come to any other conclostion that purposefully spreading of fake news and propaganda on lemmy.
I love this platform and want to see it thrive, but the fact that these kind of posts can so easily populate my feed is disturbing.
When I want to read something relatively well verified and unbiased I reach for Wikipedia. They are doing a better job than any other source I found on the internet so far on keeping things clear of BS
Wikipedia articles are supposed to summarize “reliable sources” and be neutral among them, but not give equal weight to “unreliable sources”.
Here’s the thing: people have by now figured out that if you first define sources that say things you like as “reliable” and sources that say things you don’t like as “unreliable”, then you can turn Wikipedia into a propaganda organ for whatever you want.
Wikipedia is neither an especially good source nor an especially bad one.
Bias on Wikipedia is very bad now. One of the co-founders of Wikipedia has declared it “propaganda.” It doesn’t get more damning than that. Indeed, I’ve been involved in certain pages which have been butchered beyond recognition over the years thanks to power capture in the mod hierarchy. You wouldn’t BELIEVE how bad it is on many pages. Anything which is even vaguely contentious is guaranteed to be ideologically captured.
