October 1, 2025 • 20 mins
They told us Wikipedia was the “free encyclopedia anyone can edit.”
What they didn’t tell us is how it edits you back.
In this episode of Think First, Jim Detjen pulls apart the myth of Wikipedia’s neutrality — exposing how “fringe” labels erase arguments, how intelligence agencies treat it like a propaganda shop, and why Tucker Carlson was left stunned when co-founder Larry Sanger admitted just how compromised the site has become.
This isn’t just about a website.
It’s about the funhouse mirror shaping classrooms, headlines, and even the AI models now writing your future.
Dry wit included. Gaslights spotted. Poetic truths exposed.
Stay sharp. Stay skeptical. #SpotTheGaslight
Read and reflect at Gaslight360.com/clarity
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_01 (00:00):
It's late.
(00:00):
You're sitting in front of yourlaptop.
The glow of the screen is theonly light in the room.
And because you're human,because you're curious, you type
your own name into Google.
At the very top, above everyarticle, every social media
post, every resume, sitsWikipedia, the Encyclopedia of
Record, the People'sEncyclopedia, the Oracle of
(00:22):
Truth.
You click, and suddenly, thereyou are.
Except it's not you.
It's not your achievements, notyour career, not the real story
of your life.
You scroll down, your chesttightens.
The more you read, the less yourecognize yourself.
It's like standing in front of afunhouse mirror.
(00:43):
The reflection is you, but it'sstretched, bent, distorted.
Which means, if the mirror lies,the lie becomes the truth.
And that leaves us with oneenormous question.
What happens when theencyclopedia we trust to define
reality starts gaslighting us?
(01:04):
This is Think First, where wedon't follow the script.
We question it.
Because in a world full ofpoetic truths and professional
gaslighting, someone's gotta saythe quiet part out loud.
On paper, Wikipedia is one ofhumanity's proudest
achievements.
(01:25):
Launched in 2001, anencyclopedia written by everyone
for everyone, neutral,transparent, open.
Larry Sanger coined the name.
Jimmy Wales put up the servers.
And the promise wasintoxicating.
Knowledge for the digital age,accessible to all, governed by
the sacred law of neutrality.
(01:47):
Teachers told students, don'tcite it, but you can use it.
Journalists leaned on it tofact-check background.
AI engineers scraped it to traintheir models.
It quietly became theinfrastructure of knowledge.
But here's the rub (01:59):
the dream isn't the reality.
Bethany Mandel discovered thisthe hard way.
She opened her Wikipedia pageand found what she later called
a curated collection of herworst moments.
Not her work, not her career,not her motherhood, just every
hostile attack glued togetherinto her official biography.
(02:23):
Philip Roth tried to correct hisown page.
Wikipedia insisted his novel,The Human Stain, was based on
one professor.
Roth wrote in and said, No, itwasn't.
I wrote it.
I know.
And Wikipedia rejected him,because he wasn't a reliable
enough source on himself.
Tucker Carlson found the samething.
(02:45):
He pulled up his page and readit aloud.
It didn't call him a journalistor a broadcaster, it called him
a leading voice of whitegrievance politics.
Think about that.
The most quoted encyclopedia inthe world, labeling people not
with facts, but with editorialslurs.
And it raises questions.
Questions that ripple outward.
(03:07):
Who really controls Wikipedia?
Who decides which sources arereliable and which are
blacklisted?
Why do some narratives survivewhile others are scrubbed?
And what happens when artificialintelligence, the next filter of
all human knowledge, is trainedon Wikipedia as its foundation.
Because if Wikipedia gaslights,it doesn't just distort your
(03:30):
perception of the present, itrewrites history itself.
The founding story of Wikipediais pure poetry.
Two visionaries, Larry Sangerand Jimmy Wales, set out to
create the world's first openencyclopedia.
No gatekeepers, no ivory tower,just humanity writing itself
(03:51):
into history.
And the sacred law, NPOV,neutral point of view.
The rule was simple (03:57):
represent all sides fairly.
No bias, no spin.
Present the facts and let thereader decide.
It worked for a while, but thencame the redefinition.
The neutrality clause wasrewritten, no longer all views.
Now it became all significantviews from reliable sources.
(04:21):
Significant, reliable.
Two words that look harmless,but hide a trapdoor.
Because who decides what'ssignificant?
Who decides what's reliable?
In practice, it meantestablishment media outlets
became the arbiters of truth.
The New York Times?
Reliable.
The Washington Post?
(04:42):
Reliable.
CNN reliable.
Mother Jones?
Reliable.
But Fox News?
Not reliable.
The New York Post?
Not reliable.
The Federalist, Daily Caller,Epic Times, absolutely not.
(05:03):
Wikipedia calls it the PerennialSources list.
But let's be honest, it's ablacklist.
Here's how it works.
If the Washington Post calls youa conspiracy theorist, that's a
reliable citation.
But if a conservative outletdefends you, that's disallowed.
So the article looks neutral,but the scaffolding is rigged.
Your critics count.
(05:24):
Your defenders don't.
It's like refereeing abasketball game where one team's
baskets count and the otherteam's don't.
Different mask.
Same puppet master.
And the referees?
They're not professors orjournalists.
They're not even named.
They're the Power 62.
The 62 most powerfuladministrators on Wikipedia.
(05:45):
And, here's the kicker.
85% of them are anonymous.
Imagine the Supreme Court in skimasks, handing down rulings
under Reddit handles likeCatDad420.
This is the machinery of truth,and it runs behind the curtain.
This is where the cracks beginto show.
(06:07):
Bethany Mandel's biography readslike opposition research.
Philip Roth gets rejected as anunreliable witness to his own
life.
Tucker Carlson gets rebranded bya hostile columnist.
And those are just the publiccases.
Behind the scenes, it's evenstranger.
Back in 2006, a grad studentcreated WikiScanner.
(06:28):
It matched anonymous edits to IPaddresses.
And it found CIA headquarters inLangley editing Wikipedia
articles.
Picture it, fluorescent litcubicles, government contractors
in khakis and lanyards,scrolling, typing, adjusting
entries on world leaders.
Forget James Bond.
(06:48):
Today's spies don't need AstonMartins, they just need
broadband and edit permissions.
Larry Sanger himself now warnsWikipedia is a gold mine for
intelligence operations.
And you know he's right.
Because if you were runningpropaganda, where would you go?
Straight to the Encyclopedia ofRecord.
(07:10):
And once you start looking, yousee it everywhere.
Edit wars over climate change,COVID pages locked down to
prevent dissent.
Political biographies sculptedlike campaign ads.
And the same gaslight everytime.
The page looks neutral, but thebias is baked into the
scaffolding.
(07:33):
Before we dive back in, a quickword about the project that's
bigger than this podcast.
What if the biggest lies you'vebeen told weren't lies at all?
What if they were stories?
Comforting stories, soothingmyths, the kind of poetic truths
that feel good, even whenthey're not true.
That's the game.
Politicians do it, media doesit, institutions do it.
(07:55):
They don't just lie, theydistort.
They gaslight you with shame,they cradle you with bedtime
myths, and that gap betweenperception and reality is where
we're losing the plot.
That's why I wrote Distorted: How gaslighting and poetic truth (08:05):
undefined
bend our perception of reality.
It's not another self-help book,it's a survival manual, a guide
for spotting the tricks, dodgingthe spin, and refusing to
outsource your thinking.
Early access is open now.
Find it at Barnes Noble, Amazon,and at gymdechen.com.
(08:27):
And if you do grab a copy,here's my one ask: leave a
review.
Because the world isn't short onlies.
It's drowning in distortions.
Alright, back to the show.
Now, defenders of Wikipedia pushback.
(08:49):
They say, it's open, it'stransparent.
Every edit is logged, every talkpage is public.
Anyone can contribute, that'sthe point.
And technically, they're right.
But here's the problem.
Transparency withoutaccountability is still
manipulation.
Yes, you can see the log, butthe Power 62 decide which edits
(09:12):
survive.
Yes, you can comment on the talkpage, but if your sources are on
the blacklist, you're dismissed.
It's like a transparent casino.
You can watch every hand, butthe house still wins.
Here's the mental model.
Call it the fun house mirroreffect.
The reflection looks real, itfeels accurate, but it's bent by
(09:33):
whoever polished the glass.
Wikipedia reflects reality, butit reflects it through a warped
lens, polished by establishmentmedia, anonymous administrators,
and sometimes intelligenceagencies.
The reflection isn't fake, it'sdistorted.
(09:53):
Now, let's lift the curtain alittle further.
Because once you understand howthe rules are written, you start
to see how much else bendsaround them.
Take AI.
Large language models, theengines behind ChatGPT, Gemini,
Claude, are trained heavily onWikipedia.
So whatever bias slips into theencyclopedia slides straight
(10:14):
into the machine.
One recent study found LLMsactually misapply Wikipedia's
neutrality rules.
They can't always tell when theencyclopedia itself has been
tilted, which means AI doesn'tcorrect the distortion, it just
polishes the bias and feeds itback to you.
And here's the kicker.
(10:35):
Researchers estimate about 5% ofnew Wikipedia pages are now
AI-generated or AI-assisted.
So the mirror isn't just bent,it's recursive.
A distortion teaching machineshow to distort, the snake eating
its own tail.
Meanwhile, Washington iscircling.
In August 2025, HouseRepublicans launched a formal
(10:58):
investigation into Wikipedia.
They demanded logs,communications, even evidence of
foreign influence, warning aboutorganized efforts to manipulate
U.S.
public opinion.
And earlier in the year, theU.S.
attorney for DC questionedwhether Wikimedia should even
keep its nonprofit status,accusing it of enabling
(11:19):
propaganda.
So the same site, once hailed asthe free encyclopedia anyone can
edit, is now under federalscrutiny for narrative warfare.
And then came the exchange thatreally landed.
Larry Sanger explained howWikipedia's rules let editors
downplay ideas by calling themfringe.
That's when Tucker Carlson cuthim off.
SPEAKER_02 (11:42):
Well, the inclusion of the term fringe tells me
right away that you're afreaking liar.
The liar, if you use that word.
Because it's a word liketerrorism and so many words,
racism, that we can't reallydefine and don't care really to
define.
Like what does that mean?
And if the whole policy turns onthe word, then it's fair to
demand a precise explanation ofwhat it means, but we never get
(12:05):
one.
What is fringe?
They can't tell you fringe iswhat I don't like.
Fringe is hate speech.
SPEAKER_00 (12:09):
Yes, yes.
Or it's simply a new view thatis going to become dominant in
10 years or something.
Happens all the time.
SPEAKER_02 (12:15):
Galileo, fringe character.
SPEAKER_00 (12:16):
Happens all the time in the history of ideas.
SPEAKER_02 (12:19):
No.
Right.
So that's so obvious.
Even a child understands that.
Right.
Right.
The key is the definition.
And if you can't come up with adefinition, then we have to take
the word out because it it canonly abet lying.
SPEAKER_01 (12:34):
And if you think that's bad, listen to this.
Sanger recalls a moment back in2006 when a tool called
WikiScanner went live.
It tracked where edits werecoming from.
And the results were shocking.
SPEAKER_00 (12:50):
Yes, it it wasn't until like, I think it was 2006,
2007, Virgil Griffiths didmaster's research.
He came up with a tool calledWikiScanner that enabled people
to look up um the IP addressesof people who had done edits.
(13:15):
Um and like who had edited whicharticles.
And so they were able to findall a whole bunch of edits uh
coming from Langley.
SPEAKER_02 (13:25):
Oh, I didn't even know that.
SPEAKER_00 (13:27):
No, it's true.
SPEAKER_02 (13:28):
Not not to brag.
I could just tell by reading it.
Like because I know what thatis, right?
SPEAKER_00 (13:32):
So I I since have learned differently and learned
much better.
Um, I I don't have the thebackground that you have, um uh,
but uh it's it's also very clearto me what we are told about the
way that intelligence works nowis that um, of course, there's
the old-fashioned cloak anddagger um spying going on, but
(13:55):
uh a large part of the remit ofintelligence today is to
manipulate public opinion invarious ways.
And uh Wikipedia is like just agold mine for the intelligence
agencies of the world because uhit's like a one-stop shop.
You know, you can just like typein the things that you want
(14:17):
people to believe, I suppose.
Now, how that works, like whichagencies are involved, how how
the heck should I know?
SPEAKER_02 (14:24):
Well, you can tell by reading it.
You can tell instantly byreading it some of what's going
on.
I mean, you never know the wholestory, of course, but it's super
obvious to me, some of theplayers in this, very obvious,
and they're the big ones, ofcourse.
So, um, but I my question, andeverything you've said makes
sense.
My question, however, is like,how is this allowed?
(14:46):
So if you're not allowed to editWikipedia for pay on behalf of,
say, a PR agency, how are youallowed to do it on behalf of an
intelligence agency?
SPEAKER_00 (14:59):
That's a good question.
I actually um asked Elon Muskand president um and the
president to to uh you know umuse Doge or other government
resources to uh investigate whatum United States employees uh
(15:21):
were actually um editingWikipedia and you know perhaps
um stop that.
Um I don't know, maybe maybe weshouldn't.
Maybe there's reasons, uhlegitimate reasons for for
government employees to to dothis, but uh at least Elon Musk
did retweet that um and uh got alot of support.
(15:44):
So um Did anyone do anythingabout it?
SPEAKER_01 (15:48):
Think about that.
The co-founder of Wikipedia justsaid, yes, the CIA was editing
entries, and no, nobody reallystopped them.
Forget James Bond.
Today's spies don't need AstonMartin's or Martinis, just
broadband and a login.
And the battlefield?
It's global.
The Anti-Defamation Leaguerevealed more than 30 Wikipedia
(16:12):
editors colluded to injectanti-Israel narratives.
Other reports showed 14 editorsbanned during battles over Gaza
coverage.
Pages weren't just beingupdated, they were being
weaponized, rewritten in realtime to tilt perception of a
war.
And while humans fight it out,bots are learning the game too.
(16:32):
Research shows automated systemscan now slip in edits so subtle
they bypass detection.
Think about that.
A shadow army of Wikipedia botsrewriting history footnote by
footnote while everyone elseargues about commas.
So, let's be honest.
Wikipedia isn't just a mirror,it's a factory floor, a fun
(16:56):
house production line whereedits, blacklists, bots, and
backroom battles mass-producereality for the rest of us.
And once you see that, thestakes don't just feel academic,
they feel existential.
And just before we head into theclose, there's one more piece of
this puzzle you should see.
(17:16):
Because Wikipedia doesn't justlive on the web, it's the
world's default curriculum.
If a journalist wants a quickfact, they check Wikipedia.
If a student needs a biography,they check Wikipedia.
If a game show contestant'scramming for Jeopardy, you
guessed it.
Wikipedia.
Which means if Wikipedia callssomething fringe, your teacher
(17:39):
won't assign it, your searchengine will bury it, and your
friends will look at yousideways if you bring it up at
dinner.
So when we say Wikipedia tiltsreality, we don't just mean
online, we mean the living room,the classroom, even the pop
quiz.
It's not an encyclopedia, it's asyllabus for the whole planet.
And if you think I'mexaggerating, remember this.
(18:02):
Wikipedia has over 6 billionmonthly views.
That's more traffic thanFacebook, Twitter, and TikTok
combined, all feeding a singleperception of reality.
So ask yourself (18:14):
if the encyclopedia is the upstream
river, what happens when theriver runs crooked?
So, what does this mean for you?
It means Wikipedia isn't just anencyclopedia, it's a
battlefield.
It's where narratives arefought, it's where reputations
are made and broken, it's wherepoetic truth gets dressed up as
(18:38):
fact.
And because Wikipedia sits atthe root of the knowledge
pipeline, bias there is biaseverywhere.
AI models train on it, GoogleAnswers lean on it, classrooms
cite it, journalists repeat it.
This is why Congress is probingthe Wikimedia Foundation.
It's why Larry Sanger left theproject, it's why he published
(18:59):
his nine theses for reform,abolish the blacklist, and fake
consensus, allow competingarticles and demand
transparency.
It's radical.
But when the encyclopediagaslights, radical is the only
option.
And this is why I wroteDistorted, how gaslighting and
poetic truth bend our perceptionof reality.
(19:21):
Because this isn't just aboutWikipedia, it's about every
system that claims neutrality,but operates as a funhouse
mirror.
So the next time you click onWikipedia, remember, you're not
just reading facts, you'rereading an edit more.
You're reading what survived theblacklist, you're reading a
funhouse mirror.
Wikipedia doesn't just gaslight,it proofreads the lie until it
(19:44):
looks true.
You don't need all the answers,but you should question the ones
you're handed, because sometimesthe encyclopedia doesn't just
edit history, it edits reality,one footnote at a time.
Until next time, stay skeptical,stay curious, and always think
(20:06):
first.
Want more?
The full six-step framework weuse is at gaslight360.com.
You can also dive into thedeeper story, the bio, the
podcast, and the mission atjimdechen.com.
And if you like this one, tagit.
Save it.
Share it.
It's late.
(00:00):
You're sitting in front of yourlaptop.
The glow of the screen is theonly light in the room.
And because you're human,because you're curious, you type
your own name into Google.
At the very top, above everyarticle, every social media
post, every resume, sitsWikipedia, the Encyclopedia of
Record, the People'sEncyclopedia, the Oracle of
(00:22):
Truth.
You click, and suddenly, thereyou are.
Except it's not you.
It's not your achievements, notyour career, not the real story
of your life.
You scroll down, your chesttightens.
The more you read, the less yourecognize yourself.
It's like standing in front of afunhouse mirror.
(00:43):
The reflection is you, but it'sstretched, bent, distorted.
Which means, if the mirror lies,the lie becomes the truth.
And that leaves us with oneenormous question.
What happens when theencyclopedia we trust to define
reality starts gaslighting us?
(01:04):
This is Think First, where wedon't follow the script.
We question it.
Because in a world full ofpoetic truths and professional
gaslighting, someone's gotta saythe quiet part out loud.
On paper, Wikipedia is one ofhumanity's proudest
achievements.
(01:25):
Launched in 2001, anencyclopedia written by everyone
for everyone, neutral,transparent, open.
Larry Sanger coined the name.
Jimmy Wales put up the servers.
And the promise wasintoxicating.
Knowledge for the digital age,accessible to all, governed by
the sacred law of neutrality.
(01:47):
Teachers told students, don'tcite it, but you can use it.
Journalists leaned on it tofact-check background.
AI engineers scraped it to traintheir models.
It quietly became theinfrastructure of knowledge.
But here's the rub (01:59):
the dream isn't the reality.
Bethany Mandel discovered thisthe hard way.
She opened her Wikipedia pageand found what she later called
a curated collection of herworst moments.
Not her work, not her career,not her motherhood, just every
hostile attack glued togetherinto her official biography.
(02:23):
Philip Roth tried to correct hisown page.
Wikipedia insisted his novel,The Human Stain, was based on
one professor.
Roth wrote in and said, No, itwasn't.
I wrote it.
I know.
And Wikipedia rejected him,because he wasn't a reliable
enough source on himself.
Tucker Carlson found the samething.
(02:45):
He pulled up his page and readit aloud.
It didn't call him a journalistor a broadcaster, it called him
a leading voice of whitegrievance politics.
Think about that.
The most quoted encyclopedia inthe world, labeling people not
with facts, but with editorialslurs.
And it raises questions.
Questions that ripple outward.
(03:07):
Who really controls Wikipedia?
Who decides which sources arereliable and which are
blacklisted?
Why do some narratives survivewhile others are scrubbed?
And what happens when artificialintelligence, the next filter of
all human knowledge, is trainedon Wikipedia as its foundation.
Because if Wikipedia gaslights,it doesn't just distort your
(03:30):
perception of the present, itrewrites history itself.
The founding story of Wikipediais pure poetry.
Two visionaries, Larry Sangerand Jimmy Wales, set out to
create the world's first openencyclopedia.
No gatekeepers, no ivory tower,just humanity writing itself
(03:51):
into history.
And the sacred law, NPOV,neutral point of view.
The rule was simple (03:57):
represent all sides fairly.
No bias, no spin.
Present the facts and let thereader decide.
It worked for a while, but thencame the redefinition.
The neutrality clause wasrewritten, no longer all views.
Now it became all significantviews from reliable sources.
(04:21):
Significant, reliable.
Two words that look harmless,but hide a trapdoor.
Because who decides what'ssignificant?
Who decides what's reliable?
In practice, it meantestablishment media outlets
became the arbiters of truth.
The New York Times?
Reliable.
The Washington Post?
(04:42):
Reliable.
CNN reliable.
Mother Jones?
Reliable.
But Fox News?
Not reliable.
The New York Post?
Not reliable.
The Federalist, Daily Caller,Epic Times, absolutely not.
(05:03):
Wikipedia calls it the PerennialSources list.
But let's be honest, it's ablacklist.
Here's how it works.
If the Washington Post calls youa conspiracy theorist, that's a
reliable citation.
But if a conservative outletdefends you, that's disallowed.
So the article looks neutral,but the scaffolding is rigged.
Your critics count.
(05:24):
Your defenders don't.
It's like refereeing abasketball game where one team's
baskets count and the otherteam's don't.
Different mask.
Same puppet master.
And the referees?
They're not professors orjournalists.
They're not even named.
They're the Power 62.
The 62 most powerfuladministrators on Wikipedia.
(05:45):
And, here's the kicker.
85% of them are anonymous.
Imagine the Supreme Court in skimasks, handing down rulings
under Reddit handles likeCatDad420.
This is the machinery of truth,and it runs behind the curtain.
This is where the cracks beginto show.
(06:07):
Bethany Mandel's biography readslike opposition research.
Philip Roth gets rejected as anunreliable witness to his own
life.
Tucker Carlson gets rebranded bya hostile columnist.
And those are just the publiccases.
Behind the scenes, it's evenstranger.
Back in 2006, a grad studentcreated WikiScanner.
(06:28):
It matched anonymous edits to IPaddresses.
And it found CIA headquarters inLangley editing Wikipedia
articles.
Picture it, fluorescent litcubicles, government contractors
in khakis and lanyards,scrolling, typing, adjusting
entries on world leaders.
Forget James Bond.
(06:48):
Today's spies don't need AstonMartins, they just need
broadband and edit permissions.
Larry Sanger himself now warnsWikipedia is a gold mine for
intelligence operations.
And you know he's right.
Because if you were runningpropaganda, where would you go?
Straight to the Encyclopedia ofRecord.
(07:10):
And once you start looking, yousee it everywhere.
Edit wars over climate change,COVID pages locked down to
prevent dissent.
Political biographies sculptedlike campaign ads.
And the same gaslight everytime.
The page looks neutral, but thebias is baked into the
scaffolding.
(07:33):
Before we dive back in, a quickword about the project that's
bigger than this podcast.
What if the biggest lies you'vebeen told weren't lies at all?
What if they were stories?
Comforting stories, soothingmyths, the kind of poetic truths
that feel good, even whenthey're not true.
That's the game.
Politicians do it, media doesit, institutions do it.
(07:55):
They don't just lie, theydistort.
They gaslight you with shame,they cradle you with bedtime
myths, and that gap betweenperception and reality is where
we're losing the plot.
That's why I wrote Distorted: How gaslighting and poetic truth (08:05):
undefined
bend our perception of reality.
It's not another self-help book,it's a survival manual, a guide
for spotting the tricks, dodgingthe spin, and refusing to
outsource your thinking.
Early access is open now.
Find it at Barnes Noble, Amazon,and at gymdechen.com.
(08:27):
And if you do grab a copy,here's my one ask: leave a
review.
Because the world isn't short onlies.
It's drowning in distortions.
Alright, back to the show.
Now, defenders of Wikipedia pushback.
(08:49):
They say, it's open, it'stransparent.
Every edit is logged, every talkpage is public.
Anyone can contribute, that'sthe point.
And technically, they're right.
But here's the problem.
Transparency withoutaccountability is still
manipulation.
Yes, you can see the log, butthe Power 62 decide which edits
(09:12):
survive.
Yes, you can comment on the talkpage, but if your sources are on
the blacklist, you're dismissed.
It's like a transparent casino.
You can watch every hand, butthe house still wins.
Here's the mental model.
Call it the fun house mirroreffect.
The reflection looks real, itfeels accurate, but it's bent by
(09:33):
whoever polished the glass.
Wikipedia reflects reality, butit reflects it through a warped
lens, polished by establishmentmedia, anonymous administrators,
and sometimes intelligenceagencies.
The reflection isn't fake, it'sdistorted.
(09:53):
Now, let's lift the curtain alittle further.
Because once you understand howthe rules are written, you start
to see how much else bendsaround them.
Take AI.
Large language models, theengines behind ChatGPT, Gemini,
Claude, are trained heavily onWikipedia.
So whatever bias slips into theencyclopedia slides straight
(10:14):
into the machine.
One recent study found LLMsactually misapply Wikipedia's
neutrality rules.
They can't always tell when theencyclopedia itself has been
tilted, which means AI doesn'tcorrect the distortion, it just
polishes the bias and feeds itback to you.
And here's the kicker.
(10:35):
Researchers estimate about 5% ofnew Wikipedia pages are now
AI-generated or AI-assisted.
So the mirror isn't just bent,it's recursive.
A distortion teaching machineshow to distort, the snake eating
its own tail.
Meanwhile, Washington iscircling.
In August 2025, HouseRepublicans launched a formal
(10:58):
investigation into Wikipedia.
They demanded logs,communications, even evidence of
foreign influence, warning aboutorganized efforts to manipulate
U.S.
public opinion.
And earlier in the year, theU.S.
attorney for DC questionedwhether Wikimedia should even
keep its nonprofit status,accusing it of enabling
(11:19):
propaganda.
So the same site, once hailed asthe free encyclopedia anyone can
edit, is now under federalscrutiny for narrative warfare.
And then came the exchange thatreally landed.
Larry Sanger explained howWikipedia's rules let editors
downplay ideas by calling themfringe.
That's when Tucker Carlson cuthim off.
SPEAKER_02 (11:42):
Well, the inclusion of the term fringe tells me
right away that you're afreaking liar.
The liar, if you use that word.
Because it's a word liketerrorism and so many words,
racism, that we can't reallydefine and don't care really to
define.
Like what does that mean?
And if the whole policy turns onthe word, then it's fair to
demand a precise explanation ofwhat it means, but we never get
(12:05):
one.
What is fringe?
They can't tell you fringe iswhat I don't like.
Fringe is hate speech.
SPEAKER_00 (12:09):
Yes, yes.
Or it's simply a new view thatis going to become dominant in
10 years or something.
Happens all the time.
SPEAKER_02 (12:15):
Galileo, fringe character.
SPEAKER_00 (12:16):
Happens all the time in the history of ideas.
SPEAKER_02 (12:19):
No.
Right.
So that's so obvious.
Even a child understands that.
Right.
Right.
The key is the definition.
And if you can't come up with adefinition, then we have to take
the word out because it it canonly abet lying.
SPEAKER_01 (12:34):
And if you think that's bad, listen to this.
Sanger recalls a moment back in2006 when a tool called
WikiScanner went live.
It tracked where edits werecoming from.
And the results were shocking.
SPEAKER_00 (12:50):
Yes, it it wasn't until like, I think it was 2006,
2007, Virgil Griffiths didmaster's research.
He came up with a tool calledWikiScanner that enabled people
to look up um the IP addressesof people who had done edits.
(13:15):
Um and like who had edited whicharticles.
And so they were able to findall a whole bunch of edits uh
coming from Langley.
SPEAKER_02 (13:25):
Oh, I didn't even know that.
SPEAKER_00 (13:27):
No, it's true.
SPEAKER_02 (13:28):
Not not to brag.
I could just tell by reading it.
Like because I know what thatis, right?
SPEAKER_00 (13:32):
So I I since have learned differently and learned
much better.
Um, I I don't have the thebackground that you have, um uh,
but uh it's it's also very clearto me what we are told about the
way that intelligence works nowis that um, of course, there's
the old-fashioned cloak anddagger um spying going on, but
(13:55):
uh a large part of the remit ofintelligence today is to
manipulate public opinion invarious ways.
And uh Wikipedia is like just agold mine for the intelligence
agencies of the world because uhit's like a one-stop shop.
You know, you can just like typein the things that you want
(14:17):
people to believe, I suppose.
Now, how that works, like whichagencies are involved, how how
the heck should I know?
SPEAKER_02 (14:24):
Well, you can tell by reading it.
You can tell instantly byreading it some of what's going
on.
I mean, you never know the wholestory, of course, but it's super
obvious to me, some of theplayers in this, very obvious,
and they're the big ones, ofcourse.
So, um, but I my question, andeverything you've said makes
sense.
My question, however, is like,how is this allowed?
(14:46):
So if you're not allowed to editWikipedia for pay on behalf of,
say, a PR agency, how are youallowed to do it on behalf of an
intelligence agency?
SPEAKER_00 (14:59):
That's a good question.
I actually um asked Elon Muskand president um and the
president to to uh you know umuse Doge or other government
resources to uh investigate whatum United States employees uh
(15:21):
were actually um editingWikipedia and you know perhaps
um stop that.
Um I don't know, maybe maybe weshouldn't.
Maybe there's reasons, uhlegitimate reasons for for
government employees to to dothis, but uh at least Elon Musk
did retweet that um and uh got alot of support.
(15:44):
So um Did anyone do anythingabout it?
SPEAKER_01 (15:48):
Think about that.
The co-founder of Wikipedia justsaid, yes, the CIA was editing
entries, and no, nobody reallystopped them.
Forget James Bond.
Today's spies don't need AstonMartin's or Martinis, just
broadband and a login.
And the battlefield?
It's global.
The Anti-Defamation Leaguerevealed more than 30 Wikipedia
(16:12):
editors colluded to injectanti-Israel narratives.
Other reports showed 14 editorsbanned during battles over Gaza
coverage.
Pages weren't just beingupdated, they were being
weaponized, rewritten in realtime to tilt perception of a
war.
And while humans fight it out,bots are learning the game too.
(16:32):
Research shows automated systemscan now slip in edits so subtle
they bypass detection.
Think about that.
A shadow army of Wikipedia botsrewriting history footnote by
footnote while everyone elseargues about commas.
So, let's be honest.
Wikipedia isn't just a mirror,it's a factory floor, a fun
(16:56):
house production line whereedits, blacklists, bots, and
backroom battles mass-producereality for the rest of us.
And once you see that, thestakes don't just feel academic,
they feel existential.
And just before we head into theclose, there's one more piece of
this puzzle you should see.
(17:16):
Because Wikipedia doesn't justlive on the web, it's the
world's default curriculum.
If a journalist wants a quickfact, they check Wikipedia.
If a student needs a biography,they check Wikipedia.
If a game show contestant'scramming for Jeopardy, you
guessed it.
Wikipedia.
Which means if Wikipedia callssomething fringe, your teacher
(17:39):
won't assign it, your searchengine will bury it, and your
friends will look at yousideways if you bring it up at
dinner.
So when we say Wikipedia tiltsreality, we don't just mean
online, we mean the living room,the classroom, even the pop
quiz.
It's not an encyclopedia, it's asyllabus for the whole planet.
And if you think I'mexaggerating, remember this.
(18:02):
Wikipedia has over 6 billionmonthly views.
That's more traffic thanFacebook, Twitter, and TikTok
combined, all feeding a singleperception of reality.
So ask yourself (18:14):
if the encyclopedia is the upstream
river, what happens when theriver runs crooked?
So, what does this mean for you?
It means Wikipedia isn't just anencyclopedia, it's a
battlefield.
It's where narratives arefought, it's where reputations
are made and broken, it's wherepoetic truth gets dressed up as
(18:38):
fact.
And because Wikipedia sits atthe root of the knowledge
pipeline, bias there is biaseverywhere.
AI models train on it, GoogleAnswers lean on it, classrooms
cite it, journalists repeat it.
This is why Congress is probingthe Wikimedia Foundation.
It's why Larry Sanger left theproject, it's why he published
(18:59):
his nine theses for reform,abolish the blacklist, and fake
consensus, allow competingarticles and demand
transparency.
It's radical.
But when the encyclopediagaslights, radical is the only
option.
And this is why I wroteDistorted, how gaslighting and
poetic truth bend our perceptionof reality.
(19:21):
Because this isn't just aboutWikipedia, it's about every
system that claims neutrality,but operates as a funhouse
mirror.
So the next time you click onWikipedia, remember, you're not
just reading facts, you'rereading an edit more.
You're reading what survived theblacklist, you're reading a
funhouse mirror.
Wikipedia doesn't just gaslight,it proofreads the lie until it
(19:44):
looks true.
You don't need all the answers,but you should question the ones
you're handed, because sometimesthe encyclopedia doesn't just
edit history, it edits reality,one footnote at a time.
Until next time, stay skeptical,stay curious, and always think
(20:06):
first.
Want more?
The full six-step framework weuse is at gaslight360.com.
You can also dive into thedeeper story, the bio, the
podcast, and the mission atjimdechen.com.
And if you like this one, tagit.
Save it.
Share it.
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