Pod Insights The Tucker Carlson Show Wikipedia Co-Creator Reveals All: CIA Infiltration, Banning Conservatives, & How to Fix the Internet About this episode Larry Sanger built Wikipedia as an unbiased repository of the world’s knowledge, and then stood helplessly by as activists and intel agencies turned it into the most comprehensive propaganda op in human history. There’s nothing more corrupt.
(00:00) The Origins of Wikipedia
(04:27) Wikipedia’s Dangerous Policy Changes
(14:01) Who Is Responsible for Corrupting Wikipedia?
(27:39) How Does Wikipedia Actually Work?
(37:28) Is Wikipedia Controlled by the Intel Agencies?
(43:16) Sanger’s Request to Elon Musk and Donald Trump to Help Fix Wikipedia
(1:01:41 ) How Wikipedia Can Be Saved
Larry Sanger is co-founder of Wikipedia. With a Ph. D. in Philosophy from Ohio State, Sanger's career moved from academia to educational and reference projects online. He is now president of the Knowledge Standards Foundation. He has been blogging at LarrySanger.org for twenty years, where he posts influential pieces about the internet, philosophy, education, and most recently theology (his conversion story went viral in February 2025). He also plays Irish fiddle and homeschools his boys.
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Transcript 13,993 words · 6 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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0:29 Tucker Carlson? Larry Sanger, thank you for doing this. I think about you all the time. Literally, I know it's a little creepy because I think that Wikipedia is... You can't overstate the importance of Wikipedia in shaping our collective memory. And a collective memory really is a culture, a civilization. Who are we? And Wikipedia is the answer to that question. Like, who are we? Oh, it's on Wikipedia. And it's so embedded in search that, I mean, it shapes America. Wikipedia shapes America. And because of its importance, it's an emergency, in my opinion, that Wikipedia is completely dishonest and completely controlled on questions that matter.
1:31 Tucker Carlson? So, thank you for coming back. And I'd love to start at the beginning. Like, you created Wikipedia. How did that happen? And what were your intentions when you did that?
1:44 Speaker 02 So Jimmy Wales had registered newpedia.com, the domain name, and simply had the idea of a free, public-contributed encyclopedia. And he hired me, it was like my assigned job, to get it started.
2:07 Speaker 02 That happened in early 2000. So I worked on Newpedia for about a year and it was going very slowly. And so a friend told me about Wikis and it was, it was a revelation, this idea that somebody could just put up essentially a bulletin board, a blank bulletin board, invite other people to edit the text in real time and it would become something actually useful and it wouldn't be just a lot of, you know, curse words and graffiti and so forth.
2:49 Tucker Carlson? What does Wiki mean?
2:51 Speaker 02 It actually comes from a Wiki Wiki web. And that in turn comes from the Wiki Wiki taxis at the Honolulu Airport, I guess.
3:03 Tucker Carlson? What? Really?
3:05 Speaker 02 Yes.
3:06 Tucker Carlson? Like headed to Wiki Ki?
3:07 Speaker 02 Yes, I didn't come up with this. It's, it's Ward Cunningham. He invented the first Wiki in 1995, I believe. So, so basically, a friend told me about Wikis and I was, I was amazed at the, the, the basic idea and just the thought that it could work. And I thought, well, this would be a way to make the problems with Newpedia go away, be a lot more articles coming into the system. And then Newpedia could be like the, you
3:51 Speaker 02 know, beat them into, into proper shape. But it didn't work that way. Wikipedia.
3:59 Speaker 02 The Newpedia editors wanted nothing to do with a wiki, anything that was so uncontrolled, essentially. So it took on a life of its own. We launched it originally, it was the Newpedia wiki. And then on January 15, we relaunched under
4:18 Tucker Carlson? Of what year? Of what year, January?
4:20 Speaker 02 2001.
4:21 Tucker Carlson? 2001.
4:22 Speaker 02 We launched under Wikipedia.com. So I coined the name Wikipedia and a lot of the other sort of basic jargon, like Wikipedian and various other things. I came up with a lot of the original policies, like the neutrality policy, which actually started with Newpedia. And the requirement that original research may not be, you know, published for the first time in the encyclopedia. And a number of other things, of course.
4:58 Tucker Carlson? I should say, for those who don't know, you come from a philosophy background.
5:00 Speaker 02 Yeah.
5:01 Tucker Carlson? You're a philosopher, which is kind of a great background for this job. Why, why these policies? For example, why would you ban the publication of original material on Wikipedia?
5:16 Speaker 02 It's supposed to be a summary of what we all take ourselves to know, essentially. And especially if it's a neutral encyclopedia, then it's supposed to canvas all of the views that can be found in humanity on every question, essentially, at a very high level, generally speaking. Of course, specialized encyclopedias can get into the real nitty gritty. And my, my hope with Wikipedia in the beginning was that eventually it would become that specialized. So it would be the equivalent of, you know, bookshelves worth of articles.
6:00 Speaker 02 And well, I guess it did work out that way.
6:03 Tucker Carlson? It replaced libraries, it replaced books, it replaced.
6:07 Speaker 02 To a great extent, to a great extent, I think you're right. For a lot of people, yeah. Basically, for a period until LLMs came out a couple of years ago.
6:21 Speaker 02 People used Wikipedia to look up quick answers about practically everything. I actually, I would, I would say until Siri started giving Wikipedia answers quickly, but it was still using Siri. And for that matter, LLMs, you know, AI chatbots are also trained on Wikipedia now. So it continues to be relevant.
6:48 Tucker Carlson? Well, not just relevant, I mean, of course, its power expands exponentially once it's tethered to this new technology, AI, right?
6:56 Speaker 02 I think that's a very, that's very safe to say, I think that's true. LLMs are trained on a lot of different data, not just Wikipedia, of course. But there's a lot of questions, I use LLMs all the time now. And I can tell you, I've looked up, you know, specialized questions.
7:16 Tucker Carlson? Large language models.
7:17 Speaker 02 Exactly. I've looked up a lot of questions in theology because I'm into theology now. And there are some places where I just know the only, the only source for that particular factoid that I could find online outside of the LLM itself is Wikipedia.
7:38 Tucker Carlson? Right, right. So it's institutionalized it. Google did, of course, did that in the most profound way when it tied its search to Wikipedia, put Wikipedia at the top of its searches. So these questions, these core questions like, you know, what do you put on Wikipedia? What do you exclude? Questions that you wrestled with 24 years ago. These are like questions that affect every human being on the planet now.
8:04 Speaker 02 Kind of scary thought.
8:05 Tucker Carlson? Yeah, it's scary, but it's true. And so few things matter more than this from my perspective. How we understand ourselves in the world around us. That's like the central human task. Like that's, that's what we're here to do is to figure that out and to act accordingly. And Wikipedia controls that more than any other force.
8:22 Speaker 02 Right, right.
8:22 Tucker Carlson? So I'm not blaming you, but.
8:26 Speaker 02 Some people do.
8:27 Tucker Carlson? So, but walk us through like how you, how Wikipedia went from what you created it to be to what it is now. Like, when did you start to see changes? What were the debates?
8:38 Speaker 02 Yeah. In the early years, we really did take neutrality seriously. And it, it wasn't just a requirement of being unbiased. Right? It was, the aim was to bring people together, enable them to work together, even though they were from all parts of the world, different religions, different viewpoints.
9:02 Tucker Carlson? Yes.
9:03 Speaker 02 And, and then to essentially record their knowledge. So I intended it, and I think Jimmy Wales is on the record in a few places, saying that he intended neutrality as being a way of bringing people together.
9:17 Tucker Carlson? Yes.
9:17 Speaker 02 Right?
9:19 Tucker Carlson? Which it is.
9:20 Speaker 02 Well, but I want to read the, the current definition of neutrality to show you what it has evolved into, which it did very gradually, right? So here's how, how the neutral point of view page begins. All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view, NPov. So far, so good. Which means representing fairly proportionately and as far as possible without editorial bias. So far, it's great. All the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic.
10:05 Tucker Carlson? Okay, I see two modifiers in that sentence.
10:07 Speaker 02 Two modifiers that are very important.
10:09 Tucker Carlson? Significant and reliable.
10:11 Speaker 02 Yes. Yes, and let me go on because if you look farther down on the page, they go on to discourage giving equal validity to quote, "minority view, fringe theory, or extraordinary claims." Right? So, and that such views should be labeled that way. So, the neutral point of view policy essentially dictates that Wikipedians must write articles in a biased way.
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13:48 Tucker Carlson? Well, the inclusion of the of the term fringe.
13:51 Speaker 02 Yes.
13:52 Tucker Carlson? Tells me right away that you're a freaking liar. A liar, if you use that word. Because it's a word like terrorism and so many words, racism, that we can't really define and don't care really to define. Like, what does that mean?
14:05 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
14:05 Tucker Carlson? And if the whole policy turns on the word, then it's fair to demand a precise explanation of what it means, but we never get one. What is fringe? They can't tell you. Fringe is what I don't like. Fringe is hate speech.
14:15 Speaker 02 Yes, yes. Or it's simply a new view that is going to become dominant in 10 years or something. Happens all the time.
14:21 Tucker Carlson? Galileo, fringe character.
14:22 Speaker 02 Happens all the time in the history of ideas.
14:24 Tucker Carlson? No! Right. So that's so obvious, even a child understands that.
14:30 Speaker 02 Right, right.
14:31 Tucker Carlson? The key is the definition. And if you can't come up with a definition, then we have to take the word out because it
14:37 Speaker 02 Yes.
14:37 Tucker Carlson? It can only about lying. So how did that get in there?
14:40 Speaker 02 Well, I think it happened like this. I think Wikipedia developed
14:47 Speaker 02 In sort of in tandem with the development of media. So basically, as media from the founding of Wikipedia, 2001 to about 2012 or so, was became solidified in a center-left establishment standpoint. So if you were to read Wikipedia from 2012 or so, 2010, it read a lot like the New York Times or the BBC. I remember saying that at the time.
15:28 Speaker 02 And then, especially around about 2016, and maybe a few years before that, the media landscape changed almost overnight. So that once stayed mainstream sources became totally biased. They stated in their own voice that the president was lying and so forth.
15:56 Tucker Carlson? And racist.
15:57 Speaker 02 And racist, exactly. Racist. Tucker Carlson is a conspiracy theorist. So, for example. And that, of course, then was echoed in Wikipedia. So Wikipedia feels perfectly free to say that Donald Trump is telling lies and that various pundits are conspiracy theorists.
16:25 Tucker Carlson? Here's my question. I mean, so Wikipedia became a weapon of ideological theological war, used to destroy its enemies, of course, and that's what it remains. But someone had to allow that. And that's so far from what it was created to be. In fact, it's the opposite, the mirror image of what it was created to be. That you have to ask, like, was there a fight over that? Who allowed it? Like, if you're getting to the point where you're disallowing, quote, fringe theories or conspiracy theorists or some other term made up by the CIA to hide its secrets, someone has to, like, okay that. Who, what was that process?
17:07 Speaker 02 It's a good question. You can look at it from an organic point of view. I can't tell you what was going on behind the scenes, if there were any, you know, puppet masters that were controlling the process. I don't know. What I can tell you is that over the years conservatives, libertarians were just pushed out. They, in many cases, well, there is a whole, you know, army of administrators, hundreds of them, who are constantly blocking
17:51 Speaker 02 people that they have ideological disagreements with. And that's not new. So if somebody really does become a problem from their perspective, then they can be simply gotten rid of on a pretext. It's very difficult now. It's possible. It's possible. But it's very difficult for conservatives to get into Wikipedia and actually play the game. But you have to play the game. And that means you have to have to walk on eggshells. So the point is, it wasn't always like this. Over the years, basically, the left consolidated its power. But the way
18:34 Speaker 02 I like to put it is that, you know, that the left has its marched through the institutions. And when Wikipedia appeared, it was one of the institutions that they marched through.
18:47 Tucker Carlson? The difference is, it's brand new. So like, I'm, you know, I grew up in this country. I've never believed in Harvard. It's absurd. I've always thought it was absurd. I really believed in Wikipedia. I sent money to, I'm on, I mean, you can check the records. I have sent money, like significant money to Wikipedia because I was so thrilled by its existence. So thrilled. And so it wasn't always this. And now it's like, the leading source of dishonesty, or I would say disinformation. I mean, most topics in Wikipedia seem totally straight to me. But if you go to anything that intersects, any topic that intersects with theology, politics, ideology, power.
19:24 Tucker Carlson? And you know something about the topic. And in my case, a couple of topics that I have firsthand knowledge, direct knowledge of it, they lie. They leave out key information. They load up the top of the entry with either superlatives or insults that are not, they're totally subjective and insane, far-right conspiracy theor- I mean, with a straight face. Like, if you're calling someone a far-right conspiracy theorist before even explaining to me who this person is, then you're a propagandist. You're a liar.
19:53 Speaker 02 Absolutely.
19:53 Tucker Carlson? Yeah.
19:54 Speaker 02 No, I agree. I described it as propaganda, beginning around 2020. Before that, I don't know that I would have given it that word. It was already emerging, you know?
20:07 Tucker Carlson? I agree. No, no, this has happened before our eyes.
20:09 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
20:11 Tucker Carlson? So when did you leave and why?
20:13 Speaker 02 Oh, a long time ago. Yeah. 2002. So, no, yeah, I was only there for the first two years of the project. I got it off the ground. I set a lot of the original policies. And then, so the company that launched Wikipedia, BOMIS, Inc., so Jimmy Wales was the CEO of that. And he had a couple of partners. So it was my job to start it. And I did. And then the bottom fell out of the tech market, you know, that, yeah, back in 2000. So they lost
20:55 Speaker 02 a big contract with, I think it was Google. And so they weren't able to pay people anymore. I was laid off. And I decided, I made the decision to, you know, just step back from my role. I was, I would have been welcome to continue on, but I decided not to basically devalue my professional labor. But with distance in 2002, I saw that Jimmy Wales was essentially allowing.
21:30 Speaker 02 Troublemakers, leftists really, to take over. And, and they did. As, as early as that, it took them time, I think, to really consolidate their power and, and create sort of internal processes and institutions and policies that really consolidated their power. But, um, yeah.
21:53 Tucker Carlson? Who is Jimmy Wales and what's he like?
21:56 Speaker 02 Jimmy Wales, um, is the other co-founder of Wikipedia. He's got a finance degree.
22:08 Speaker 02 Let's see, comes from Alabama. He went to a private school in Alabama, I think. I knew him from, um, you know, online debating forums about Ayn Rand in the mid 1990s. I actually met him face to face, um, on a little junket that I took to visit my uncle. So I just made a stopover in Chicago when he was living there. So I met him before. Um, uh, he hired me to start Wikipedia. Um, but he's, he's a very personable person, actually. Uh, if you, if you meet him for the first time and you don't know anything about him.
22:53 Tucker Carlson? What are his views?
22:56 Speaker 02 I don't know, actually. That's a good question. Um, I'd like to know. Uh, they used to be, uh, broadly libertarian.
23:09 Tucker Carlson? Yes.
23:11 Speaker 02 But he's now associated with the left. He has got a lot of lefty pals. Um, and so I, I think he would probably say he still is, you know, a believer in classical liberalism or something like that, but I don't know if I believe it.
23:30 Tucker Carlson? Well, look at the results.
23:31 Speaker 02 Right.
23:31 Tucker Carlson? I mean, it's a, it's an authoritarian enterprise and it's a, it's a proper, you know, it's isvestia. And but with much greater reach and a much more profound effect. And it's one of the worst things about our society, actually.
23:45 Speaker 02 But let's be, let's be fair to Jimmy Wales here.
23:50 Speaker 02 It isn't clear that he approves of the current approach that Wikipedia is taking.
23:58 Tucker Carlson? I've never spoken to Jimmy Wales, other than to send him money years ago. And let me ask you about the money. So I, is it a, it's a nonprofit, correct?
24:08 Speaker 02 Yes.
24:08 Tucker Carlson? Can you make money from it?
24:10 Speaker 02 Oh, of course, you know, just like any big nonprofit that's raising hundreds of millions of dollars, you know, you can essentially transfer money through grants. And now they are a grant making institution. So, I mean, I, I certainly don't need to explain to you how really big foundations work, right? But money can, can change hands, large amounts of money can change hands through institutions like the Wikimedia Foundation. That's, that's the name of the legal entity that owns the platform.
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27:04 Tucker Carlson? So can you describe how the process works? So we've got, you know, Wikipedia entry on you. Let's just say. How is that? And I haven't actually read your Wikipedia entry. I'm sure it's hostile in a subtle way, but.
27:20 Speaker 02 It's actually okay.
27:21 Tucker Carlson? It's okay. I've never read my own Wikipedia entry, not one time, because I don't, I don't.
27:25 Speaker 02 I don't blame you.
27:28 Tucker Carlson? Don't want to go crazy, because I am an expert on that subject. So I feel like, I feel like I, you know, could probably compare their description to what I know to be true, and it would just make me angry. And I don't want to be angry, but, um, but I have no doubt that it's hostile, right?
27:42 Speaker 02 It'd piss you off.
27:43 Tucker Carlson? Oh, is that true?
27:44 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah, I'm pretty sure.
27:45 Tucker Carlson? Have you read it?
27:46 Speaker 02 I think I've read the first paragraph anyway.
27:49 Tucker Carlson? Pretty tough, huh?
27:50 Speaker 02 I think so.
27:53 Tucker Carlson? You know what? I'm not just saying this. Anyone who knows me knows it's true. I've never done this before, but, um, I'm going to look it up right now, and I'm just going to read the first paragraph.
28:04 Speaker 02 That's good.
28:04 Tucker Carlson? I promise I've never, I don't even know where it is. Oh, there it is, right there.
28:19 Tucker Carlson? Oh, I knew I was gonna, this is the first paragraph. It basically just says, "I'm a conservative political commentator." Okay. "But I'm a leading voice of white grievance politics."
28:31 Speaker 02 White grievance politics?
28:33 Tucker Carlson? Okay, I thought I was gonna be mad. I'm amused. I don't even know what that is. White grievance politics. Okay, so then you click on white grievance politics, and it cites columnist Michael Gerson, who I happen to know. Not someone, I think he's passed away, I'm sorry. I don't want to make fun of him. But he's not a real, I mean, he was an ideologue, okay? A big time ideologue. And it quotes his quote, "Non-primary source needed," it says in brackets, "that the Republican Party has been swiftly repositioned as an instrument of white grievance." I guess it was a column attacking me, no doubt about that. So, they call me in the first paragraph, "a leading voice of white grievance politics." Not how I describe myself.
29:18 Tucker Carlson? I've never thought of myself that way. I don't really care, but, and in order to call me, basically, they're calling me a Nazi, of course. They cite a Washington Post columnist who hated me.
29:32 Speaker 02 Right.
29:33 Tucker Carlson? And that's the citation?
29:36 Speaker 02 Right, yes, that's, that's pretty much it. If they were following a genuine neutrality policy, then they, they might say that if they, if that was what your detractors were really focused on, and perhaps it is, but they would certainly, certainly quote you in response to that.
29:57 Tucker Carlson? And they would give examples. I mean, it wouldn't be ad hominem. It would be, you know, quoting me saying, "White people are angry. We have a lot of grievances and they're justified." Okay, there he is, you know, espousing white grievance politics.
30:11 Speaker 02 Uh huh, right, yeah.
30:12 Tucker Carlson? I don't think I've done that, though I do think that, by the way. So maybe I am a white grievance politician. But whatever, I don't even care. But it's just interesting. They don't care either. The point is to make you sound scary and Hitler-like.
30:26 Speaker 02 Right, no, that's right. Yeah, I don't know what white grievance politics is. I'm pretty sure you're not into it.
30:35 Tucker Carlson? I'm actually not into it. I mean, I do think white people have been completely mistreated and they have every reason to be mad about it, but I don't want them, anyone, to be mad about anything. And I definitely don't want racial conflict. I've never wanted that.
30:46 Speaker 02 Yes.
30:47 Tucker Carlson? So, um, but whatever. But that, it's not about me and I'm sort of sorry I even brought that up. And that's all I'm ever gonna read in my Wikipedia entry. But, um, that's kind of the point. How is it allowed to use subjective terms with no clear definition in someone's entry? Those are, that's a political term. That's a term of propaganda.
31:11 Speaker 02 Yeah.
31:11 Tucker Carlson? It's a term designed to discredit, not to illuminate or explain, but to attack. That's very common in political language, if that is political language. But how is that, how is no editor like, wait a second, we don't even, we don't even define white grievance politics. How can we accuse someone of engaging in it?
31:28 Speaker 02 Yeah. Um, it's, there's a lot of history and there, and we could take it in many different directions. I mean, we've already talked about the policy that permits it. We could also talk about the sources that are permitted. Like, if you look at only the sources that are permitted to be used in Wikipedia, so mostly secondary sources, and they are mostly left-wing or center, generally speaking,
32:04 Speaker 02 there is now a blacklist called the perennial sources page that contains lists of dozens of conservative sources that are just not allowed. And so if the only defenders of Tucker Carlson can be found in those other sources, then you won't be defended in the article about you, and they will call the article about you neutral.
32:35 Tucker Carlson? That's quite amazing. Who makes the decision on the blacklist?
32:43 Speaker 02 So there is a reliable sources group essentially that debates it. Now, there are people who spend the most time, you know, probably are working full time for somebody on Wikipedia. They build up a lot of clout.
33:05 Tucker Carlson? What does that mean, working full time for somebody on Wikipedia?
33:09 Speaker 02 Well, there are PR firms, just for example, that do nothing but edit articles on Wikipedia in order to be able to insert desired factoids according to how people pay them essentially. So it's a thing. Oh, yes. Wikipedia PR firms, essentially. And this is not allowed officially. It's called paid editing. A big no-no. And if you do do it, then you have to announce yourself. A lot of people do it and they don't announce themselves, of course.
33:52 Speaker 02 So my point then, to answer your question, is that there are a lot of people who have built up clout over the years in the Wikipedia system. And a lot of them have been made into the leaders of the project. There are 833 administrators, as they're called. So these are sort of the rank and file cops. Then you've got 16 bureaucrats who can name the cops. And you've got 49 check users, and these are accounts that can identify the IP address of accounts.
34:34 Speaker 02 And then there are 15 members of an arbitration committee, which is sort of like the Supreme Court of Wikipedia. Deals mostly with behavioral issues as opposed to editorial. So now, here's an interesting...
34:49 Tucker Carlson? Do we know who these people are?
34:51 Speaker 02 That's what I was about to answer. Of this, this power 62, because if you add up all of those accounts and there's overlap, there's 62 such accounts, only nine, 14.5% are named. So 85% of the most powerful accounts on Wikipedia, on the editorial side, are anonymous.
35:15 Tucker Carlson? So Wait a second.
35:17 Speaker 02 No, it's true.
35:20 Tucker Carlson? So again, these are the people who are shaping Americans' understanding of the world of their own country of themselves, of reality itself. And we don't know who they are because their identities are hidden?
35:33 Speaker 02 That's correct. Yes. They can libel people with impunity as they, as they do you. And, and there is no legal recourse because they are anonymous. And, and the Wikipedia Foundation enjoys Section 230 immunity, which means it can't be sued in the United States.
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38:09 Tucker Carlson? Okay, so my question is, there's nothing that can be done, they're protected by 230 immunity.
38:14 Speaker 02 Yeah.
38:14 Tucker Carlson? So they can't be sued into better behavior.
38:17 Speaker 02 Right.
38:18 Tucker Carlson? But presumably they can be shamed and reasoned with. And the first, so the first step in that is just asking the question, on what grounds are you keeping the identities of some of the most powerful people in the country secret? Why can't I know who's making these decisions? Who's blacklisting entire news organizations on the basis of their politics, for example? Who's responsible for the slander? Why can't I know their names? What would Wikipedia, the foundation, say if I asked that question?
38:45 Speaker 02 They would say that according to the policies of the editorial side of their organization, which they're not responsible for, people can participate anonymously at all levels, right? So you could be the most powerful person on the editorial side and you don't need to reveal your identity. That's, it's a, it's a matter of policy now, you know?
39:12 Tucker Carlson? They're talking about a non-answer. They're hiding their identities because they're allowed to. Okay, got it.
39:19 Speaker 02 Well, yes.
39:20 Tucker Carlson? Okay, but why are they allowed to?
39:22 Speaker 02 Okay, so I think the answer is basically, it goes back to like the... The zeitgeist of 1990s hacker culture, when people went on like these funny names, nicknames, handles, not their real names, and that has continued. It never stopped. All across Wikipedia, people use these sort of cutesy names, and they like to portray themselves to the public as just, you know, mop wielding janitors of the site. And of course, it's ludicrous,
40:05 Speaker 02 right? But it's just, as far as I can tell, it's a game that they're playing. They're putting on the air of being like harmless college students that are only interested in comma placement and that sort of thing. So why do you need to know my identity and so forth? But I'll tell you, people, they just haven't pressed them on this question.
40:28 Tucker Carlson? And they should be pressed immediately. And I mean, because just in practical terms, as you said, it's ludicrous. Who has more effect on Americans or the world's understanding of history, the seven history departments of the Ivy League or Wikipedia? It's not even close. It's not even close, not in the same universe.
40:46 Speaker 02 Yes.
40:46 Tucker Carlson? But if all of a sudden, every history professor at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Dartmouth, Cornell, etc. decided, I'm not telling you my name, as I teach your kids about the Renaissance or whatever, we would say, that's freaking nuts. Of course, I have to know your name.
41:04 Speaker 02 Right, right. And, you know, traditional media organizations, they name their editors and their journalists, of course. They have real world reputation to live up to. And if they do bad reporting, then they can be fired. They can, they experience career consequences. And that simply doesn't happen on Wikipedia. Now, you know, people, they can mess up on Wikipedia and be kicked out. They can lose their administratorship, whatever that happens, I suppose. But it's not real world consequences, is it? Not really.
41:41 Tucker Carlson? No, it's not. And I, so here's, okay, so I'm sort of getting to one of my core concerns. Which you've made me think is something to be concerned about, which is the influence of intelligence agencies on the work product at Wikipedia. It's very obvious to me, having been around that world a lot, that they're influencing some of the answers, some of the entries on Wikipedia. It's just super, super obvious. It's part, it's part of the propaganda campaign, which is the real war, the info war. And like, you must have thought of that when you were building this thing, like, man, you know, the intel agencies could get involved and start changing the way people understand what they did, for example.
42:22 Speaker 02 No.
42:23 Tucker Carlson? You didn't, you never thought of it?
42:25 Speaker 02 No, I had no such idea. Not in 19, not in 2001, in 2000, 2002, no. I mean, I, I, I was a babe in the woods. Yes, it, it wasn't until like, I think it was 2006, 2007, Virgil Griffiths did master's research. He came up with a tool called Wiki Scanner that enabled people to look up the IP addresses of people who had done edits and like who had edited
43:08 Speaker 02 which articles. And so they were able to find a whole bunch of edits coming from Langley.
43:13 Tucker Carlson? Oh, I didn't even know that.
43:16 Speaker 02 No, it's true.
43:17 Tucker Carlson? Not, not to brag, I could just tell by reading it, like, because I know what that is, right?
43:22 Speaker 02 I, I since have learned differently and learned much better. I don't have the background that you have. But it's, it's also very clear to me, what we are told about the way that intelligence works now is that.
43:40 Speaker 02 Of course, there's the old fashioned cloak and dagger spying going on. But a large part of the remit of intelligence today is to manipulate public opinion in various ways. And Wikipedia is like just a goldmine for the intelligence agencies of the world because it's like a one stop shop. You know, you can just like type in the things that you want people to believe, I suppose. Now, how that works, like which agencies are involved? How the heck should I know?
44:14 Tucker Carlson? Well, you can tell by reading it. You can tell instantly by reading it, some of what's going on. I mean, you never know the whole story, of course, but it's super obvious to me, some of the players in this, very obvious, and they're the big ones, of course. So, but my question, and everything you've said makes sense. My question, however, is like, how is this allowed? So if you're not allowed to edit Wikipedia for pay on behalf of, say, a PR agency, how are you allowed to do it on behalf of an intelligence agency?
44:47 Speaker 02 That's a good question. I actually asked Elon Musk and President and the President to, you know, use Doge or other government resources to investigate what United States employees were actually editing Wikipedia and, you know, perhaps stop that. I don't know, maybe, maybe we shouldn't. Maybe there's reasons, legitimate reasons for government employees to do this.
45:27 Speaker 02 But at least Elon Musk did retweet that and got a lot of support.
45:34 Tucker Carlson? So. Did anyone do anything about it? Did anyone do anything about it?
45:41 Speaker 02 Not to my knowledge, except now there is a congressional investigation. I don't know if my tweet had anything to do with the start of that. I don't think so. I think it had more to do with the reporting of Ashley Rinsberg. And, well, of course, Israel, and I would add, Hindus are very bothered with the way that their ethnic groups are treated in Wikipedia. And both of them, both a whole bunch of Jews and a whole bunch of Hindus have been after me in the last couple of years, saying, "You've got to speak out. You've got to help us."
46:26 Speaker 02 You know, and I've said, "I don't really know a lot about the situation. I mean, there isn't a whole lot that I could do."
46:32 Tucker Carlson? Will they be accused of Indian or Israeli grievance politics? Probably not.
46:36 Speaker 02 What's that?
46:37 Tucker Carlson? No, sorry. I'm just thinking like, no, that was a bitter, sardonic aside. I, no, excuse me. I take that back. I don't want to be a grievance person. Um, you know, of course, but the answer, what you're really saying is, people who are organized have a way to push back against the lying.
46:56 Speaker 02 For sure. For sure. I think that, that if, like, Israeli intelligence, for example, got together and made a real concerted effort to, to fight against the, this group of 40 Muslim activists that Ashley Rinsberg identified, they might be able to make some inroads.
47:28 Tucker Carlson? You think? You think they might be able to do that?
47:30 Speaker 02 Yeah, they might.
47:33 Speaker 02 It really depends.
47:34 Tucker Carlson? It's possible. I'm just throwing that out there.
47:36 Speaker 02 Here's the thing. I actually think concurrently, we're going to talk about the nine theses here.
47:44 Tucker Carlson? Yes.
47:44 Speaker 02 I assume. So I would like to encourage people to at least test the waters. Don't like, don't go to Wikipedia and be a jerk and get yourself kicked out right away because they will kick you out for sure if you're, if you are not playing by the rules. But go there and maybe not all at once, but you know, over the next few weeks, make some, some real efforts to do, to make good faith edits to Wikipedia and build up some credibility within the community. You can make a difference there. I think it's a good idea for, to give
48:26 Speaker 02 it a try, you know? One thing that has never been tried is to simply get all of the libertarians and all of the conservatives and, and the Jews and the Hindus and the Christians and whoever else has grievances against Wikipedia, organize them.
48:47 Tucker Carlson? Yes.
48:48 Speaker 02 And descend on Wikipedia and actually try to make a change.
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50:49 Tucker Carlson? That never occurs to most conservatives. Their first instinct is to, I'll speak for myself, my first instinct is run away. I don't want to deal with this, it's horrible.
50:58 Speaker 02 Me too.
50:59 Tucker Carlson? I hate these people. And this is my internal monologue. And if I'm mad enough, we should start something better. It never occurs to your average conservative to take back the institution that's been perverted and corrupted. It never occurs to them, well, maybe I should, I don't know, try to join the faculty at Harvard and stop lying. Or why don't I fix Wikipedia? And I think that's, you're right.
51:25 Speaker 02 Yeah. So I think it was either the first or second interview that you did of me was in 2019 when I started something called a social media strike. And it actually went pretty well, but it always struck me that, first of all, I could have followed it up. And second of all, it could have been much bigger, like if I had organized it properly, but it was mostly just me and my blog, you know, and still there were like a half a dozen or 10 different media sources that covered this social media strike. So maybe we should organize something similar with regard to Wikipedia.
52:10 Tucker Carlson? I think part of the problem is that most non-liberals have just no patience for bureaucracy.
52:16 Speaker 02 Right.
52:16 Tucker Carlson? And liberals, because they, you know, as Ted Kaczynski famously wrote, "The whole point of liberalism is safety in numbers. These are people who are hollow and afraid inside." And so they seek each other out and they create these institutions so they can feel safe. And non-liberals just don't feel that at all because they're not, you know, because they believe in something and they're not ruled by fear. And so the average conservative, when told to sit through like a PTA meeting or join the Wikipedia, you know, editors process or something like, goes crazy, can't deal with it.
52:53 Speaker 02 Right, right.
52:55 Tucker Carlson? Do you notice this?
52:56 Speaker 02 Yes. And there's another sort of practical problem that stands in the way of this. There's, you're not allowed to do what's called brigading on Wikipedia. So brigading means organizing, editing of a particular article off the Wiki. So if you're caught doing this, then you can be, you can be blocked. So if I were to tell everybody to go to the article about Larry Sanger, and please don't do that. But if I were to try to organize that, like on this show right now, then I might be blocked for brigading.
53:40 Tucker Carlson? But it's cool for like Saudi intelligence or Mossad or the CIA to do it.
53:44 Speaker 02 For sure.
53:46 Tucker Carlson? This is so bonkers. For sure. Okay.
53:52 Speaker 02 No, it's
53:52 Tucker Carlson? Got it. Yeah, got it. And it's so obvious. I mean,
53:56 Speaker 02 It's, it's, it's an obvious thing for them to do. They wouldn't be doing their job if they weren't doing it.
54:01 Tucker Carlson? Right.
54:01 Speaker 02 Right? I mean, they're supposed to be shaping public opinion. That's part of their remit is the Intelligence Committee or Community now, right?
54:09 Tucker Carlson? Yeah.
54:09 Speaker 02 And, and the way to shape, uh, public opinion, one of the main ways is to make sure that Wikipedia reads the way you want it to read. And yes, then they can organize secretly behind the scenes and they do.
54:27 Tucker Carlson? Yeah, there's such a lot. I mean, I just happen to know some of the topics. Like I was there for not many things, but some things and you read about, you know, something that you just happen to have direct knowledge of and it's the account of it is so intentionally distorted. Such a lie. And then people you know, you read about, it's like, wait, I, I remember when you had a DUI arrest or, or whatever, and it's gone.
54:54 Tucker Carlson? Um,
54:57 Tucker Carlson? if they can't even keep the paid PR people out, then that suggests to me that the people who edit Wikipedia are probably making money on this. Like the fastest way would just be to bribe them, right?
55:11 Speaker 02 If you are really good at playing the Wikipedia game and you're like one of these, this Power 62 and you're not in the pay of somebody, then you're just leaving money on the table. But that seems obvious to me.
55:25 Tucker Carlson? Well, if we can't even know their names, then what would be the disincentive? Like,
55:29 Speaker 02 And that would be one of the reasons why we don't know their names. And that actually is one of the main reasons why I say we should know their names.
55:37 Tucker Carlson? So I'm just calling on WikiLeaks, you know, or Julian Assange, where are you?
55:42 Speaker 02 I, I cannot, I cannot agree. I don't, I, I don't, uh, I don't think that we should dox the, the Power 62. Um, this is what I call
55:52 Tucker Carlson? By dox, what do you mean? Does that mean like home address or does that just mean name?
55:56 Speaker 02 Name. Name is enough. That would be doxing them.
55:59 Tucker Carlson? Okay.
56:01 Speaker 02 In the Wikipedia system, they are,
56:08 Speaker 02 Basically, anyone who reveals their name and they don't want their name revealed would be immediately blocked for doxing and it would be in a permanent block for sure. So it's a very serious offense on Wikipedia. So I'm, I am not encouraging people to do this.
56:26 Tucker Carlson? That, that, okay, that's fair. I, I respect the fact that you've thought about this a lot and much more than I have and you're decent. And so you're probably right. I'm just frustrated. But I wonder, is there, it seems to me, knowing the names of the people making these decisions is in the public interest. That's for sure. These are not just random Twitter users. Okay. They're shaping history. They are the authors of history. Certainly the gatekeepers of history. So
56:52 Speaker 02 And they're libeling. We need to talk about that.
56:56 Tucker Carlson? Well, they sure, they are, obviously. And I say this as Mr. Wake grievance politics.
57:04 Tucker Carlson? They, I can't, I'm, yeah. They certainly have libeled a lot of people I know.
57:09 Speaker 02 Yes.
57:09 Tucker Carlson? Literally libeled, like saying things that are untrue about them. Yeah.
57:12 Speaker 02 And there's no, there's no recourse, right? So this, this is the problem, right?
57:18 Speaker 02 John Sigenthaler, senior, called me up in 2005.
57:23 Tucker Carlson? He was a newspaper editor from Tennessee.
57:25 Speaker 02 Exactly. He was a longtime publisher and editor of The Tennessean, one of the founding board members, I believe, of USA Today. So very important newspaper man.
57:36 Tucker Carlson? And kind of a center-left liberal, I would say.
57:39 Speaker 02 Right. And he, the article about him said that he had been under suspicion of being responsible in some way for the assassination of RFK. And he was livid, of course, because he had actually like worked on RFK's campaign and things like that.
58:05 Speaker 02 And he blamed me and like I kind of didn't, you know, blame him for doing so. And he opened my eyes to just how reputations can be harmed by people's Wikipedia articles. And I have heard from dozens and dozens, maybe over a hundred different reasonably famous people since then with grievances about the Wikipedia articles and they're like at their wits end. They know I'm long gone from Wikipedia and they don't know what to do.
58:46 Speaker 02 Right? So I've kept abreast of this issue on Wikipedia quite a bit and it bothers me because I take sort of personal responsibility. I feel personal responsibility, which is one of the reasons why I came up with the nine theses in the first place.
59:06 Tucker Carlson? But was just so like, what did Siegenthaler do? Like, was he able to get that off Wikipedia?
59:10 Speaker 02 He was able to get satisfaction. I don't think he got an immediate response and immediate reversal, but reasonably quickly. But I can't remember if it was before or after they had changed his article that he called me, but he wanted me to know. Right? And I don't blame him. And another time Philip Roth, the famous journalist.
59:38 Tucker Carlson? Philip Roth, the novelist?
59:40 Speaker 02 The novelist, yes. He contacted me also and was complaining that the story of the origin of the inspiration of the human stain was wrong on Wikipedia. He had gone to the Wikipedia talk page and said, hi, I am Philip Roth and you've got the story wrong and here's the real story. And they said, sorry, we can't use that. You're a primary source.
1:00:10 Speaker 02 I mean, it's ridiculous, of course. I mean, just what kind of person do you have to be to, to like, to take that sort of disrespectful stance to somebody like Philip Roth and to twist your own rules in that way for almost petty reasons. There's a lot of petty power players on Wikipedia, I find.
1:00:41 Tucker Carlson? I believe that.
1:00:43 Speaker 02 The people behind this, they hide behind their anonymity. So there is no legal recourse when somebody is seriously libeled so that, you know, their career is damaged. I've heard from people whose careers were materially damaged.
1:01:00 Tucker Carlson? Oh, well, I'm sure I'm one of them.
1:01:02 Speaker 02 By Wikipedia.
1:01:03 Tucker Carlson? Yeah. Uh, yeah. My recourse has just been to, you know, stay cheerful, focused on God and my family, you know, like not get mad. I think is kind of the only, that's the only thing I've been able to do about it and not read it. Don't marinate in that. But I don't think it's just petty power. It's like global power because
1:01:24 Speaker 02 Right.
1:01:25 Tucker Carlson? they're aligned with Google, the biggest search engine, the search monopoly that dominates English language search completely, has a monopoly on it. And they have somehow made a deal with Google that allows them to be the top search result. So for example, I just Googled myself for the first time ever and Wikipedia is the first result. Now, why would Wikipedia be the first result on me? I still work. I still have a job. So like there, why would that be number one? Why would a bunch of anonymous editors get to be the first result on my name? Because they have a deal with Google.
1:01:57 Speaker 02 I can explain it. I, you very well could be right. Um.
1:02:03 Tucker Carlson? I bet my house on it, but.
1:02:05 Speaker 02 Right. Well.
1:02:08 Speaker 02 Look, in the early days, Wikipedia was the only source of information on a whole bunch of topics. Okay, and then the way that the Google algorithm worked back then, if you ended up being the first source for a lot of topics, then your Google PageRank score was higher. And so Wikipedia just shot to the top of Google's PageRank algorithm, or at least this is the story they tell, right? And so, one of the reasons why Google, or Wikipedia, rather, took off so quickly is
1:02:50 Speaker 02 this feedback loop that it had with Google, right? So, you know, Wikipedia would write 100 articles that never had any coverage by Google before. They would appear on Google, people would search for those topics, and they would come to Wikipedia, and then the number of contributors would expand, and lather, rinse, repeat, and there was exponential growth.
1:03:16 Tucker Carlson? Well, so I think we're saying the same thing. I mean, you're describing the mechanism by which Wikipedia is the guaranteed first response to any query on a fact about a person or history.
1:03:28 Speaker 02 Right.
1:03:29 Tucker Carlson? I mean, that's to say, it doesn't matter kind of what
1:03:32 Speaker 02 Right, right, right.
1:03:33 Tucker Carlson? the mechanism is, it's the results is the same.
1:03:35 Speaker 02 Yes, yes, yes.
1:03:36 Tucker Carlson? And they know that.
1:03:37 Speaker 02 Yes, and I guess what I'm saying is, if there was an actual deal from the beginning, it would be from the beginning. And I wouldn't rule that out, I'm enough of a conspiracy theorist to say that's not totally impossible. In fact, the, how many startups can you say were the first reviews by any news source was the New York Times and MIT Technology Review? But those were the first reviews that were published by any mainstream source of Wikipedia?
1:04:14 Tucker Carlson? Amazing.
1:04:15 Speaker 02 Yeah, that was in September of 2001.
1:04:19 Speaker 02 So we were immediately on the establishment's.
1:04:22 Tucker Carlson? Of course. Well, I mean, Wikipedia is a servant to the ruling class, obviously, which is corrupt. So Wikipedia is itself corrupt, the most corrupt.
1:04:32 Tucker Carlson? Yeah, you can't over. And I must say, my last central comment, then I want to get to what we can do to make this better. But I mean, you've written extensively about it. But my last comment is that when people grouse about the media are corrupt news media, they're always referring to like, companies that really don't matter, like CBS, or NBC, or CNN, or Fox News. It's like, who cares? They're all going away. They're totally discredited. Everyone knows that. And they won't even be here in 10 years. Wikipedia has a much greater effect on how people understand the world than any of those media outlets. Wikipedia is a media outlet, and it's never included in the list of corrupt media outlets. And that just bugs me.
1:05:16 Speaker 02 Well, could I push back slightly?
1:05:18 Tucker Carlson? Of course.
1:05:20 Speaker 02 People our age and older still do take CNN and NBC and all the rest very seriously. So no, not the conservatives, but basically centrists. My mother votes Republican, and she still watches, you know, the mainstream media. And it still defines her reality, essentially, you know. So it's a generational thing.
1:05:50 Tucker Carlson? It is. I'm just saying that the actuarial tables tell us that this is, has a limited shelf life. So
1:05:55 Speaker 02 That's right.
1:05:56 Tucker Carlson? That's it. And just looking for extrapolating forward, you know, 10, 15, 20 years. You know, that that stuff is not, it's not meaningful. Digital media is very meaningful, and Wikipedia is the most meaningful. That's my only point. And I just think that someone should say that out loud.
1:06:13 Speaker 02 I agree. No, I think that's true. It's probably Wikipedia by itself is more influence, more influential than the New York Times, or any other single media source.
1:06:27 Tucker Carlson? And it works in tandem with the New York Times.
1:06:29 Speaker 02 Right.
1:06:31 Tucker Carlson? Any chance of getting the New York Times blacklisted on Wikipedia? Do you think? So you laugh.
1:06:36 Speaker 02 I don't think so.
1:06:40 Tucker Carlson? Well, I know for a fact that I'm more honest than New York Times. I mean, I take a lot of tech just, I really believe that I am, but I'm blacklisted and they're not. So like, I just think that's not neutral. Whether I'm right or wrong. Okay. You have, you know, following the example of our beloved German monk 500 years ago, written some theses that you want to nail to the front door of Wikipedia.
1:07:03 Speaker 02 That's right.
1:07:05 Tucker Carlson? What are they?
1:07:06 Speaker 02 All right. Let's go through the list. All right. This should take about five minutes, maybe.
1:07:13 Tucker Carlson? So take your time. This is, I just want to restate if you're coming to the video right now. This is the creator of Wikipedia explaining how Wikipedia can be saved from corruption.
1:07:22 Speaker 02 Yes. Nobody has ever actually made a thoroughgoing reform proposal of Wikipedia. This is the first time anybody has done that. And it's certainly the first time I have done that. There's been a lot of piecemeal of reform proposals, but this is thoroughgoing. And I'm trying, just as Luther did, I'm trying to start a conversation. All right. So this is not a-
1:07:46 Tucker Carlson? I hope this starts a reformation. I do. I hope this starts what Luther started.
1:07:51 Speaker 02 Right.
1:07:53 Tucker Carlson? A return to honesty.
1:07:54 Speaker 02 Will be the Protestant Wikipedians. Okay. So, the nine theses begin this way. Number one, end decision making by consensus. So Wikipedia pretends to make difficult editorial decisions based on a process they call consensus. But it's a sham because this allows ideologues to silence dissent by falsely claiming, in effect, unanimous agreement. But of course, there isn't unanimous agreement.
1:08:37 Tucker Carlson? So the scientific consensus on climate change would be a perfect example of this-
1:08:41 Speaker 02 Would be a very good example. So the consensus, I say, as a description of how they arrive at difficult editorial decisions should be abandoned. Now, what they replace it with, that's a good question, but- Let's begin there.
1:09:02 Tucker Carlson? And decision making by consensus because it allows an aggressive faction to overwhelm the skeptical faction.
1:09:11 Speaker 02 Exactly. It's really a cynical institutional fiction. It has to end. They can't call what they're doing consensus anymore. That's not a consensus at all, especially if they claim to be an open global project.
1:09:32 Speaker 02 Period. All right.
1:09:34 Tucker Carlson? Period. Thank you. I agree.
1:09:36 Speaker 02 Number two, enable competing articles. So this is, this is a little bit out there, but I think it's a good one. Since true neutrality is impossible, as we've been discussing under the current editorial monopoly, Wikipedia should allow multiple competing articles written from different declared perspectives, each striving for neutrality within its own framework. So let the people write alternative articles. And for this, let me quickly tell you about what I think.
1:10:12 Tucker Carlson? That's not far out.
1:10:13 Speaker 02 No, it really shouldn't be.
1:10:15 Tucker Carlson? Great idea.
1:10:16 Speaker 02 Yes. I mean, why not just allow, you know, there can be multiple articles titled Donald Trump. Right?
1:10:24 Tucker Carlson? So you could have, you know, special report on Fox News, or you could have the CBS Evening News, then you could also have Joe Rogan, because that's what alternative media is.
1:10:34 Speaker 02 Right, right, right. Why not?
1:10:35 Tucker Carlson? And people can decide what they believe.
1:10:37 Speaker 02 Yes. So, um, fine. Number three. Abolish source blacklists, which we've already talked about this quite a bit. Wikipedia maintains a list of perennial sources, which serves as an ideologically one-sided blacklist of media sources. All right.
1:11:01 Tucker Carlson? So you. Can I ask, what is the justification for that? And like internally, we just don't believe them, they're not real. What are the criteria for determining?
1:11:13 Tucker Carlson? Authenticity of a news source.
1:11:15 Speaker 02 That's pretty much it.
1:11:16 Tucker Carlson? No, I mean, my opinion.
1:11:18 Speaker 02 They, they, well, they don't say it's just their opinion. You say, they say, as a matter of objective fact, we have.
1:11:26 Speaker 02 Right?
1:11:27 Tucker Carlson? I gotta start doing that. You know, studies show the New York Times lies, therefore, you know, I'm just banning it.
1:11:33 Speaker 02 Well, you would think that that would, that, that that would hold some weight with an objective analysis.
1:11:41 Tucker Carlson? Boy, definitely, I can tell you.
1:11:42 Speaker 02 Yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay. So you can't cite the New York Post, Fox News, or you on Wikipedia as a source. So I am making the modest proposal that this blacklist should be abolished. It was established in 2017. It's fairly new.
1:12:05 Tucker Carlson? Right after Trump.
1:12:07 Speaker 02 What's that?
1:12:07 Tucker Carlson? The year Trump gets inaugurated.
1:12:09 Speaker 02 That's right.
1:12:10 Tucker Carlson? They decide that we're just not going to hear from certain news organizations just because, because objectively, they're bad.
1:12:17 Speaker 02 Wikipedia may not cite the, well, for example, the New York Post. And, and we should actually investigate whether that decision was made at about the time that the Hunter Biden laptop story was, was breaking. Right?
1:12:35 Tucker Carlson? Is this public? By the way, can you, can I go on the Wikipedia site and find out what's blacklisted?
1:12:40 Speaker 02 Sure, just, just type in perennial sources, Wikipedia into any search engine and the first result will be this page.
1:12:48 Tucker Carlson? And it names them, the blacklist.
1:12:51 Speaker 02 Oh, of course. Yeah, it's all, it's all color coded. Green.
1:12:56 Tucker Carlson? Do you have the list? Do you mind if I do that really quick?
1:12:59 Speaker 02 Go right ahead.
1:13:00 Tucker Carlson? Okay, so it's, let me just do, I just, I'm testing your thesis, so it's perennial.
1:13:07 Tucker Carlson? Source.
1:13:09 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:13:09 Tucker Carlson? List Wikipedia, right?
1:13:13 Speaker 02 Well, you're doing that. I'll give you some fully approved sources. New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, The Nation, Mother Jones, GLAD.
1:13:24 Tucker Carlson? Come on.
1:13:25 Speaker 02 These are all greenlit, fully greenlit. Okay, the blacklisted sources are Breitbart, Daily Caller, Epoch Times, Fox News, New York Post, The Federalist. So you can't use those as sources on Wikipedia.
1:13:45 Tucker Carlson? Oh, wow. Well, they've got, of course. So is red, I'm looking at it now.
1:13:51 Speaker 02 Yes. Red means it's blacklisted. You cannot cite it as a source of facts. Maybe as a source of opinion, but generally that works out.
1:14:03 Tucker Carlson? Anti defamation league gets a green light.
1:14:06 Speaker 02 Only for some. Yes, if you're actually reporting about the, about the Arab.
1:14:13 Tucker Carlson? Israeli conflict?
1:14:14 Speaker 02 Yes, yes.
1:14:15 Tucker Carlson? Okay.
1:14:16 Speaker 02 You may not cite them.
1:14:18 Tucker Carlson? Interesting.
1:14:19 Speaker 02 So you can't, you can't find the Jewish perspective on the war so easily anymore on.
1:14:26 Tucker Carlson? Media.
1:14:32 Tucker Carlson? Yeah, Catholic hierarchy. This is interesting.
1:14:36 Speaker 02 Yes. There's a serious academic encyclopedia of Christianity that is not allowed on Wikipedia. I was surprised to find.
1:14:46 Tucker Carlson? Counterpunch is not allowed. They're naughty. They're naughty. Daily Caller not allowed.
1:14:53 Speaker 02 Of course.
1:14:55 Tucker Carlson? Oh.
1:14:55 Speaker 02 You started.
1:14:55 Tucker Carlson? Daily Mail, not, yeah, I did start it. I've got nothing to do with it now, but I did start it. That's interesting. This is kind of incredible.
1:15:06 Tucker Carlson? Okay. I never hear about this.
1:15:11 Tucker Carlson? And we don't know who made this decision.
1:15:14 Speaker 02 Mr. X is the name of his account.
1:15:20 Speaker 02 Now, it's edited, of course, as Wikipedia pages are by a whole bunch of other people.
1:15:26 Tucker Carlson? LifeSite News not allowed.
1:15:28 Speaker 02 Right.
1:15:29 Tucker Carlson? Of course, the pro-lifers.
1:15:31 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:15:32 Tucker Carlson? That's interesting. I'm gonna see if this... Okay, well, why does no one talk about this? Oh, Sputnik, of course, not allowed.
1:15:42 Tucker Carlson? Talky mag.
1:15:43 Speaker 02 Search me. I don't know why people aren't talking about it. It's obviously huge news. I think it's simply embarrassing for the left. And so the left aren't going to report about it, and the right has been reporting about it.
1:15:59 Tucker Carlson? TV Guide allowed. The Un's Review not allowed.
1:16:07 Tucker Carlson? TV Guide, totally cool. Un's, VDARE not allowed.
1:16:15 Tucker Carlson? So funny. This is amazing. Okay.
1:16:20 Tucker Carlson? All right.
1:16:23 Tucker Carlson? You've amused me deeply. Okay, I'm so sorry. I just had, I'm sorry for the...
1:16:28 Tucker Carlson? It's all so incredible to me. Okay. So, number three.
1:16:32 Speaker 02 Right. All right, shall I go on then?
1:16:35 Tucker Carlson? Yes, and I will not interrupt. I just can't.
1:16:39 Speaker 02 So, to conclude the discussion of number three, the blacklist should be abolished. Diverse sources should be cited with acknowledgement of how different groups assess their credibility if necessary.
1:16:53 Tucker Carlson? Exactly.
1:16:54 Speaker 02 Yeah. Okay. Number four, revive the original neutrality policy. Wikipedia must return to genuine neutrality by refusing to take sides on controversial issues, even when one view dominates Wikipedia, well, academia and mainstream media. So...
1:17:18 Speaker 02 I suppose that one is fairly straightforward. And we've already discussed it quite a bit. That the neutrality policy right now defines neutrality in terms of what are called significant views and the reliable sources. And significant views are significant views according to, you know, the faculty members of Harvard and things like that. And if you, your view is held only at, you know, conservative seminaries, for example, or other bastions of conservatism, then they're not significant. At least that's how it's treated on Wikipedia right now.
1:18:03 Speaker 02 So that needs to be, Wikipedia should be a big tent, as it used to be, enabling many, many different people to come together, you know, in a big, I just think of it as like old fashioned liberal kumbaya. You know, people should be able to come together and, and talk to each other from radically different points of view and just make sure that their views are all respected on the same page.
1:18:31 Tucker Carlson? Yeah, it shouldn't just be the most reactionary views. NBC, Harvard, you know, only the most kind of stalwart defenders of this broken project.
1:18:44 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:18:45 Tucker Carlson? Right? It shouldn't just be the College of Cardinals voting here.
1:18:48 Speaker 02 Right.
1:18:49 Tucker Carlson? So in my opinion, okay.
1:18:50 Speaker 02 Yes, yes. There's a good way to characterize the currently only permitted viewpoint on Wikipedia. And that is with the acronym GASP, which stands for Globalist Academic Secular and Progressive. And each one is necessary and together they just give a perfect picture of the viewpoint of Wikipedians today, of most Wikipedians.
1:19:24 Tucker Carlson? Do they know that they're like representing, selling the views of, say, the Aspen Institute or the Atlantic Council or the CIA or the Washington Post editorial board? Like such a tiny minority of the globe's population.
1:19:37 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:19:38 Tucker Carlson? But the most powerful people in the world, like they are the Praetorian Guard protecting the powerful. Do they, do they see that?
1:19:46 Speaker 02 I think they do. I think a lot of, of course, it's a, it's a fairly big group of people, you know, in the single digit thousands of regular editors these days. I think a lot of those people do know that and they take pride in it, frankly.
1:20:03 Tucker Carlson? How?
1:20:03 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:20:04 Tucker Carlson? In oppressing the rest of the population on behalf of the richest and most powerful.
1:20:07 Speaker 02 They don't think they're doing that, but yeah.
1:20:10 Tucker Carlson? That's exactly what they're doing. By lying to people, you oppress them.
1:20:13 Speaker 02 Yeah. All right. Then number five. So just a little throat clearing here. A short little proposal. Repeal, ignore all rules. So there is a policy called ignore all rules, which I came up with in the first few days of the project. Originally, I meant it as a joke to encourage newcomers, right? So like if rules make you nervous and like you're not sure what to do, then just ignore them and go about your business. That's essentially what I said.
1:20:50 Tucker Carlson? Yeah. It's a good rule for responsible, honest people.
1:20:54 Speaker 02 And, and this became essentially a cargo cult. You know, over the years, people started using this to shield insiders from accountability. So I made this rule and so I now declare that it should be repealed.
1:21:13 Tucker Carlson? How has it been used to protect corruption?
1:21:17 Speaker 02 Well, generally what happens is if somebody can't think of a covering rule in a special case, but it just seems plausible to the people who are working on an article.
1:21:31 Tucker Carlson? Right.
1:21:32 Speaker 02 This, this really ought to be against the rules or whatever. Just ignore all rules and they'll just say that, you know, and it's, and they usually say in a kind of tongue in cheek way, but in a way that's serious enough to actually have an effect, right? But, you know, a lot of lesser contributors, they wouldn't be able to get away with that sort of thing. So there is one guy who said at the height of COVID, if there is one serious application of ignore all rules, it should be now. We should be able to ignore all the rules regarding whatever
1:22:16 Speaker 02 in order to get people to believe that COVID is serious and they they should be jabbed and asked and so forth.
1:22:23 Tucker Carlson? The vax is the only answer to it. Yeah. So basically, we should, if you, when you ignore all rules, after a while, you're ignoring all principles. And they're doing it again in the service.
1:22:35 Speaker 02 Selectively.
1:22:35 Tucker Carlson? Yeah, selectively in the, in the service of like the most powerful people in the world.
1:22:40 Speaker 02 Right. Okay. Number six, reveal who Wikipedia's leaders are. So we've talked about.
1:22:49 Tucker Carlson? Why is that not number one? I like that one.
1:22:51 Speaker 02 Um, yes. So Wikipedia's most powerful editors remain overwhelmingly anonymous despite wielding enormous influence over one of the world's most powerful media platforms. These leaders must be publicly identified for accountability and given liability insurance as, you know, as volunteers of nonprofits often are. So there's no reason why they shouldn't do this.
1:23:20 Tucker Carlson? If you're wielding real power, I think it's, and by the way, I like anonymity online a lot of the time because I think it helps the underdog tell the truth. And so I am for anonymity on social media, for example. I don't think you should have to register with the government to give your opinions, just to be clear. But if you're wielding real institutional power, I think it's fair to require people to say who they are, just like Supreme Court justices have to give their real names. Right?
1:23:49 Speaker 02 Right. It's, it's, it's a no brainer. If there is one thing that might get the attention of the mainstream media, it seems to me it might be this one. I don't think it's widely known that 85% of the most powerful accounts on Wikipedia are anonymous. How is that allowed?
1:24:11 Tucker Carlson? No, I know. I couldn't agree more.
1:24:13 Speaker 02 It's just disgusting.
1:24:14 Tucker Carlson? And by the way, there are consequences to having your identity known, I can tell you. And they're not great. On the other hand, you know, that's the, that's the price that you pay for having influence. I don't know. That's fair.
1:24:26 Speaker 02 Right. And, and by the way, I don't want those people to be doxxed. I'm going to say it again. And, and, and I'm not saying that the people who are there should be forced to reveal their identity or anything like that. They can resign.
1:24:40 Tucker Carlson? I agree.
1:24:41 Speaker 02 And then new people can be brought in.
1:24:43 Tucker Carlson? That's exactly right.
1:24:44 Speaker 02 And, and, and then maybe, if necessary, you could pay them a little stipend for their trouble. They've got, they're raising, I think, something like $200 million a year now, right? It's a huge amount of money.
1:24:59 Tucker Carlson? As I said, I was a donor. Yeah, no, I get it.
1:25:02 Speaker 02 Yeah. Okay. And
1:25:07 Speaker 02 let the public rate articles. That's number seven. Wikipedia should implement a public rating and feedback system, allowing readers to evaluate articles. They can't do that now.
1:25:19 Tucker Carlson? We call it, that's the comment section, but they don't have a comment section.
1:25:23 Speaker 02 They don't have a comment section. They don't have any sort of rating section. There are no metrics that they can use. They've metricized everything, you know, books on Amazon, you know, thumbs up on, on, on X and, you know, YouTube and whatnot, but not Wikipedia. And, and if there's one
1:25:42 Tucker Carlson? Never thought of that.
1:25:43 Speaker 02 What's that?
1:25:44 Tucker Carlson? I've never thought of that. That's so smart.
1:25:45 Speaker 02 Yeah. Well, and, and look, if there's one place where an actual rating system would matter and actually be important, it would be Wikipedia because we, I think you and I agree that Wikipedia does have some decent articles, right?
1:26:03 Tucker Carlson? Great articles.
1:26:04 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:26:05 Tucker Carlson? And, and You want to learn about the Falkland Islands? You want to learn, learn about some bird species? Yeah, it's amazing. It's, that's why it's so frustrating.
1:26:12 Speaker 02 Yes. So, so, I mean, wouldn't it be nice if there were some independent reviews, independent of Wikipedia, that would, you know, give the public a notion of whether they can actually trust the information. And I actually think that you should be able to identify and even rate the raiders and say, okay, These accounts who have rated the Trump article very highly are mostly Democrats. And those that rate the article very poorly are mostly Republicans.
1:26:52 Speaker 02 And then you should, there should be a system that would enable you to go and, and learn what the best articles are, especially if they're competing articles, again, from anybody's point of view.
1:27:06 Tucker Carlson? Yes, I love that.
1:27:10 Speaker 02 Would be nice. Let's see.
1:27:14 Speaker 02 Thesis number eight, and indefinite blocking. Wikipedia's practice of blocking accounts permanently is unjust and ideologically motivated. So I did a little personal investigation last June. In a period of two weeks, forty-seven percent of the blocks that had been done by Wikipedia were indefinite, which means permanent. And you can sort of understand some of them because you're re-blocking the same people who have already been blocked because they made new accounts. Those are called sock puppets. It's still a very, very high number, right?
1:27:58 Speaker 02 And they do, as I have said, block willy-nilly, and they will block permanently. I mean, there are people online who, who complain that they were blocked for making grammar corrections, you know? I've seen, I don't know, three or four cases of just that.
1:28:21 Speaker 02 I quote a few in the essay. So each of these theses, by the way, has a whole essay to go with it, which I very carefully wrote over the last nine months.
1:28:32 Tucker Carlson? And where can interested people find that?
1:28:35 Speaker 02 They can find it on my user page on Wikipedia. So just go there. I don't know if it'll be on the user page, or maybe it will be linked from the user page, but it'll be on Wikipedia itself. So I actually want to take the debate to them. You know, I still have an account in good, good standing for now. We'll see if they block me over this. I'm not sure. But, uh, but I would like to start a debate there. So that's why I've posted it there. I also have a version of the nine theses on my blog.
1:29:14 Speaker 02 And it's, it's identical, but it also has links to archived versions of all the resources that I cite, so they can't like take anything down without people knowing. Let's see, so. Um, I think that basically indefinite blocks should be extremely rare. They should require multiple administrators to agree because right now one person can for arbitrary reasons practically block another account. An account in good standing that might have had like thousands of edits. Without really any meaningful recourse, right?
1:29:59 Speaker 02 So at least let's have a panel of people convened if you want to block somebody permanently. And, um, and of course you should be able to, uh, appeal your permanent block. If you are permanently blocked every maybe three, six, maybe 12 months. Right? So the idea is it's only fair to give people the opportunity to say, well, I've reformed. I'm not going to do what I've done before. People, you remember the, the movie Escape from Alcatraz? Yes.
1:30:39 Speaker 02 There was a character in it who's befriended by Clint Eastwood's character, uh, who's this great painter and he makes a painting of the warden. The warden sees a copy of this as he's snooping around in a cell. And, uh, it's an unflattering picture of the warden.
1:31:02 Speaker 02 So that man's, his painting supplies are taken away by the, the warden. And they have so few joys in this place. It's like living death. And so the, the painter then commits suicide. A lot of people feel very strongly about Wikipedia because it is a significant hobby in some cases, you know, in the way that like I play Irish fiddle. That's like my, one of my big hobbies. And I don't know, you're fly fishing, I guess.
1:31:39 Tucker Carlson? Yeah.
1:31:40 Speaker 02 If you were to take this away from people forever, you know, just disallow them, then, you know, it, it can be really upsetting to people. One person, there's a story I quote in the essay of, of a guy who came close to suicide when his account was blocked. And you know how they responded? They responded, Wikipedia is not therapy. There's an essay to this effect, you know? Wikipedia is not therapy.
1:32:11 Tucker Carlson? No, it's cruelty.
1:32:12 Speaker 02 It is. That's basically what they're implying.
1:32:15 Tucker Carlson? Yeah.
1:32:16 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:32:16 Tucker Carlson? Right. It's a, right. It's a way to hurt people.
1:32:21 Speaker 02 So that, that should stop. They should be nicer, frankly, to, to the people who are spending so many hours on the system. Number nine, adopt a legislative process. So if you take all eight together, you might very well ask, how can these changes be made? So Wikipedia is extremely institutionally conservative. It's hard to change from within.
1:32:50 Tucker Carlson? It's the DMV, I noticed.
1:32:52 Speaker 02 Yes. So what I propose is that because they lack any method of major reform, there is nothing like an editorial council on Wikipedia. Because it needs major reform now, especially, it needs an elected.
1:33:14 Speaker 02 Editorial legislature with real powers, powers to implement reforms established through Wikipedia's first constitutional convention. So Wikipedia should treat itself as a kind of polity, which until now has been a strange mixture. For years and years, I have said this, it is a strange mixture of oligarchy and anarchy. Right?
1:33:44 Tucker Carlson? Like America itself.
1:33:46 Speaker 02 Right. So, and what they really need to do is have a serious constitutional convention, take their own governance, editorial governance seriously. And I'm not saying this would be run by the Wikipedia Foundation, it would be run by the volunteers, of course, the Wikipedia Foundation would pay for the constitutional convention and also for, you know, the travel expenses of people who later come together in an editorial assembly, which would meet face to face, right? Because these people have to be identified, one person, one vote.
1:34:29 Speaker 02 And for that matter, I also say that if you vote for the people in such an editorial assembly, then you have to be identified, not necessarily publicly, but to someone to ensure that there is indeed only one person, one vote. Because right now, that's one of the big problems about voting in the Wikipedia community. Because Wikipedia is anonymous, it's only too possible for people to run multiple sock puppets, or they run separate accounts, that they pretend belong to different people. Right? And then that gives them more than one vote. That's not fair.
1:35:09 Tucker Carlson? No.
1:35:10 Speaker 02 Yeah. So it should be, the editorial assembly, I'm saying, should be run face to face, you know, can meet in different places in the world and, you know, people could be paid a stipend for both travel and just like an ordinary legislature.
1:35:29 Tucker Carlson? I would donate to that. I donate in a real way to that. Because what you're, I think what you're really saying... Which is what Martin Luther was really saying is this is really serious. This is worth reforming because it matters.
1:35:41 Speaker 02 Yes, it really matters.
1:35:42 Tucker Carlson? It's not all bad. By the way, the idea of Wikipedia is a beautiful idea, an important idea. You know, broadcasting truth at scale, like that's just always a good thing. Right? And so it's worth saving. It's imperative to save it. And like running it like out of your garage without the safeguards that you've described just makes you pray, of course, to the worst people in the world. PR firms, intelligence agencies, paid liars.
1:36:08 Speaker 02 Right, right. I think that if there is one of all of these theses, if there is one that the mainstream media and governments around the world might be able to get behind, it is this idea that they need to get their house in order and start have a council of people that take responsibility for the shape of policy.
1:36:37 Tucker Carlson? Exactly right. That's exactly right. I mean, it's like, if you don't like Google, you could say, well, it's a Narpish's fault. If you don't like any publicly traded company, at least you can identify the person making decisions or responsible for the decisions.
1:36:50 Tucker Carlson? But here you have this shadowy, incredibly influential institution. And you, there's no recall, you can't even be mad at someone because you don't know who they are.
1:37:00 Speaker 02 Right?
1:37:02 Tucker Carlson? They're saying, I so appreciate the seriousness with which you take this, the brilliance that allowed you to create this in the first place. And I hope that people listen to you. I hope they understand how much it matters.
1:37:13 Speaker 02 Thank you. I appreciate it.
1:37:14 Tucker Carlson? Thank you. Good to see you again. It's the third time we've done an interview. I don't know.
1:37:19 Speaker 02 Fourth, actually.
1:37:20 Tucker Carlson? Fourth, okay, okay. Well, I care about this.
1:37:24 Tucker Carlson? I hope other people start to care too.
1:37:25 Speaker 02 Second time in person. So, yes.
1:37:30 Tucker Carlson? You're making me feel crazy. I'm obviously obsessed, but there's a reason I am. And it has nothing to do with me. It has to do with history and the collective memory, which is another way of saying your civilization, it can't exist unless it understands itself.
1:37:44 Speaker 02 I appreciate your interest and your support. I, I'm very grateful for it.
1:37:51 Tucker Carlson? Well, I mean it. Thank you very much.
1:37:58 Tucker Carlson? We want to thank you for watching us on Spotify, a company that we use every day. We know the people who run it. Good people. While you're here, do us a favor. Hit, follow, and tap the bell so you never miss an episode. We have real conversations, news, things that actually matter. Telling the truth always. You will not miss it if you follow us on Spotify and hit the bell. We appreciate it. Thanks for watching.
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