Wikipedia is training Google and AI to lie to you
We live in a world where access to information is more plentiful than ever, yet truth has never felt more elusive. AI summaries, 24/7 media, and never-ending social media “takes” create more opportunities for content to be corrupted by misinformation and disinformation.
Wikipedia is another example. Fresh claims of left-wing bias have triggered congressional concerns and led to the launch of Grokipedia as an alternative encyclopedia. Last month, Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger was banned by editors for trying to promote an “intellectual diversity” project online. This month, my organization, the Hindu American Foundation, found out (yet again) why intellectual diversity is so sorely needed within Wikipedia, throughout the mainstream media, and everywhere Americans consume content.
Wikipedia editors recently changed the summary description of HAF, which is meant to be written from a “neutral point of view,” to now include this line: “HAF is thoroughly embedded in networks of Hindu nationalist politics and seeks to weaponize Hindu victimhood to bolster this agenda.”
Does that sound neutral to you?
I have worked at HAF for more than a decade. The campaigns we’ve done, the policy stances we’ve articulated, and the educational work we’ve promoted don’t neatly fit into the buckets that either our supporters or detractors want to put us in.
In U.S. political terms, HAF falls somewhere between the mainstream center-left and center-right (although political reference points have shifted dramatically over the past decade). HAF is more left-leaning on domestic cultural issues and more right-leaning on foreign policy matters. We are definitely nowhere near the far-right Hindu supremacists that our most vocal detractors would suggest, but a quick look at HAF’s Wikipedia page shows otherwise.
