Gross #wikipedia
Discussion
Gross #wikipedia
@pluralistic yuck.
Given a list of their user IDs the community could review their activities.
@pluralistic thats 100 percent an AI written email
This is what happens with vendor relationships that are quasi-patronships by the 1%
https://www.marketing-interactive.com/google-inks-commercial-deal-with-wikipedia-to-pay-for-content
I.e the same thing that happened to PBS once David Koch joined their board of directors...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Alphabet
The alternative sucks worse though
https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-launches-grokipedia-wikipedia-competitor/
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/11/right-wing-attack-wikipedia-bias-musk-cruz/684886/
https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/elon-musk-also-has-a-problem-with-wikipedia
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2025/10/grokipedia-elon-musk/684730/
@pluralistic Is there not irony here given your recent post about LLM adoption (and this likely being an LLM editing tool being marketed)?
@classwario no, in fact, it is not.
@classwario 'Irony' is objecting to the proposition that disapproval of running an open source llm on you laptop is a matter of purity culture, in the very same breath as implying that everyone who does so is jointly and severally liable for every scammer who uses any llm, in any way.
That is irony.
@pluralistic That’s conflation, after all the double negatives. Strawman at best. Not irony. Irony would be presenting surprise to the audience about something in which the narrator knew they themself (I like the plural or non-gendered singular) was complicit. Like trying to remove the apple’s impact because of the tree’s spitting distance, for instance.
Reading the first paragraph is enough for me to flag that template search optimization bullshit.
Undoubtably today it’s been AI generated
@pluralistic What the actual bot??!
@pluralistic I'm guessing they didn't read your Wikipedia page before offering to enshittify it.
@pluralistic Famous people problems. 😊
@pluralistic going to guess this breaks Wikipedia t&cs? Also for Wikipedia "consultants" they've clearly not done their research to end up contacting you!
@pluralistic I know someone with a successful business doing this for probably 20 years now
@pluralistic Wow.
What's #Wikipedia's attitude to such grifters?
Usually, not good at all for the subject of the page.
Generally, blocking and reverting... And watching the "enhanced" page very carefully and with a lot of suspicion on all modifications afterwards 🤔
Which means that the person has paid for something that will not stay.... And be regarded with suspicion afterwards ...
I would strongly recommend to *not* do that 😬