Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) sent a letter to the nonprofit operator of Wikipedia alleging a pattern of liberal bias in articles on the collaborative encyclopedia.

"I write to request information about ideological bias on the Wikipedia platform and at the Wikimedia Foundation," Cruz wrote to Wikimedia Foundation CEO Maryana Iskander in a letter dated October 3. "Wikipedia began with a noble concept: crowdsource human knowledge using verifiable sources and make it free to the public. That's what makes reports of Wikipedia's systemic bias especially troubling."

Citing research from the conservative Manhattan Institute, Cruz wrote that "researchers have found that articles on the site often reflect a left-wing bias." Cruz alleged that "bias is particularly evident in Wikipedia's reliable sources/perennial sources list" because it describes "MSNBC and CNN as 'generally reliable' sources, while listing Fox News as a 'generally unreliable' source for politics and science. The left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center gets a top rating, but the Heritage Foundation, a prominent conservative think tank, is a 'blacklisted' and 'deprecated' source that Wikipedia's editors have determined 'promotes disinformation.'"

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[–] 195 points 1 year ago (1 child)

Ted Cruz thinks we should stop attacking pedophiles

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  • [–] 154 points 1 year ago* (12 children)

    Cruz alleged that "bias is particularly evident in Wikipedia's reliable sources/perennial sources list" because it describes "MSNBC and CNN as 'generally reliable' sources, while listing Fox News as a 'generally unreliable' source for politics and science. The left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center gets a top rating, but the Heritage Foundation, a prominent conservative think tank, is a 'blacklisted' and 'deprecated' source that Wikipedia's editors have determined 'promotes disinformation.'"

    It's kind of funny how when your goal becomes to present factual information, there aren't many especially right-leaning sources. I wonder why that might be.

    Can you think of why that might be the case, Ted?

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  • [–] 25 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    I'm not sure ol' Rafael is capable of thought.

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  • [–] 43 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    He is very capable of thought. He's an intelligent and well educated man who puts on a persona to further his own agenda. He is lacking empathy and morals, not thought.

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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    He’s an intelligent and well educated man...

    I have yet to see any evidence of that. Everything I've heard from him has always been utterly moronic.

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  • [–] 20 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Also, these ding-a-lings keep confusing rather mid corporate news outlets as "liberal". Also, it's awfully interesting how butthurt the right is about SPLC, I have to say. They've been howling about that one for years. Gosh, I wonder what it is about SPLC that makes them so angry?

    Reminds me of how they used to howl about ACORN until they had that little weasel O'Keefe make up a bunch of bullshit about it. Of course, a lot of these little shits have been whining about Wikipedia ever since its inception, since people constantly use it as a way to refute their LIES.

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  • [–] 74 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    Left wing bias = says objectively true things about me I don’t like.

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  • [–] 35 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    This is literally where we are right now.

    My MAGA parents told me that they consume news "from both sides". When pressed to name a single source that they consider on the left, they could not. They didn't even try to say "CNN" or some shit, they simply could not come up with a single source.

    So thankfully, they recognized their irrationality, and are no longer MAGA.

    Lol jk 🥲

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    [–] 69 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    while listing Fox News as a 'generally unreliable' source for politics and science.

    You mean that Fox News that argued it’s an entertainment show that no reasonable person would take seriously?

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  • [–] 58 points 1 year ago

    The point of him making this dumb comparison is to quietly sell the idea to The Stupids that Heritage, Fox and other propaganda places deserve equal consideration as reality.

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  • [–] 48 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    If reality is left of you, maybe your position is far too right?

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  • [–] 45 points 1 year ago

    Reality has a left wing bias

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  • [–] 41 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Cruz alleged that “bias is particularly evident in Wikipedia’s reliable sources/perennial sources list” because it describes “MSNBC and CNN as ‘generally reliable’ sources, while listing Fox News as a ‘generally unreliable’ source for politics and science.

    Fox News, the one that successfully argued in court they they were for entertainment purposes only and not actual news? That Fox News?

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    [–] 39 points 1 year ago

    "Wahhhh! They don't let us lie to you and treat us as reliable sources!"

    I can't stand these scum...

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  • [–] 38 points 1 year ago

    Reality has a liberal bias

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  • [–] 36 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    I recently looked into this on another forum where someone shared some articles supposedly proving bias. One article was itself highly biased to the right, so not particularly credible.

    The other article, from an organization that ranked the bias of news sources, was very neutral and objective, took accusations of bias seriously, went into detail, and removed the "unbiased" classification from Wikipedia, but didn't conclude any provable bias, leaving it unranked. The best example of bias they had was the fact that articles on socialism and communism didn't list Soviet atrocities, but those atrocities have their own pages and are also mentioned on pages of the countries involved, so that was not a great example.

    All these accusations are just the result of a massive right-wing campaign against facts and reality-based reporting. Everything that doesn't follow their propaganda is biased, according to them.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago

    The Wikipedia page for Capitalism also doesn’t have any atrocities in my quick check; the “criticism” section is fairly short and tame. Somehow though I’m sure this doesn’t bother conservatives.

    And to act like communism can only exist in a soviet context is just ridiculous. Like you said, the atrocities are very real and have their own pages because they’re not really so directly connected to communism. We shouldn’t lump every nasty thing the US has done into the capitalism page, either.

    God, I just wish for once conservatives would have a thought that was even vaguely consistent across their worldview but in the end all we get is record-breaking hypocrisy and twisted feelings over any kind of sense.

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  • [–] 35 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    You mean Rafael Cruz, who uses the chosen first name of Ted?

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  • [–] 34 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Do not treat this as just a tantrum. It's the right's playbook of moving the overton window to the right by taking extreme positions and invoking the golden mean fallacy. It certainly has worked on MSM.

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    [–] 31 points 1 year ago

    Not false. Reality is proven to have a left-wing bias.

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  • [–] 29 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    Attacking Wikipedia can not be normalized, we must protect it.

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  • [–] 26 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Why are we still taking these right wing fascist morons seriously?

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  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago

    Because they have a fuckload of power right now? Now, it’s really nore that we should take the problem seriously and the people should be dragged through the streets, so if that’s what you’re getting at then hell yea.

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  • [–] 24 points 1 year ago (1 child)
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    [–] 24 points 1 year ago

    Apparently things like truth and reality are left wing now. Good luck with that, psychotic ultra right wingers.

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  • [–] 21 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    Ted Cruz picks a fight with mirror, accusing it of falsely making him look like Grandpa Munster grew a beard.

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    Repeat after me, Die Mad About It. The sooner the better.

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  • [+] 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 9 months ago)
    [–] 19 points 1 year ago (10 children)

    Is there a way to just download a straight copy of Wikipedia?

    Def not asking because I expect every possible thing to go awry and we end up with Big Brother’s version of wiki

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    [–] 18 points 1 year ago

    These people are such little babies. The whole reason Conservapedia exists is because they had a meltdown over using CE and BCE for dates. You know, as is the standard. But little whiny conservatives need to have their little book club centered at all times.

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  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago

    Sounds like the modern equivalent of burning books to me.

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago

    Any publisher of truth exhibits strong anti-fascist bias. That's because fascism is inherently anti-truth

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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago

    I love it when this comes up in internet arguments. The mob often agrees with an individual's statement that Wikipedia is bad, and then when asked for an example it's always 100% something absolutely insane. The logical conclusion is that we're all wrong in different ways, but some people simply refuse to accept it and argue with the encyclopedia.

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  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago*

    Now seems like a good time to do a backup.

    For local use: https://www.howtogeek.com/260023/how-to-download-wikipedia-for-offline-at-your-fingertips-reading/

    If you have a server: https://blog.stefan-koch.name/2024/11/14/self-hosting-wikipedia

    (Kiwix-serve is what you're looking for)

    Unfortunately I can't vouch for either of these instructions as I followed instructions from a now defunct privacy podcast.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago

    “Systemic issues are real when they affect the conservative agenda, and DEI is good when it requires including conservative propaganda.” Got it.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago

    Reality does not have a right-wing bias. Reality does not have a left-wing bias. But when the right has festered into such an anti-scientific culture as to be at war with truth and reality itself to the point at putting us all at an accelerated risk of a new dark age - then reality is maybe just a little more biased in favor of literally everyone else.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago

    To fascists like Cruz, "left wing bias" means "they are reporting unbiased data instead of compliantly rewriting everything to align with our centralized propaganda machine."

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