Neil KandalgaonkarApr 26

Beloved programming community: many of you are hearing about the US DoJ threatening Wikipedia.

Some of you are thinking of ways to thwart this. Download the Wikipedia dumps, put it on IPFS or hand-couriered USB drives or other less-censorable systems.

A good impulse, but missing the point.

Wikipedia is not just a big document or a software artifact.

Its true value is that it is effortlessly available to a wide audience, can be updated rapidly, with no preconditions to view or edit.

Show threadNeil KandalgaonkarApr 26

Many nerds dream about less-censorable distributed tech, and think a great event like this will finally make their dream relevant. Move Wikipedia over and the audience will switch!

The audience will not switch. Distributed networks with no chokepoints are possible, but are always inconvenient or insecure. The audience was already finding it more convenient to chat with AIs.

The audience may not even be allowed to switch! The government can easily influence device manufacturers.

Show threadNeil KandalgaonkarApr 26

It's certainly possible that a new knowledge-sharing paradigm could eventually bloom, one that's native to the properties of a distributed network.

But if you want to preserve the value of Wikipedia _today_, its connection to audiences _today_, you're not going to win by dodging it with clever tech.

You have to actually fight this.

Show threadIan Brown 👨🏻‍💻Apr 27

@neilk Agree 99%.

Tiny detail: when will @wikipedia / #WikiMedia enable edits via @Tor and Apple’s #iCloud #PrivateRelay service? I haven’t been able to post/edit for a few years, thanks to this understandable but crude security measure. Nor it seems can 3-5% of editors 😢 https://www.ianbrown.tech/2024/03/31/1741/

Why is Wikimedia (still) blocking contributions via VPNs?

Wikimedia has blocked anyone using Virtual Private Networks, including Apple's Private Relay service, from editing pages -- even when logged in 😬 It's easier to block wiki-vandals if they can’t e

Show threadBryan Davis6d ago
@wikipedia @1br0wn @neilk Sadly likely only after implementing some invasive device tracking system. Anonymizing proxies get blocked because moderators otherwise feel they can’t keep up with blocking purposeful vandalism by known bad actors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Advice_to_users_using_Tor
Wikipedia:Advice to users using Tor - Wikipedia

Show threadIan Brown 👨🏻‍💻6d ago
@bd808 @wikipedia @1br0wn @neilk I know. Annoying, as there are perfectly good privacy-preserving techniques which could do the job much better, using cryptography.
Show threadBryan Davis6d ago
@wikipedia @1br0wn @neilk I think I would like to hear more about these techniques you envision. I spent part of my career inventing novel device fingerprinting techniques. The last ~12 years I have been trying to atone for that by working on privacy preserving open systems. Tools that assist in moderation at scale without requiring durable tracking tokens are very interesting for me.
Show threadIan Brown 👨🏻‍💻6d ago

@bd808 @wikipedia @1br0wn @neilk Excellent — then I’m very interested in hearing your thoughts too!

What you’re describing is significantly more ambitious than what I had in mind, which was simply a Tor/iCloud Private Relay user proving they were a given registered Wikipedia/media editor to Wikipedia servers, without revealing their actual IP address to Wikimedia Foundation…

Show threadIan Brown 👨🏻‍💻6d ago

@bd808 @wikipedia @1br0wn @neilk Next step would be proving the user was *a* registered editor, without revealing which one — in a way which enables revocation in serial cases of abuse (like double-spent Chaumian ecash.)

I think your full-on case would go significantly further. Ambition is good 😊

Show threadIan Brown 👨🏻‍💻
@bd808 @wikipedia @neilk I wonder if @fj has any thoughts, esp. on #PrivateRelay possibilities 🧐
Apr 27 at 7:31pmWeb
Show threadFrederic Jacobs5d ago

@1br0wn @bd808 @wikipedia @neilk The "out of the box" technique that could be used here is Privacy Pass https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/privacypass/about/

But I think the Wikipedia specific problem is that if someone does degrade articles, you want some ability to revoke the credentials, not just do rate-limiting like what Privacy Pass currently offers.

Would be interesting to understand what the Wikimedians think the exact requirements are.

Privacy Pass (privacypass)

Show threadIan Brown 👨🏻‍💻5d ago
@fj @bd808 @wikipedia @neilk great spot FJ! Haven’t yet checked the WG mail archive, but I wonder if they could be persuaded to add this requirement 🧐
Show threadJaap-Henk Hoepman (@xot)4d ago
@1br0wn @fj @bd808 @wikipedia @neilk We wrote a paper about something very similar ti this several years ago https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2994620.2994634 (e.g. also being able to trace other recent edits by an editor that turns out to be malicious)