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.
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.
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.
@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/
@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…
@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 😊
@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.
@bd808 @wikipedia @neilk @1br0wn Indeed. Although when I inquired about this — and I had a non-trivial although hardly large existing, registered history — it was not offered as an option.
A related approach, of course, is to grant incredibly limited editing abilities, with associated warnings to page reviewers, for new “private” accounts. Then let them slowly build up trust over time and many known good edits.
@neilk @1br0wn @wikipedia What seems like a reasonable editing limitation to you in this trust earning idea?
The currently stated problem here is that vandalism by determined attackers is too time consuming to moderate when admins cannot ban a “device” from creating new accounts or making anonymous edits. For a trust earning path to avoid this perceived burden I guess it would need some separation from typical vandal fighting.
@bd808 @1br0wn @neilk @wikipedia as far as I'm concerned it's a solved as a /technical/ problem; what needs to be done is solve the /social/ problem of nurturing a community of folks willing to babysit the queue. What will motivate that community? Perhaps it will be locality or national pride (a queue for expats to help folks in their native country edit around restrictions) or a pseudonym or social credit system (I'm motivated to help merge "Tom's" edits, despite not knowing who/where Tom is in real life, because of Tom's history of excellent contributions), or pure altruism, or ????
The interesting technical problems to me are the ones that would enable/motivate a particular social solution to the community building problem.
@1br0wn @neilk @wikipedia The only time I can edit Wikipedia is when I am physically present at the public library. My home Wi-Fi has been blocked, with no clear method for appeal. I have no idea why.
I'm a professional copy editor and proofreader. I edit the spelling and usage errors present across all Wikimedia platforms. Or I did, before I was blocked.
They have to relocate to Canada (or similar), it's the only way
@neilk
I agree, but I have sympathy for the nerds who simply want to use their talents in its defense and are seeking some way to do that.
Political advocacy and legal defense are not among their talents.
We all need some vision to which we can apply those skills. Decentralization is SOME vision, I don't think it's an effective one, I don't think it engages with the moment at all, but it exists as a vision which means it gets more attention than all the non-existent visions.
@neilk
True enough, but you can't really fight this in the US. So it makes sense to try and preserve some of the value that exists.
Wikimedia is going to have to have contingency plans, and I'm sure they do but this might be the time to publicize at least a few of those things (such as foreign domains through which Wikipedia English can be accessed.) They really should be planning for what happens when their US domains or hosting or both are disabled.
@neilk
Hadn't actually heard about the threats to Wikipedia, or this Edward Martin character.
Surely it looks like one of those letters sent by lawyers who don't understand anything:
* Wikimedia Foundation is more involved in the software than the content
* Doesn't the First Amendment prohibit the state interfering in free communication?
* Many global NGOs are US-based, so 'foreign nationals'. Rest of world exists.
* 'information manipulation' is what computers are for
@dusnm Before they were dusty volumes in every school library, some of the first encyclopedias were started by political radicals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclop%C3%A9die
Wikipedia admirably adheres to an ethic of the "Neutral Point of View". However, the view that there should be a popular encyclopedia is itself, not neutral. Despots have always been against it.
@neilk I think it's exactly the point. Wikipedia being effortlessly available is at the whim of a single government's authoritarian power grab, and it has been for far too long. Like so many other projects backed by 501c3 orgs, it's critically important that we decouple it from these gov-dependent structures and rethink them as a fundamental common good.
Sure, putting it on IPFS as-is will not fix anything about that. But it's exactly the impulse necessary to start addressing the core issue.
@janw Let me be clearer. I’m not saying never think about new things. I’m saying that first, fight for the things you have now.
A bully just swiped your favorite portable gaming device. Are you going to accept it and say, “that’s on me. I should have kept it in a safe and then only used it when I’m sure nobody is following me or watching ne”
Or are you going to go get it back? And organize a posse of your friends if need be?
@janw Even if you somehow achieved the impossible and made a distributed and effective replacement, it wouldn’t be enough.
Can’t ban it? Ok it’s illegal to be caught using it or contributing to it. They’ll fork it and say the original is run by pedophile terrorists.
The rules don’t even have to be explicit. China has a user-contributed encyclopedia too. Administrators know they must keep “sensitive” topics down, comply in advance, or else.
There is no alternative. You have to fight them.
@neilk Gotcha. Yes, 100% agree, the fight has to happen.
And at the same time, as non-US citizens, we also have to think about reducing the dependence on US funding to keep projects with global reach alive and prospering. I know, a supra-nationally organized or fully decentralized version of Wikipedia et al. will probably not happen. But we can still learn from this for the future.
@janw Oh yes. I’m trying to speak to Americans there especially because they have the power to do something
As someone in Canada who has contributed and even been employed by the free knowledge movement I share your concerns.
@troed They’re aware of this. I assume there are now backup plans for this.
But the US has a globally unique culture and legal framework for free speech.
Other countries have more restrictions and legal liabilities on speech and are thus more vulnerable to a fascist takeover. And now, no country can be called safe. In Germany, AfD is rising. In my own country, Canada, it’s plausible we will be made to comply with US dictates despite fierce resistance.
@neilk I'm laughing a bit here in Sweden about the belief that the US has less restrictions on free speech than we do actually :D Sorry. Our laws on that are older than the US as a country ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Freedom_of_the_Press_Act
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