In early August 2023, news spread widely that Larry Sanger had admitted to the interference of American intelligence agencies in the work of the largest Internet encyclopedia. We checked whether he made such a claim.

Telegram channels wrote about Sanger’s “coming out” from August 1 to August 3 Readovka (885,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), “Signal» (426,000) and "Sheikh Tamir» (144,000), as well as TV presenter Vladimir Solovyov (199,000) and showman Andrey Bocharov (113,000). Plot Also hit in a row regional And federal The media (in particular, wrote about Sanger’s statement “Sight», "Gazeta.ru» And "News 24/7"), dispersed in "VKontakte», on platforms "Zen» And "Peekaboo». In publications approved, that, according to Larry Sanger, signs of interference by US intelligence agencies in the work of Wikipedia appeared back in 2008 and since then their activity has increased, and since 2015 the site has been used to promote the agenda of the “left-liberal establishment.” In some videos of Sanger's monologue, common on VKontakte, in the subtitles you can see the phrase that at the same time the encyclopedia “came under government control.”

On July 31, Larry Sanger was interviewed by journalist Glenn Greenwald for his program System Update. During the 25-minute conversation, titled Wikipedia: From Democratized Knowledge to Left-Establishment Propaganda, Greenwald and Sanger discussed the history of the free encyclopedia and its problems, in particular the issue of the quality of articles and the neutrality of authors and moderators.

The reported Sanger confession is based on his answer to one of the questions: Does it seem to him that the “ideologization of journalism” that occurred during the Trump presidency has spread to Wikipedia, which is supposed to be truthful, but “there is no longer truth without ideological coloring”? Sanger's answer verbatim (1:13:39) sounded like this: “They are not guided by the original policy of neutrality of Wikipedia or anything like that, they don’t care about that at all. They look to CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times and whatever those outlets feel comfortable saying. And the other thing to remember is that they stated that 80% of news sources on the right are unreliable. Officially. This is their policy at the moment. Many people don't realize this, but it's true. And this really colors the articles and what editors allow to be written in articles. But the deeper explanation is... I think I'm now proposing to develop a conspiracy theory. But essentially the left - and this is not such a conspiracy theory, everyone knows and believes it, right? — very deliberately looking for opportunities to seize control. Of course, it's not just the left, we're all susceptible to it, aren't we? There is also a gray area, as in the example you gave. This is the establishment, they have their own agenda. And I don't want to give any opinions because I haven't studied how they achieve this. Clearly, between 2005 and 2015, Wikipedia was on the radar of the establishment. And we do have evidence that - I think Virgil Griffith discovered this in 2008 - CIA and FBI computers were used to edit Wikipedia. Do you think they stopped doing this? No. And not only them. We know that intelligence now, most intelligence activity now is information warfare that is waged online. And where, if not on sites like Wikipedia, right? So they bribe the most powerful people to push their agenda. Or they create their own talent within the community, teaching them to “play Wikipedia”, and then promote what they want to say through their own people. That's what I think about it."

As can be seen from the text, there is no recognition in Larry Sanger’s answer, which contains a number of reservations, and he does not talk about “the transfer of Wikipedia to government control.” For the most part, he expresses his opinion and position, including a well-known fact: in 2007, programmer Virgil Griffith developed a program to track anonymous edits WikiScanner, with the help of which it was possible to discover that a number of articles were edited from computers located in the networks of the CIA and FBI. The fact that Wikipedia can be edited by anyone is also no secret, but the fact that this enjoyed and is used by officials and, probably, intelligence services of different countries, has been discussed for many years by the wiki community itself, including Russian-language. Activists strive to monitor dubious statements, distortions, propaganda and other information prohibited by the rules of the free encyclopedia that appear in articles. When such activity is detected, the community collects evidence, publicly discusses it, and the result of the discussions may be the deprivation of editing rights to the violators or the blocking of the account.

In the same interview, but a few minutes later, in response to another question from Greenwald, Sanger recalls that he is not an expert in the internal affairs of Wikipedia, since he left the project. Russian-language Telegram channels, in turn, ignored that Sanger left Wikipedia back in 2002, and since the mid-2000s regularly speaks with criticism free encyclopedia, trying create a competitor to it with varying degrees of success. One of Sanger's main conceptual claims is that moderators do not comply the principle of neutrality, which plan creators should be central to Wikipedia. In his blog and in interviews in recent years, Sanger has expressed his undisputed an understanding of this principle in which neutrality takes precedence over factuality or scientific consensus, a concept he defends throughout his interview with Greenwald.

The problem of bias of some moderators and editors of Wikipedia is also not new; on the contrary, this issue is constantly discussed in the community itself, and in the English version of the encyclopedia a separate large section is devoted to the problem of bias of editors in different countries article. Year after year, accusing Wikipedia of lack of balance, bias and participation in left-liberal propaganda, Sanger does not provide any evidence of bribery of moderators or other direct external interference (including from the intelligence services) in the work of the encyclopedia.

Note also that the information provided by Sanger about 80% of news sources on the right side officially declared unreliable is apparently the result of distortion: “Verified” was unable to find such information in open sources, the figure of 80% appears in American studies of media consumption in a different context. Thus, in a 2018 Gallup poll it says, that US residents consider 80% of news on social networks and 62% in traditional media to be biased.

Thus, Larry Sanger, in an interview with Glenn Greenwald, really expressed his belief that Wikipedia has ceased to be a neutral source and that intelligence agencies and the political establishment are seeking to influence the content of articles in the encyclopedia. However, Sanger did not provide any evidence for this. At the same time, his words are not a recognition or a sensation: the co-founder of the free encyclopedia has not been involved in its work for 20 years, most of this time he criticizes it, and almost any user has the opportunity to make edits to the content of Wikipedia. Thousands of people use it every day, among whom there may well be employees of various special services. Russian-language publications about Sanger’s statement lack context, some of them distort the essence of the statement, and in some posts Sanger’s words are completely distorted.

Cover photo: Still image from Glenn Greenwald's program.