Since October 7, roughly 40 Wikipedia editors have worked to “delegitimize Israel, present radical Islamist groups in a favorable light, and position fringe academic views on the Israel-Palestine conflict as mainstream over past years,” according to a new report.
Dozens of editors of the Wikipedia site have coordinated to promote radical Islamist ideas and undercut the Jewish state on the popular online encyclopedia, according to Pirate Wires. In addition to the editors, the group Tech For Palestine made a similar push to propagandize Wikipedia’s pages, though the group stopped its efforts once they were discovered.
“A separate but complementary campaign, launched after October 7 and staged from an 8,000 member-strong Discord group called Tech For Palestine (TFP), employed common tech modalities — ticket creation, strategy planning sessions, group audio ‘office hour’ chats — to alter over 100 articles,” according to the Pirate Wires report.
“Type ‘Zionism’ into Wikipedia’s search box and, aside from the main article on Zionism (and a disambiguation page), the auto-fill returns: ‘Zionism as settler colonialism,’ ‘Zionism in the Age of the Dictators’ (a book by a pro-Palestinian Trotskyite), ‘Zionism from the Standpoint of its Victims,’ and ‘Racism in Israel,’” it added.
Google grants Wikipedia a “most favored nation” status, allowing Wikipedia articles to be listed first on any topic-related search result, according to the report.
“The recent issue with the ‘Zionism’ Wikipedia page is fundamentally a Google problem,” a source told Pirate Wires. “Wikipedia articles act as an unprotected back door to top Google search results, with the article’s introduction often populating the knowledge panel, giving the impression Google has vetted this content — when it hasn’t. Malicious editors exploit this vulnerability, platforming fringe views and giving them priority over more reliable sources.”