Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-07-17/In the media

Agency's leaked emails provide rare glimpse into use of Wikipedia in a "smear campaign" financed by the ruler of the United Arab Emirates
An investigative article in The New Yorker, titled "The Dirty Secrets of a Smear Campaign", describes how "Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, the ruler of the United Arab Emirates, paid a Swiss private intelligence firm millions of dollars to taint perceived enemies". Most of the lengthy article (whose audio version runs 1 hour and 13 minutes) isn't about Wikipedia, but there are several paragraphs about how the firm ("Alp Services", founded by an investigator named Mario Brero) used it for their purposes alongside many other interesting tools (such as illegitimately obtaining phone call records or tax records of their targets, and planting stories in various news outlets).

The first part is about an American oil trader named Hazim Nada, founder of a company called Lord Energy:

This outside view from the victim's perspective is later matched to what the reporter learned from leaked/hacked internal emails of "Alp Services":

And:

And regarding another target:

On fr:Kamel Jendoubi, a "Controverses" section was added by a SPA in January 2019, and expanded by another SPA in August 2019. Most of it was deleted in April/May 2021, by an account with only one earlier edit, and then by an experienced editor. Around the same time, the English Wikipedia's article Kamel Jendoubi likewise saw an attempt by an IP editor to remove similar information, which was reverted as "Likely censorship of content"; although a July 2022 edit that provided a more detailed rationale for a more limited removal was successful.

The New Yorker article was published in April. Its findings were put into a much wider context earlier this month when various European news media collaborating in the European Investigative Collaborations (EIC) network reported on the results of an investigation dubbed "Abu Dhabi Secrets", revealing that

This investigation was based on a stash of "78,000 confidential documents obtained by the French online newspaper Mediapart", according to Middle East Eye, which summarized the modus operandi of the campaign as follows:

Many or most of the news reports emanating from the collective EIC investigation don't seem to have focused on the Wikipedia angle. Still, the Spanish publication Infolibre reveals some further details, quoting from messages where Alp's paid Wikipedia editors report about their efforts to their Emirati clients, in particular edits (presumably including these) on the English and Spanish Wikipedia to connect Mohammed Zouaydi (known as the "Al Qaeda's financier") to the Muslim Brotherhood. On the Spanish Wikipedia, they claim to have entered "an intense battle with pro-Muslim Brotherhood elements who wanted to censor information about the Brotherhood and its links to Al Qaeda" (translated back from Spanish).

At the French Wikipedia's "Projet Antipub", editors are currently looking into various other articles and accounts that may be connected to the campaign. – H

Ruwiki
The Telegraph reports (non-paywalled) on the founding of Ruwiki (see previous Signpost coverage):

According to The Telegraph, Ruwiki lacks specific content compared to the Wikipedia version:

In related news, on July 5 between around 2am and 4am Moscow time, access to Wikipedia and other "Western internet services" including Google was temporarily disrupted as Russian authorities tested the country's "Sovereign Internet system", as reported in a Twitter thread by Access Now staff member Natalia Krapiva. – AK, H

In brief

 * Wiki wars: A BBC radio programme presented by Lara Lewington tries to explain how the Wikipedia sausage is made, touching on hoaxes and Things Gone Wrong like the Croatian and Scots Wikipedias. The programme contains two gross errors – it claims that IP editors lost the ability to edit biographies of living people after the Seigenthaler incident (ahem) and that paid editors are forbidden from editing articles directly (they are only "very strongly discouraged" from doing so).
 * TEDx talk: Annie Rauwerda (of Depths of Wikipedia) gave a TEDx talk titled "Why an encyclopedia is my favorite place on the Internet". Watch the recording to find out which encyclopedia it is.
 * Jimmy Wales interview: The "co-founder of Wikipedia" was interviewed by Lex Fridman on his popular podcast (video, transcript), for three hours and 15 minutes. One user compiled some excerpts they found especially interesting from a Wikipedian perspective, and journalist Stephen Harrison (known for his Wikipedia column in Slate) summarized several points from the interview in a Twitter thread, e.g. about Wales "push[ing] back on Wikipedia’s alleged left wing bias."

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