Greg's Corner

Another ironic name pledges to fight fake news

The concept of fake news continues to make headlines in the real news. First it was Mark Zuckerberg and the monolithic Facebook who vowed to combat fake news, even though most fake news is spread like an office cold through Facebook. Then it was Craig Newmark of craigslist fame who poured millions of dollars into fighting fake news while his site continues to house racists, scam artists and criminals. Now, another person who shouldn’t throw stones in a glass house has thrown his weight behind the fight against fake news. Jimmy Wales is the founder of Wikipedia, and he just launched a new platform called WikiTribune to help combat the supposed menace that is fake news.

So I’m sure you’re asking. “What’s wrong with WikiTribune”? On the surface, nothing yet. However, if it follows the same pattern as Wikipedia before it, WikiTribune could eventually end up propagating the fake news it claims to prevent.

While Wikipedia is a valuable resource on the web, it’s not 100% reliable. Go to just about any page on Wikipedia that deals with a controversial topic and click on the ‘Talk’ tab and you might just be able to see the heated arguments over facts that go on behind the scenes. Also, some trusted Wikipedia editors have been known to have biases on certain subjects and edit their pet pages to reflect that. That’s not even taking into consideration that Wikipedia is often subject to cyber-vandalism since the pages can be edited by just about anyone.

So far it seems the Generals leading the fight against fake news have never heard the phrase “We have met the enemy and he is us.”