Twitter and Facebook have mis handlered Donald Trump when he made baseless claims, adding that the U. S. presidential election he lost had been manipulated, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales told the AFP.
The two social media giants suspended Trump indefinitely after his supporters stormed the U. S. Capitol on January 6, an attack on the seat of democracy that led Wednesday to Trump’s political trial.
Wales told the AFP in an interview to mark Wikipedia’s anniversary Friday that duty for the unprecedented occasions in Washington was “100% at the feet of Donald Trump. “
But he said Twitter and Facebook had “constantly fought misinformation, misinformation” that was being sold through the former New York real estate tycoon who must resign next week.
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“With Donald Trump, he’s been treated badly for a long, long time,” Wales said. “Obviously he’s spreading misinformation, he’s obviously violent to people. “
– Eyeball against wisdom –
In the 20 years since its inception, Wikipedia is now one of the most popular in the world, with more than 55 million articles in three hundred languages and is read more than 15 billion times a month.
It is also, as Wales first imagined, “a world in which each and every user of the planet has free access to the sum of all human knowledge. “
The Internet entrepreneur’s resolution in 2003 to become a non-profit organization is one of the reasons why he believes Wikipedia has not faced the same negative reactions and misleading resolutions as Twitter or Facebook.
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“They (social media platforms) have a business style that says, ‘We want as many eyes as possible, we want as many page perspectives as possible,'” said the 54-year-old.
“Now it’s also harmful to your brand. So you have to deal with that. But I think they’re going to have a hard time. “
Facebook and Twitter have strongly related to cultural wars that profoundly divide America and the dissemination of incorrect information around the world.
Wikipedia, on the other hand, is one of the most recent examples of early Internet utopia, advocates say.
However, in the early 2000s, the lies and vandalism of Wikipedia users provoked a debate about Internet regulation.
But now the online resource is more likely to be promoted as an example of what the Internet has to offer, says the British-American entrepreneur.
“I say we’ve never been as bad as they said and we’re not as smart as they think,” he said.
“But we still know that Wikipedia is perfect. We still have a lot of paintings to do. “
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– “Building to last” –
Wales is also aware that Wikipedia is fundamentally different from social media platforms.
“We have a very transparent project to create an encyclopedia. So, everything we do, we judge it through that standard,” he said.
“(This is) a very different project from a social network that says, sees and publishes what you think, publishes your opinions.
“Because the fact is, a lot of other people have terrible opinions. “
Wales admits that Wikipedia still has demanding situations to succeed in and has faced questions about the diversity of the thousands of “Wikipetedians,” the network of publishers and directors who run the site.
In 2021, Wikipedia will implement a uniform code of conduct with corresponding sanctions opposed to insults and harassment, which have targeted minority teams within the network in the past, in their three hundred versions in other languages.
Wales stated that the drafting of the code of conduct “took longer than it has taken,” but that it was because the network was so giant “that it takes a long time to figure things out and achieve understanding and the club. “
However, the target for the next 20 years will be remarkably for the first two decades.
In 2006, Wales set a goal of having 100,000 Wikipedia entries for languages with more than one million speakers.
“We are at least 20 years old,” he said.
In the end, he hopes to have created one that will endure, such as the British University of Oxford, the oldest in the English-speaking world, whose roots date back to the late 11th century.
“We focus on how to build an establishment that can last,” Wales said. “We need to be that kind of thing in society for a long time. “
Afp