609. I Asked Wikipedia Founder Why It's So Biased

heretics.

Andrew Gold

Documentary, Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.3 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 17 January 2026

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger joins Andrew Gold to explain what he believes happened to Wikipedia — from neutrality and “NPOV” to activism, bias, editorial control, and the culture of Wikipedia editing. SPONSORS: Earn up to 4 per cent on gold, paid in gold: https://www.monetary-metals.com/heretics/ Use my code Andrew25 on MyHeritage: https://bit.ly/AndrewGoldDNA Grab your free seat to the 2-Day AI Mastermind: https://link.outskill.com/GOLDNOV4 Start fresh at tryfum.com/products/zero-crisp-mint . Over 500,000 people have already made the switch — no nicotine, no vapor, no batteries. Just flavor, fidget, and a fresh start. Get up to 45% off Ekster with my code ANDREWGOLDHERETICS: https://partner.ekster.com/andrewgoldheretics Plaud links! Official Website: Uk: https://bit.ly/3K7jDGm US: https://bit.ly/4a0tUie Amazon: https://amzn.to/4hQVyAm Get an automatic 20% discount at checkout until December 1st. Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at https://mintmobile.com/heretics In this conversation, Larry Sanger (co-founder of Wikipedia and founder of Citizendium) breaks down how Wikipedia works behind the scenes, how articles get shaped, and why he argues Wikipedia is no longer reliably neutral. We also discuss media narratives, institutional trust, and whether Wikipedia can be “fixed” — or whether alternatives are needed. If you’ve ever searched “Is Wikipedia biased?“, “Can you trust Wikipedia?“, “Who controls Wikipedia?“, or “How are Wikipedia pages edited?“, this episode is for you. Follow Larry: https://x.com/lsanger https://larrysanger.org/ If you enjoyed this, follow Heretics and share the episode. Join the 30k heretics on my mailing list: https://andrewgoldheretics.com Check out my new documentary channel: https://youtube.com/@andrewgoldinvestigates Andrew on X: https://twitter.com/andrewgold_ok Insta: https://www.instagram.com/andrewgold_ok Heretics YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@andrewgoldheretics Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:51.0	Larry Sanger, welcome to the show.
0:52.7	Good to be here. Are you the founder or co-founder of Wikipedia?
0:56.4	Oh, co-founder? That's a controversial question because Jimmy Wales, who is the other co-founder,
1:04.0	he walked out of an interview recently when he was asked that. Why was that? Originally, in the first three press releases that Jimmy put out, I was called co-founder by him.
1:20.0	And I was described that way, and then first press reports, and it was quite uncontroversial
1:27.3	until 2005. And I had just started making
1:33.6	criticisms of Wikipedia. And then for the first time, Jimmy Wales said, well, actually,
1:39.8	the person who told me about wiki software was this other employee, and that he's sort of
1:48.4	leaving me out of the origin story at that point.
1:52.7	Why did you leave?
1:55.2	You know, I spent two years working for Jimmy Wales' for-profit company called Bomas, which is the sort of parent
2:03.2	company of Newpedia and then Wikipedia. And they lost a big ad contract with, I think it was
	...

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