How Wikipedia Turned Into an ‘Engine of Defamation’ | Co-Founder Larry Sanger

American Thought Leaders

The Epoch Times

Government, News, Politics

4.9 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 15 October 2025

⏱️ 64 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Larry Sanger is the co-founder of Wikipedia and coined the name “Wikipedia' in 2001. He established many of Wikipedia’s founding policies, including the original neutrality guidelines, before he left in 2002.

Since then, he has become a vocal critic of Wikipedia’s growing ideological bias, particularly on politically charged issues.

Sanger says certain outlets are favored as sources while others are blacklisted, creating systemic distortion and exclusion of dissenting views.

Most of Wikipedia’s top editors are anonymous, which means that people have no legal recourse for lies or inaccuracies about them that may be published on Wikipedia’s pages.

In this episode, Sanger breaks down what went wrong with Wikipedia and how it can be reformed.

Sanger has put forward nine theses for reform, including enabling competing articles, restoring original neutrality policies, convening an editorial assembly, and creating transparent rating systems for entries.

But what is the likelihood it will happen? Can—and should—Congress do something about it? And could Elon Musk’s Grokipedia offer a more balanced alternative?

Editor’s Note: The Wikimedia Foundation did not immediately respond to our request for comment.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Shortly after Trump came into office, as the mainstream media became sort of explicitly biased,
0:09.0	so did Wikipedia.
0:10.0	In this episode, I sit down with Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia and now president of the Knowledge Standards Foundation.
0:17.0	He discusses how Wikipedia uses essentially a blacklist. And according to this list, you simply may not cite, may not use as sources of Wikipedia articles,
0:28.6	anything that has been branded as right-wing.
0:33.6	How is it that we do not know the identities of many of Wikipedia's top editors?
0:39.1	85% of them are anonymous.
0:41.4	You don't know how many accounts are controlled by a single individual or a single organization
0:47.2	that pretends to be essentially organic, but it's not.
0:52.8	Can and should Congress do something about it?
0:56.0	Congress is investigating now.
0:57.0	The Oversight Committee is investigating
0:59.0	foreign influence on Wikipedia.
1:02.0	We need to understand what the hell is going on behind the scenes.
1:05.0	Could Elon Musk's Groghapedia offer a more balanced alternative?
1:09.0	I might be very pleasantly surprised that it actually is neutral.
1:12.6	We'll see.
1:13.6	This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Yanya Kellick.
1:17.6	Larry Sanger, so good to have you back on American Thought Leaders.
1:25.6	It's good to be back.
1:35.1	I've been following Wikipedia for a long time, you know, longer than 20 years, in fact,
1:38.3	which is when I really started with the Epoch Times.
	...

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