Topic: Jimmy Wales

2 chapters across the catalog

Sanger recounts the early history of Wikipedia, which launched in 2001 as a free encyclopedia project for Jimmy Wales's company, Bombis. He notes that Google's search algorithm helped Wikipedia become the dominant source of information, which quickly drew the attention of the CIA and other government agencies. Evidence from the "Wiki Scanner" project in 2007 proved that IP addresses from Langley, Virginia, were being used to edit Wikipedia articles.

Sanger highlights the "crazy" policy that prevents the actual subjects of articles—such as Barack Obama or Donald Trump—from correcting their own pages. He recounts his own resignation from Wikipedia in 2002 after the parent company, Bombis, could no longer pay him, leading him to become a leading critic of the project. He argues that the platform's refusal to accept primary sources from the subjects themselves is a fundamental flaw in its pursuit of truth.