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YouTube Did Not Inform Wikipedia of Plan to Debunk Conspiracies

posted by mrpg on Thursday March 15 2018, @11:14PM   Printer-friendly
from the so? dept.

takyon writes:

YouTube wants to debunk conspiracy theory videos using other resources, such as Wikipedia:

In Austin, Texas, on Tuesday, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki told the audience at the South by Southwest Interactive conference that the social video site plans to defuse conspiracy theory content by pairing it with corrective information culled from Wikipedia – a site editable by more or less anyone. However, she neglected to inform Wikipedia, which on Wednesday reacted with bemusement.

In a statement, the crowdsourced encyclopedia's parent, the Wikimedia Foundation, said, "We are always happy to see people, companies and organizations recognize Wikipedia's value as a repository of free knowledge. In this case, neither Wikipedia nor the Wikimedia Foundation are part of a formal partnership with YouTube. We were not given advance notice of this announcement." The foundation urged companies that use Wikipedia's content – that would be YouTube – "to give back in the spirit of sustainability."

Wikipedia contributor Phoebe Ayers framed the issue more bluntly, commenting via Twitter, "It's not polite to treat Wikipedia like an endlessly renewable resource with infinite free labor."

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Justin Case on Friday March 16 2018, @12:10AM (1 child)

    by Justin Case (4239) on Friday March 16 2018, @12:10AM (#653197) Journal

    Sorry, I wasn't clear. I wasn't commenting about Wikipedia's gentle request for support. I thought it odd that The Register acts like a near-crime has been committed here, when they could well be guilty of the same offense: using the HREF tag as designed.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @01:56AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @01:56AM (#653269)

    From what I understand, it's not the linking that's the problem, but the inclusion of scrapped snippets from Wikipedia. The issue is in making it available, but not editable. Wikipedia depends on "free labor", and every visitor is a potential editor; if you scrap content and post it elsewhere (especially a site as large as YouTube), you reduce the pool of potential editors, and that has a direct negative impact on Wikipedia.