– Jimmy Wales used porn site money to launch Wikipedia, then edited his own entries to try to hide his links to porn industry (Natural News, April 9, 2015):
The “online encyclopedia” known as Wikipedia has a problem with accuracy, bias and misinformation, which is bad enough — but one of its co-founders, Jimmy Wales, may also have ties to the porn industry.
According to a new book by Mike Bundrant, co-founder of the iNLP Center and host of Mental Health Exposed, a Natural News Radio program, the Wikipedia site routinely violates its pledge of neutrality in views, especially when it comes to information about alternative health.
“Wikipedia is on a misinformation campaign against alternative health and the healing arts. The public needs to know it. Natural health deserves fair representation,” said Bundrant on his Kickstarter web page aimed at raising funds to publish and distribute Ubiased: The Truth about Healing Arts on Wikipedia.
“Because of its massive search engine authority, Wikipedia entries often rank #1 in Google for specific health related searches. It is often the first information someone reads about a particular topic,” Bundrant said. “Given that high search engine results are often equated with high credibility, the public is likely to believe the falsities they are exposed to on Wikipedia.
“Because Wikipedia promotes itself as an ‘encyclopedia’ (with the goal to replace Encyclopedia Britannica) people often believe that what they are reading must be true,” he wrote, adding that his book “will expose the flagrant bias and academic errors or omissions on the Wikipedia domain, pertaining to alternative health movements and modalities.”
Demanding retractions to facts
You can see examples of the Wikipedia bias against alternative medicine — entries which often state that there is no science behind the concepts — here, here and here.
In addition to “problems” with accuracy and an inherent bias toward mainstream, “conventional” concepts of medicine, there are huge questions regarding Wikipedia‘s earliest forms of funding.
As reported by WorldNetDaily columnist Dr. Judith Reisman, Ph.D., in December — written in defense of fellow WND columnist and former heavy metal rock drummer-turned ordained preacher Bradlee Dean:
Wikipedia’s trashing of iconoclastic, ordained preacher Bradlee Dean proves that the heavy-metal drummer and his band have been doing a great job of delivering truth to American youth. Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia’s creator, originally made his living off a website that earned revenue from pornography traffickers. Wales’ cult of far-leftist volunteer editor zealots labor minute-by-minute to mislead readers who think Wikipedia’s half-truths — and worse — are a legitimate “encyclopedia.”
The column elicited a spirited response from Wales, who insisted that it was incorrect. He summarily demanded a retraction.
But in response, WND editor Joseph Farah explained to Wales that Bomis (which rhymes with “promise”), a now-defunct company founded by Wales and his partner in 1996, states that “Bomis ran a website called Bomis Premium at premium.bomis.com until 2005, offering customers access to premium, X-rated pornographic content.”
In addition, the same page notes that Wales himself at one point attempted to hide Wikipedia‘s founding ties to Bomis:
Wales edited Wikipedia in 2005 to remove the characterizations of Bomis as providing soft-core pornography,[18][39] which attracted media attention.…
And a former Bomis employee, who spoke to Natural News on condition of anonymity, added, “We used to commute to work together in 1998 in Pacific Beach, San Diego. 99% of his traffic was for porn. I refused to index porn, so that was the end of my job. Really it was a sleazy porn ring search engine.”
Finally, Fox News reported in 2010 that Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger, who left in 2002, told the FBI that Wikimedia Commons, the parent company, was “rife with renderings of children performing sexual acts.”
“Steaming cauldron of misinformation”
Fox News further noted:
Sanger sent a letter to the FBI earlier this month outlining his concerns and identifying two specific Wikimedia Commons categories he believes violate federal obscenity law.
The first category, entitled “Pedophilia,” contains 25-30 explicit and detailed drawings of children performing sexual acts. The category was created three years ago.
“I don’t think Wikimedia should be censored,” Sanger said. “If they have decided to include pornography, then that ought to be their legal right. But I think the public ought to know that there’s a lot of that there.”
The story was subsequently updated with responses from Wikimedia and Deputy Director Erik Moeller; click here and scroll to the bottom to read those.
As for Bundrant, he calls the Wikipedia page describing neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) a “steaming cauldron of misinformation.”
You can help him expose the site’s serial misrepresentations of facts by pledging to support his new book — click here.
(Photo credit: Cary Bass/Wikipedia)
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