[HN Gopher] DNS over Wikipedia
___________________________________________________________________
DNS over Wikipedia
Author : pyinstallwoes
Score : 307 points
Date : 2022-12-02 14:25 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| alpos wrote:
| What are you going to do if people start to trust this and then
| someone edits the wiki sources to redirect people to phishing
| sites mocked up to look real?
| lxgr wrote:
| This is neat, but I expected something completely different from
| the name. I already had my hopes up for doing VPN/IP over DNS
| over Wikipedia.
|
| Frustratingly, beyond not actually offering that (which is
| entirely reasonable), it does not even seem to be using DNS for
| the implementation of what it does.
| nashashmi wrote:
| DNS is a good name to help understand what it does but I am
| perturbed at the misappropriation. If it ramifies to calling
| everything DNS, search for real dns services will be cluttered
| with irrelevant results.
|
| This a redirect to the right domain. It is not an IP address
| lookup. This could have just as well been an "I feel lucky"
| search box using Wikipedia as the source. Or a Duck !bang.
| billpg wrote:
| Is it actually DNS, or is there a custom name-to-IP lookup
| process going on?
|
| Also, am I just needlessly splitting hairs?
| Group_B wrote:
| It's not actually DNS
| matt_heimer wrote:
| Its host aliasing
| andyp-kw wrote:
| Wikipedia is acting as a system for domain name retrieval.
| Karellen wrote:
| Right, but DNS doesn't retrieve domain names. It uses domain
| names to retrieve other information.
|
| In DNS, domain names are the _keys_. In this system, domain
| names are the _values_.
| zarzavat wrote:
| Allow me to introduce you to CNAME records.
|
| Sure it's a very _narrow_ form of DNS...
| TOGoS wrote:
| > Also, am I just needlessly splitting hairs?
|
| Since the linked README doesn't even mention "IP", I suspect
| the author misunderstands what "DNS" is about, and this is
| actually a search tool, and the headline is bad.
| pushedx wrote:
| Many record types contain hostnames as values. So many that
| it isn't even worth listing all of them here.
| Joker_vD wrote:
| DNS is for associating various information with domain names,
| and looking that information up. Yes, the most popular
| information to associate with a domain name is IPv4- and
| IPv6-addresses via A and AAAA fields; but CNAME records exist
| as well, you know.
| notpushkin wrote:
| This is not even CNAME, more like a Redirect header in DNS
| (if this was actually a thing, that is).
|
| Still, this is arguably _a domain name system_ , just one
| that isn't compatible with the DNS as we know it.
| OJFord wrote:
| It's not 'actually' DNS, no, but it's sort of like CNAME
| redirection, except Wikipedia's the authority instead of the
| (first) domain name.
| shp0ngle wrote:
| 8kun and kiwifarms are both censored on wikipedia.
|
| Maybe that's a good thing. But let's not pretend it's less
| censored than google!
| throwoutway wrote:
| > Instead of googling for the site, I google for the site's
| Wikipedia article ("schihub wiki") which usually has an up-to-
| date link to the site in the sidebar, whereas Google is forced to
| censor their results.
|
| In the video, it doesn't show this. It shows going to the
| scihub.idk domain. And then a redirect happens. So does this tool
| just host a local a domain resolver (and HTTP redirect server)
| for all .idk domains that does a wiki search and then responds
| with a HTTP redirect?
| trynewideas wrote:
| The comment is context for what inspired the tool. The
| functionality is about 40 lines of pretty readable Rust:
| https://github.com/aaronjanse/dns-over-wikipedia/blob/master...
|
| 1. Make a Wikipedia search API request for the .idk domain,
| using the name as the article name.
|
| 2. Retrieve the rendered page contents if found.
|
| 3. Find the first Wikipedia infobox table on the page.
|
| 4. Extract the first "URL" or "Website" entry in that infobox.
|
| 5. Return the entry's value, if it's a link.
|
| All this runs in a nickel.rs server on 127.0.0.1:80, which
| routes the requests as permanent redirects to the destination.
| Using dnsmasq,[1] if it's an .idk domain, it routes the request
| through the above Wikipedia resolver.
|
| 1: https://github.com/aaronjanse/dns-over-
| wikipedia/tree/master...
| derhuerst wrote:
| The extension could also use Wikidata [1] entries - which
| (AFAIK almost always) hold the data that is displayed in
| Wikipedia article's infobox - because then it wouldn't have
| to resort to parsing HTML.
|
| Specifically, Wikidata has a "official website" property [2]
| that seems to be used. If there are multiple extensions, like
| in Sci-Hub's case [3], it could pick one based on user
| preferences.
|
| [1] https://www.wikidata.org/ [2]
| https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P856 [3]
| https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q21980377
| ilyt wrote:
| Please don't abuse public good infrastructure
| thepangolino wrote:
| How's that abusing public infrastructure?
|
| 1. Wikipedia is a private entity.
|
| 2. It is very well funded.
|
| 3. That extension probably uses less resources than someone
| loading an entire webpage with all associated media just to
| look up a url.
| Somatochlora wrote:
| In what way is this abuse?
| GNOMES wrote:
| Depending if this became "popular", could overload them with
| traffic.
|
| I presume this is a fun test project though, so I doubt it
| would cause much harm, but it could be there.
| rippercushions wrote:
| It's hitting the Wikipedia API, which I can assure you is
| used to seeing a lot worse.
| Joker_vD wrote:
| Overload wikipedia with traffic? As opposed to manually
| opening a Wikipedia page and copypasting the URL from it?
| Thorentis wrote:
| This isn't DNS (resolving IPs to FQDNs) as much as resolving DNS
| prefixes to their current suffixes.
|
| As others have pointed out, Wikipedia is starting to censor
| results just like Google. Maybe it would be better for this
| extension to pivot into providing their own service that performs
| this task.
| gumby wrote:
| This is actually better than the title suggests.
|
| I thought it might be something like automated edits to Wikipedia
| talk pages as a database or cache, which would be abusive.
|
| But actually it's using Wikipedia entries as a smart name search.
| This is read-only and a clever and legit use of the WP. If the
| browsers allowed the use of spaces in the domain name portion
| URLs it would be even more useful, but it's probably better that
| they don't (out of spec for TLDs)
| pyinstallwoes wrote:
| Exactly. Almost gives credence to the idea of a well-behaved
| decentralized peer-to-peer network.
| cuttysnark wrote:
| On the other hand, Wikipedia pages seemingly get "vandalized"
| all the time and sometimes aren't corrected immediately.
|
| Doesn't this create a situation where a bad actor could change
| the Wikipedia page for a `semi-popular-brand.com` url listing
| to something bad? Anyone who used `semi-popular-brand.idk` in
| that timeframe would land in the bad page. Perhaps I'm
| misunderstanding.
| gumby wrote:
| This is possible with the DNS already which is why there have
| been various efforts to try to harden the protocol, to
| varying effect so far.
| MivLives wrote:
| Sure but that requires knowledge of DNS, and a bad edit on
| wikipedia is much more accessible.
| imiric wrote:
| Are you saying it's not a good idea to rely on domain lookup
| from a public wiki?
|
| I think you might be onto something...
| 6chars wrote:
| Maybe an enhancement would be to have it look at the edit
| history and use the most recent URL that has remained on the
| page for at least X hours/days
| jmbwell wrote:
| This reminds me of the old "AOL Keywords" system in its later
| stages, when it was just a shortcode for a web site.
| camhart wrote:
| What's the use case? Or just a fun programming task?
|
| Wouldn't this hammer wikipedia unnecessarily? DNS are very quick,
| lightweight requests.
| michaelt wrote:
| If you want to visit a site like 'The Pirate Bay' or 'Sci-Hub'
| by name, Wikipedia provides the URL, whereas google doesn't.
| deelowe wrote:
| Use cases are given on the github page. It's useful for sites
| that aren't indexed by Google and for avoiding spam.
| davrosthedalek wrote:
| This is not doing DNS. This is "domain name autocomplete".
| Joker_vD wrote:
| It's using Wikipedia as a provider for CNAME records. Does it
| count as DNS?
| fundad wrote:
| No because using this also requires DNS
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| I thought the chrome extension didn't work at first, but you have
| to type "https://scihub.idk" rather then just "scihub.idk", which
| leads to a google search.
| Joker_vD wrote:
| I think you can also do "scihub.idk/", the trailing slash
| forces Chrome to treat it as an URL.
| [deleted]
| some_random wrote:
| I love this so much, although it sucks that this is actually
| useful.
|
| ITT: people who didn't actually read what the project does
| mmahemoff wrote:
| If the point is to get to the site faster, why is the TLD "idk"?
| Couldn't it be 1 letter or at least the same three letters?
|
| On a separate note, someone could actually make a website do this
| without any extension. It would need to use wikipedia dumps and
| has the advantage it can't be suddenly edited by a malicious
| actor.
| priteau wrote:
| I assume idk means I don't know. As in, get me to this website
| for which I don't know the domain name.
| aew4ytasghe5 wrote:
| > On a separate note, someone could actually make a website do
| this without any extension. It would need to use wikipedia
| dumps and has the advantage it can't be suddenly edited by a
| malicious actor.
|
| Why would we trust "a website" more than random wikipedia edits
| to provide correct or up-to-date data?
|
| The purpose of this app is to get the _current_ url of those
| sites, which keeps changing url semi-frequently, so a offline
| copy of wikipedia would not work.
| Kiboneu wrote:
| It redirects to URL entries in the infobox (present in many wiki
| pages) associated with the body of your entered URL (ending with
| '.idk').
|
| What it does not do is prevent anyone from temporarily editing
| the associated wikipedia page and phishing you into an attacker-
| controlled website.
| corytheboyd wrote:
| I feel like that is an acceptable risk for something called
| "DNS over Wikipedia".
| cxr wrote:
| Not sure when this project first began exactly, but the Show HN
| for it is from 2020
| <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22790425>, and various
| things suggest that timeframe for its genesis.
|
| The same concern was raised by the user "segfaultbuserr" in
| that Show HN thread[1].
|
| In 2019 I wrote up this very idea as part of a brain dump of
| long-stalled thoughts that I had been kicking around but not
| published anywhere. There are mitigations to the attack you
| describe, which I included in my original terse writeup about
| such a "Wikipedia Name System"[2]. I pasted the explanation in
| a comment in the original Show HN thread. The idea lies in the
| fact that although wikis can be edited to point to your own
| fake honeytrap, there are things that _can 't_ be faked; it's a
| public ledger sort of thought exercise in the vein of Bitcoin--
| but no need for proof of work or what is currently associated
| with cryptocurrency, etc. As I (re-)explained three years ago:
|
| > _Not as trivially compromised as it sounds like it would be;
| could be faked with (inevitably short-lived) edits, but
| temporality can 't be faked. If a system were rolled out
| tomorrow, nothing that happens after rollout [...] would alter
| the fact that for the last N years, Wikipedia has understood
| that the website for Facebook is facebook.com. Newly created,
| low-traffic articles and short-lived edits would fail the trust
| threshold. After rollout, there would be increased attention to
| make sure that longstanding edits getting in that misrepresent
| the link between domain and identity [can never reach
| maturity]. Would-be attackers would be discouraged to the point
| of not even trying._
|
| (This also provides mitigation for what is (currently) the top
| comment in this thread--the issue of Wikipedians censoring
| certain domains, provided that they have a long enough history
| to meet the trust threshold before they were decided to be too
| contentious to share information about them.)
|
| 1. See <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22791534>
|
| 2. Originally published, along with other thoughts from that
| month, at <https://www.colbyrussell.com/2019/05/15/may-
| integration.html...>
| 752963e64 wrote:
| voxic11 wrote:
| Wikipedia editors have noticed that people use wikipedia for this
| purpose (finding the current location of sites) and so they have
| started to censor links for sites they don't want to encourage
| people to access. Right now this mostly impacts sites few would
| condone, like 8chan or kiwifarms. But in theory the policy
| applies to any site with illegal material so places like the
| pirate bay or scihub could have their links removed at any time.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Kiwi_Farms#URL
| appletrotter wrote:
| Could hardcode the values for those sites in the extension in
| that case.
| maxique wrote:
| Which defeats the object when the URLs change so often, and
| we're back to the original problem.
| EarlKing wrote:
| I'm genuinely shocked people haven't been redirecting this to
| Tubgirl. Frankly, I'm a little disappointed.
| yydcool wrote:
| so it's just matter of time, and wikipedia is no better than
| google
| besnn00 wrote:
| Wikipedia has helped me in a couple of instances in which
| Google or DuckDuckGo couldn't, for example getting the latest
| onion or clearnet URL for a certain site.
| bombcar wrote:
| Arguably the onion URL is information of value, but someone
| who can't figure out what the URL for 8chan might be
| probably doesn't need to go there anyway.
| rpgmaker wrote:
| They certainly are no better than Google in that respect.
| Wikipedia has been censoring and promoting tilted political
| edits to the pages of certain figures for years now.
| Unbeknownst to most people, Wikipedia is central to the
| global censorship apparatus that's been put in place in the
| last decade or so.
| fundad wrote:
| A leveraged buyout is always a possibility
| kikokikokiko wrote:
| We live in a distopia where one of the last search engines that
| returns real results related to anything the western mainstream
| "hidden forces" do not want you to be able to see is Yandex, a
| company located under a dictatorship. In 2022, the only way for
| a regular citizen to approximate what is reality, what is the
| "truth", is to look for information provided from the opposite
| side of any argument you're trying to understand more of.
| Everything is fake or hidden from you. It's the stable
| diffusion distopia.
| ajross wrote:
| How about this: try posting an URL for kiwifarms or
| stormfront or whatever right here, in this thread. See if it
| stays up. See who's willing to tolerate it.
|
| No one wants what you think you want. The distopia [sic] is a
| feature, not a bug. _YES_ , we as a society have decided that
| some forms of discourse are to be shunned. All societies
| have. All subcultures have forbidden subjects. Everyone does
| this. Everyone wants this.
|
| So please, please stop with the stuff about "reality" and
| "truth" as if those are the concepts at hand. No one is
| confused about what kiwifarms stands for. We just don't want
| them in our feeds.
| haroldp wrote:
| > YES, we as a society have decided that some forms of
| discourse are to be shunned.
|
| "We as the cultural elite have decided what you may read."
|
| > No one is confused about what kiwifarms stands for.
|
| This is demonstrably false. You have invented or swallowed
| a narrative about kiwifarms and are working to prevent
| anyone else from discovering the truth for themselves.
|
| A different narrative is that Kiwifarms operated within the
| law. False accusations were made against it. CloudFlair
| believed those accusations and stopped protecting it from
| illegal network attacks. Illegal network attacks knocked it
| offline for a while.
|
| Which of these narratives is true, and how could we find
| out?
| Cyberdog wrote:
| > How about this: try posting an URL for kiwifarms or
| stormfront or whatever right here, in this thread. See if
| it stays up. See who's willing to tolerate it.
|
| Man, I almost did. But people just get so irrationally
| angry about words on the internet nowadays that I decided
| against tempting fate. I don't need people trying to
| destroy my career because I don't irrationally hate the
| right people right now.
|
| Yes, Kiwi Farms exists and has information and opinions you
| might not like. It certainly has ones that _I_ don 't like.
| But at the end of the day, it's just words on the internet;
| the stuff about "organized harassment campaigns" and all
| that is a media lie. I really wish people would just visit
| the place and realize that it's just a bunch of shitposters
| with a clear "look, laugh, but don't touch" mentality and
| not the demonic bogeyman the press has made it out be. But
| I realize that irrational hatred is faster and easier,
| so...
| LastTrain wrote:
| Hey when you think that everyone else is being irrational
| guess what?
| haroldp wrote:
| You may or may not be the irrational one. Would you like
| historical examples?
| LastTrain wrote:
| Oh and you think you are exceptional too. Shall we go for
| the trifecta?
| haroldp wrote:
| > Oh and you think you are exceptional too.
|
| Of course. Everyone does.
|
| > Shall we go for the trifecta?
|
| Shall we put your notion in a historical context or no?
| LastTrain wrote:
| Unless you are someone of historical significance, no.
| dale_glass wrote:
| > I don't need people trying to destroy my career because
| I don't irrationally hate the right people right now.
|
| You don't "irrationally" hate them probably because you
| happen not to fit the target profile.
|
| EDIT: And are you serious? You truly think that KiwiFarms
| is a quirky, harmless place that just collects info to do
| nothing with it, and at the same time believe that on HN
| you'd be targeted by people who'd try to ruin your life?
| What force keeps such nasty people off kiwifarms but
| allows their presence here, I wonder?
|
| > Yes, Kiwi Farms exists and has information and opinions
| you might not like. It certainly has ones that I don't
| like. But at the end of the day, it's just words on the
| internet;
|
| There's no such thing as "just words on the internet".
| Words express beliefs and intent. I take them seriously.
|
| > the stuff about "organized harassment campaigns" and
| all that is a media lie.
|
| Of course. The sort of people that compile elaborate
| profiles on people including personal information are
| some sort of enlightened beings that despite obsessively
| tracking down and compiling every embarrassing or weird
| thing about another person would never actually use that
| information for anything at all.
| haroldp wrote:
| > There's no such thing as "just words on the internet".
| Words express beliefs and intent. I take them seriously.
|
| How do you decide which words people should be allowed to
| read, and which words they should not be allowed to read?
| dale_glass wrote:
| I wasn't talking about that, but since you asked: My
| personal views and morals, just like everyone else. If
| you're on something I host, then I make the rules on my
| property.
| haroldp wrote:
| So immoral things should be excised from wikipedia?
| dale_glass wrote:
| That's for Wikipedia to decide. I'm not a member.
| haroldp wrote:
| But if you owned wikipedia, you feel it would be best to
| remove immoral things from it?
| dale_glass wrote:
| Depends on what you mean.
|
| If you mean documenting its existence, then no, because
| we have to learn from history. So I wouldn't have an
| issue with an article on antisemitism or the like.
|
| But if I found out that something I own actually helps
| Nazis, then yes, I'd do my best to stop that from
| happening. If I suddenly ended up owning Stormfront or
| Kiwifarms, I would absolutely pull the plug and burn it
| all to the ground with no warning.
| haroldp wrote:
| > But if I found out that something I own actually helps
| Nazis, then yes, I'd do my best to stop that from
| happening.
|
| But the internet helps nazis. Telephones help nazis. I
| would argue that censorship helps nazis. The real nazis
| were completely censored from Weimar radio and Goebbels
| touted Der Angriff as "the most censored newspaper" by
| the German government. What is our standard for "helps"?
|
| Side note: the wikipedia article for stormfront retains
| the link to the site. Removal was discussed on the Talk
| page, but retained with rather pointed language.
| dale_glass wrote:
| > But the internet helps nazis. Telephones help nazis.
|
| I'm a consequentialist. I'll make the decision based on
| the overall consequences. So for instance the internet
| helps nazis, but it also does a lot of good for a lot
| more people. Now if the effect of the internet was 99% to
| help nazis, that would be a problem.
|
| > Side note: the wikipedia article for stormfront retains
| the link to the site. Removal was discussed on the Talk
| page, but retained with rather pointed language.
|
| Like I said, that's up to them to decide. If it was up to
| me, I would not allow that link.
| howenterprisey wrote:
| They've allegedly had threads on Wikipedia editors (I
| haven't personally verified this, as I don't feel like
| learning how to navigate that site, but it was stated by
| people I find credible). So, no, immoral things should be
| documented on Wikipedia, but we're perfectly within our
| rights to protect our community.
| Cyberdog wrote:
| Oh, God, I'm being dragged into this debate again.
|
| > There's no such thing as "just words on the internet".
| Words express beliefs and intent. I take them seriously.
|
| Intent? Find me a post on KF stating intent to harm
| someone in real life which wasn't either downvoted or
| promptly deleted. Go ahead.
|
| > Of course. The sort of people that compile elaborate
| profiles on people including personal information are
| some sort of enlightened beings that despite obsessively
| tracking down and compiling every embarrassing or weird
| thing about another person would never actually use that
| information for anything at all.
|
| Create an alt account on KF and post in a lolcow's thread
| saying that you want to harm that person in real life.
| You'll be downvoted into oblivion, probably banned,
| possibly doxed if you used the same username as you use
| elsewhere, and possibly reported to law enforcement.
|
| You can believe what you're told by people with
| motivation to lie, or you can discover the truth. Up to
| you.
| howenterprisey wrote:
| They post contact information, links to profiles where
| the user can be contacted, and so on, right? If so,
| they're complicit in whatever people do with that
| information, even if they don't talk about it on the
| forums.
| haroldp wrote:
| I think that is a fair line of reasoning.
|
| Most online forums have rules against doxing. Then again,
| most online forums have problems with anonymous users
| making false claims.
|
| Is wikipedia likewise complicit for publishing articles
| on nefarious topics? How about linking to macdonalds.com,
| who is surely complicit in more deaths than kiwifarms?
| howenterprisey wrote:
| Sure, it's also complicit, but the cost-benefit analysis
| favors Wikipedia, whereas KF has a much higher bar of
| utlity to clear because it's publishing information that
| would be trivial to use to hurt specific individuals.
| What value could KF provide that's worth that pain? I
| don't think there's any.
| Cyberdog wrote:
| By that logic, if someone uses a phone book to harass you
| via telephone, the phone company is liable.
|
| Or, for a more up-to-date example, if someone uses a DNS
| provider to find a server's IP address and do a DDOS
| attack against it (as is constantly happening to KF), the
| DNS provider would be liable.
| howenterprisey wrote:
| The phone book and DNS provider are different because
| they don't say why one would want to harass those people,
| whereas on KF that information is provided along with
| their contact info.
| dale_glass wrote:
| > Intent? Find me a post on KF stating intent to harm
| someone in real life which wasn't either downvoted or
| promptly deleted. Go ahead.
|
| Are you new to online communities? I've been a core
| member of several for years.
|
| There's always politics, admin only channels, and people
| contacting each other outside the main system. Sometimes
| multiple levels, like two admins talking in private, then
| adding a third, then bringing it into the admin channel,
| then breaking the news into the main community.
|
| In communities where there's external attacks, or a
| concern with reputation, the people in charge typically
| take that seriously. It's very possible that something is
| publicly forbidden, but with the right contacts you can
| find the right people.
|
| > Create an alt account on KF and post in a lolcow's
| thread saying that you want to harm that person in real
| life.
|
| Which is unsurprising because formerly kiwifarms used
| traditional hosting, and had to at least keep some
| plausible deniability. But everyone knows what all that
| stuff they post is for.
|
| > You'll be downvoted into oblivion, probably banned,
| possibly doxed if you used the same username as you use
| elsewhere, and possibly reported to law enforcement.
|
| Sure, and if you know the right people on the right
| Discord, then you can avoid all that and discuss all the
| plans and share all the juicy news away from prying eyes.
|
| Besides which, the info is public. Anyone can act on it
| without being a member, or having any agreement on
| anything with people posting there.
| Cyberdog wrote:
| > There's always politics, admin only channels, and
| people contacting each other outside the main system.
|
| Okay, so KF is responsible for conversations that happen
| outside of KF now? What should KF's admins do about that?
|
| > Sure, and if you know the right people on the right
| Discord, then you can avoid all that and discuss all the
| plans and share all the juicy news away from prying eyes.
|
| Take that up with Discord, then.
| dale_glass wrote:
| > Okay, so KF is responsible for conversations that
| happen outside of KF now?
|
| No, I mean that any organization is more than what it
| presents publicly. The people that own KF, and the people
| that post on it are going to have more ways to talk to
| each other than to post on public threads.
|
| > Take that up with Discord, then.
|
| No, I take it up with the people who use Discord to this
| end first of all. And with Discord second, of course, if
| they know that's going on there and allow it.
| [deleted]
| staringback wrote:
| > How about this: try posting an URL for kiwifarms or
| stormfront or whatever right here, in this thread. See if
| it stays up. See who's willing to tolerate it.
|
| https://kiwifarms.net
| g_hn_liaison wrote:
| Everyone's already taken the bait, but I'm an awful fish,
| so I'll post their secret .onion url: kiwifarmsaaf4t2h7gc3d
| fc5ojhmqruw2nit3uejrpiagrxeuxiyxcyd.onion
|
| It's not really something I'd be comfortable with either,
| so I get it, but everyone in this thread should at least
| understand that the average kiwi farms thread is roughly as
| offensive as the conversations at every job site that
| constructed all your houses, every field that grew your
| vegetables, and every rig that pumped the oil for your car.
| I'm not saying it's _okay_ , but you have to accept it to
| some extent. Those people are out there offline, too.
|
| While you're at it, check out their "Christmas Art" thread
| and think of the average Nazi spending most of their time
| being a perfectly polite and non-hateful person:
| https://archive.ph/TffRs
| babypuncher wrote:
| Absolutely, even the so-called "free speech" platforms like
| Truth Social will ban you for saying the wrong things.
| Moral absolutism never really works out.
| voxic11 wrote:
| Hackernews almost never actually deletes things (afaik they
| only do if there is a legal requirement or in exceptional
| circumstances after human review). Instead of being deleted
| comments/posts get marked as dead and hidden by default.
| You can enable viewing dead posts in your profile.
|
| Basically they implement the strategy discussed here
| https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/moderation-is-
| differen...
|
| Its the best of both worlds. People who get offended easily
| or just don't want to deal with low quality content can
| view the moderated content only. But if the moderation gets
| taken too far they can opt in to viewing the unmoderated
| content as well.
|
| Also I'll bite on your challenge https://kiwifarms.net/ is
| the current URL.
| psychphysic wrote:
| What I don't know is, I see mainstream media become
| increasingly curated and clearly agenda driven.
|
| Is this a function of reality or me getting better at
| spotting it?
|
| I felt as though in the 90s CNN legitimately was a good news
| source. Early 21centuey VICE was legitimately good.
|
| Today there is next to nothing given anything other than a
| heavily biased view.
|
| _I think_ the internet has made things worse, there 's a new
| kind of bias. What do you set the headline to for the
| breaking alert? Because that's what people will see. Follow
| that up with a more subtle article and boom you've got a
| basically iron glad propaganda machine.
| p0pcult wrote:
| I think it is a function of game theory akin to Prisoner's
| Dilemma.
|
| If all the news sources are rather centrist (i.e., they all
| "cooperate"), then no one gains or loses audiences because
| of bias. This is a good strategy when publishing is
| expensive. However, as the costs of publishing drop, it
| becomes profitable to shave off niche (smaller) audiences,
| with biased publication. This begins the defection phase of
| the PD game series. As defections accelerate, anyone who
| _doesn 't_ defect eventually suffers by continuing to not
| defect, leading to a new optimal state of all defections--
| i.e., publishers have to defect to maintain audience.
|
| I dunno, I just came up with that as I was writing it.
|
| There are also things to be said about the ability now to
| track engagement, which allowed humans to quantify (i.e.,
| put a cost/value/ROI on) the extent to which bias/outrage
| drive engagement. But, this function would still play into
| the greater theoretical framework I proposed.
| nequo wrote:
| This makes a lot of sense. Here is a classic paper that
| tests a model like this on US data:
|
| https://web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/research/biasmeas.pdf
| We estimate a model of newspaper demand that incorporates
| slant explicitly, estimate the slant that would be chosen
| if newspapers independently maximized their own profits,
| and compare these profit-maximizing points with firms'
| actual choices. We find that readers have an economically
| significant preference for like-minded news. Firms
| respond strongly to consumer preferences, which account
| for roughly 20 percent of the variation in measured slant
| in our sample.
| p0pcult wrote:
| Very cool. Thanks for sharing. Since it is a like minded
| result, I obviously have a significant preference for it.
| (Unlike the sibling to your comment, which was obviously
| produced by someone from _the other team_ )
|
| /s
| psychphysic wrote:
| I think that would make sense if these were new smaller
| news media but I see it mostly the bigger players.
|
| Even the BBC which is state funded. Okay, that might be a
| bad example as they are a state broadcaster and so
| propaganda is really their remit.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > niche (smaller) audiences, with biased publication.
|
| We could just call them specialized audiences with
| particular interests, instead of equating the neoliberal
| centrism of a bunch of collaborating oligarchic
| publications to lack of bias.
|
| edit: e.g. if all of the publications collaborate to not
| discuss issues concerning Mexican-Americans, a defector
| who peels off a large audience by being the only
| publication that attends to Mexican-American issues would
| not be an example of "bias" except under extremely
| normative definitions of "bias."
| sammalloy wrote:
| > I felt as though in the 90s CNN legitimately was a good
| news source.
|
| Nope. They were the original cheerleaders of modern
| militarism, from the first Persian Gulf War, which they
| turned into an infotainment spectacle devoid of any serious
| critical analysis, to their promotion of NAFTA and neo-
| liberalism. This idea that things were better in the past
| is a form of rosy retrospection and nostalgia. Things
| weren't better, they just hid the bullshit under thicker
| layers of opaqueness. And I say this as a progressive
| liberal who has always hated CNN and despises Fox.
| athrowaway12 wrote:
| It goes back into at least the 80s as well.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
| doctor_eval wrote:
| I'm not sure. Herman and Chomsky wrote Manufacturing
| Consent - a book describing the manipulation of public
| sentiment in the service of corporate and political goals -
| in 1988, and they were talking about wars from the 60s. The
| term itself comes from the 1920s. And 1984 was published in
| 1949.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
| mistercheph wrote:
| This has always been the case, it's just that the dial has
| been turned from industrial dystopia to nightmare.
| linuxhansl wrote:
| As things stand Wikipedia is pretty good. Non-contentious
| topics are free to edit by everyone,
| contentious/political/hotbutton/etc topics have restricted
| editorship.
|
| I do not sense any specific bias. As usual, "freedom of
| speech" does not imply a right to be listened to.
|
| Also, I do not buy this dystopia claim. In 99.99% of all
| topics we know exactly what is true and what is not. The sky
| is blue, clouds are condensed water, the earth is a sphere,
| there is racism, there is poverty, wealth is unevenly
| distributed over the planet, hygiene helps prevent sickness,
| vaccinations have prevented a lot of suffering, social
| security is expensive, etc, etc.
|
| The facts are easy. We used to argue about consequences
| stemming from these facts and what do to about it. These days
| we tend to confuse our disagreements with "alternate facts".
|
| It's really not that hard to stay informed.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Bias definitely exists but it's on a page by page, or
| perhaps topic by topic basis. It can be fun looking at the
| talk page - and better yet, the archives of the talk pages.
| mistercheph wrote:
| This is the style of thinking that is drilled into children
| from a young age. No one has ever discovered anything,
| mankind has not continually rediscovered the world and then
| forged dogmas and killed dissenters and then burned the
| dogmas and killed the priests of the former dogma. There is
| Capital T Truth and Capital F Factx. No one is responsible
| for those factx, they just exist and are delivered by God
| into the minds of men. Looking out my window right now, the
| sky is grey.
| rosmax_1337 wrote:
| I hate to break it to you, but the facts are not easy. To
| take something which is far enough away that it hopefully
| doesn't come across as inflammatory to you, consider the
| 9/11 attacks. And how the opinions about what happened are
| incredibly split all around the world.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polls_about_9/11_cons
| p...
|
| Now, you can ofcourse dismiss all these opinions as
| "alternate facts". Probably similarly to how devoted
| christians dismissed theories about a heliocentric solar
| system as "alternative facts" only aspoused by lunatics.
| brookst wrote:
| We live in an imperfect society where extremists leverage the
| very real flaws to insist that _everything_ is _absolutely_
| corrupt and that we should embrace the exact opposite of
| anything that's imperfect. Vaccines don't prevent 100% of all
| infections for everyone? They're obviously complete frauds
| that do no good at all.
|
| The sad thing is that we have real problems, and this
| nihilistic insistence that _everything_ is fake means that
| those problems will only get worse.
| pessimizer wrote:
| This argument is 100% of the time used to silence people by
| telling them that they should be talking about anything
| other than the subject they are currently talking about.
| It's also a generic argument that can be used to dismiss
| _any_ issue without changing the wording.
| leemelone wrote:
| you ok?
| LastTrain wrote:
| He made a point, what's yours?
| doctor_eval wrote:
| Right?
|
| Whenever I get into a discussion about vaccines I say
| something along the line of:
|
| Of all the shitty things our governments do in our names,
| you're choosing _vaccines_ to fight against?!
| protoman3000 wrote:
| I disagree. I find fringe information readily available,
| after a few more easy steps that is.
|
| Could it instead be that the environment (or, to speak in
| your words: "the western mainstream hidden forces") has
| altered your perception?
|
| You can always exit the Matrix.
| rosmax_1337 wrote:
| I agree with this post. Over the span of the last 20 years,
| and most certainly the last 7-5 years, the information wars
| have ramped up to an entirely new level. After 2018, large
| portions of dissident content mostly stemming from the right
| was completely banned on youtube, facebook, twitter. And it's
| being kept up in tiktok, instagram, and more recently even
| entities like cloudflare have begun participating.
|
| I understand, the truth is not comfortable. It is sometimes
| incredibly hurtful to know the other sides version of the
| truth. But even then truth is worth it.
|
| "All I'm offering is the truth, nothing more."
| [deleted]
| Cyberdog wrote:
| Once upon a time I built an iOS language translation/dictionary
| app which used Wikipedia as a back end. Basically, if you entered
| a word in language X and the Wikipedia version for language X had
| an entry, it could find the translation for that word in language
| Y by looking at the "this article in other languages" information
| in the source for that page. It was useful for finding
| translations or transliterations of terms that wouldn't commonly
| appear in standard dictionaries, like neologisms, brand names, or
| even just really obscure topics. Unfortunately it eventually got
| taken down from the App Store because Wikipedia's asshole lawyers
| didn't like that I used a serifed W in the logo even though I
| made it clear it wasn't an official Wikipedia product everywhere
| and I didn't have the motivation to "correct" my audacious use of
| an upper-case W which Wikipedia now apparently holds the
| copyrights to.
|
| I still use this technique "manually" for finding translations
| when dictionaries, though. Wikipedia has a lot of information
| which isn't in a typical API-friendly format, but with a bit of
| regex there's some interesting possibilities.
|
| If this sounds interesting, the Objective-C source is still
| available here: https://github.com/garrettalbright/wptrans You
| might also be able to find clones of it in the App Store since I
| know people were taking my source and republishing it back in the
| day, some even for a profit (mine was always free).
| pessimizer wrote:
| If this takes off, it's just going to result in a court order
| against Wikipedia. Z-lib getting popular on Tiktok = no z-lib
| anymore. Getting Wikipedia censored will ultimately make it
| harder for people to find sites like scihub.
| 9edda054-232f wrote:
| Why don't just buy a domain like DNSOver.Wiki so people can just
| scihub.dnsover.wiki without installing the browser extension..
| aryamaan wrote:
| it's actually a clever idea
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| Bad information is like viruses. Right?. So what we need is an
| immune-system. Bad information will still be there but it is
| prevented (to an extent) from multiplying.
|
| What would an immune-system for online information look like?
| dontbenebby wrote:
| How do you define "bad" information? I found a list of CSAM
| sites via a link in a Wikipedia book about onion services-
| having a known evil target to practice getting a dot onion to
| reveal its ip was both good and bad data, depending on who you
| ask.
|
| (The CFAA has since expired, and those rude little pedophiles
| DEFINITELY noticed me.)
| meindnoch wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_of_trust
| kfiven wrote:
| Why Wikipedia though? Wikidata should be one to get this kind of
| data and all Wikipedia articles has Wikidata items. On top of
| that Wikidata even keep records of site name, like when someone
| change their site name.
| dontbenebby wrote:
| I think a lot of people conflate Wikipedia with the larger
| Wikimedia organization.
|
| https://www.wikimedia.org/
| xd1936 wrote:
| I suppose the thought process is, more eyeballs are on
| corresponding Wikipedia pages for entities than are on Wikidata
| entries, so it's more likely to be corrected/up-to-date.
| account-5 wrote:
| I always do this, just manually.
| tjpnz wrote:
| Keep in mind that Wikipedia has a habit of censoring the infobox
| URL for sites their editors don't like.
| psychphysic wrote:
| You say that like the content and topic choice isn't usually
| heavily biased!
| super256 wrote:
| > If you Google "Piratebay", the first search result is a fake
| "thepirate-bay.org" (with a dash) but the Wikipedia article lists
| the right one. -- shpx
|
| I'm laughing in pain. I detest google so much for being so bad at
| its only job - finding stuff - merely to maximize $$$. Google was
| such a great product and genuinely serving humanity. Now it's
| only a shell of its former self.
| 6chars wrote:
| Google is the worst search engine besides every other one
| 6chars wrote:
| (In my experience at least. I'm open to recommendations!)
| super256 wrote:
| Amazon product search is worse ;)
| aryamaan wrote:
| that is what OP meant that Google is the worst and every
| thing else is worse.
| Spivak wrote:
| Google's approach is not, in general, capable of handling
| adversarial inputs. This isn't a Google problem as much as
| Google is currently losing the SEO war.
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(page generated 2022-12-02 23:00 UTC)