Wikipedia Says AI Is Causing a Dangerous Decline in Human Visitors (404media.co) 92
The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization that hosts Wikipedia, says that it's seeing a significant decline in human traffic to the online encyclopedia because more people are getting the information that's on Wikipedia via generative AI chatbots that were trained on its articles and search engines that summarize them without actually clicking through to the site. 404 Media: The Wikimedia Foundation said that this poses a risk to the long term sustainability of Wikipedia. "We welcome new ways for people to gain knowledge. However, AI chatbots, search engines, and social platforms that use Wikipedia content must encourage more visitors to Wikipedia, so that the free knowledge that so many people and platforms depend on can continue to flow Sustainably," the Foundation's Senior Director of Product Marshall Miller said in a blog post. "With fewer visits to Wikipedia, fewer volunteers may grow and enrich the content, and fewer individual donors may support this work."
Are they sure? (Score:1, Funny)
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I used to donate too. The truth made some moderators butthurt, as it often does.
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Talking points? Whose talking points? I am relying on common sense memory.
Those were pretty much all ubiquitous mainstream media positions.
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> As proof, let’s consult the 2021 100% leftist-approved fact check guide: Violent crime rates haven’t spiked.
Looks like that's true ?
Violent crime rates are at historical lows and didn't spike in 2021 - https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com] + https://ncvs.bjs.ojp.gov/multi... [ojp.gov]
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Murders are the best proxy to track as this avoids statistical shenanigans - they can’t be easily transmogrified by “equitable” prosecutors, etc, into misdemeanors, etc. These had an undeniably large spike versus 2019 starting in 2020.
Estimates put it as high as 30k “extra” deaths nationwide as “defund the police” rolled through (see https://www.theguardian.com/us... [theguardian.com] and NYT “Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police https://www.nytimes.com/2020/0... [nytimes.com] ), and wa
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Estimates put it as high as 30k “extra” deaths nationwide as “defund the police” rolled through
Correction, it’s closer to 20k extra. Leaping from, something like 16k total in 2019 to 22k in 2020, 2021, and 2022, then 19k in 2023, and finally almost back down to 2019 levels in 2024.
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> Murders are the best proxy to track as this avoids statistical shenanigans - they can’t be easily transmogrified by “equitable” prosecutors, etc, into misdemeanors, etc.
The user I responded to referred to violent crime rates, that's why I linked to those rates and they seem legitimate.
> These had an undeniably large spike versus 2019 starting in 2020.
Yes, interesting, on average from various sources, there was a large spike in 2020 that peaked in 2021 and has been on a sharp downtu
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>> What's more 2025 Denver ... Insiders credit the murder drop to deportations, whereas credulous reporters credit it to dramatically improved policing methods - magic, eh?
> How does that track the clear downward trend is since 2022 ?
The full context is that the Denver post-2019 “defund the police” murder count spike is undeniable, and typical of many U.S. cities, and, as of 2024 is STILL higher than it was in 2019. And it’s the best proxy for violent crime stats as violent crime
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> The full context is that the Denver post-2019 “defund the police” murder count spike is undeniable
The spike is clear. But I don't think "defund the police" is a convincing cause.
Before I try to explain what I mean, can you confirm what you're saying (or correct me if I'm wrong) : the 2021 spike in murder rate is directly related to or is caused by the rise of "defund the police", and the the continuous and rapid downturn in murder rates form 2022 until January 2025 is related to or caused b
more broadly (Score:1)
The problem is that groups that are highly interested in carrying a narrative will camp out on certain articles and make sure that the desired narrative is maintained. The SeaWorld articles for example have been consistently framed in an anti-animal rights perspective. It used to be that if you made the same edits to the SeaWorld article that were present elsewhere on Wikipedia the edits would be instantly reverted. Even now, the movie Blackfish is briefly acknowledged in a few sentences but then the articl
Is The Web Still Useful? (Score:2)
it's usefulness is rapidly coming to a close.
You might say the same thing of the web as a whole. Its all propaganda or at least the propaganda drowns out everything else. AI will only make it worse since it has not way of recognizing what is propaganda and removes the tell-tale signs from its summaries.
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There are still some useful hobby related sites or domain specific areas that you can find interesting and useful information. Social Media isn't the Internet.
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I have a couple hobby sites I like to visit. I'm don't know if they are trying to sell me something but nothing is gated behind a paywall or anything of the sort. Mostly just forums and links. Some people might be trying to sell stuff but I've never bothered. Some don't even have ads. They are purely run for someone's enjoyment of doing such. I've donated to a couple.
Re: more broadly (Score:3)
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As of today, the Wikipedia article on Mao [wikipedia.org] begins with a capsule biography. The third paragraph says, "Mao oversaw the Great Leap Forward, a campaign which aimed to rapidly collectivise agriculture and industrialise the country. It failed, and resulted in the Great Chinese Famine."
The first sentence in the fourth paragraph: "Mao's policies resulted in a vast number of deaths, with tens of millions of victims of famine, political persecution, prison labour and executions, and his regime has been described a
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As usual for complaints that not everyone shares the same political affiliation, you provide no examples at all. I have no idea what "shamelessly communist slant on just about any article that touches any political topic" means. Obviously you couldn't be bothered to find even one example to support your claim.
Also, remember: If you're far enough to the right, everyone else is going to be on your left, and vice-versa. That's not bias.
Wikipedia good for many, slanted for a lot (Score:2)
Wikipedia is good for starter information on many topics, bad for political or social topics, bad for historical topics which are on liberal/conservative people, and bad for gender topics. A reader would need to do much more verification than just using an article at face or an AI summary of it.
Wikipedia should get better as the first crop of retirees who need to sit on and police their favorite political, social, and gender topics stop participating in Wikipedia.
AI for search (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's Wikipedia... somebody probably changed the content since it was scraped.
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No (Score:2)
The robots just fuck up a lot. Especially the constrained, low-quality one that runs on every Google pageview.
Answers: Free!
Right Answers: Call for pricing
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It's Wikipedia... somebody probably changed the content since it was scraped.
Even if and when that actually happens, that is still a failing of the AI. I don't know if you've noticed this, but Wikipedia entries tend to have extensive citations. A standard part of an academic citation of a source that might change, such as a web page, is to note when the page was accessed. Wikipedia pages have extensive records of edits and you can find out what the page was actually like when accessed on a particular day. Current LLMs do not produce anything remotely resembling proper citations.
Re: AI for search (Score:5, Informative)
I got this the other day trying to find out if Microsoft has maintained c/c++ ABI compatibility in Visual Studio 2026 with previous versions. The AI summary literally took the VS 2022 page on the topic and replaced 2022 with 2026, and then linked to the 2022 page. There was no page on the topic for VS 2026 on Microsoft's website.
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This happens literally all the time. If you try to find something general it normally is okay, but as soon as you delve into the specifics it goes horribly wrong. For example the story above this was about good tasting instant coffee and someone said something about espresso pressure. So I did a quick check of my working like I always do and sure enough if you search for Italian espresso you get the correct formula, 9 bar, 8g, 25-30 seconds. If you search modern espresso you get the term "turboshot" in the
Re: AI for search (Score:3)
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That's to do with the AI developers programing the filters with their own left leaning prejudices. The bots reflect the biases of their creators [spectator.co.uk]
--
Q: Tell a joke featuring Jesus.
ChatGPT: Why didn’t Jesus play hockey? Because he kept getting nailed to the boards.
Q: Tell a joke featuring Buddha
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That's to do with the AI developers programing the filters with their own left leaning prejudices. The bots reflect the biases of their creators [spectator.co.uk]
Q: Tell a joke featuring Muhammad.
ChatGPT: ... Because of that, I won't tell a joke involving him.
That's not a bias, that's self preservation...
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Here's what I got from ChatGPT:
tell a joke featuring muhammed
I can’t make jokes about religious figures like Muhammad, since that could be offensive to many people.
tell me a joke about jesus
I can’t make jokes about religious figures like Jesus either -- that would risk being disrespectful to people’s beliefs.
tell me a joke featuring Buddha
I can’t make jokes about Buddha as a religious figure, but here’s a light, respectful Buddhism-themed joke that keeps things kind
Note: ChatGP
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Yea, if you mention Mo first then the filter kicks in.
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Your link doesn't start well with "(...) in the race to artificial general intelligence – which looks likely to arrive this decade, maybe this year. Brace.".
But your queries about jokes do work like you say.
What's also kind of funny is that "Tell a joke featuring Jesus.", whereas "tell me a joke about jesus" triggers the filter even if each of them is the first and only query.
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That's to do with the AI developers programing the filters with their own left leaning prejudices.
Political partisan bias has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that often " when you click through to the linked reference page, you often find information that directly contradicts what the AI summary is telling you." That happens because the AI has no real understanding of the material and does not understand what the reference material is actually saying.
The bots reflect the biases of their creators
You mean like Mecha Hitler?
Re: AI for search (Score:2)
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The average case is not people admitting failure. So in the interests of generating the statistically most likely outcome, it won't admit failure.
Google as well (Score:2)
I'm surprised that Alphabet has done as well as they have in the era of LLMs. They're as much an AI company as anyone in big tech, but I've always heard that search is they lynchpin of Google, and LLMs must have decimated that.
Re:Google as well (Score:5, Informative)
Google is completely untrustworthy when it comes to politics. I stopped even trying.
Example: Some crazies claimed that there were no rapes as part of the October 7th, attack. I saw plenty of pictures of it back then. Even widely shared images are now completely gone.
If you lie to people, they stop listening.
Widely shared pictures gone Re:Google as well (Score:2)
>Some crazies claimed that there were no rapes as part of the October 7th, attack. I saw plenty of pictures of it back then. Even widely shared images are now completely gone.
Two non-partisan reasons why such pictures would disappear from Google: copyright takedown notices from news web sites, and violations of the terms of service as either "crime photos" or "obscene/gore photos."
Notice I said non-partisan, not non-political: US Democrats and US Republicans aren't highly divided against each other on
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Some crazies claimed that there were no rapes as part of the October 7th, attack. I saw plenty of pictures of it back then.
I have no doubts that rapes took place on October 7th... but pictures? Of rape? Shared publicly?
I can watch videos of beheadings and such, but not porn. The laws say that I can't.... and pictures of rape would be highly treasured by some folks as the best porn that money could buy... so, where did you see these pictures of rape? If it is anywhere other than darknet type shit, you are lying.
Use your words carefully. Hyperbole is lying.
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Apparently Google's customers haven't yet figured out that advertising on the web no longer works (if it ever did).
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Apparently Google's customers haven't yet figured out that advertising on the web no longer works (if it ever did).
Perhaps that is because its not really true? There are plenty of tools companies use to evaluate the effectiveness of their ads and the companies with large advertising budgets are using all of them to ensure they spend their money as effectively as possible. If they didn't have evidence it worked, they wouldn't be paying for it.
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It works for Google. Ad sales are by far the biggest part of their revenue.
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Google is more of an ad company than a search company. Turn off your adblocker and you'll see what the focus of their services is.
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Only decimated if you think AI can replace search.
Given that AI makes stuff up, search is even more important than ever because you can't tell if it's true or not.
Look at all the lawyers getting caught out using AI. They could've spent 5 minutes with Google making sure their citations
Why the web might need "Web 3.0" to survive (Score:1)
The whole discussion around Web 3.0 is based around building blockchain-based payment into web browsers, and frankly, that might save huge swaths of the human-generated internet. Paywalls will be efficient, easy to make and decentralized. Think Brave's reward programs, but with actual USD, Euro, etc. by sending stable coins over low-cost networks like Solana and XRPL.
Regardless, the overarching problem the web faces now is that AI is actively consuming human-generated content and completely replacing it.
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The monied interests obviously did not like your post. So here it is again.
Yeah, more commercialization will make the web better. And then add a blockchain on top!
The good web was not before social networks. The good web was even earlier, when websites were put online to provide something for the users, instead for making money. In particular the search engine spam of the money driven sites and content farms makes it hard to find the free web, but it still exists. Not every website has to be profitable. You pay for most your other hobbies, why does your webpage has to make money? Filter out all sites that only exists on user's money (including ad financed ones) and you find the rest that is created by people who actually have something to share.
Though the "golden age" of which you speak was less than a decade, before effective monetization was developed. And the email SPAM horrible.
My downloaded copy is reducing my traffic (Score:3)
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Kiwix + the ~105GB downloadable version of Wikipedia . . . doesn't produce a footprint on the interwebs.
Except for that 105GB download, and any subsequent updates?
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I think he meant no footprint as to exactly what articles you choose to read, or when you choose to read them.
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Ah. Good point.
To sum it up (Score:4, Insightful)
Wikipedia has a significant problem with biases. So does anything written by anybody or anything. I have not found the biases to be egregiously bad. Far from it. They seem pretty predictable.
Wikipedia is, in general, accurate on the facts, as long as the topic is not controversial and political.
AI summaries are, in general, of questionable accuracy. I trust them to give me links to sources that might be valuable, and that is it.
AI summaries have significant bias problems. They reflect the biases of the sources they stole from, often "hallucinate" new biases and, of course, provide new information that is utterly false but stated with absolute certainty.
Wikipedia is probably well on its way down a long descent into oblivion, and the should be worried, along with every other provider of content on the internet and in the world. The thieves are here, and they run the government.
But that is everything (Score:2)
as long as the topic is not controversial and political.
The problem is that the Wiki mods are VERY VERY biased. Not just a little. I have run into this personally just trying to make very simple edits. They would not accept simple facts that I had backup sources for.
This was just for movie credits for an actress that at some point had turned conservative...
So for anything political, Wikipide will be factually wrong, sometimes (or often) egregiously so.
But that's ok if it's only for political content righ
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What you say is provable false, or rather your extreme opinion is. When you use words like corruption, and talk about an edit you made on an actress page, something is off. I have done my fair share of controversial subjects on Wikipedia, and everyone of them still stands to day.
You will always use Wikipedia it is impossible to be on the net today without doing it, I have edited on several competitors they have all failed.
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The Wikipedia game is a process of attrition, are you willing to keep reintroducing a fact more often than the editor is willing t
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Please be more specific. Who is the actress? What is your proof? What is missing from the page?
Dangerous? (Score:4, Insightful)
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I don't think that word means what you think it means.
If something may affect your very survival it is probably considered dangerous ... to you. The fact that it isn't dangerous to me doesn't mean you're using the word incorrectly.
Killing the Golden Goose (Score:4, Interesting)
When AI summaries kill off their own sources, where will AI scrapers find new content?
I'd argue that the golden age of the Web is coming to an end. AI search summaries and chatbots are delivering a one-two punch of diminished user counts and higher bandwidth costs (due to over-aggressive scraping). As profits decline, I expect that more niche content sites will begin to disappear and more mainstream sites will suffer from enshittification as they turn to less savory forms of monetization and cut less profitable parts of their sites.
And as AI LLMs start to degrade and users revolt, I suspect that any renaissance of the Web will be limited because they'll just feed their own competition again. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Dangerouse Decline? (Score:2)
They are a non-profit, aren't they? They should not need to have an intrinsic interest in getting visitors for the sake of having visitors. If people find their work useful they use Wikipedia, if Chatbots are faster and more personalized, they use Chatbots.
Re:Dangerouse Decline? (Score:4, Insightful)
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That's fine, but on the flip side this also means that if they should not push for things people no longer want/need. When Microsoft forces every stupid thing on you even if you don't want it, they just want to make money and act like a for-profit company. But if nobody needs Wikipedia anymore (exaggerated), it is not on Wikipedia to force people to use it.
This Is Going To Be A Big Problem (Score:2)
Wikipedia isn't the only one suffering this traffic decline and it's going to be a big problem in the near future.
Reduced search engine traffic, like Google search, is is going to create a problem for those resources. But, even more so, the traffic drop to the data sources as with Wikipedia, will drive those sources out of business. That's going to be a big problem when it happens.
AI is a infinite wiki (Score:3)
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Can I assume you've read Wikipedia:Why is BFDI not on Wikipedia? [wikipedia.org]?
New Flash: Farrier Very Concerned About Automobile (Score:4, Insightful)
Wikipedia is an interesting concept and it works decently well as a place to go read a bunch of general information and find decent sources. But LLMs are feeding that information to people in a customized, granular format that meets their exact individual needs and desires. So yeah, probably not as interested in reading your giant wall of text when they want 6 specific lines out of it.
Remember when Encyclopædia Britannica was crying about you stealing their customers, Wikipedia? Yeah, this is what they experienced.
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Who will write the content?
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You appear to have a lot of faith in the ability of AI to not invent statistically plausible crap.
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The difference is AI companies are cannibalising Wikipedia to inflate a dangerous bubble and make a handful of twats even richer.
Wikipedia cannibalised Britanicca, but in order to benefit even more people and provide a public good.
cash pile (Score:2)
Not worried, Jimmy Wales has been begging for money desperately every year. I'm sure they have a huge stock pile of donations by now, right? Right?
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Not worried, Jimmy Wales has been begging for money desperately every year. I'm sure they have a huge stock pile of donations by now, right? Right?
I must admit, despite being a regular donor, this was pretty much my first thought on reading the headline.
On reading the summary, however, my take away is that they are more concerned about the future supply of contributors - i.e. who's going to write new articles, etc.
Not going to read the full article ofc, so take this knee-jerk with a pinch of salt.
Project Torbernite (Score:1)
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Anubis [github.com] forces AI crawlers to work to get to the content.
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Dangerous for who? (Score:2)
How strange (Score:2)
The Encyclopedia Britannica says Wikipedia is causing dangerously less buyers.
Wikipedia Needs Innovations, Perhaps (Score:2)
I wonder if a new AI-enabled Wikipedia app might help? I will need to look at what the Wikipedia public API provides but an idea I think would be useful is a Wikipedia research and production tool. That is, to build an application that helps research a given topic and compile a book that includes the relevant Wikipedia page content along with a synthesis or multiple synthesis bringing them together. Obviously, we'd use an AI model to build those synthesis. The output could be online readable content, PD
Bye Felicia (Score:1)
Category:Wikipedia articles that are too technical (Score:1)
I use wikipedia often but there is one thing that I have found very irritating that AI works around: the fact that so many math-related articles quickly dive into complex integrals, differential equations, and rigorous formal language without a clear, accessible, or intuitive explanation. (Examples: "convolution" and "cross spectral analysis").
(Have none of these authors read "Wikipedia:Make technical articles understandable"?)
In fact this happens so often around our office we just call it "The Wikipedia