A Bored Chinese Housewife Spent Years Falsifying Russian History on Wikipedia

[88m3]

A Bored Chinese Housewife Spent Years Falsifying Russian History on Wikipedia

She “single-handedly invented a new way to undermine Wikipedia,” says a Wikipedian.

www.vice.com

fascinating

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Little did he know he’d stumbled upon an entire fictitious world constructed by a user known as Zhemao. It was one of 206 articles she has written on Chinese Wikipedia since 2019, weaving facts into fiction in an elaborate scheme that went uncaught for years and tested the limits of crowdsourced platforms’ ability to verify information and fend off bad actors.

One of her longest articles was almost the length of “The Great Gatsby.” With the formal, authoritative tone of an encyclopedia, it detailed three Tartar uprisings in the 17th century that left a lasting impact on Russia, complete with a map she made. In another entry, she shared rare images of ancient coins, which she claimed to have obtained from a Russian archaeological team.

Though Zhemao occasionally feigned humility and expressed disgust with “online circle-jerking,” the investigation also found that she controlled at least four sock puppets, alternative accounts she used to create an illusion of support. “Please don’t call me boss, I am just an ordinary student,” Zhemao wrote in reply to one of them.


Whatever else you have to say she went hard as fukk. Holy shyt.


(edit: there's some odd anti-wikipedia editorializing in the article. I looked up the author and she's a new hire at Vice, her only previous employer of note is the SCMP which is seen as a bit of a propaganda arm for the Chinese government. Slightly disconcerting.)

 

[88m3]

Little did he know he’d stumbled upon an entire fictitious world constructed by a user known as Zhemao. It was one of 206 articles she has written on Chinese Wikipedia since 2019, weaving facts into fiction in an elaborate scheme that went uncaught for years and tested the limits of crowdsourced platforms’ ability to verify information and fend off bad actors.

One of her longest articles was almost the length of “The Great Gatsby.” With the formal, authoritative tone of an encyclopedia, it detailed three Tartar uprisings in the 17th century that left a lasting impact on Russia, complete with a map she made. In another entry, she shared rare images of ancient coins, which she claimed to have obtained from a Russian archaeological team.

Though Zhemao occasionally feigned humility and expressed disgust with “online circle-jerking,” the investigation also found that she controlled at least four sock puppets, alternative accounts she used to create an illusion of support. “Please don’t call me boss, I am just an ordinary student,” Zhemao wrote in reply to one of them.


Whatever else you have to say she went hard as fukk. Holy shyt.


(edit: there's some odd anti-wikipedia editorializing in the article. I looked up the author and she's a new hire at Vice, her only previous employer of note is the SCMP which is seen as a bit of a propaganda arm for the Chinese government. Slightly disconcerting.)

interesting catch and she's Hong Kong based(somehow), her articles/twitter seem fairly honest but I haven't dived in too far


I honestly don't know what vice is up to these days and it's come up a few times randomly recently

 

[Professor Emeritus]

interesting catch and she's Hong Kong based(somehow), her articles/twitter seem fairly honest but I haven't dived in too far


I honestly don't know what vice is up to these days and it's come up a few times randomly recently

Most of the article seemed fine, certain framings could come off as anti-wikipedia but not egregiously so, then I ran into the line, "The incident dealt a heavy blow to the site’s dwindling credibility." That makes no fukking sense, isn't how it would be reported anywhere else and isn't remotely well-backed enough for a journalist to just make the claim without sourcing.

Over the last few years right-wingers have been attacking wikipedia for having a "liberal bias", but they say the exact same shyt about every source of information. But China banned wikipedia in 2019 and Russia is currently suing Wikipedia to try to get them to remove shyt they don't like about their war in Ukraine. So it seems like someone randomly degrading wikipedia out of nowhere is being influenced by a political agenda.

It's also worth saying that she didn't break this story - it's been reported in multiple places for the last two weeks. So she made the effort to signal-boost an already existing story.

 

[Hood Critic]

One of her longest articles was almost the length of “The Great Gatsby.”....

The level of dedication...