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Comment by skilled | Hacker News Reader

This was not linked in the article, so here is what Jimmy wrote in the talk page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gaza_genocide#Statement_f...

Thank you for sharing that, turns out to be a lot more measured and balanced than the news article makes it out to be. Damn media always fueling the fires rather than spreading understanding and clarify. I think both sides seems to be raising good points, and probably the truth and more balanced view sits in the middle.

I continued reading through the talk page and eventually come across this:

> the United States government is exerting serious political pressure on Wikipedia as a whole to reveal the real life identities of many editors here who disagree with the current military actions of the government of Israel.

I have not heard about this before, what specifically is this about, if it's true?

It's a congressional inquiry, the claim is that the editors are biased against Israel. https://www.commondreams.org/news/house-gop-investigates-wik...

> the editors are biased against Israel

But so what? Is that unlawful in the US somehow today? That sounds absolutely bananas to be honest, aren't people supposed to have "true" freedom of speech, including being allowed to be biased against or for Israel?

It's not nationally illegal, and yes I would I agree that this seems in clear violation of freedom of speech. There have been some similar laws passed at the state level like this one in Texas https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/anti-israel-policies-are-ant... that have somehow held up in the courts

What is really absolutely bananas is to continue to believe that United States has true freedom of speech. There are so many limitations and exceptions that the USA scores worse than Europe where they don't have such a thing enshrined in their constitution (in so far as they have a constitution to begin with):

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/freedom-of-expression-ind...

Of course, you could be pedantic and say 'but freedom of expression isn't freedom of speech' but that would be precisely the kind of thing that continues to perpetrate the myth. A theoretical freedom on some narrow issue does not do much in competition with a much broader actual freedom. And that's the 2024 version, your guess about what the 2025 edition of that index looks like, I'm thinking not nearly as good for the USA. Blackmailing universities for starters.

Yes, but please understand that the government of USA has a bias in favor of Israel that it needs to uphold. Why do you hate America and Freedom(TM)?

https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-1/

Is a metalaw restricting the laws Congress can set.

Freedom of speech seems to be commonly regarded as having a far wider scope than it actually does. IANAL.

From a textualist standpoint you're right, but in practice the Supreme Court has expanded the First Amendment to prohibit government actions (besides just lawmaking) that would deter speech.

RE ".... claim is that the editors are biased against Israel..." We ALL have Bias's

Another thing to reaize is ...

In war the first casualty is truth.

I always think of what was claimed to happened in video "collateral murder"

Where US killed several people , because a reporters telephoto lens was mistaked of a rocket launcher, when viewed from a few KM away - OR so we are told.

Ascertaining the truth isn't made easier when one side massacres journalists and forbids free domestic reporting.

Here are more details on this: https://truthout.org/articles/house-republicans-investigate-...

Here is the letter from two US congressmen, requesting information from Wikipedia, including "Records showing identifying and unique characteristics of accounts (such as names, IP addresses, registration dates, user activity logs) for editors subject to actions by [Wikipedia's arbitration committee]": https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/08272...

I never thought I'd see the day where the same government that says "Freedom of Speech is important" would go around doxxing people on the internet. I always thought it'd eventually happen, but not during my lifetime.

Discussed recently:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43799302

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45043164

Reading the discussion, this appears to be an instance of the system working as intended. People are discussing Jimbo's message and weighing his position against the position of previous editors of the article, and they are weighing the merits and adherence to Wikipedia policy of each.

> As many of you will know, I have been leading an NPOV working group and studying the issue of neutrality in Wikipedia across many articles and topic areas including “Zionism”. While this article is a particularly egregious example, there is much more work to do. It should go without saying that I am writing this in my personal capacity, and I am not speaking on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation or anyone else!

I've definitely noticed this a lot more lately on Wikipedia where an article will be really quick to label something as "pseudohistory" or "pseudoscience" or likewise in the summary. Sometimes it makes sense, but there are quite a few articles where the difference between "crackpot" theories and acceptable "fringe" areas of study are fairly subjective. Or that someone feels the need to stand up a separate page about "denialism" of a topic where it was largely unnecessary.

And even for actual pseudoscience topics like Flat Earth Theory - the page has so much good information on it. But the summary on the page is terrible and does not even reflect a good summary of the page's own content! Mostly because people feel an unnecessary need to shoehorn in assessments of the myth status of the theory.

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