How billionaires rewrite Wikipedia
- In this article I report on editing that was apparently paid for by Greg Lindberg, who is now in prison following his conviction for bribery and fraud. I have participated in editing the article about Lindberg. The opinions expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect the rest of the Signpost staff or of other Wikipedians.
"The rich are different from you and me—they have more money."[1] Like the rest of us, billionaires are people whose behavior does not necessarily reflect that of others, even among those with similar-sized bank accounts. The only conclusion we can draw about billionaires is that they have more money—and thus more power—than most Wikipedians. They do not appear to edit articles themselves; instead, they pay editors to edit on their orders. In this article, I examine three current or former billionaires who appear to have paid editors and the changes these editors made to related Wikipedia articles. Based purely on Wikipedia edit histories, it is impossible to prove that an editor has been paid to edit for a billionaire, even in cases where the paid editor claims to work for the billionaire. We are nevertheless able to present strong evidence of a paid-editing relationship in at least two of the following cases.
The three main individuals discussed below, Greg Lindberg, Robert T. Brockman, and Robert F. Smith, have all recently had brushes with the law. Lindberg reported to federal prison on October 20, 2020, following his conviction on fraud and bribery charges.[2]
Brockman was indicted on allegations of tax evasion, "the largest U.S. tax case ever against an individual".[3][4] Smith was involved in the same case, but reached a non-prosecution agreement with the U.S. Justice Department following his payment of $139 million to the U.S. Treasury, and is expected to testify against Brockman.
In December 2019, The Wall Street Journal published a report, "How the 1% Scrubs Its Image Online", about five rich people who were believed to be employing Status Labs, the successor of Wiki-PR, to whitewash Wikipedia articles. Their suspected clients included U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, Jacob Gottlieb, billionaire financier Kenneth C. Griffin, the fraudulent blood testing company Theranos and its CEO Elizabeth Holmes, and Omeed Malik. According to the Journal, Status Labs created fake news sites to remove negative news about these people from Google searches.
A December 2019 Special Report in The Signpost covered other whitewashing tactics in detail, focusing on Theranos Labs and edits by Status Labs' apparent employee User:Jppcap.
- ^ While this quote is often attributed to F. Scott Fitzgerald or Ernest Hemingway, the truth may be more complex. See Dow, Eddy (November 13, 1988). "The Rich Are Different". New York Times. Retrieved 23 August 2020.
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