Israeli students with Images of Israeli hostages held in Gaza (Israel Ministry of Education)
A recent investigation by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has exposed systemic bias on Wikipedia, revealing a coordinated effort to manipulate content related to Israel. The report highlights how dozens of Wikipedia editors worked together to circumvent the platform’s policies, injecting antisemitic narratives, anti-Israel bias, and misleading information into key articles.
This discovery raises concerns about Wikipedia’s reliability and the integrity of its editorial process, especially on politically sensitive topics. Read more about the ADL’s findings and the broader implications for online information accuracy.
ADL said it has found clear evidence that a group of at least 30 editors acted in concert to circumvent Wikipedia’s policies to introduce antisemitic narratives, anti-Israel bias, and misleading information:
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These 30 editors were much more active than other comparable groups of editors, on average, by a factor of at least two, based on total edits made over the past 10 years.
The 30 editors were much more likely than other editors to communicate with each other on Wikipedia: they were as much as 18 times more active in group communications than comparable groups of editors, said the ADL.
The editors appeared to coordinate to change pages related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, downplaying Palestinian antisemitism, violence, and calls to destroy Israel while promoting criticism of Israel.
These edits have ramped up since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks and include the systematic removal of citations to reputable sources and tandem voting to keep content critical of Israel but remove coverage of Palestinian violence and terrorism.
“It’s clear that Wikipedia needs to do far more to address the very active antisemitic and anti-Israel bias and coordination,” said Daniel Kelley, Interim Head, ADL Center for Technology and Society. “And until then, other platforms that rely on Wikipedia as a source– from Google Search to large language models like ChatGPT – must deprioritize unvetted Wikipedia’s content on issues related to Jews, Israel and the Middle East conflict so that they do not perpetuate this bias.”
In addition to the campaign of anti-Israel manipulation and disinformation uncovered on English-language Wikipedia pages, Wikipedia’s policies are failing to prevent widespread bias on its Arabic-language pages related to Hamas. An ADL analysis of Arabic Wikipedia pages on the terrorist organization found that both the primary page and related content glorify Hamas, promote pro-Hamas propaganda, and violate Wikipedia’s neutrality guidelines.
“Most readers assume Wikipedia is a reliable online encyclopedia, but in reality, it has become a biased platform manipulated by agenda-driven editors on many topics,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL CEO. “Recent Wikipedia efforts toward neutrality are nothing but a Band-Aid on a problem that’s getting worse, with persistent antisemitic and anti-Israel bias still far too present. We urge Wikipedia and policymakers to act quickly before rampant disinformation on one of the most visited sources of information leads to tragic consequences.”
