Grokipedia is a dark reflection of Wikipedia
Spiderman had Venom, Superman had Bizarro, and Wikipedia has… Grokipedia?
Growing up, I clicked away countless hours getting lost in Wikipedia, going from one article to another in a never-ending web of interconnected pages, topics, and editor discussions. This helped me build a sense of the world, its cultures, and its history – as well as instilled a sense in me that there could be more than one truth to every situation.
However, it also made it clear that some things are just facts, and they stay true no matter how you bend it. The Earth is round despite what flat-earthers say. Vaccines do work. Climate change is happening. And the birds do exist – thanks, Wikipedia!
These statements should not be controversial. They are scientifically proven. And yet, many would argue that they represent the so-called woke ideology and should be purged – or at least presented side-by-side with “alternative” views. That’s the idea behind Elon Musk’s latest project, Grokipedia.
Superficially, it’s similar to Wikipedia. Its layout and structure are comparable, both end each article with a list of sources, and even the font Grokipedia uses is almost identical to that used by Wikipedia. Scores of articles on Grokipedia were straight-up copied from Wikipedia.
And yet, Grokipedia is not really an encyclopedia, just like Bizarro is not really a superhero, even though he looks somewhat like Superman.
Unlike Wikipedia, whose repository of more than 65 million articles in over 340 languages was built and guarded by thousands of human contributors over the past two decades, Grokipedia is maintained and edited by Grok, a chatbot, and not even the best one at that.
Anyone familiar with Wikipedia would have at some point wandered to its “Talk” section available for each article and sometimes containing a robust discussion among contributors as to why certain facts were presented the way they were. Grokipedia simply displays edits made by Grok – despite claims it seeks to become free of “centralized control.”
At its current stage, Grokipedia also has no photos or images. Since it copies much of the content already published by Wikipedia, its release was initially delayed to weed out “propaganda” and remove biases.
While the Wikipedia community is open about existing or perceived biases on the site – it is edited by humans, after all – and has tools in place to mitigate their effects, Grokipedia appears to promote a certain point of view, one that aligns with right-wing leanings of its creator.
For example, a Wikipedia entry on George Floyd described him as an “African American man who was murdered by a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during an arrest.” Meanwhile, the Grokipedia entry started with the description of Floyd as an “American man with a lengthy criminal record.”
The conversation on this topic is live. Join in the discussion.
Whatever one’s thoughts on Floyd are, it is a fact that it wasn’t his criminal record that made him world-famous and ignited the Black Lives Matter movement – it was his death at the hands of a white police officer.
While both may be factually right, only one entry is manipulative, and it’s not on Wikipedia.
It’s healthy to scrutinize anyone, or anything, that holds power over information, whether government institutions, media, or Wikipedia. But projects like Grokipedia – looking at you, Runiversalis – aren’t launched out of a noble desire for balance.
They exist because whether you’re the Russian president or Elon Musk, an independent record of reality makes it a lot harder to rewrite facts so that they suit your interests better and turn fiction into truth.
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