Il controllo della conoscenza, dell’informazione e della storiografia ha sempre rappresentato un modo di esercitare il potere e di sollecitare l’appoggio popolare. Visto che la politica ha a che fare con le percezioni, è sempre stato necessario persuadere la popolazione che il sistema di potere è giusto e deve essere perpetuato, e che questo o quel gruppo “merita” il potere.

Nella vecchia Unione Sovietica, Stalin cancellava gli ex alleati dalle fotografie. In Brasile Getulio Vargas si presentò come un salvatore della cultura popolare nera con la sua politica culturale basata su selezione e controllo, una politica che spingeva verso l’oblio le attività ricreative, lo sport, il carnevale e le associazioni di danza originate dai poveri e dai neri che vivevano nelle città, soprattutto nella vecchia capitale Rio de Janeiro. Nel mondo della finzione, lo stato totalitario di 1984 arriva a creare una nuova lingua per esprimere quella visione realtà imposta dal partito al potere, una lingua formulata in modo tale da rendere impossibile pensare al di fuori di certi confini.

I politici non sono mai stati a corto di idee su come manipolare la realtà e ottenere più potere, ma il recente tentativo di modificare gli articoli di Wikipedia è, nel migliore dei casi, risibile. Internet è una delle più importanti tecnologie al servizio della libertà di espressione, di pensiero e di stampa.

Wikipedia, soprattutto la sua versione inglese, è un ottimo esempio di come la collaborazione aperta e la cooperazione volontaria possono dare risultati eccellenti. Migliaia di persone lavorano per migliorare sempre di più il contenuto di Wikipedia, mentre il governo cerca di modificarne gli articoli per raggiungere i suoi obiettivi. Una dopo l’altra, queste modifiche sono state ripulite da altri utenti.

Per mettere il governo sotto un controllo più stretto è stato creato il bot di Twitter @BRWikiEdits, sul modello dell’americano @congressedits (una mossa ripresa in Canada e in Gran Bretagna). @BRWikiEdits è un bot che registra le modifiche alle pagine di Wikipedia provenienti da computer di senato, camera e altre branche del governo.

Quello degli attivisti ciber-libertari è uno sforzo benvenuto, che ha portato anche all’incremento della privacy online contro la sorveglianza governativa tramite le comunicazioni criptate, e che sta dando una mano a togliere l’economia dalle mani delle grandi imprese grazie alle reti P2P e le criptomonete. E ora arrivano questi bot, che servono a proteggere le fonti d’informazione e che hanno già rivelato un certo numero di modifiche alle pagine di Wikipedia.

In Brasile, la recente approvazione della legge denominata Pietra Miliare Civile di Internet senza grosse discussioni in società (a beneficio di chi?) dimostra la necessità di aumentare l’attivismo online.

Il governo non può estendere il proprio potere su internet. È uno strumento troppo potente per essere messo al servizio della politica. Significherebbe la riscrittura della storia e la soppressione della libertà di pensiero.

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

Controlling knowledge, information and the historical narrative has always been a way of exercising power and enlisting popular support. Since politics is about perception, it has always been necessary to persuade the people that the system in power is just and should be perpetuated, and that one or another group “deserves” power.

In the old Soviet Union, Stalin erased old allies from pictures. In Brazil Getulio Vargas presented himself as a savior of popular and black cultures through his own (selective and controlling) cultural policy, relegating to oblivion recreational, sports, carnival and dancing associations formed by poor and black people in the cities, especially in the old capital, Rio de Janeiro. In fiction, the totalitarian state of 1984 even created a new language to express the worldview of the party in power, formulated so as to make any kind of thinking outside its boundaries impossible.

Politicians have never been short on ideas to manipulate and try to get more power, but the recent attempt to edit Wikipedia articles is at best laughable. The Internet is one of the greatest technologies for free expression, thinking and press.

Wikipedia, especially its English version, is an excellent example of how open collaboration and voluntary cooperation can achieve excellent results. Thousands of people work diligently to make Wikipedia’s content incrementally better, while the government tries to edit articles to meet its objectives. One by one, these edits have been weeded out by other users.

And, so that the government is put under even more scrutiny, the Twitter bot @BRWikiEdits has been created, modeled after the US-centered @congressedits (a move that has also been replicated in Canada and in the UK as well). @BRWikiEdits is a bot that tracks edits to Wikipedia page performed by computers from the Senate, the House of Deputies and several other government branches.

It’s a welcome effort in a cyber-libertarian activism that has also been responsible for a ramping up our online privacy against government surveillance through encryption and helping take our economy out of the corporations’ hands through P2P networks and crypto-currencies. Edit bots now act to protect our information sources, and have already tracked several modifications to Wikipedia pages.

The recent unanimous approval of the Civil Landmark of the Internet in Brazil, without much discussion in society (who does it benefit?) proves the necessity of increased activism online.

The government can’t extend his power over the internet. It’s too powerful a tool to be put in service of power, the re-writing of history and the suppression of freedom of thought.

Translated into English by Erick Vasconcelos.

Translations for this article:

• Italian, Attivismo Ciber-Libertario: la Gente si Difende.

Plus, Orwell probably hadn’t heard of Wikipedia. This week, ten of the biggest public relations firms signed a pledge that condemned the practice of “sockpuppeting,” or padding clients’ Wikipedia pages to their benefit. This opened up a whole new avenue to question the legitimacy of the public relations industry, one that’s already scoffed at heartily. It’s easy to picture a public relations professional as a conscienceless brownnoser, but I find it hard to believe that they are any more susceptible to corruption of information than journalists who often answer to media corporations or state-owned outlets. If you promote your friend’s band or their blog post on Facebook, you’re doing public relations. It’s not inherently evil and it’s not all that glamorous.

Anyway, here’s part of the pledge:

“On behalf of our firms, we recognize Wikipedia’s unique and important role as a public knowledge resource. We also acknowledge that the prior actions of some in our industry have led to a challenging relationship with the community of Wikipedia editors.”

Wikipedia already has a shaky reputation as a source of information because of the fact that anyone can go in and say whatever they want on a page. Your high school teachers and college professors probably weren’t too happy with you if you ever cited Wikipedia in a research paper. While the accuracy of Wikipedia is improving, anything positive or negative on a business’s Wiki page should probably be taken with a grain of salt. That said, a lot of people do use Wikipedia as a key source of information, and if your business has its own page, most people would take that as a signal that you’ve gained recognition.

In October 2013, the Wikipedia admins went on a wild goose chase after “suspicious” accounts, targeting an organization called Wiki-PR:

“Former Wiki-PR clients told the Daily Dot that they paid between $500 and $1,000 to the company for creation of a Wikipedia page, and $50 a month for monitoring any changes made to the page and resurrection of any material deleted during subsequent edits.

In other words, we’ll create the page you want and do everything we can to make sure it stays that way. It should go without saying that this practice seriously undermines the credibility of both the organization and the very forum it’s promoting. In an email, Wiki-PR’s CEO defended his company’s practices, writing that they simply “counsel our clients on how to adhere to Wikipedia’s rules” and that their services differ from those of most PR firms which “don’t know the rules as well because they do PR work, broadly, and try to promote.”

So what, though? If you’re operating under the assumption that everyone in public relations is a lying hack and that Wikipedia is a beacon of infallible knowledge, you’re wrong on both counts. Wikipedia is really trying to throw their ethical weight at these people – not unlike journalists who think they hold a sort of ethical superiority over PR folks – who are going to end up compromising their clients in the long run if their Wiki posts are inaccurate, anyway.

Here are the experts’ opinions on this. Most of them talk about open, honest and mutually beneficial communication, but this statement from Erik Deutsch, principal at ExcelPR  group and president of PRSA-LA caught my interest:

“It’s hard to argue with the principles adopted by the 10 large PR firms. That said, issuing such a statement could actually support the notion that PR pros somehow deserve to be singled out for their unique ability to wreak havoc on platforms like Wikipedia. Taken a step further, it could reinforce the view among critics that it’s inherently ‘dubious’ to get paid to write or edit a client’s Wikipedia page.”

This pretty much sums up the unfair assumption that people who want positive outcomes for their businesses should be shamed for promoting them online. Believing everything you read on the Internet is a dangerous game to begin with, and public relations firms’ bickering with Wikipedia over conflicts of interest in businesses detracts from what they should be worried about – enemies of net neutrality making life difficult for new businesses to flourish online to begin with.

Orwell would probably be most upset about the ethical policing on both ends.