694
No matter what you think of Wikipedia, if the heritage foundation have actually threatened to dox editors then that’s despicable.
this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2025
694 points (99.9% liked)
Privacy
2034 readers
161 users here now
Welcome! This is a community for all those who are interested in protecting their privacy.
Rules
PS: Don't be a smartass and try to game the system, we'll know if you're breaking the rules when we see it!
- Be civil and no prejudice
- Don't promote big-tech software
- No reposting of news that was already posted
- No crypto, blockchain, NFTs
- No Xitter links (if absolutely necessary, use xcancel)
Related communities:
Some of these are only vaguely related, but great communities.
founded 5 months ago
MODERATORS
"No matter what you think of Wikipedia" sounds like Wikipedia is extremely controversial. I've never met a person who has anything against Wikipedia. How insane and out of touch with reality do you have to be to have something against Wikipedia?
The only people I've seen that dislike it are people who want to hide things (like Holocaust deniers) or people that have some weird beef with people that run it or edit it.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(5 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
What does the heritage foundation have against Wikipedia?
They don’t like them publishing facts:
https://forward.com/news/686797/heritage-foundation-wikipedia-antisemitism/
load more comments
(10 replies)
load more comments
(2 replies)
Anyone got a list of the heritage foundation leaders and big players?
It's only fair
load more comments
(1 replies)
I’ll never contribute to Wikipedia because they block VPNs
They should really unblock them. I know it’s not always easy to combat these problems, but a dedicated individual can break articles using non-VPN IPs like mobile data IPs
They not only enforce IP bans on account creation but on every single edit you make, even if logged in…
load more comments
(1 replies)
Can someone please ELI5?
The Heritage Foundation has threatened to doxx the editors of wikipedia because the greatest threat to authoritarians is information
ELi5 please: how can heritage foundation track an IP address to a particular person? and what happens if the editor simply makes edit via VPN? and why does WP show the IP adresses anyway?
I had a guy contact me about buying a Minecraft account a few months ago. It was an account held by a highschool friend of mine with a three-letter username that is a word, making it incredibly unique.
He identified the now-unmonitored email address associated with it, found that email in leaked logs from a forum, then searched for other hits from the same IP in the same time range. That forum access was from my house, so he found my email associated with it elsewhere.
He successfully identified another friend of ours at the same time. All from a single dynamic IP fifteen years ago.
Wikipedia blocks edits from pretty much all public VPNs and is very harsh with IP bans in general. They do allow edits without accounts though, so they show the IP so that an accountless user can be identified when making multiple edits or posting on the talk page. Hashing it would probably make more sense.
Your IP address says far more about you than you think. Your IP address can generally automatically identify what country and continent you are on. Who your ISP is. Possibly narrowing down to even your local region. At which point they simply need to find some marginally plausible reason to petition the ISP to identify who that IP address was leased to during x period of time. And then all of a sudden you're not very anonymous.
- Wikipedia shows IPs instead of usernames for anonymous edits, which the heritage foundation can see. Wikipedia now automatically creates “temporary accounts” for anonymous edits instead of showing the IP
- Wikipedia blocks most VPN edits because they cull malicious edits by IP, so while possible, it’s difficult to make an edit from a VPN since the IP is likely shared with bad actors
- See above. In an effort to limit malicious or nonhelpful edits, anonymous edits are shown by IP in the edit history, though this now stops that
TIL that anonymous edits show your ip address.
We must all do this anonymously editing in coffee shops and libraries.
load more comments
(2 replies)
Wikipedia attempts to shield editors from being Doxxed and harassed by right wing nuts and their followers over writing accurate information.
Right wing nuts take offense at not being able to shape the narrative/history.
I can’t wait for the ring wing nuts to fall back behind so behind from this massive web of lies they’re concocting for themselves. They’re now saying “vegetables are toxic and that you shouldn’t eat them”…
To be fair, most plants do manufacture their own pesticides that may harm small reptiles.
How is that defensible? Are there no laws to tamp down online terrorism from bad actors like Heritage? I'd imagine they're 100% in the wrong for making threats of any kind but I'm just a wee layman.
The laws exist to protect bad actors like Heritage
No laws? Sir/ma'am, we have the 2nd amendment. I can't think of any law higher.
Too bad the 2A nutjobs and right wing nutjobs are the same people.
Once you go far enough left, you get your guns back...
You're not wrong...
Well theres the 1st admendment. The 2nd is for when the 1st is being denied...
The 2nd was meant to ensure the 1st was respected.
The issue with "Wait that's illegal" is that it never work in practice.
If the heritage foundation decide to dox an editor tomorrow. The editor in question would have to file a lawsuit and go against an army of layers the heritage foundation can afford. Even if the editor win at the end, it will be a long and drawn out legal battle where heritage risk almost nothing.
And this is not accounting for the editor having to deal with harassment due to being dox while having to pay for a layer and fighting a legal battle.
And that is why making such terroristic threats should be criminal in the first place.
load more comments
(2 replies)
The internet is, by nature, problematic in terms of legal compliance because it is not wholly under the jurisdiction of any singular country.
You can go after hardware physically located within your own jurisdiction, and you can go after operators under your jurisdiction. But if you start going after folks/hardware outside of that, you're rightfully going to be told to fuck off. (Which is why IP holders burn so much money on anti-piracy lobbying and get practically nowhere)
Its the same reason encryption bans are laughably idiotic.
Even if there was, look who's in power. Even if judges ruled against Heritage, I'm not holding my breath of them getting any sort of accountability.
load more comments
(4 replies)