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What happens when the world’s most trusted information platform quietly drifts away from neutrality — and who is left to speak up?

In this episode, Andrew Gold speaks with Larry Sanger, the philosopher and internet pioneer who helped build Wikipedia from the ground up. As Wikipedia’s co-founder and first editor-in-chief, Sanger was instrumental in shaping its original mission: open collaboration, decentralised knowledge, and a strict commitment to neutrality. What followed, he argues, is a cautionary tale about how ideals erode when power concentrates.

Sanger explains why he believes Wikipedia no longer lives up to its founding principles. He outlines how editorial control has become increasingly centralised, how informal hierarchies shape what is deemed “acceptable knowledge,” and how coordinated activism can influence entries on controversial topics. According to Sanger, neutrality didn’t disappear overnight — it was slowly replaced by moral certainty and group enforcement.

The conversation focuses on process, not personalities. Sanger describes how incentives inside Wikipedia reward conformity, how dissenting editors are marginalised, and why appeals to policy often mask deeper ideological alignment. He also discusses the role of leadership and governance, arguing that decisions made at the top helped normalise a culture where activism and encyclopaedia writing became increasingly blurred.

Andrew presses Sanger on difficult questions: Is bias inevitable in open systems? Can neutrality survive at internet scale? And why do so many people still treat Wikipedia as an unquestionable authority despite its internal conflicts?

Sanger also reflects on the personal cost of whistleblowing. Speaking out against a platform he helped create meant professional isolation, public misrepresentation, and being dismissed as disgruntled. Yet he maintains that the stakes are too high to stay silent. When reference points lose credibility, public discourse suffers — especially in politics, science, and culture.

The episode goes beyond Wikipedia to ask a broader question: what happens when gatekeepers of knowledge stop seeing themselves as stewards and start acting as arbiters? Sanger argues that rebuilding trust will require pluralism, transparency, and a renewed commitment to epistemic humility — values that once defined the early internet.

If you rely on Wikipedia daily, debate culture online, or care about who controls information in the digital age, this conversation offers an insider’s account of how power quietly reshapes truth.

🎧 Watch the full podcast here:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/5ByqjwdbWafNPpLiSS7ZVW?si=b87af2e7c1e748b4

#wikipedia #larrysanger #jimmywales #whistleblower #freeexpression #mediabias #digitalculture #TheDailyHeretic

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