I've spotted surprising amounts of confidently-stated nonsense even in fairly neutral articles where Elon / xAI is unlikely to have a particular political slant.
Many of the most glaring errors are linked to references which either directly contradict Grokipedia's assertion or don't mention the supposed fact one way or the other.
I guess this is down to LLM hallucinations? I've not used Grok before, but the problems I spotted in 15 mins of casual browsing made it feel like the output of SoA models 2-3 years ago.
Has this been done on the cheap? I suspect that xAI should probably have prioritised quality over quantity for the initial launch.
Some time ago, there was a project called Citizendium that aimed for quality over quantity, with articles written and peer-reviewed by subject matter experts who had to use their real names and working email addresses, among other requirements. I always thought that was interesting, since the main critique of Wikipedia is its open editing model.
Citizendium is still around, though they've loosened some of the requirements in order to encourage more contributions, which seems self-defeating to me. I think they should have tried to cooperate with Wikipedia instead. The edits and opinions of subject matter experts could be a special layer on top of existing Wikipedia articles. Maybe there could be a link for various experts with highlights of sections they have peer-reviewed and a diff of what they would change about the article if those changes haven't been accepted. There could also be labels for how much expert consensus and trust there is on a given snapshot of an article or how frozen the article should be based on consensus and evidence provided by the experts. This would help users delineate whether an article contains a lot of common knowledge or whether it's more speculative or controversial.
> I've spotted surprising amounts of confidently-stated nonsense
I find this to be the most annoying aspect of AI. The initial Google AI results were especially bad. It is getting better, but still spout info I know is false without any warning.
Like, I find blowhards tiring enough in RL. Don't really want to deal with artificial blowhards when I'm trying to solve a problem.
I'm no apartheid apologist, but I have lived here (ZA) all my life.
Whilst I haven't read the entire article, the first paragraph is actually on-point: apartheid was shit in a lot of respects, but the schools, especially in rural areas, have dramatically declined since 1994, as have most government-run companies (with the exceptions like Eskom being bailed out every year).
You don't have to like the facts, but that's what they are.
Yeah I used to date a coloured girl from Jo'berg who'd grown up in that era and she was positive that they had some degree of prosperity and modern comforts unlike the surrounding African countries. The overwhelming flow of people voting with their feet and walking across the borders was from the surrounding countries to SA rather than vice versa.
I wonder if something called "context" and the socio-economic direction might have something to do with it.
"I think we gotta hand it to Apartheid because schools were very slightly less worse" isn't the argument you think it is. It does paint where you stand quite clearly.
Never start a sentence with "I'm no apartheid apologist, but". Nothing good can ever come out of it.
By "apartheid apologetics" do you mean that it is factually wrong or merely that you dislike the framing? I think there is a huge difference between those two accusations.
Apologetics has a well-defined meaning. In this case, it's a bad faith deluge of out-of-context non-sequiturs posing as a coherent argument in order to defend something deplorable.
>A prevailing narrative depicts apartheid as a system of unremitting total oppression for black South Africans, yet empirical data indicate substantial advancements in black literacy and real wages during the era.
This is a false contradiction. You can oppress people and still pay them higher wages and fight illteracy.
You're describing a very charitable scenario. You might get those outcomes while still fighting against literacy and high wages.
Since a rising tide lifts all boats, in a growing economy you might see wages, literacy and health outcomes improve nominally for an oppressed group, in absolute terms, while all of these outcomes improve significantly faster for the other group(s) in the same period.
It's not presenting that as an opinion or purely facts-based though, it's documenting other narratives that exist in the world under a "Legacy and Critical Assessments" headline.
It presents a false logic like it's not A because B but B has nothing to do with A.
You can say, you are not poor because you own a house but you can not claim you are not poor because you can read.
That's not another narrative that's a false contradiction
So by your logic the people of the german democratic republic weren’t oppressed because they got free education and proper wages. I think the citizens saw that differently.
As a Green Line enjoyer, I'm not enough of an expert to spot the factual errors. The article does seem a bit much though. I've noticed a lot of the Grokipedia articles just go on. If I wanted to know that much about the Green Line I could probably just buy a book on it.
While ChatGPT tells me it's unable to access the linked page directly from Grokipedia (lolol), I was able to download the content, copy/paste it into ChatGPT, and ask it to fact check it. I think I will do this more often, with other sites (and other models) as well, going forward, as Chat is able to categorize statements as being correct vs. misleading vs. flat out wrong.
> The article does seem a bit much though. I've noticed a lot of the Grokipedia articles just go on.
And yes, that's what I'm noticing as well. There is a clear attempt to establish a narrative.
Do you mean Elon Musk? Bryanston High School and Pretoria Boys High School were all-white, so any beating he received (I'm assuming you're referring to the same savage incident Kimball was) was at the hands of other white boys.
So, being attacked and nearly killed by other white boys does not validate his opinions on apartheid.
Why would you do free work for a company which is planning to profit from your labor? Wikipedia/Wikimedia is a non-profit. All of their money pays for real expenses instead of whatever vanity project Musk has decided is necessary to sell xAI to the masses.
How do you think you can reach anything close to objectivity without aiming for diversity and inclusion? What do you think will happen to an encyclopaedia which is mostly run by Elon fans? We already had that at one of the extremes (and the echos are still here) from the time medicine just didn't bother to study women.
When you grow up to be an adult, you will understand that "objectivity"is a fiction.
And an encyclopedia can absolutely do that and still present factual information based on actual research and facts.
You know that just because a lady has blue hair or a person has colored skin does NOT mean that they can't be right about something or do good research. Right? You do know it, right?
Because in the end, when you cry about DEI (whatever you believe it to mean), this is the implication that comes with it: that you can't imagine for a second that anyone who doesn't look exactly like you could ever do anything competently. I genuinely wonder if you've ever thought about that for more than half a second after you closed that Charlie Kirk video.
If you do believe it, fair enough. I guess you're allowed to believe it. But at least be honest about it.
I really don't mean to be rude but you sound insane. You have spent too much time in whatever insulated twitter space you're in, and you've ended up sounding like an insane person! Please go do independent research on these topics, so you can try not saying things like "DEI virtue signaling white knights". You just strung together 3 separate buzzwords (buzzphrase?)
Because truth is inconvenient to their world view. Better to build up the world and facts as you imagine them to be than risk learning something that contradicts deeply held beliefs.
Can you explain how that applies in this specific case? Because I can't come up with a scenario where you suggesting corrections to Grokipedia does any good.
If you're correcting a lie that they actively want to spread (e.g. the "White Genocide" lie) they obviously won't accept your correction.
If you're correcting a lie that they don't care about (hypothetical example: "ripe strawberries are blue") they might accept your correction, but that makes it less likely that an uninformed visitor will see through their lies.
So the best case scenario is that literally nothing happens, and the worst case one is that you're indirectly helping their cause. What am I missing?
Let me rephrase. The type of person who would submit "corrections" to grokopedia are the types of people who are typically interested in supporting its ideological outcomes. Because they have close enough to the same world-views. The same types of people who say female instead of women outside of a medical context or complain all the time about wokeness invading their favorite media. Someone who suggests that reporting errors to grokopedia would do any good are firmly in the camp that believes in the garbage it's trying to perpetuate. That's why they support it and why they think others should submit corrections.
They know that this is being built with an explicitly partisan bias, but also know liberal folk are super weak to certain types of attacks. Attacks like "be fair" and "you can submit feedback". They are explicitly playing on liberal weaknesses all while leaning into the blatantly false representation of history. They will say "you can't judge it since you haven't provided feedback to help correct it" but that was never their intention and they just say those things because it confuses liberals. And I know I've overused "liberals" here. That's absolutely my bias slipping in. But they are the most credulous folks who will constantly try to reach across the aisle to blatant bad faith actors. If there's a better term for this, I haven't learned it in my 20+ years of being politically active in the US.
Not that I think it does any good on a site like this, but I vouched for your original comment. I completely agree with you. I was also raised in the cult and have first hand experience with many people still in it. I know why they would support and lend effort to things like these. They support all sorts of awful shit.
Do you think Wikimedia doesn't profit off of the contributions people make to Wikipedia?
>pays for real expenses
Only a small percentage of donations do.
>instead of whatever vanity project
Anytime the topic of Wikimedia donations come up you will see people complaining about their vanity projects too, wishing they could donate towards wikipedia itself.
If you are happy to work for a for-profit corporation w/o any financial compensation then you are more than welcome to do that. Seems a bit irrational to me but that's just my opinion.
> If you are happy to work for a for-profit corporation w/o any financial compensation then you are more than welcome to do that. Seems a bit irrational to me but that's just my opinion.
Not the person you are replying to, and it is a bit tangential, but you just basically described a solid chunk of open-source software work.
I am not mocking open-source software work, I am mocking how reductionist the parent comment was, because their logic often applies to volunteer open-source software work as well. And, I suspect, on HN we can agree that volunteer open-source software work can often be worth doing, regardless of how "irrational" it is or how much for-profit corporations could benefit from it.
I don't think this is an accurate comparison. Working on open source software means you are contributing to that software, which yes may be used by for profit companies. This is more analogous to contributing to Wikipedia, which is then used by for profit companies like Grok, than it is contributing to Grok products directly, which cannot be leveraged by other tools in this ecosystem (afaik).
> If you found something wrong in that article you should submit some fixes.
Why? This site isn't run by people who are interested in factual accuracy.
If they think Wikipedia articles are inaccurate, they could always propose changes and have a proper discussion with the rest of the contributors. Grok was trained on Wikipedia so realistically this is just a jumbled regurgitation of Wikipedia articles blended with other sources from across the web without the usual source vetting process that Wikipedia uses.
This is a politically motivated side project being run by the worlds richest man, and frankly I doubt many people are interested in helping him create his own padded version of reality.
the pursuit of truth doesn’t work by keeping so-called falsehoods up while a debate rages on about their veracity. especially given that there’s no indication on wikipedia of contested facts. i may not be involved in the debate but i’d love some indication and perhaps a hyperlink to where the debate is happening.
the proper discussion you want will never happen. it’s an exercise in persuasion ie trying to move people from one entrenched position to another, and there’s nothing more impossible than that. the only way out is to offer competition, and that’s what grokipedia seems to be doing. check the history of christianity, heresy, reformation. when the catholic church set itself up as the object to be won over persuasively it successfully stifled doctrinal progress. until the intolerants exited.
> i may not be involved in the debate but i’d love some indication and perhaps a hyperlink to where the debate is happening.
Are you familiar with Wikipedia at all? Here, for anyone who is unfamiliar, let's take a look at an example page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid - this is guaranteed to have controversial ongoing discussions given the political climate.
Note how at the top of the page right now there are two large boxes discussing ongoing changes to the article - one indicating that it is considered too long, and another indicating that some of the content is being split into a separate draft [0] page. Both of these boxes include links to the relevant pages and policies.
The first box, indicating that the article is too long and drifting off topic, includes a direct link to the Talk page [1]. Note that this page is also linked at the top of the article, and that goes for every single article on wikipedia.
That talk page is where the proper discussion that I want happens - out in the open. Note that you can even reply to talking points without needing an account. Note that replies and criticisms are reproduced and readable directly on the page.
This is what open collaboration and truth seeking looks like. "Grokipedia" requires you to create an account and funnel a suggested correction into an black box. It's the equivalent of a suggestions box in an HR office. On wikipedia, the discussion is out in the open, while the grok version just says "Fact checked by Grok" at the top, like we're supposed to blindly trust that.
Which of these is modeling open collaboration, and which of these is just deferring to priest grok, again? The grok page gives no indication that alternative interpretations exist, they don't show any indication that sections are being criticized as inaccurate. Comparing Wikipedia to the catholic church like this is divorced from reality, doubly so in comparison to this grok project.
> especially given that there’s no indication on wikipedia of contested facts
Have you ever been to a Wikipedia Talk Page? Basically every page you can find will have some people arguing about what should be placed on the page on the Talk page.
I mean, given who runs it, one would assume the apartheid apologetics are by design. I can think of few things more pointless than trying to correct Musk’s safe space.
Looking up the Republican Party "controversies" vs the Democratic Party "controversies" should let you know exactly what this projects intentions are.
That being said, my biggest issue with it is how Grok is writing everything. It's like it is trying REALLY hard to be neutral but it's conversational training slips up and starts "spicing" things up a little. For example on Elon's article:
"...at age 12 in 1983, developing a space-themed video game called Blastar, which he sold to PC and Office Technology magazine for approximately $500. *This early entrepreneurial act foreshadowed Musk's later pursuits in technology and business*."
Sentences like that are designed to subtly bring emotion to certain topics.
You're right, that's definitely a mistake. Though to be fair, the same article gets it right if you scroll down to the Tesla section. The article on Tesla also gets it right.
Kinda funny how Grokipedia looks like an encyclopedia but clearly talks like an LLM.
Lots of confidence, not so much evidence.
It’s not that it’s trying to lie — it’s just how these models work. They’re great at making language sound right, not necessarily be right.
Feels more like a mirror of what the internet “thinks” than an actual source of truth.
If they framed it that way — more experiment, less Wikipedia — I think people would take it a lot better.
I suggest that anyone interested compare the content of Wikipedia and Grokpedia articles on topics that interest them, as well as the differences in sources between these two projects. Of course, only if someone finds this research interesting.
Yeah nah, just compare the Grokipedia entries for the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. I don't think one could get any more weasel-worded if they tried.
An utter waste of everyone's time, money, effort, and manpower.
“ In recent decades, the party has prioritized identity-based equity policies, climate interventions, and expansive regulatory frameworks, yet empirical critiques highlight correlations between its governance in major cities and elevated crime rates, homelessness persistence, and educational stagnation amid softened enforcement and redistribution efforts.[7][8]”
Which doesn’t link to anything supporting the negative assertions.
No search results for Republicans Party, which I assume means it said something Musk didn’t like.
I compared Grokipedia's entry on the band "American Football" [^0] to Wikipedia's [^1] and they are _almost_ the same. While Grok does attribute Wikipedia in the footer, they added this to their article:
> On July 2, 2025, the band released their first live album, American Football (Live in Los Angeles), recorded during the anniversary shows at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles with guest appearances by Ethel Cain and M.A.G.S., accompanied by a concert film documenting the performance.
If you go to the source [^4] for this claim, you'll see that:
- They dropped a film of the same name alongside the album release.
- The "guest appearances" are actually interviews in the film.
- The entry excluded the female artist that was cited in the source.
I, then, compared Grok's entry on United Airlines [^2] against Wikipedia's [^3]. Grok's seemed to be autogenerated this time.
I skipped to the section on MileagePlus since I know a bit about how that program works. It has a few inaccuracies:
- It only lists the four published MileagePlus tiers: Silver, Gold, Platinum and 1K and omits the two unpublished, but well-known, tiers above 1K: Global Services and Chairman's Circle.
- The 2025 premier qualifying point (PQP) redemptions are actually from 2024.
- Some of the language it uses wouldn't meet Wikipedia's editorial standards, like the nebulous "priority everything" benefit from obtaining 1K status (whose source is unclear, as neither of the two sources cited use this phrase).
- "The current logo features a stylized "U" incorporating a world map outline, symbolizing global connectivity" That's United's old logo. They absorbed Continental's logo when they merged.
- The article opens with the claim that United has 1018 aircraft in its fleet as of APR 2025, then, later, states that it has 1,001 active aircraft as of OCT 2025. The source for the 1,001 figure states 1,055 on the page with 1,003 in revenue service.
So I wouldn't use Grokipedia as a source for anything, just like Wikipedia, though I'm sure some will try.
I have tried briefly checking two pages about Russo-Ukrainian War. First of all, hilariously Elonopedia starts from 1917-1921 war and goes on about it for multiple paragraphs, then suddenly switches to the 2014 invasion. And no, it's not in the "history" section, it's a main starting section.
Then actual description of the war is much more biased in the Elonopedia. In every case possible the invasion is presented as "both sides are guilty". I wouldn't list the examples, anyone can do it. Too much effort imo.
Then I checked Russo-Georgian War articles, this time at least the century and war was correct in Elonopedia. But again, right from the start it is incredibly biased towards Russia. Elonopedia completely omits the initial attack make bu Russian forces at 01 Aug 2008, skip a week and presents war as if it was initiated by Georgians, following Kremlin propaganda line. Didn't both reading full article.
All in all it is 100% as I have expected reading the news about this supposedly "unbiased" encyclopedia - it's a LLM-generated slop, with no human fact checking (mixing two different century separated wars into one article is telling), and it is essentially a far-right propaganda outlet. It will follow Goebbels rule of mixing 60% or truth with 40% of lies, to prime up unsophisticated readers towards Elon's and rightwing crowd goals.
>Then I checked Russo-Georgian War articles, this time at least the century and war was correct in Elonopedia. But again, right from the start it is incredibly biased towards Russia. Elonopedia completely omits the initial attack make bu Russian forces at 01 Aug 2008, skip a week and presents war as if it was initiated by Georgians, following Kremlin propaganda line.
Why do you think the international team of Europeans would leave out something like an August 1st attack by Russian forces? Why would the US-funded media outlet for Europe (RFE/RFL) parrot the report's position that the conflict was overwhelmingly Georgia's fault?
"The Mission is not in a position to consider as sufficiently substantiated the Georgian claim concerning a large-scale Russian military incursion into South Ossetia before 8 August 2008."
Can you share the evidence you have that supports your position that Russia attacked on 01 August? The EU concluded that was unsubstantiated.
EU in 2008 was extremely biased towards Russia too, the appeasement was going full tilt, just like the tasty gas in the pipeline, so they are not exactly impartial party. I'm generally inclined to believe a victim country, not the invading empire, but you do you. And inconclusive doesn't mean definitely ruled out. Can be lack of evidence for either outcome.
And if you are that suspicious of that date, we can pick another. In 1992 Russia invaded independent Georgia (among other countries), so any action was towards occupation force, in defense.
PS: and if look throughout the history, we will find very few cases, when a smaller country attacks much bigger one especially after already losing at least one fight against them. And the opposite is true, there are hundreds and thousands of cases when a bigger country attacks the smaller one, especially after already winning once against them. And countless times when a bigger country lied about pretext for such attack, to be seen as not crazy murderers outright, but muddy waters and sow doubt. Russia succeeded it seems.
I’m doing so, and it’s not that different? Grok gets to the point a bit more, and has a bit more of a bent, but say the Wikipedia page on Communism doesn’t bury the lede on the negatives of communism. Curious if this will end up pointing out that in the end Wikipedia isn’t that bad.
Grok’s pages on the prosecutions of Trump are definetly biased.
I’m probably not the core audience for this though. I use Wikipedia as a reference, not to tell me what to think.
I guess this poses an interesting question: if Wikipedia was being created today, would it be a human- edited encyclopedia or would they just resort to AI because it’s easier? It makes me wonder if people will shy away from hard problems and just take the easy path, resulting in a shallower and less useful product to society.
Oh yes it would be possible. It would probably be less biased as well. Don't forget that these models are trained on libraries of congress worth of books as well as things like Wikipedia. Given that Wikipedia - like any encyclopedia - does not (or should not, at least) contain original research but only refers to existing sources and given that the companies which train these models have their ways to access those sources - sometimes illegally but still - all Wikipedia adds to the mix is a biased interpretation of the original research.
I have to wonder, obviously the grok version exists just to push Elons politics and take control over the “truth”. But it seems like an LLM could take over. Considering Wikipedia is not meant to contain any original facts, just a collection of references to external information.
If you’ve tried OpenAI’s Deep Research or similar tools, you’ll know they pull far more info than Wikipedia. But if you’re an expert, you’ll quickly spot errors since the breadth is huge but the depth and accuracy are only so-so.
For non-experts just exploring new topics, it’s still perfectly useful. Grokipedia probably uses a similar search, verify, summarize workflow, so it naturally inherits mistakes from the internet, which isn’t really an LLM problem.
Grok is just the first to make it public, and other AI companies could easily build their own synthetic data Wikipedias, and some probably already have.
Wikipedia’s coverage looks broad, but it still can’t keep up with how fast knowledge grows. And the gaps are even more severe in non-English versions of Wikipedia.
I tried it briefly. Its an ok initial start with significant flaws - while it counters Wikipedia's (editorial demographic) bias on cultural topics it seems to do so by assuming the style of a bland, unanalytical reporter, accepting the self-framing of the subject and relaying it at turgid length.
An example: the classical liberal writer Douglas Murray is one of the many targets on Wikipedia of ludicrous "far right" style categorizations; nevertheless its correct to attempt to draw out his own alignments and biases especially where he writes provocatively in areas with cultural tensions.
Grokipedia seems to smooth over those tensions almost in denial while Wikipedia stirs them up via exaggeration. I don't think either are helpful or honest.
Putting aside my political concerns about Elon Musk starting an encyclopedia, I thought I'd look up the indie rock band Beat Happening as a tester. My first thoughts were that it was very impressive. There's a confused garbled image link (that appears as text) but otherwise it looks convincing:
> Beat Happening was an American indie pop band formed in Olympia, Washington, in 1982 by vocalist and guitarist Calvin Johnson, guitarist Heather Lewis, and drummer Bret Lunsford.
Then I though, hey let's see what wikipedia says, here it is:
> Beat Happening was an American indie pop band formed in Olympia, Washington in 1982. Calvin Johnson, Heather Lewis, and Bret Lunsford were the band's continual members.
I came away less impressed- grokipedia's opening paragraph reads to me like a very minor rephrase. I assume wikipedia is in the training data here and being spat back out?
In fact going back to the garbled image link:
> 
Even this seems to be a reference to the wilipedia image at the top of the article titled:
The point is rewriting the articles that matter to Musk. Nobody cares about the rest of the articles, they are there just to justify Grokipedia being an encyclopedia at all.
May I ask why you directly added it to your blocklist? I can see several potential reasons people block sites and I wonder which is the leading one for you.
You can't chose an identity based off the illuminati trilogy and expect people to enter a politically neutral discussion with you surely?
The entry premise for wikipedia is that "it's a discussion" is a valid meta state for an article. Do you think that entry state is a valid condition for a machine generated encyclopedia where its guiding principle is "to adjust for systematic left bias in the world view" ? (my words)
clearly, one engages with the world as it aligns to ones world view. To be continually at odds with reality as you perceive it is both tiring and ultimately unsatisfying. Grok users seek a truth grounded in confidence grok is right, and it's founder is right, and the people who seek truth elsewhere are wrong and ungrokly and stupid and dull.
I don’t need to access the far right echo chamber of a fucking nazi billionaire. MAGA are liars and they believe truth is "left-biased". To them "unbiased" means "fits how I want the world to be". There’s absolutely no objectivity to expect from Grok, Grokipedia, Twitter. It’s the same shit as Conservapedia.
That they attack Wikipedia because it’s somehow fake is proof enough that Grokipedia is gonna become a fascist cesspool.
You're clearly the target market for Wikipedia and as such have nothing to gain from any attempts to open your mind for a different view.
Just... go easy on all those labels you spew out so easily. It makes it hard to take anything you say seriously, as it stands now those labels seem more like a mirror.
None of these labels are false. I won’t shy away from calling a spade a spade, or a nazi a nazi. I’m tired of far right extremists trying to control the narrative while saying the most hateful shit and lying all the time. If you want to attack someone’s speech, attack MAGA. They’re the party of flat earth and antivax and "paracetamol causes autism" and "slavery was not that bad".
And stop trying to frame this as just open mindedness, this is not the case. MAGA and far right billionaires are not the open minded ones.
You calling these individuals 'nazis' devalues the term and ridicules those who fought and died to defeat the Nazis. It devalues the threat the Nazis were to those around them.
You using terms like 'nazi' and 'far right extremist' so easily to indicate those who you happen to dislike tells me you need to either grow up or need to touch grass, for real. Drop that applePhone and go outside, meet some people. Meet some of those you would call nazis and right wing extremists as well just like they meet people like you all the time.
I remember when I was a kid I childishly edited the Bible so that all occurances of 'god' or 'lord' and the like were replaced with my nickname. I then uploaded these altered copies all over the 1990s internet. This seems like pretty much the same energy.
patiently waiting for grokipedia’s article on grokipedia. it seems to not be available at the moment. i’m interested from a philosophical perspective: on the completeness of self-description. for example, here’s wikipedia on wikipedia[0]
It’s sad to see that there’s an army of engineers willing to help a literal insane person attempt to warp reality with a massive propaganda machine for a salary.
this concept has huge potential when done slowly with caution, but I bet this one ends up too politically biased one day, so far seems like the most blatant copy paste of wikipedia texts
What is the point of Grokipedia. It's an interesting experiment I guess (Really is it just a bunch of pre-rendered prompts I could ask Grok instead?), curious how much of wikipedia is in the training set. I would think if you wanted an alternate encyclopedia you would want something that AI can train against, so Grok itself can't probably bet too much value out of it. (
I guess people can choose their truth now? I suppose the US Government could require grokipedia to be chosen over wikipedia for use in schools?
I mean I guess I'll check it out for the lols but I don't see myself actually using it.
>... Musk announced xAI was building a new AI-generated online encyclopedia, to be called Grokipedia, in the midst of his criticisms of Wikipedia's ideological biases. The project was suggested and named by White House AI and crypto czar David O. Sacks at the All-In podcast conference earlier that month. According to Musk's announcement, it would be an AI-powered knowledge base designed to rival Wikipedia by addressing its perceived biases, errors, and ideological slants.
Wikipedia is a collaborative, multilingual online encyclopedia consisting of freely editable articles written and maintained primarily by volunteers worldwide, utilizing wiki software to enable open contributions under free content licenses. Launched on January 15, 2001, by American entrepreneur Jimmy Wales and philosopher Larry Sanger as a wiki-based complement to the slower-paced expert-reviewed Nupedia project, it rapidly expanded due to its accessible editing model.[1][2] Since 2003, Wikipedia has been hosted and supported by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization that provides technical infrastructure and promotes free knowledge dissemination.[3] As of October 2025, Wikipedia encompasses over 65 million articles across 357 language editions, making it one of the largest reference works ever compiled, with the English edition alone surpassing 7 million entries.[4] Renowned for its unprecedented scale, accessibility, and role in democratizing information, Wikipedia has nonetheless encountered persistent criticisms regarding factual reliability, susceptibility to vandalism and hoaxes, and systemic ideological biases—particularly a left-leaning slant in coverage of political figures and topics, as evidenced by computational analyses associating right-of-center entities with more negative sentiment and acknowledged by co-founder Sanger who has described the platform as captured by ideologically driven editors.
I think everyone wants pluralism unless they're in charge, in which case they want a world where only the people who agree with them have power.
I also note that - in theory, the purpose of wikipedia is to serve it's users. If I want to know, the example outlined in the blog post, where was George W. Bush born, I can find the answer in Wikipedia. Certainly there are places where it optimizes for it's editors but for the most part, the vastness of a website with 7 million articles implies it is for the consumers.
Uberpedia seems much more intended for the editors. I don't want to consume information, I just want to feel warm and fuzzy knowing that there are people who agree with me.
But Grokipedia doesn't sound like Curtis is describing at all, he explicitly calls out that forks (like conservipedia) don't solve these "issues".
Well, they use AI to create "content". So I guess it's fair to use AI to read it.
This is what Claude says about "Grokipedia"'s article about the Gaza war, compared to the original:
Major Differences Between Wikipedia and Grokipedia's Gaza War Articles
1. Framing and Perspective
Wikipedia: Presents the conflict with multiple perspectives, acknowledging disputed narratives. Uses neutral language like "armed conflict" and presents genocide allegations as claims made by "many human rights organizations and scholars."
Grokipedia: Frames the conflict almost entirely from an Israeli perspective. Hamas is consistently portrayed as the aggressor and sole source of civilian suffering, with Israeli actions defended as necessary self-defense.
2. Casualty Figures and Reporting
Wikipedia: Reports over 79,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza as reported figures, noting they come from the Gaza Health Ministry but presenting them as the available data.
Grokipedia: Systematically questions and undermines Palestinian casualty figures, dedicating entire sections to "Verification Challenges and Inflated Figures" and "Combatants Versus Civilians." It emphasizes that figures are "Hamas-administered" and suggests deliberate fabrication, claiming the ministry has "incentives for propagandistic reporting."
3. Treatment of Genocide Allegations
Wikipedia: States that "many human rights organizations and scholars of genocide studies and international law, including an independent UN commission, say that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, though some dispute this".
Grokipedia: Dismisses genocide allegations as part of "double standards in scrutiny" and frames them as politically motivated attacks on Israel's legitimate self-defense. The word "genocide" appears primarily in sections criticizing those who make such claims.
4. Hamas's Responsibility for Civilian Harm
Wikipedia: Mentions Hamas's use of civilian infrastructure but doesn't make it the primary explanation for Palestinian casualties.
Grokipedia: Contains extensive sections titled "Impact of Hamas Tactics on Civilian Suffering" arguing that Hamas's embedding of military assets in civilian areas is the primary cause of Palestinian civilian deaths, stating "Hamas's operational choices to a disproportionate share of Palestinian suffering, independent of Israeli response intensity."
5. Aid and Humanitarian Crisis
Wikipedia: Describes Israel's blockade cutting off necessities and causing famine, with Israel's actions as a key factor.
Grokipedia: Features a section on "Aid Distribution Failures and Diversion by Hamas," emphasizing that "Hamas diverts up to 25% of incoming aid supplies" and that aid failures stem primarily from Hamas's control and diversion rather than Israeli restrictions.
6. Language and Terminology
Wikipedia: Uses terms like "Israeli invasion," "Israeli offensive," and "Israeli strikes" in a descriptive manner.
Grokipedia: Uses emotionally charged language like Hamas's "systematic atrocities," "barbarism," and describes October 7 as involving "mass killings, sexual violence, and arson" while Israeli actions are described as "targeted operations," "precision strikes," and "necessary self-defense."
7. International Law and War Crimes
Wikipedia: Notes that "experts and human rights organizations have stated that Israel and Hamas have committed war crimes", treating both sides' alleged violations seriously.
Grokipedia: Has separate sections for "Hamas Violations" and "Israeli Actions Under International Law," with the Hamas section focusing on terrorism and war crimes, while the Israeli section emphasizes legal justification, proportionality, and compliance efforts. It includes a section on "Investigations and Double Standards in Scrutiny" arguing Israel faces biased treatment.
8. Historical Context
Wikipedia: Provides context about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the occupation, and blockade as contributing factors.
Grokipedia: Emphasizes Hamas's ideology, its 1988 charter calling for Israel's destruction, and its "rejectionism" as the primary context, with a section on "Hamas's October 7, 2023 Attack" prominently featuring "Atrocities and Hostage Abductions" with graphic details.
9. Verification and Sources
Wikipedia: Generally presents available information with citations, acknowledging when sources are disputed.
Grokipedia: Systematically questions sources that reflect negatively on Israel (especially UN and Gaza Health Ministry data) while presenting Israeli military assessments as reliable. It includes phrases like "Hamas-controlled" and "unverified" repeatedly when discussing Palestinian sources.
10. Overall Narrative
Wikipedia: Attempts to present the conflict as complex with legitimate grievances and wrongdoing on multiple sides.
Grokipedia: Presents a clear narrative of Israeli victimhood and justified response to Hamas terrorism, with Palestinian civilian suffering primarily attributed to Hamas's tactics rather than Israeli military operations.
Conclusion
The Grokipedia article reads as an explicitly pro-Israel advocacy piece rather than an encyclopedia article. It systematically frames Israeli actions in the most favorable light while questioning, undermining, or recontextualizing information that might reflect negatively on Israel. This represents a fundamental departure from Wikipedia's attempt at neutral point of view, confirming the concerns about Grokipedia presenting topics aligned with Elon Musk's political positions.
It says that science has concluded that race is a social construct, but to my knowledge african people have no neanderthal DNA, and some people in africa have "ghost DNA" of an unknown hominid, if I remember an old new scientist article correctly. How is this purely social?
To oversimplify somewhat, the reason geneticists describe "race" as a social construct is that classifying everyone into a handful of buckets created by Victorians and based on people's dermal melanin density, fails to cut reality at its joints. For a more detailed response: https://bioanth.org/about/aaba-statement-on-race-racism/
If you take various different African populations, you'll find they're genetically diverse, not one single group, and the differences within the racial categories are large compared to the differences between the racial categories.
To put it another way: dividing people up by skin colour being "black" or "white" is about as useful as doing so by their hair colour being "blonde" or "ginger" — it's not that this isn't part of the world, it is, it's just that the categorisation is functionally useless.
Am I to understand that you are unaware that "race" is "skin tone" in much of the Anglosphere? This specific mapping, and the uselessness of the categories, is the core of why "race" is seen as a social construct.
The categorical divisions that translate as "race" are different in other parts of the world, and that they are so varied demonstrates the same point: it's a socially defined categorisation system. These other divisions too are necessarily superficial, though with a language barrier as well as a cultural barrier I cannot compare their usage to the racial categories I grew up with.
I recently watched a debate where Curtis Yarvin argued that democracy is a mistake and the USA should be ruled by, quite literally, a CEO dictator [0].
My understanding is that he has the ear of JD Vance and other high-ranking Republicans. This terrifies me. The country I grew up in & love is dead if these philosophies take root.
Another thing philosopher genius and right-wing darling Curtis Yarvin recently said:
"We have only one problem. The problem is: our billionaires are n—ers. They may be rich. But they're n—er rich. The nature and function of their wealth is profoundly negrous. You can probably name exceptions. I can too. But in every way, the exceptions prove the rule"
I still don't understand what he meant by that statement, none the less, floors me each time I read it. I don't think it's for my understanding... I'm not his audience.
Amusing to see what Grokipedia thinks of various cities.
And no surprise, apartheid apologetics: https://grokipedia.com/page/Apartheid#debunking-prevailing-n...
Hilarious factual errors in https://grokipedia.com/page/Green_Line_(CTA)
> Hilarious factual errors in https://grokipedia.com/page/Green_Line_(CTA)
Impossible! That article was "Fact checked by Grok yesterday!"
I'm glad we've solved the LLM hallucination problem by fact-checking with LLMs. No way that could go wrong.
I've spotted surprising amounts of confidently-stated nonsense even in fairly neutral articles where Elon / xAI is unlikely to have a particular political slant.
Many of the most glaring errors are linked to references which either directly contradict Grokipedia's assertion or don't mention the supposed fact one way or the other.
I guess this is down to LLM hallucinations? I've not used Grok before, but the problems I spotted in 15 mins of casual browsing made it feel like the output of SoA models 2-3 years ago.
Has this been done on the cheap? I suspect that xAI should probably have prioritised quality over quantity for the initial launch.
Some time ago, there was a project called Citizendium that aimed for quality over quantity, with articles written and peer-reviewed by subject matter experts who had to use their real names and working email addresses, among other requirements. I always thought that was interesting, since the main critique of Wikipedia is its open editing model.
Citizendium is still around, though they've loosened some of the requirements in order to encourage more contributions, which seems self-defeating to me. I think they should have tried to cooperate with Wikipedia instead. The edits and opinions of subject matter experts could be a special layer on top of existing Wikipedia articles. Maybe there could be a link for various experts with highlights of sections they have peer-reviewed and a diff of what they would change about the article if those changes haven't been accepted. There could also be labels for how much expert consensus and trust there is on a given snapshot of an article or how frozen the article should be based on consensus and evidence provided by the experts. This would help users delineate whether an article contains a lot of common knowledge or whether it's more speculative or controversial.
> I suspect that xAI should probably have prioritised quality over quantity for the initial launch.
I mean, I don't think this is _for_ people who care about quality, tbh. For those, there is wikipedia. This is more of a safe space for Musk.
> I mean, I don't think this is _for_ people who care about quality, tbh. For those, there is wikipedia. This is more of a safe space for Musk.
Wikipedia isn't for those who care about quality, either. It's still quantity over quality, just not as badly as this LLM garbage.
[citation needed]
> safe space for Musk
++
> I've spotted surprising amounts of confidently-stated nonsense
I find this to be the most annoying aspect of AI. The initial Google AI results were especially bad. It is getting better, but still spout info I know is false without any warning.
Like, I find blowhards tiring enough in RL. Don't really want to deal with artificial blowhards when I'm trying to solve a problem.
I'm no apartheid apologist, but I have lived here (ZA) all my life.
Whilst I haven't read the entire article, the first paragraph is actually on-point: apartheid was shit in a lot of respects, but the schools, especially in rural areas, have dramatically declined since 1994, as have most government-run companies (with the exceptions like Eskom being bailed out every year).
You don't have to like the facts, but that's what they are.
Yeah I used to date a coloured girl from Jo'berg who'd grown up in that era and she was positive that they had some degree of prosperity and modern comforts unlike the surrounding African countries. The overwhelming flow of people voting with their feet and walking across the borders was from the surrounding countries to SA rather than vice versa.
But this is literal apartheid apologia.
Saying "advancements in black literacy and real wages during the era" as if those things are due to apartheid is offensively absurd.
How about we advance literacy and wages without, you know, all the apartheid.
By "we" I will understand that you mean Africans. Otherwise, you might be committing one (1) colonialism.
So, ask the rest of Africa how that has gone for them.
Ah yes, the use of inclusive pronouns is colonialism, but apartheid is good.
I am sure this is a sincere concern of yours rather than an attempt to mockingly use the arguments of your position's opposition.
I wonder if something called "context" and the socio-economic direction might have something to do with it.
"I think we gotta hand it to Apartheid because schools were very slightly less worse" isn't the argument you think it is. It does paint where you stand quite clearly.
Never start a sentence with "I'm no apartheid apologist, but". Nothing good can ever come out of it.
Might be a good idea to copy some example snippets. The website doesn't have a revision history and could change after you post a link.
By "apartheid apologetics" do you mean that it is factually wrong or merely that you dislike the framing? I think there is a huge difference between those two accusations.
Apologetics has a well-defined meaning. In this case, it's a bad faith deluge of out-of-context non-sequiturs posing as a coherent argument in order to defend something deplorable.
>A prevailing narrative depicts apartheid as a system of unremitting total oppression for black South Africans, yet empirical data indicate substantial advancements in black literacy and real wages during the era.
This is a false contradiction. You can oppress people and still pay them higher wages and fight illteracy.
You're describing a very charitable scenario. You might get those outcomes while still fighting against literacy and high wages.
Since a rising tide lifts all boats, in a growing economy you might see wages, literacy and health outcomes improve nominally for an oppressed group, in absolute terms, while all of these outcomes improve significantly faster for the other group(s) in the same period.
It's not presenting that as an opinion or purely facts-based though, it's documenting other narratives that exist in the world under a "Legacy and Critical Assessments" headline.
It presents a false logic like it's not A because B but B has nothing to do with A. You can say, you are not poor because you own a house but you can not claim you are not poor because you can read.
That's not another narrative that's a false contradiction
No you can't.
You also don't seem to understand "apologetics"?
So by your logic the people of the german democratic republic weren’t oppressed because they got free education and proper wages. I think the citizens saw that differently.
Hilarious factual errors in https://grokipedia.com/page/Green_Line_(CTA)
Weird that it displaying some other web site's embed/shortcodes:
> ![Cottage Grove-bound Green Line train approaching Roosevelt station][float-right] The Green Line utilizes primarily 5000-series railcars
Strange indeed. That feels like it shouldn't happen at all.
As a Green Line enjoyer, I'm not enough of an expert to spot the factual errors. The article does seem a bit much though. I've noticed a lot of the Grokipedia articles just go on. If I wanted to know that much about the Green Line I could probably just buy a book on it.
Among the more obvious errors are short runs to UIC/Halsted and a northwestern trajectory along Lake St from the loop.
But yes, it also suffers from attention to irrelevant detail.
Keeping with the Green theme the page on Green's Functions (https://grokipedia.com/page/Green's_function) sounds like it's having a stroke
The problem I have with most AI output like this is that it's just a huge wall of text that doesn't really say anything.
While ChatGPT tells me it's unable to access the linked page directly from Grokipedia (lolol), I was able to download the content, copy/paste it into ChatGPT, and ask it to fact check it. I think I will do this more often, with other sites (and other models) as well, going forward, as Chat is able to categorize statements as being correct vs. misleading vs. flat out wrong.
> The article does seem a bit much though. I've noticed a lot of the Grokipedia articles just go on.
And yes, that's what I'm noticing as well. There is a clear attempt to establish a narrative.
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Do you mean Elon Musk? Bryanston High School and Pretoria Boys High School were all-white, so any beating he received (I'm assuming you're referring to the same savage incident Kimball was) was at the hands of other white boys.
So, being attacked and nearly killed by other white boys does not validate his opinions on apartheid.
Ah yes, America. The place where you get beaten to death for being a fascist asshole. It is well known. Famously.
You can select text, and send factual errors to be fixed. If you found something wrong in that article you should submit some fixes.
Why would you do free work for a company which is planning to profit from your labor? Wikipedia/Wikimedia is a non-profit. All of their money pays for real expenses instead of whatever vanity project Musk has decided is necessary to sell xAI to the masses.
"All of their money pays for real expenses"
Not true, nearly 30% of their budget goes to partisan activism with DEI related initiatives.
"Supporting equity represents the second largest part of our programmatic work"
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_...
that's a real expense. who else on earth should be doing DEI initiatives if not the goddamn chroniclers of human experience?
Definitely not an encyclopedia that is supposed to be objective.
How do you think you can reach anything close to objectivity without aiming for diversity and inclusion? What do you think will happen to an encyclopaedia which is mostly run by Elon fans? We already had that at one of the extremes (and the echos are still here) from the time medicine just didn't bother to study women.
When you grow up to be an adult, you will understand that "objectivity"is a fiction.
And an encyclopedia can absolutely do that and still present factual information based on actual research and facts.
You know that just because a lady has blue hair or a person has colored skin does NOT mean that they can't be right about something or do good research. Right? You do know it, right?
Because in the end, when you cry about DEI (whatever you believe it to mean), this is the implication that comes with it: that you can't imagine for a second that anyone who doesn't look exactly like you could ever do anything competently. I genuinely wonder if you've ever thought about that for more than half a second after you closed that Charlie Kirk video.
If you do believe it, fair enough. I guess you're allowed to believe it. But at least be honest about it.
[flagged]
I really don't mean to be rude but you sound insane. You have spent too much time in whatever insulated twitter space you're in, and you've ended up sounding like an insane person! Please go do independent research on these topics, so you can try not saying things like "DEI virtue signaling white knights". You just strung together 3 separate buzzwords (buzzphrase?)
> You and other DEI virtue signaling white knights are engaging in the worst racism of all.
A comment like this is completely unacceptable on HN. The guidelines make it clear that we expect better than this here:
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.
Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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Because truth is inconvenient to their world view. Better to build up the world and facts as you imagine them to be than risk learning something that contradicts deeply held beliefs.
Can you explain how that applies in this specific case? Because I can't come up with a scenario where you suggesting corrections to Grokipedia does any good.
If you're correcting a lie that they actively want to spread (e.g. the "White Genocide" lie) they obviously won't accept your correction.
If you're correcting a lie that they don't care about (hypothetical example: "ripe strawberries are blue") they might accept your correction, but that makes it less likely that an uninformed visitor will see through their lies.
So the best case scenario is that literally nothing happens, and the worst case one is that you're indirectly helping their cause. What am I missing?
Let me rephrase. The type of person who would submit "corrections" to grokopedia are the types of people who are typically interested in supporting its ideological outcomes. Because they have close enough to the same world-views. The same types of people who say female instead of women outside of a medical context or complain all the time about wokeness invading their favorite media. Someone who suggests that reporting errors to grokopedia would do any good are firmly in the camp that believes in the garbage it's trying to perpetuate. That's why they support it and why they think others should submit corrections.
They know that this is being built with an explicitly partisan bias, but also know liberal folk are super weak to certain types of attacks. Attacks like "be fair" and "you can submit feedback". They are explicitly playing on liberal weaknesses all while leaning into the blatantly false representation of history. They will say "you can't judge it since you haven't provided feedback to help correct it" but that was never their intention and they just say those things because it confuses liberals. And I know I've overused "liberals" here. That's absolutely my bias slipping in. But they are the most credulous folks who will constantly try to reach across the aisle to blatant bad faith actors. If there's a better term for this, I haven't learned it in my 20+ years of being politically active in the US.
Not that I think it does any good on a site like this, but I vouched for your original comment. I completely agree with you. I was also raised in the cult and have first hand experience with many people still in it. I know why they would support and lend effort to things like these. They support all sorts of awful shit.
Do you think Wikimedia doesn't profit off of the contributions people make to Wikipedia?
>pays for real expenses
Only a small percentage of donations do.
>instead of whatever vanity project
Anytime the topic of Wikimedia donations come up you will see people complaining about their vanity projects too, wishing they could donate towards wikipedia itself.
If you are happy to work for a for-profit corporation w/o any financial compensation then you are more than welcome to do that. Seems a bit irrational to me but that's just my opinion.
> If you are happy to work for a for-profit corporation w/o any financial compensation then you are more than welcome to do that. Seems a bit irrational to me but that's just my opinion.
Not the person you are replying to, and it is a bit tangential, but you just basically described a solid chunk of open-source software work.
I am not mocking open-source software work, I am mocking how reductionist the parent comment was, because their logic often applies to volunteer open-source software work as well. And, I suspect, on HN we can agree that volunteer open-source software work can often be worth doing, regardless of how "irrational" it is or how much for-profit corporations could benefit from it.
I don't think this is an accurate comparison. Working on open source software means you are contributing to that software, which yes may be used by for profit companies. This is more analogous to contributing to Wikipedia, which is then used by for profit companies like Grok, than it is contributing to Grok products directly, which cannot be leveraged by other tools in this ecosystem (afaik).
To me it's no worse than working for a "nonprofit" without financial compensation.
[dead]
This. They could use some competition for sure. Spending billions on simple html website doesn't make any sense.
> If you found something wrong in that article you should submit some fixes.
Why? This site isn't run by people who are interested in factual accuracy.
If they think Wikipedia articles are inaccurate, they could always propose changes and have a proper discussion with the rest of the contributors. Grok was trained on Wikipedia so realistically this is just a jumbled regurgitation of Wikipedia articles blended with other sources from across the web without the usual source vetting process that Wikipedia uses.
This is a politically motivated side project being run by the worlds richest man, and frankly I doubt many people are interested in helping him create his own padded version of reality.
the pursuit of truth doesn’t work by keeping so-called falsehoods up while a debate rages on about their veracity. especially given that there’s no indication on wikipedia of contested facts. i may not be involved in the debate but i’d love some indication and perhaps a hyperlink to where the debate is happening.
the proper discussion you want will never happen. it’s an exercise in persuasion ie trying to move people from one entrenched position to another, and there’s nothing more impossible than that. the only way out is to offer competition, and that’s what grokipedia seems to be doing. check the history of christianity, heresy, reformation. when the catholic church set itself up as the object to be won over persuasively it successfully stifled doctrinal progress. until the intolerants exited.
> i may not be involved in the debate but i’d love some indication and perhaps a hyperlink to where the debate is happening.
Are you familiar with Wikipedia at all? Here, for anyone who is unfamiliar, let's take a look at an example page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid - this is guaranteed to have controversial ongoing discussions given the political climate.
Note how at the top of the page right now there are two large boxes discussing ongoing changes to the article - one indicating that it is considered too long, and another indicating that some of the content is being split into a separate draft [0] page. Both of these boxes include links to the relevant pages and policies.
The first box, indicating that the article is too long and drifting off topic, includes a direct link to the Talk page [1]. Note that this page is also linked at the top of the article, and that goes for every single article on wikipedia.
That talk page is where the proper discussion that I want happens - out in the open. Note that you can even reply to talking points without needing an account. Note that replies and criticisms are reproduced and readable directly on the page.
This is what open collaboration and truth seeking looks like. "Grokipedia" requires you to create an account and funnel a suggested correction into an black box. It's the equivalent of a suggestions box in an HR office. On wikipedia, the discussion is out in the open, while the grok version just says "Fact checked by Grok" at the top, like we're supposed to blindly trust that.
Which of these is modeling open collaboration, and which of these is just deferring to priest grok, again? The grok page gives no indication that alternative interpretations exist, they don't show any indication that sections are being criticized as inaccurate. Comparing Wikipedia to the catholic church like this is divorced from reality, doubly so in comparison to this grok project.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:History_of_South_Africa_... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Apartheid
> especially given that there’s no indication on wikipedia of contested facts
Have you ever been to a Wikipedia Talk Page? Basically every page you can find will have some people arguing about what should be placed on the page on the Talk page.
> i may not be involved in the debate but i’d love some indication and perhaps a hyperlink to where the debate is happening.
I think that's the "Talk" pages that go with the entry pages.
Huh? It's fairly common to see notices at the top of a page that something is under dispute for NPOV, a current event, subject of an edit war, etc.
Why on earth would anyone do free work for Elon Musk, of all people?
Clout.
With whom? “Big Balls”?
What clout?
Have you opened twitter recently?
No, why do you ask?
eh that requires making an account, which I'd prefer not to.
You won’t even do that to correct the apartheid apologetics that you pointed out?
I mean, given who runs it, one would assume the apartheid apologetics are by design. I can think of few things more pointless than trying to correct Musk’s safe space.
If someone disagrees with the mission of Grokipedia, not contributing is the correct play.
Who decides which fixes will be used? Seems unlikely that you or I could correct anything.
[flagged]
Looking up the Republican Party "controversies" vs the Democratic Party "controversies" should let you know exactly what this projects intentions are.
That being said, my biggest issue with it is how Grok is writing everything. It's like it is trying REALLY hard to be neutral but it's conversational training slips up and starts "spicing" things up a little. For example on Elon's article:
"...at age 12 in 1983, developing a space-themed video game called Blastar, which he sold to PC and Office Technology magazine for approximately $500. *This early entrepreneurial act foreshadowed Musk's later pursuits in technology and business*."
Sentences like that are designed to subtly bring emotion to certain topics.
I feel like ‘Wikipedia for stupid people’ is already quite a crowded market, tbh.
Silly glitch on the page: https://grokipedia.com/page/Sri_Lanka
Comparing the Elon Musk articles between Grokipedia and Wikipedia, the first factual difference is with Tesla:
>..Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 as CEO and chief engineer, Tesla in 2003 ... (grok)
>Musk joined the automaker Tesla as an early investor in 2004 and became its CEO ... (wikipedia)
I think Wikipedia is more accurate on that one.
You're right, that's definitely a mistake. Though to be fair, the same article gets it right if you scroll down to the Tesla section. The article on Tesla also gets it right.
Kinda funny how Grokipedia looks like an encyclopedia but clearly talks like an LLM. Lots of confidence, not so much evidence.
It’s not that it’s trying to lie — it’s just how these models work. They’re great at making language sound right, not necessarily be right. Feels more like a mirror of what the internet “thinks” than an actual source of truth.
If they framed it that way — more experiment, less Wikipedia — I think people would take it a lot better.
I suggest that anyone interested compare the content of Wikipedia and Grokpedia articles on topics that interest them, as well as the differences in sources between these two projects. Of course, only if someone finds this research interesting.
Yeah nah, just compare the Grokipedia entries for the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. I don't think one could get any more weasel-worded if they tried.
An utter waste of everyone's time, money, effort, and manpower.
This is a nice touch:
“ In recent decades, the party has prioritized identity-based equity policies, climate interventions, and expansive regulatory frameworks, yet empirical critiques highlight correlations between its governance in major cities and elevated crime rates, homelessness persistence, and educational stagnation amid softened enforcement and redistribution efforts.[7][8]”
Which doesn’t link to anything supporting the negative assertions.
No search results for Republicans Party, which I assume means it said something Musk didn’t like.
empirical
It really likes that word, and seems to use it a lot to justify displaying its owner's views.
“Oh, it’s EMPIRICAL, my mistake.”
Not so fast! Heard u liked utterly whitewashed nonsense?
https://grokipedia.com/page/Republican_Party_(United_States)
The search is astonishingly bad
I compared Grokipedia's entry on the band "American Football" [^0] to Wikipedia's [^1] and they are _almost_ the same. While Grok does attribute Wikipedia in the footer, they added this to their article:
> On July 2, 2025, the band released their first live album, American Football (Live in Los Angeles), recorded during the anniversary shows at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles with guest appearances by Ethel Cain and M.A.G.S., accompanied by a concert film documenting the performance.
If you go to the source [^4] for this claim, you'll see that:
- They dropped a film of the same name alongside the album release.
- The "guest appearances" are actually interviews in the film.
- The entry excluded the female artist that was cited in the source.
I, then, compared Grok's entry on United Airlines [^2] against Wikipedia's [^3]. Grok's seemed to be autogenerated this time.
I skipped to the section on MileagePlus since I know a bit about how that program works. It has a few inaccuracies:
- It only lists the four published MileagePlus tiers: Silver, Gold, Platinum and 1K and omits the two unpublished, but well-known, tiers above 1K: Global Services and Chairman's Circle.
- The 2025 premier qualifying point (PQP) redemptions are actually from 2024.
- Some of the language it uses wouldn't meet Wikipedia's editorial standards, like the nebulous "priority everything" benefit from obtaining 1K status (whose source is unclear, as neither of the two sources cited use this phrase).
- "The current logo features a stylized "U" incorporating a world map outline, symbolizing global connectivity" That's United's old logo. They absorbed Continental's logo when they merged.
- The article opens with the claim that United has 1018 aircraft in its fleet as of APR 2025, then, later, states that it has 1,001 active aircraft as of OCT 2025. The source for the 1,001 figure states 1,055 on the page with 1,003 in revenue service.
So I wouldn't use Grokipedia as a source for anything, just like Wikipedia, though I'm sure some will try.
[^0]: https://archive.is/twkBP (might not be available yet; it's still getting archived)
[^1]: https://archive.ph/lOkdT
[^2]: https://archive.ph/EnN2T
[^3]: https://archive.ph/uooNW
[^4]: https://pitchfork.com/news/american-football-to-share-new-li...
I have tried briefly checking two pages about Russo-Ukrainian War. First of all, hilariously Elonopedia starts from 1917-1921 war and goes on about it for multiple paragraphs, then suddenly switches to the 2014 invasion. And no, it's not in the "history" section, it's a main starting section.
Then actual description of the war is much more biased in the Elonopedia. In every case possible the invasion is presented as "both sides are guilty". I wouldn't list the examples, anyone can do it. Too much effort imo.
Then I checked Russo-Georgian War articles, this time at least the century and war was correct in Elonopedia. But again, right from the start it is incredibly biased towards Russia. Elonopedia completely omits the initial attack make bu Russian forces at 01 Aug 2008, skip a week and presents war as if it was initiated by Georgians, following Kremlin propaganda line. Didn't both reading full article.
All in all it is 100% as I have expected reading the news about this supposedly "unbiased" encyclopedia - it's a LLM-generated slop, with no human fact checking (mixing two different century separated wars into one article is telling), and it is essentially a far-right propaganda outlet. It will follow Goebbels rule of mixing 60% or truth with 40% of lies, to prime up unsophisticated readers towards Elon's and rightwing crowd goals.
>Then I checked Russo-Georgian War articles, this time at least the century and war was correct in Elonopedia. But again, right from the start it is incredibly biased towards Russia. Elonopedia completely omits the initial attack make bu Russian forces at 01 Aug 2008, skip a week and presents war as if it was initiated by Georgians, following Kremlin propaganda line.
The EU isn't exactly known for being Kremlin propagandists. Here is the link to the 700-page international fact-finding report they published in 2009: https://www.echr.coe.int/documents/d/echr/hudoc_38263_08_Ann...
This Radio Free Europe article is a decent summary of the report: https://www.rferl.org/a/EU_Report_On_2008_War_Tilts_Against_...
Why do you think the international team of Europeans would leave out something like an August 1st attack by Russian forces? Why would the US-funded media outlet for Europe (RFE/RFL) parrot the report's position that the conflict was overwhelmingly Georgia's fault?
"The Mission is not in a position to consider as sufficiently substantiated the Georgian claim concerning a large-scale Russian military incursion into South Ossetia before 8 August 2008."
Can you share the evidence you have that supports your position that Russia attacked on 01 August? The EU concluded that was unsubstantiated.
EU in 2008 was extremely biased towards Russia too, the appeasement was going full tilt, just like the tasty gas in the pipeline, so they are not exactly impartial party. I'm generally inclined to believe a victim country, not the invading empire, but you do you. And inconclusive doesn't mean definitely ruled out. Can be lack of evidence for either outcome.
And if you are that suspicious of that date, we can pick another. In 1992 Russia invaded independent Georgia (among other countries), so any action was towards occupation force, in defense.
PS: and if look throughout the history, we will find very few cases, when a smaller country attacks much bigger one especially after already losing at least one fight against them. And the opposite is true, there are hundreds and thousands of cases when a bigger country attacks the smaller one, especially after already winning once against them. And countless times when a bigger country lied about pretext for such attack, to be seen as not crazy murderers outright, but muddy waters and sow doubt. Russia succeeded it seems.
I’m doing so, and it’s not that different? Grok gets to the point a bit more, and has a bit more of a bent, but say the Wikipedia page on Communism doesn’t bury the lede on the negatives of communism. Curious if this will end up pointing out that in the end Wikipedia isn’t that bad.
Grok’s pages on the prosecutions of Trump are definetly biased.
I’m probably not the core audience for this though. I use Wikipedia as a reference, not to tell me what to think.
I guess this poses an interesting question: if Wikipedia was being created today, would it be a human- edited encyclopedia or would they just resort to AI because it’s easier? It makes me wonder if people will shy away from hard problems and just take the easy path, resulting in a shallower and less useful product to society.
Without Wikipedia's corpus, today's AI might not even be possible.
Oh yes it would be possible. It would probably be less biased as well. Don't forget that these models are trained on libraries of congress worth of books as well as things like Wikipedia. Given that Wikipedia - like any encyclopedia - does not (or should not, at least) contain original research but only refers to existing sources and given that the companies which train these models have their ways to access those sources - sometimes illegally but still - all Wikipedia adds to the mix is a biased interpretation of the original research.
I have to wonder, obviously the grok version exists just to push Elons politics and take control over the “truth”. But it seems like an LLM could take over. Considering Wikipedia is not meant to contain any original facts, just a collection of references to external information.
If you’ve tried OpenAI’s Deep Research or similar tools, you’ll know they pull far more info than Wikipedia. But if you’re an expert, you’ll quickly spot errors since the breadth is huge but the depth and accuracy are only so-so.
For non-experts just exploring new topics, it’s still perfectly useful. Grokipedia probably uses a similar search, verify, summarize workflow, so it naturally inherits mistakes from the internet, which isn’t really an LLM problem.
Grok is just the first to make it public, and other AI companies could easily build their own synthetic data Wikipedias, and some probably already have.
Why build a synthetic data Wikipedia when Wikipedia exists? Except to push some political point like Grokipedia seems to be for.
Wikipedia’s coverage looks broad, but it still can’t keep up with how fast knowledge grows. And the gaps are even more severe in non-English versions of Wikipedia.
I tried it briefly. Its an ok initial start with significant flaws - while it counters Wikipedia's (editorial demographic) bias on cultural topics it seems to do so by assuming the style of a bland, unanalytical reporter, accepting the self-framing of the subject and relaying it at turgid length.
An example: the classical liberal writer Douglas Murray is one of the many targets on Wikipedia of ludicrous "far right" style categorizations; nevertheless its correct to attempt to draw out his own alignments and biases especially where he writes provocatively in areas with cultural tensions.
Grokipedia seems to smooth over those tensions almost in denial while Wikipedia stirs them up via exaggeration. I don't think either are helpful or honest.
https://grokipedia.com/page/Douglas_Murray_(author)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Murray_(author)
Seems kind of spase still? I tried looking up Little house on the parire and it turned up the TV show but not the book series.
Reflections on Trusting Trust is mentioned in Ken Thompson's page but when I searched for it he wasn't part of the results.
It's yet another scam/beta product. He's testing the waters to see if it can be turned into a commercial project.
I'm not sure it isn't primarily to further the post-truth world where popularity trumps facts
Same story for Twitter
If he gets a $1T pay package, cost centers for the larger goal are rounding errors
Putting aside my political concerns about Elon Musk starting an encyclopedia, I thought I'd look up the indie rock band Beat Happening as a tester. My first thoughts were that it was very impressive. There's a confused garbled image link (that appears as text) but otherwise it looks convincing:
> Beat Happening was an American indie pop band formed in Olympia, Washington, in 1982 by vocalist and guitarist Calvin Johnson, guitarist Heather Lewis, and drummer Bret Lunsford.
Then I though, hey let's see what wikipedia says, here it is:
> Beat Happening was an American indie pop band formed in Olympia, Washington in 1982. Calvin Johnson, Heather Lewis, and Bret Lunsford were the band's continual members.
I came away less impressed- grokipedia's opening paragraph reads to me like a very minor rephrase. I assume wikipedia is in the training data here and being spat back out?
In fact going back to the garbled image link:
> 
Even this seems to be a reference to the wilipedia image at the top of the article titled:
> File:Beat Happening (1988 Rough Trade publicity photo).jpg
What a collosal waste of resources? Is anyone under the impression that this kind of "rephrased and lesss acurate wikipedia" is going to be helpful?
The point is rewriting the articles that matter to Musk. Nobody cares about the rest of the articles, they are there just to justify Grokipedia being an encyclopedia at all.
Thanks for sharing, added to my blocklist!
May I ask why you directly added it to your blocklist? I can see several potential reasons people block sites and I wonder which is the leading one for you.
You can't chose an identity based off the illuminati trilogy and expect people to enter a politically neutral discussion with you surely?
The entry premise for wikipedia is that "it's a discussion" is a valid meta state for an article. Do you think that entry state is a valid condition for a machine generated encyclopedia where its guiding principle is "to adjust for systematic left bias in the world view" ? (my words)
clearly, one engages with the world as it aligns to ones world view. To be continually at odds with reality as you perceive it is both tiring and ultimately unsatisfying. Grok users seek a truth grounded in confidence grok is right, and it's founder is right, and the people who seek truth elsewhere are wrong and ungrokly and stupid and dull.
Fnord!
I don’t need to access the far right echo chamber of a fucking nazi billionaire. MAGA are liars and they believe truth is "left-biased". To them "unbiased" means "fits how I want the world to be". There’s absolutely no objectivity to expect from Grok, Grokipedia, Twitter. It’s the same shit as Conservapedia.
That they attack Wikipedia because it’s somehow fake is proof enough that Grokipedia is gonna become a fascist cesspool.
You're clearly the target market for Wikipedia and as such have nothing to gain from any attempts to open your mind for a different view.
Just... go easy on all those labels you spew out so easily. It makes it hard to take anything you say seriously, as it stands now those labels seem more like a mirror.
None of these labels are false. I won’t shy away from calling a spade a spade, or a nazi a nazi. I’m tired of far right extremists trying to control the narrative while saying the most hateful shit and lying all the time. If you want to attack someone’s speech, attack MAGA. They’re the party of flat earth and antivax and "paracetamol causes autism" and "slavery was not that bad".
And stop trying to frame this as just open mindedness, this is not the case. MAGA and far right billionaires are not the open minded ones.
You calling these individuals 'nazis' devalues the term and ridicules those who fought and died to defeat the Nazis. It devalues the threat the Nazis were to those around them.
You using terms like 'nazi' and 'far right extremist' so easily to indicate those who you happen to dislike tells me you need to either grow up or need to touch grass, for real. Drop that applePhone and go outside, meet some people. Meet some of those you would call nazis and right wing extremists as well just like they meet people like you all the time.
Grow up.
I remember when I was a kid I childishly edited the Bible so that all occurances of 'god' or 'lord' and the like were replaced with my nickname. I then uploaded these altered copies all over the 1990s internet. This seems like pretty much the same energy.
Grokipedia at home: https://github.com/abhishekbasu/localwiki
patiently waiting for grokipedia’s article on grokipedia. it seems to not be available at the moment. i’m interested from a philosophical perspective: on the completeness of self-description. for example, here’s wikipedia on wikipedia[0]
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia
There is already a Wikipedia article about Grokipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grokipedia
See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45424533
Does anyone know why replies are disabled in that other submission?
It’s sad to see that there’s an army of engineers willing to help a literal insane person attempt to warp reality with a massive propaganda machine for a salary.
this concept has huge potential when done slowly with caution, but I bet this one ends up too politically biased one day, so far seems like the most blatant copy paste of wikipedia texts
What is the point of Grokipedia. It's an interesting experiment I guess (Really is it just a bunch of pre-rendered prompts I could ask Grok instead?), curious how much of wikipedia is in the training set. I would think if you wanted an alternate encyclopedia you would want something that AI can train against, so Grok itself can't probably bet too much value out of it. (
I guess people can choose their truth now? I suppose the US Government could require grokipedia to be chosen over wikipedia for use in schools?
I mean I guess I'll check it out for the lols but I don't see myself actually using it.
>... Musk announced xAI was building a new AI-generated online encyclopedia, to be called Grokipedia, in the midst of his criticisms of Wikipedia's ideological biases. The project was suggested and named by White House AI and crypto czar David O. Sacks at the All-In podcast conference earlier that month. According to Musk's announcement, it would be an AI-powered knowledge base designed to rival Wikipedia by addressing its perceived biases, errors, and ideological slants.
(source Wikipedia)
Let the battle... commence.
Wikipedia is a collaborative, multilingual online encyclopedia consisting of freely editable articles written and maintained primarily by volunteers worldwide, utilizing wiki software to enable open contributions under free content licenses. Launched on January 15, 2001, by American entrepreneur Jimmy Wales and philosopher Larry Sanger as a wiki-based complement to the slower-paced expert-reviewed Nupedia project, it rapidly expanded due to its accessible editing model.[1][2] Since 2003, Wikipedia has been hosted and supported by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization that provides technical infrastructure and promotes free knowledge dissemination.[3] As of October 2025, Wikipedia encompasses over 65 million articles across 357 language editions, making it one of the largest reference works ever compiled, with the English edition alone surpassing 7 million entries.[4] Renowned for its unprecedented scale, accessibility, and role in democratizing information, Wikipedia has nonetheless encountered persistent criticisms regarding factual reliability, susceptibility to vandalism and hoaxes, and systemic ideological biases—particularly a left-leaning slant in coverage of political figures and topics, as evidenced by computational analyses associating right-of-center entities with more negative sentiment and acknowledged by co-founder Sanger who has described the platform as captured by ideologically driven editors.
(source Grokipedia)
https://grokipedia.com/page/Wikipedia
I compared the articles on HN and the Grok one was much longer but waffled on quite a lot like that paragraph.
Overall I think I'd read the Wikipedia one on the whole.
This doesn’t really answer my question.
https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2007/08/uberfact-ul... would be an answer form an old school blogger
I think everyone wants pluralism unless they're in charge, in which case they want a world where only the people who agree with them have power.
I also note that - in theory, the purpose of wikipedia is to serve it's users. If I want to know, the example outlined in the blog post, where was George W. Bush born, I can find the answer in Wikipedia. Certainly there are places where it optimizes for it's editors but for the most part, the vastness of a website with 7 million articles implies it is for the consumers.
Uberpedia seems much more intended for the editors. I don't want to consume information, I just want to feel warm and fuzzy knowing that there are people who agree with me.
But Grokipedia doesn't sound like Curtis is describing at all, he explicitly calls out that forks (like conservipedia) don't solve these "issues".
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very cool, this is wonderful news. I hope it continue to grow and becomes a sort of "Multivac" of sorts free of corruption seen on wikipedia.
No entry on tianmen square either.
Spell it correctly and you'll find it:
https://grokipedia.com/page/Tiananmen_Square
Does the world need a Mecha-Hitler version of Wikipedia?
It will get better. This is only version 0.1.
glances at iOS
Are you certain that iterative versioning indicates any real qualitative progress?
You’d rather the 1.0 release of iOS?
I didn't say it was an inverse correlation. I said that version numbers aren't corollary to quality or effort.
So will Wikipedia.
I hope so, but that would require of rolling back some changes they made that led to ideological biases, which would be fought tooth and nail.
Having to give credence to incorrect theories and lies would not, in fact, be an improvement.
Well, they use AI to create "content". So I guess it's fair to use AI to read it. This is what Claude says about "Grokipedia"'s article about the Gaza war, compared to the original:
Major Differences Between Wikipedia and Grokipedia's Gaza War Articles
1. Framing and Perspective
Wikipedia: Presents the conflict with multiple perspectives, acknowledging disputed narratives. Uses neutral language like "armed conflict" and presents genocide allegations as claims made by "many human rights organizations and scholars."
Grokipedia: Frames the conflict almost entirely from an Israeli perspective. Hamas is consistently portrayed as the aggressor and sole source of civilian suffering, with Israeli actions defended as necessary self-defense.
2. Casualty Figures and Reporting
Wikipedia: Reports over 79,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza as reported figures, noting they come from the Gaza Health Ministry but presenting them as the available data.
Grokipedia: Systematically questions and undermines Palestinian casualty figures, dedicating entire sections to "Verification Challenges and Inflated Figures" and "Combatants Versus Civilians." It emphasizes that figures are "Hamas-administered" and suggests deliberate fabrication, claiming the ministry has "incentives for propagandistic reporting."
3. Treatment of Genocide Allegations
Wikipedia: States that "many human rights organizations and scholars of genocide studies and international law, including an independent UN commission, say that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, though some dispute this".
Grokipedia: Dismisses genocide allegations as part of "double standards in scrutiny" and frames them as politically motivated attacks on Israel's legitimate self-defense. The word "genocide" appears primarily in sections criticizing those who make such claims.
4. Hamas's Responsibility for Civilian Harm
Wikipedia: Mentions Hamas's use of civilian infrastructure but doesn't make it the primary explanation for Palestinian casualties.
Grokipedia: Contains extensive sections titled "Impact of Hamas Tactics on Civilian Suffering" arguing that Hamas's embedding of military assets in civilian areas is the primary cause of Palestinian civilian deaths, stating "Hamas's operational choices to a disproportionate share of Palestinian suffering, independent of Israeli response intensity."
5. Aid and Humanitarian Crisis
Wikipedia: Describes Israel's blockade cutting off necessities and causing famine, with Israel's actions as a key factor.
Grokipedia: Features a section on "Aid Distribution Failures and Diversion by Hamas," emphasizing that "Hamas diverts up to 25% of incoming aid supplies" and that aid failures stem primarily from Hamas's control and diversion rather than Israeli restrictions.
6. Language and Terminology
Wikipedia: Uses terms like "Israeli invasion," "Israeli offensive," and "Israeli strikes" in a descriptive manner.
Grokipedia: Uses emotionally charged language like Hamas's "systematic atrocities," "barbarism," and describes October 7 as involving "mass killings, sexual violence, and arson" while Israeli actions are described as "targeted operations," "precision strikes," and "necessary self-defense."
7. International Law and War Crimes
Wikipedia: Notes that "experts and human rights organizations have stated that Israel and Hamas have committed war crimes", treating both sides' alleged violations seriously.
Grokipedia: Has separate sections for "Hamas Violations" and "Israeli Actions Under International Law," with the Hamas section focusing on terrorism and war crimes, while the Israeli section emphasizes legal justification, proportionality, and compliance efforts. It includes a section on "Investigations and Double Standards in Scrutiny" arguing Israel faces biased treatment.
8. Historical Context
Wikipedia: Provides context about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the occupation, and blockade as contributing factors.
Grokipedia: Emphasizes Hamas's ideology, its 1988 charter calling for Israel's destruction, and its "rejectionism" as the primary context, with a section on "Hamas's October 7, 2023 Attack" prominently featuring "Atrocities and Hostage Abductions" with graphic details.
9. Verification and Sources
Wikipedia: Generally presents available information with citations, acknowledging when sources are disputed.
Grokipedia: Systematically questions sources that reflect negatively on Israel (especially UN and Gaza Health Ministry data) while presenting Israeli military assessments as reliable. It includes phrases like "Hamas-controlled" and "unverified" repeatedly when discussing Palestinian sources.
10. Overall Narrative
Wikipedia: Attempts to present the conflict as complex with legitimate grievances and wrongdoing on multiple sides.
Grokipedia: Presents a clear narrative of Israeli victimhood and justified response to Hamas terrorism, with Palestinian civilian suffering primarily attributed to Hamas's tactics rather than Israeli military operations.
Conclusion
The Grokipedia article reads as an explicitly pro-Israel advocacy piece rather than an encyclopedia article. It systematically frames Israeli actions in the most favorable light while questioning, undermining, or recontextualizing information that might reflect negatively on Israel. This represents a fundamental departure from Wikipedia's attempt at neutral point of view, confirming the concerns about Grokipedia presenting topics aligned with Elon Musk's political positions.
“sorry, you have been blocked”
i recommend urban dictionary as replacement:
https://www.urbandictionary.com/
Based on a cursory glance at both, Urban Dictionary is more accurate.
I got blocked too. No ideas other than a faulty Cloudflare setup.
same error here - they probably crashed because of inadequate server capacity
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It says that science has concluded that race is a social construct, but to my knowledge african people have no neanderthal DNA, and some people in africa have "ghost DNA" of an unknown hominid, if I remember an old new scientist article correctly. How is this purely social?
To oversimplify somewhat, the reason geneticists describe "race" as a social construct is that classifying everyone into a handful of buckets created by Victorians and based on people's dermal melanin density, fails to cut reality at its joints. For a more detailed response: https://bioanth.org/about/aaba-statement-on-race-racism/
If you take various different African populations, you'll find they're genetically diverse, not one single group, and the differences within the racial categories are large compared to the differences between the racial categories.
To put it another way: dividing people up by skin colour being "black" or "white" is about as useful as doing so by their hair colour being "blonde" or "ginger" — it's not that this isn't part of the world, it is, it's just that the categorisation is functionally useless.
I didn't mention skin tone.
Am I to understand that you are unaware that "race" is "skin tone" in much of the Anglosphere? This specific mapping, and the uselessness of the categories, is the core of why "race" is seen as a social construct.
The categorical divisions that translate as "race" are different in other parts of the world, and that they are so varied demonstrates the same point: it's a socially defined categorisation system. These other divisions too are necessarily superficial, though with a language barrier as well as a cultural barrier I cannot compare their usage to the racial categories I grew up with.
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Getting the cloudflare error as well.
Nevertheless this reminds me of an old Curtis Yarvin post on his proposal for a meta-wikipedia. "Uberfact". He's not everyone's cup of tea but I quite enjoy this article of his - https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2007/08/uberfact-ul...
I recently watched a debate where Curtis Yarvin argued that democracy is a mistake and the USA should be ruled by, quite literally, a CEO dictator [0].
My understanding is that he has the ear of JD Vance and other high-ranking Republicans. This terrifies me. The country I grew up in & love is dead if these philosophies take root.
[0]: https://youtu.be/irc6creOFGs
"The government should be run like a business" has been the belief in certain circles that predate the Internet, even.
Yarvin is a fascist who would prefer if I was shot in the head. "Not everyone's cup of tea" is not exactly how I'd describe it.
Another thing philosopher genius and right-wing darling Curtis Yarvin recently said:
"We have only one problem. The problem is: our billionaires are n—ers. They may be rich. But they're n—er rich. The nature and function of their wealth is profoundly negrous. You can probably name exceptions. I can too. But in every way, the exceptions prove the rule"
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:sefgphqp2xqwh2hawaixykwz/po...
I still don't understand what he meant by that statement, none the less, floors me each time I read it. I don't think it's for my understanding... I'm not his audience.
It seems intellectually vacuous. But I guess it's edgy and makes some people feel goood?
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