In a recent video on his YouTube channel, Charles Hoskinson expresses all his indignation and claims:
“There is a commercial censorship taking place on Wikipedia”.
A very strong statement by the founder of Cardano which publicly highlights an issue that is very much felt by the community: censorship by centralized services.
With a tweet, he indicates the censorship of an article specifying the characteristics of Plutus, regarded as spam by a revision.
An example of commercial censorship. Mentioning Plutus is considered IOHK Blockchain Spam in its creator's biography!? pic.twitter.com/7beRrksHsJ
— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) March 24, 2020
Plutus is a purely functional programming language, useful for the definition of smart contracts on Cardano.
Everything started from the attempt to insert one of the most important research papers in the world of Proof of Stake in the section dedicated to PoS on Wikipedia. A paradox that denotes a criticality of the revision system.
Wikipedia commercial censorship. The single most cited proof of stake paper can't be mentioned in the PoS article!? https://t.co/QUe5Ma0i7c
— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) March 24, 2020
Charles’ indignation is caused by the system’s incredible ability to exclude everything that originates from the Cardano blockchain.
“Wikipedia editors don’t like crypto and especially they don’t like Cardano”.
Despite the mentions in the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times, the Cardano blockchain, which was also featured during the speeches of the American Congress, cannot find room on Wikipedia.Â
The historical memory of Charles, an important actor in the development of the Ethereum project, reveals to the public how even at that time it was very difficult to publish the scientific articles of what has become a blockchain able to transform the legal basis of American regulations in the securities sector.Â
Wikipedia regarded the Ethereum articles as “nothing new”.
Even the desire to specify and make public the different UTXO models present in the codes, thus making clear the difference between Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tezos or Cardano, was not possible.
Hoskinson could not have been clearer:
“This is damaging Wikipedia”.
Centralization and decentralization of Wikipedia
Everyone knows about the opposition of Wikipedia’s co-founder Jimmy Wales to the blockchain, who recently attended an industry conference where he spoke as a sceptic.Â
This attitude of his is certainly not the root of the problem found in the case of Cardano, but the story highlights a long-standing web problem.Â
The public utility services in the hands of centralized systems, often of a private nature, generate a shortfall of interests capable of making censorship possible.
Jimmy Wales’ criticism is mainly dedicated to the concept of online payments and micropayments made possible by cryptocurrencies. He doesn’t think the model can be interesting for the development of his work, but this is just the tip of the iceberg, in the case of utility services like Wikipedia.Â
Much more could be done with this technology, especially when it comes to source verification or the application model of a block, revision or new insertion.
A distributed ledger whose participation, also by means of voting, is made secure by the protocol, can provide the basis for a new model of conceiving an encyclopedia and the truthfulness of the sources.
This is what Lawrence Mark Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia, is attempting to do with Everipedia.
The fact that a group of editors on Wikipedia doesn’t like the crypto industry could trigger an urgent need to create new competitors.
