Podcast Summary

GZERO World with Ian Bremmer

Episode: Why We Still Trust Wikipedia, with Cofounder Jimmy Wales
Date: December 13, 2025
Guest: Jimmy Wales, Cofounder of Wikipedia

Main Theme

This episode explores why Wikipedia remains one of the most trusted sources of information online, even as global trust in institutions crumbles and the internet grows increasingly polarized. Ian Bremmer and Jimmy Wales discuss Wikipedia’s approach to neutrality, challenges from political and technological forces—including AI—issues surrounding bias, and the platform’s role as a decentralized, collaboratively trusted encyclopedia in a divided world.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Wikipedia and the Crisis of Trust

• Wikipedia’s Unique Position: While trust in many institutions and media has eroded, Wikipedia—once dismissed as an unreliable project—has become an institution people globally rely upon.
• Foundations of Trust: Wales attributes Wikipedia’s trustworthiness to clear purpose, openness, and transparency.
  • Quote ([02:22]): “Wikipedia has gone from being kind of a joke in the early days to one of the few things people trust ... we have to keep maintaining our principles.”

2. Could Wikipedia Be Built Today?

• Toxicity Online, Then and Now: While today’s internet is perceived as toxic, Wales notes online hostility (e.g., Usenet flame wars) predates algorithms and social media.
  • Quote ([03:45]): “Turns out we don’t need algorithms to teach us to be mean to each other. We can do it all on our own.”
• Infrastructure and Openness: If the early internet had been dominated by closed platforms like AOL, projects like Wikipedia would have been much harder to start. Today, tech barriers are lower, but achieving broad trust is harder due to deeper cultural divisions.

3. Maintaining Neutrality Amidst Culture Wars

• Perceptions of Bias: Wikipedia is accused of bias from various perspectives (e.g., “Wokepedia” label by Elon Musk). There is increased skepticism towards platforms claiming neutrality.
  • Quote ([05:35]): “It feels like we have a much more divisive social and political environment today ... that does make all of these things much more difficult.”
• Comparison with BBC: Like the BBC, Wikipedia faces pressure to prove neutrality but recognizes that no institution can be universally trusted.

4. Wikipedia’s Approach to Controversial Topics

• Handling Contentious Issues: Most of Wikipedia focuses on non-divisive topics, but politically charged issues (e.g., Russia-Ukraine, Israel-Gaza) require special care.
• Case Study – Russian Wikipedia: Despite Russian government pressure, Wikipedia remains accessible in Russia and retains a degree of neutrality, benefiting from its decentralized model.
  • Quote ([10:25]): “It’s a lot easier to corrupt you [a magazine editor] than it is to corrupt Wikipedia.”
• Flooding and Manipulation: Wikipedia is more resistant to mass manipulation (by AI or humans) than social media because of community vigilance and editing structures.
  • Quote ([11:31]): “Flooding Wikipedia is much harder than, say, social media ... At least so far, AI agents aren’t really able to mimic a human being for very long.”

5. Wikipedia’s Internal Governance and Consensus

• The 'Wikipedia Voice' on Gaza: Wales is concerned that the article asserts, in Wikipedia’s own voice, that ongoing events in Gaza are genocide, a position not reflected by most mainstream news outlets. He believes the site should only take such stances when consensus is overwhelming.
  • Quote ([14:41]): “I was looking for one [example] ... how about flat Earth? ... we say something like, ‘There’s a scientific consensus that the Earth is not flat.’”
  • Quote ([17:44]): “Right now it says that what’s going on in Gaza is an ongoing genocide, which is clearly one side.”
• Problems with Process: Recent editing restrictions and actions against sock puppet accounts, mainly pro-Israel, may have excluded some good-faith editors, distorting consensus. The current system, Wales notes, is not living up to Wikipedia’s ideals of neutrality and open participation.
  • Quote ([19:21]): “People of good faith have not been able to participate. So these things are going to change. ... we’ve gotten to a place that isn’t great.”

6. Bias and Diversity in Wikipedia's Editor Base

• Western and Gender Bias: Many Wikipedians are from specific demographics (e.g., male, Western), which shows up in content—such as longer articles on male authors.
  • Quote ([22:09]): “If you look at the articles about men, they are longer than articles about women.”
• Solutions beyond DEI Initiatives: Rather than imposing quotas, Wales advocates recruiting a wider, more diverse group of editors and fostering an environment welcoming to those who may doubt their expertise.
  • Quote ([23:34]): “Wikipedia is written in a very ... authoritative [tone] ... your 28-year-old tech geek male is quite good at speaking as if they know what they’re talking about, even if they don’t.”
• Code of Conduct: A universal code of conduct and a long-standing “no personal attacks” principle aim to make editing more welcoming, in contrast to “toxic” social media.

7. Personal Conduct and Neutrality for Leadership

• Wales’s Commitment to Neutrality: As cofounder, Wales avoids making public statements on contentious issues—e.g., Obamacare or whether Gaza constitutes genocide—to preserve the integrity and neutrality of Wikipedia.
  • Quote ([27:42]): “For me to take a side and become a campaigner ... is often a really bad idea for me.”

8. Wikipedia and the Age of AI

• Wikipedia as LLM Training Data: All major AI models are trained on Wikipedia, but Wales envisions ways to create more directly integrated, trusted Wikipedia-powered AI search tools for better information retrieval without bias or fabrication.
  • Quote ([30:19]): “If [AI] would respond not with its own made up stuff, but ... with exact quotes from the relevant Wikipedia entries ... that’d be incredible.”
• Commitment to Openness: Wikipedia won’t use proprietary search/AI tools and remains committed to open source solutions and independence.

9. Wikipedia’s Funding Model and Independence

• Decentralized Funding: The vast majority of Wikipedia’s funding comes from small individual donors (~$10 average), not from governments, tech giants, or individual billionaires.
  • Quote ([31:56]): “We’re really fundamentally funded by the small donors ... that gives us the intellectual independence that we might not have.”
  • Quote ([33:02]): “Some fairly obvious reasons [for not getting funded by Google, Microsoft, etc.] ... that actually think that through a minute. It’s actually really important.”

10. The Future: Centralization vs. Decentralization

• Wikipedia as Exemplar of Decentralization: In an increasingly centralized internet, Wikipedia remains a decentralized, community-governed platform. Other projects like Signal and open-source AI models are highlighted as hopeful signs that decentralization can survive and perhaps thrive.
  • Quote ([34:03]): “Are there a couple other things happening, like Open source ... where the pendulum might be starting to swing back towards decentralization?”
  • Quote ([35:25]): “It’s going to be decentralized ... that tension persists ... and I think it always will.”

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "Turns out we don’t need algorithms to teach us to be mean to each other. We can do it all on our own."
  — Jimmy Wales [03:45]

• "Wikipedia has gone from being kind of a joke in the early days to one of the few things people trust ... we have to keep maintaining our principles."
  — Jimmy Wales [02:22]

• "You can post anything you want on X ... if it bothers somebody somewhere, you’ll get hundreds of accounts yelling at you. And they’re all completely random strangers or possibly bots, you know."
  — Jimmy Wales [13:07]

• "If you look at the articles about men, they are longer than the articles about women. ... it’s not because the male Wikipedians think, 'Oh, novel by a woman, that's obviously not interesting.' People write about what they know, what they're passionate about."
  — Jimmy Wales [22:09]

• "I’m not the editor-in-chief, I can’t make these things happen, but I can coach people, remind people, convene people ... we’ve gotten to a place that isn’t great, and we need to look at the processes and figure out how do we get here, because it's not living up to what Wikipedia should be doing."
  — Jimmy Wales [20:18]

• "Are we going to have a handful of big companies who are absolutely running our lives or can we do that on our local computer? ... That tension persists and I think it always will."
  — Jimmy Wales [37:24]

Timestamps of Important Segments

• [02:00] – Building trust in Wikipedia; motivations for Wales’s new book
• [03:13] – Would Wikipedia survive if started today? Early internet culture vs. today
• [05:35] – Culture wars, divisiveness, and Wikipedia’s challenges with neutrality
• [07:02] – Does Wikipedia meet Wales's standards for trust now?
• [10:25] – Why Russia tolerates Wikipedia; decentralization and resistance to manipulation
• [11:31] – AI and attempts to flood Wikipedia; community resilience
• [14:16] – What topics reach true consensus? How Wikipedia seeks neutrality in voice
• [17:44] – Wikivoice in contentious topics: Gaza article controversy explained
• [22:09] – Demographics of editors and problems of systemic gender bias
• [23:34] – Strategies for diversifying Wikipedia’s community
• [27:09] – Wales’s personal neutrality and living Wikipedia’s values
• [30:06] – Role of Wikipedia in Large Language Models (LLMs) and vision for AI
• [31:56] – Decentralized small-donor funding model and independence
• [34:03] – Hope for decentralization: Wikipedia, Signal, and open-source AI
• [37:24] – Decentralization vs. centralization: future outlook for knowledge platforms

Tone and Language

The conversation is thoughtful, candid, and occasionally humorous, with Wales balancing optimism about Wikipedia’s community-driven model and concern about challenges like polarization, bias, and the risks of AI and over-centralization. Both speakers prioritize pragmatic solutions and introspection over polemics, modeling the kind of reasoned discourse Wikipedia aspires to support.