ok, I woke up with another reason why this wikipedia sell out has me so angry...

[susankayequinn@wandering.shop]

ok, I woke up with another reason why this wikipedia sell out has me so angry...

I've long held up gifting economy models like wikipedia (and reddit and craigslist and buy nothing) as #Solarpunk In Real Life, here today, manifesting the better world I want to see.

1/n

[susankayequinn@wandering.shop]

Libraries are the same, #solarpunk in real life.

There are many ways a better world exists alongside the terrible one...growing those seeds & using them as familiar models to help people transition conceptually away from exploitive capitalism...
https://brightgreenfutures.substack.com/p/episode-25-library-economies-and
2/n

[susankayequinn@wandering.shop]

...is one way you get to a better world.

First reddit & now wikipedia are breaking the model...

...and gaslighting us at the same time about it, which is just infuriating.

It's not that they've found an "ingenious" way to make money while keeping (maybe?) AI slop out of wikipedia...
3/n

[susankayequinn@wandering.shop]

...it's that they've broken the volunteer gifting model that wikipedia is based on.

Uncountable hours of freely-given volunteer human labor went into creating and maintaining a library of human knowledge, so that all of humanity would benefit. That's the model.

4/n

[susankayequinn@wandering.shop]

That AI corps felt free to scrape and profit from that is wrong...

...and instead of fighting that (despite promising to! for donations!), wikipedia sold out to the AI corps and are making it faster and easier for them to scrape and profit from the freely-given volunteer human labor.
5/n

[susankayequinn@wandering.shop]

(and again, gaslighting about it!)

It breaks the model — *and* it's incredibly short-sighted. Editors are already waning, this will only accelerate that.

It's the exploitive, extractive capitalist monsters destroying one of the few #solarpunk IRL models we have.

I am so furious.
6/n

[susankayequinn@wandering.shop]

My only consolation, as with everything being destroyed by fascists & AI corps & broligarchs of all kinds right now, is that they can't destroy the IDEA of wikipedia.

We had something good once.

They can enshittify and extract and exploit... but WE (the people) are the source of everything...
7/n