Powerful enough to handle even the toughest loads, like George Santos, the disgraced congressman.

Inside the Wiki Laundry

Wikipedia is the world’s most influential information source—and one of A.I.’s key training grounds. No wonder reputation-launderers everywhere are trying to hijack it

By Joseph Bullmore

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY CHOP CHOPPISH SHOP

One pebble in the avalanche of woes bearing down on Keir Starmer, the beleaguered U.K. prime minister, was the February resignation of his chief of communications, Tim Allan. The embarrassment lay not in Allan’s work for Starmer but in the alleged activities of Portland Communications, the P.R. company he had founded, which had been accused of engaging in Wiki-laundering—the concerted massaging of Wikipedia pages to bolster an image, bury an embarrassment, or alter a narrative.

According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Portland Communications had used paid subcontractors to “polish the public image of Qatar by burying references to critical reporting ahead of the 2022 World Cup,” as well as obscuring “mentions of a major terrorist-financing case involving Qatari businessmen.” The firm also “scrubbed evidence that a billion-dollar Gates-funded project failed in its mission, and promoted one side of Libya’s post-Qaddafi government over the other.”