FIRST ON FOX: Wikipedia’s editorial safeguards failed to correct antisemitic content, ADL says
FIRST ON FOX: More than a year after the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) uncovered a group of at least 30 Wikipedia editors seemingly coordinating to add anti-Israel bias, misleading information and antisemitic narratives, the group says the online encyclopedia has yet to edit or remove much of the concerning content.
"We had expected that these editors would be removed. We had expected that their edits would have been reversed. We expected that new policies would have implemented. Almost nothing has changed," ADL CEO and National Director Jonathan Greenblatt told Fox News Digital.
In the 2025 report, "Editing for Hate," the ADL raised several issues, including a "coordinated campaign" of manipulation of Wikipedia content related to Israel, Palestine and similar topics. Additionally, the organization said it found pro-Hamas perspectives informing Arabic-language content on those same topics. The group of 30 editors, according to the ADL, were more active than comparable groups "by a factor of at least two."
Wikipedia's community banned some of the editors from the topic area or from the site entirely following the 2025 report. However, the ADL claims the issues that it flagged were not resolved with the restrictions on those named in its previous report.
In its 2026 report, "Damage Done: Wikipedia Leaves Biased Edits Unchecked Despite Editor Bans," the ADL stated that "no banned editor's body of work has been systemically reviewed to determine which edits should be corrected." The organization found that across seven articles reviewed for its 2026 report, six of which are "flagship pages," 91% of a banned editor's edits were still live.
"A topic ban is great in theory, but in practice, if you're not doing it, if you aren't really taking action, there's really no ban at all," Greenblatt told Fox News Digital. "It's as if you had an individual who was spraying graffiti on the walls of public buildings. You might arrest that individual, but you don't erase or clean up the graffiti. You still leave it on the public institutions. Like, no one would do that in the real world. I don't know why that is acceptable as a practice on Wikipedia."
An account known as Iskandar323, which was part of the group of 30 editors documented in the 2025 report, serves as a case study of what has happened in the time since then. The ADL found that the account had a years-long editing history that showed a notable uptick following Hamas' Oct. 7 attacks in Israel.
The account, according to the ADL, made 485 edits across six articles, 225 of which came after the Hamas massacre, including 85 that were made in Oct. 2023. The ADL noted that the six pages that were edited "are among the highest-trafficked English-language Wikipedia entries on the topic." The pages were "Israel," "Gaza war," "October 7 attacks," "Hamas," "Zionism," and "Jews."
Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) discussed Iskandar323's conduct in public proceedings. ArbCom found that Iskandar323 "engaged in disruptive behavior in the PIA topic area, including consistently non-neutral editing." The account was given a site ban after continuing to edit topics related to Israel and Palestine despite already being under a topic ban, according to the ADL.
Just days after the Oct. 7 attacks, Iskandar323 removed much of the substance of Wikipedia's "Hamas" article, including materials detailing the group's antisemitism, anti-Zionism, use of human shields and child combatants, human rights abuses and more to "a far less-read companion article" titled "Criticism of Hamas."
The ADL said that Iskandar323 left only a "brief generalized reference behind." The organization noted that while nothing had been deleted, the moving of information made it so readers viewing the "Hamas" page would no longer see the material unless they went to a subsequent page.
On Nov. 21, 2023, the same account removed around 17,000 characters of text and citations from Wikipedia's "Gaza war" page, according to the ADL. The account deleted a section of the page detailing forensic evidence of violence committed during the Oct. 7 attacks, including decapitation, torture and sexual violence.
Two days later, Iskandar323 removed around 7,400 characters from what remained on the page, including witness accounts from Israeli soldiers and ZAKA, a first-responder organization.
"These are not innocuous edits," Greenblatt said. "These are intentional changes designed to drive a narrative, a narrative that number one, demonizes the Jewish state. That, number two, removes all context from terror incidents in general, and specifically, specifically, that sanitizes and launders what happened on October the 7th, the worst, most brutal attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust."
The ADL said that the consequences of the biased edits go beyond Wikipedia itself, calling the platform "the foundational infrastructure for the broader online ecosystem." Wikipedia is often favored by search engines, and can be "at or near the top of search results for most substantive queries," according to the ADL.
Greenblatt said that "Wikipedia has lost trust" at a crucial time as many Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and AI features embedded into other products rely on Wikipedia.
Pressure from congressional scrutiny, federal inquiries and Wikipedia's own enforcement following the 2025 report appeared to lead to a significant decrease in coordinated activity among the 30-editor group, according to the ADL. However, the organization acknowledges that while "visible signs of coordination" decreased, it does not necessarily mean that it has stopped. The 2026 report states that the problematic edits are still happening, but through "quieter, subtler techniques."
A July 2026 review identified 19 active accounts that have been editing articles related to Israel and Palestine, according to the ADL. The organization said that eight of the editors had avoided sanctions despite being part of the original 30 identified in the 2025 report. These editors are allegedly using subtle techniques, such as undoing other editors' changes, hedging factual claims and rebuilding articles slowly to avoid detection.
The other 11 editors have histories with Wikipedia, despite being new to the ADL's documentation. Like those in the group identified by the ADL over a year ago, the records of these editors — some of whom have been editing the site for years — are mostly on articles related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Across the 229 articles where the 19 accounts overlapped, the ADL found that the 11 newly identified editors were "far more active recently" and held the most recent edit on roughly six in 10 pages.
"I think the public has come to really appreciate that Wikipedia is, in theory, this source of unbiased information, has kind of integrity to it," Greenblatt told Fox News Digital. "But when Wikipedia is poisoning the public conversation because it is enforcing the intolerance encoded in it by these editors, it's pushing the prejudiced agenda of these anonymous actors, it's no longer an unbiased source of information. It's become, actually, a weapon."
Ultimately, the ADL gave a series of recommendations aimed at the Wikimedia Foundation, policymakers, search engines and AI developers, as well as the press and the public.
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The ADL called on the Wikimedia Foundation to strengthen accountability on sensitive pages by privately verifying editors' identities, ending anonymous IP-address editing and requiring vetted editors to resolve disputes. It also urged the Wikimedia Foundation to establish a task force on antisemitic bias modeled after the foundation's 2021 intervention against Holocaust revisionism.
For search engines and AI developers, the ADL is asking for more transparency when relying on Wikipedia as a source for an answer, particularly on sensitive topics. The organization also encouraged them to consider editorial caveats based on the topic, update information and develop bias-detection benchmarks.
When it comes to policymakers, the ADL would like to see continued oversight hearings on bias and antisemitism on Wikipedia, the creation of a task force to monitor coordinated content manipulation and the development of policy options by academics, technologists, Wikipedians and civil society leaders.
The ADL is also calling on the press and the public to recognize that chatbots and AI search summaries may be relying on Wikipedia's framing, even without disclosing that. It also urges individuals and the media to verify citations and quotes on AI-generated answers.
Fox News Digital reached out to the Wikimedia Foundation for comment but did not immediately receive a response.