Episode 175: Trevor Parscal

🕑 1 hour 27 minutes

Former Wikimedia Foundation developer Trevor Parscal returns to the podcast to talk about the happy (to many) news that Ross Ulbricht, who was serving a double life sentence for having created and run the "dark web" website Silk Road, was just released from prison. We also talk about the state of U.S. politics in general, and what it means for the tech world - and for Wikipedia.

Links for some of the topics discussed:

• Ross Ulbricht Wikipedia article
• "More Speech and Fewer Mistakes" (Meta blog post, January 2025)
• "What is ‘debanking’ and why are Marc Andreesen and Silicon Valley talking about it?" (Fast Company article, December 2024)
• "Google stabs Wikipedia in the front" (The Register article, January 2014)
• "Since legacy media propaganda is considered a “valid” source by Wikipedia, it naturally simply becomes an extension of legacy media propaganda!" (Elon Musk X post, January 2025)
• SPINACH Wikidata Agent