Wikia's Outrageous Exploitation of the Human Race

It's official, Jimmy Wales has gone too far. The founder of Wikipedia is famous for tapping into users to generate content and traffic, building the internet's largest chain/web of user-generated content and information. From the million+ articles written by users to the billions of incoming links that have given Wikipedia its super-human search result rankings, Wales has clearly mastered the art of human exploitation more than anyone ever has.

Most people are content with things the way they are: after all, it's for a good cause! Go ahead and exploit humans, we agree, if the end result brings as much benefit and knowledge to the world as Wikipedia did and does. However, earlier this year, Wikipedia did a couple of things that created an outrage in the online community, by banning contributing sources to Wikipedia from getting the credit they deserve.

Now Wales is at it again, this time though, it's not the greater good that'll be benefiting: Jimmy Wales is now using end-users to bring in the cash!

Wikia is Wale's for-profit company, now focusing on a "different kind of search." Today we found out what "different" means: instead of doing the web-crawling and indexing on Wikia's servers, Wales wants end users to do the crawling for him!

Yep, you read that right. Wales just bought Grub, the distributed web-crawler. and intends to use it (and the internet connections and CPUs of end-users) to power his for-profit corporation. Users could be doing something useful with their hard-earned CPU cycles, electricity, and internet connections such as finding a cure for cancer or even aiding the search for alien life, Wales wants users to focus on making him more money.

Google, Microsoft, AOL, AltaVista, Yahoo! and thousands more have something in common, can you guess what it is? That's right! They all pay for their crawlers, power bill, servers, and everything else! So why does Wales think he gets to exploit billions of computers around the web for no reason other than to make him money?

Hopefully the majority of the world's denizens will realize this is a ruse and scam and not fall for it; after all, everyone's power and internet bills are already too high to take an even bigger hit just so Wales can have more money. For-profit corporations don't EVER get to exploit the general population and their PCs, it's just not fair!



Leave a Reply  •  About to Ask for Help?  •  Subscribe to Our Feed

14 Responses to “ Wikia's Outrageous Exploitation of the Human Race ”


  1. 1Yves-Alban LehaireJul. 30th, 2007 at 4:59 pm

    Je ne maîtrise pas assez la langue anglaise pour avoir tout parfaitement compris. Néanmoins je suis globalement d'accord pour dire non à l'exploitation du plus grand nombre au profit de quelques uns. Unnissons nous, je suis pour, mais pour le bien commun... yal

  2. 2DrumboyAug. 2nd, 2007 at 9:12 pm

    I have no idea what Lehaire said, but since we all have the freedom of choice to use Grub or not, how can it be bad?

  3. 3Computer GuruAug. 3rd, 2007 at 5:49 am

    That's a good point, probably best answered with a parabole:

    There are a bunch of guys at a clothes store. Once a week, they give away clothes for free to the needy. One day, a guy comes in and convinces/tricks/persuades them to give the clothes to him - making it fully clear that he'll be selling these clothes off for personal gain, and they agree.

    If these people were naive enough to fall for it, it doesn't make him innocent. It's our job to stand up and explain why it's wrong - and why he shouldn't have done this in the first place.

  1. 1 Jimmy Wales Takes On Google! | Threadwatcher.com Pingback on Jul. 30th, 2007 at 12:41 am
  2. 1 StumbleUpon » Your page is now on StumbleUpon! Pingback on Jul. 30th, 2007 at 11:15 am
  3. 1 Megite Technology News: What's Happening Right Now Pingback on Jul. 30th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
  4. 1 WildBlueSkies » Wikia buys Grub - plans a head-on against Google Pingback on Jul. 31st, 2007 at 8:59 am
  5. 1 I’m Kataria - What else do you need to know ? » Blog Archive » Google vs Jimmy Wales & Open Source Search Pingback on Jul. 31st, 2007 at 1:16 pm
  6. 1 Grub-by open source searching (and weirdest mating ritual) - Computerworld Blogs Pingback on Jul. 31st, 2007 at 3:37 pm
  7. 1 Infothought: Updated "Grub" crawler code available, more Wikia Search(ploitation) Pingback on Aug. 1st, 2007 at 12:19 pm
  8. 1 BlogRunner: Google vs Jimmy Wales & Open Source Search Pingback on Aug. 2nd, 2007 at 2:41 pm
  9. 1 Wikia’s Outrageous Exploitation of the Human Race at The NeoSmart Files Pingback on Aug. 5th, 2007 at 9:28 pm
  10. 1 Kataria - What else do you need to know ? Pingback on Aug. 8th, 2007 at 6:55 pm
  11. 1 Wikia arrives, Google not likely to be shaken Pingback on Jan. 3rd, 2008 at 3:18 am

Leave a Reply