Suit: Wikipedia Shields Online ‘Trolls’ Pushing Smear Campaign

Decorated film producer Ryan Kavanaugh is suing Wikimedia Foundation for allegedly protecting two “trolls” who were paid to wage an online smear campaign that Kavanaugh claims cost him more than $1 billion.

Wikipedia is already facing renewed scrutiny after it banned its own founder for protesting the site’s allowance of “ideologically motivated bullies” and anti-free speech policies. Kavanaugh’s lawsuit, filed in February, accuses the organization of allowing paid bullies to attack a man with false or misleading information while operating under the guise of being a “trustworthy” source.

“If you want to know the truth about Mr. Kavanaugh, do not read his Wikipedia page,” Kavanaugh’s legal filing claims. “It does not contain the truth. Instead, it has been vandalized by online trolls, who worked for years as Wikipedia ‘editors’ to reshape Kavanaugh’s page.”

In 2021, a YouTuber named Ethan Klein falsely believed that Kavanaugh was financing a copyright lawsuit against him. In what Klein referred to as a successful “largescale concerted effort to destroy his Wikipedia,” he paid two Wikipedia editors to “vandalize” Ryan Kavanaugh’s personal Wikipedia page, the lawsuit says. Their edits “focused specifically on inserting, amplifying, or emphasizing negative content.”

Kavanaugh claims this vandalism lost him several major financial opportunities, costing him more than $1 billion in potential earnings.

In a declaration made under oath, Klein admitted that these changes “were not based on fact,” and “were done with the intent to harm, defame, discredit, and mislead readers about Mr. Kavanaugh.” The lawsuit alleges this meets the criteria for “vandalism,” which Wikimedia defines as “false information as well as misleading information published solely to cause injury to a subject.”

The filing identifies one of the paid trolls, known online as “Popoki35,” as Sara Katheleen Smith, a woman who has received “no formal education” and “lives on a commune” in California. Her edits to Kavanaugh’s Wikipedia page allegedly promoted false sexual misconduct allegations and echoed accusations made by Klein.

The crux of the case is Kavanaugh’s contention that Wikimedia’s donation page includes the promise that “volunteers work together to create and verify the pages you rely on, supported by tools that undo vandalism within minutes, ensuring the information you seek is trustworthy.”

“Wikimedia advertises Wikipedia as a source of accurate information,” the complaint reads. “Its promise to remove vandalism is essential to that representation. Kavanaugh did exactly what Wikimedia tells people to do. But Wikimedia ignored Kavanaugh’s request. It did not undo the vandalism, as it promised to do.”

Wikipedia’s anti-vandalism rules include a policy banning “undisclosed paid editing” and “strongly discourag[ing]” “conflict of interest (COI) editing,” so that individuals or organizations cannot bribe editors to manipulate the website to promote themselves or defame their rivals. Klein’s official statement admits that he and the editors he collaborated with violated this policy, and yet Wikimedia has allegedly allowed those paid editors to continue editing Kavanaugh’s page and blocked Kavanaugh’s efforts to correct the vandalism.

In April, Wikimedia Foundation, which owns Wikipedia, responded to the lawsuit by claiming protection as an online platform under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which has been used in the past to protect Big Tech censorship of conservative speech.

While Section 230 was designed to ensure that online platforms are not liable for the speech of third-party users, Wikimedia contends that it cannot be penalized for allowing and protecting an alleged violation of its own paid editing policy because it was done by a third party.

“Fundamentally, users, not Wikimedia, are responsible for their contributions to Wikipedia. Kavanaugh can seek (and has sought) to hold the authors of content he dislikes liable. … But Section 230 prohibits imposing platforms with liability for user-generated content.”

Kavanaugh’s legal filing specifically notes that the case is not about the content posted by third-party users, but “Wikimedia’s own actions, its failure to uphold its promise to undo vandalism, and its deceptive practices.” Thus, he claims Section 230 does not apply.

Wikimedia also suggests that while it hopes that the information on its website will be accurate, the organization does not make any guarantee of accuracy and warns that pages “may be incomplete, inaccurate, or misleading due to unconstructive edits or good faith errors, biases, and varying perspectives amongst contributors.”

While an online platform like X will contain false information posted by third-party users, Wikipedia, a self-proclaimed “trustworthy” information site, has positioned itself as an authoritative source rather than an open-forum free-for-all. As Kavanaugh points out, businesses, lawyers, and judges cite Wikipedia to make real-world decisions, and Google suggests Wikipedia search results and “relies heavily” on Wikipedia pages for its artificial intelligence product Gemini.

The lawsuit could challenge Wikipedia’s Section 230 immunity and will be argued before a Los Angeles court in August.

Luke Miller is a contributor for The Federalist who is studying political economy and journalism at Hillsdale College.