One of the advantages Wikipedia has over your more traditional encyclopedias is that they are all user-submitted content. This means that anyone can add information to a Wikipedia entry which helps keep pages up to date with the latest information. The downside is that this can sometimes lead to misinformation or manipulation.Such was the case with the brand “The North Face” who has recently come under fire for manipulating Wikipedia pages in a bid to market their brand. The company had been found to have replaced several photos in Wikipedia with their own photos so that when people search for “adventure” on Google, their brand would be shown at the top.
They had previously claimed that they worked with Wikipedia on this, but the organization has since denied this. “Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation did not collaborate on this stunt, as The North Face falsely claims. In fact, what they did was akin to defacing public property, which is a surprising direction from The North Face.”
The brand has since taken to Twitter to apologize in a statement that reads, “We believe deeply in @Wikipedia’s mission and apologize for engaging in activity inconsistent with those principles. Effective immediately, we have ended the campaign and moving forward, we’ll commit to ensuring that our teams and vendors are better trained on the site policies.”