Do you remember in school where we were always told about how Wikipedia wasn’t a valid source to use? Have you ever thought about how that relates to money laundering and how both of those concepts can reveal something interesting and concerning about the information (or epistemic) ecosystem around HHN, this event that we love so much? I promise that I’ll break these concepts down so you can go impress your friends and family with a two dollar word like “epistemic”!

I assume that you have a basic understanding of what money laundering is but if you don’t, it’s basically taking some bad, “dirty” money, illegally gained and funneling it through an entity, usually a legitimate business, to make the cash look legitimate and “clean”, hence the washing portion of the phrase. You might be able to guess how we can apply that concept to ideas.

What Is Fact Laundering?

Let’s go back to that idea of Wikipedia. Let’s imagine that you want to take a fact that’s dubious or totally made up and make it legitimate, at least in the eyes of Wikipedia that wants a citation for provenance (aka source of truth). You might insert the fact in a Wikipedia page either not backed by a citation (risking removal) or cited in a book that’s out of print or otherwise difficult to double check. Then either you yourself would write an article or direct someone to write an article in a legitimate or semi-legitimate source (newspaper, pay for play scientific journal, etc - this is the legitimate business in the money laundering example) and then once that’s complete, you can turn around, take that citation that looks legitimate, cite your Wikipedia fact with it and all of a sudden that mistruth is the truth.

Fact Laundering for HHN

Okay, that’s nice and good (or bad) for Wikipedia but why should we as HHN fans care? Well, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the HHN wiki. It’s a fantastic source, don’t misunderstand me, and it shows the dedication of the creators but let’s be honest, it’s full of uncited sources, dead web links and a bunch of information that has little to no provenance. I don’t think that the wiki contributors are trying to mislead but I fear that rumors and hearsay are presented as fact and absorbed into the HHN information ecosystem (what we’d call the epistemological ecosystem - epistemology just being the study of ideas and knowledge - how do we know what we know etc) too quickly. For example, if I was malicious and wanted to poison the epistemological ecosystem, here’s what I’d do. I’d pick an article or topic that has less information (like an old haunt or less popular event), insert a fact of my choice that’s plausible and not obviously false, make a Youtube video or blog post or even just wait until a creator pulls from it (It’s obvious that half or more of the information and media that appears on YT and bloggers content is sourced from the wiki) and turn around and source that created video or post as proof of the original claim, All of a sudden my claim is indisputable fact in the eyes of the community. An example:

I’ve been to Singapore’s HHN (went in 2024 and will return this year). There is a paucity of information about the event on the Wiki. If I were malicious, I’d add a false detail to a house that would be interesting to the larger community, for example that the Director or Jack had a cameo or Easter egg in a Singapore house in 2024. That’s plausible, presumably the Jack and Director costumes or props are still in the USS archive given that they’ve had them in the past (if I said that there was a specific Jack or Director house in 2024, that would be easily falsifiable) and the cameo or Easter egg would be of interest to the larger community, especially if it added something to their lore, given that the characters are among the most popular. I’d add that “dirty” fact to the wiki and then send the link anonymously to an HHN creator or call into a podcast or some other outlet with a mixture of a couple of true (or maybe “true”) facts as well as this poison untrue fact. I’d wait for one of them to bite and make something with that fact and then turn around and cite that video or post as “proof” for my bad fact. Ergo I have laundered a bad fact into a clean, “legitimate” one, I have inserted an untruth into the epistemological ecosystem of HHN.

Mitigation Strategies

Again, not to say that the HHN wiki is exactly a prime target for an epistemological attack but it does seem susceptible to these types of attacks to me . Now how could we strengthen our ecosystem against the attack? I think it’s holding our creators to the standards of reporters. Reporters and journalists traditionally would want confirmation of a fact or story from multiple sources. If one person told a reporter one thing, they wouldn’t immediately take that info and run with it but instead corroborate it with someone else independently. We should hold our creators to that same standard. If you’re looking for content or facts for your video, look for a video that says your fact but also look for another website or article that’s totally independent and says the same thing.

Now you might be thinking, “Man who cares if this is true or not, it’s a silly Halloween event”. To that, I can’t really argue but hey, you’re the one reading the article on epistemology with respect to Halloween Horror Nights so do you really have the high ground? But seriously, I care about the event and I want the truth when it comes to it. And I hope that I’ve convinced to care about the provenance of the facts and media you consume just a little more!