Photo in persons dossiers should be checked for homonyms

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1

Hello,

I noticed multiple wrong pictures in some dossiers, due to homonyms.

For example :

French politician Jack Lang has the picture of Australian politician Jack Lang.

Investor Leon Black has the picture of basketball coach Leon Black

Pilot David Rodgers haw picture of singer David Rodgers

And that’s what I found looking around for 5 minutes, so there is probably a lot more.

I assume these pictures are automatically taken from wikipedia, but they really should be checked before being added. Or only added manually.

Otherwise people with no link to Epstein will have their face associated with him…

Edit : previous ones I cited were confused with dead people so limited repercussions, but picture for Alberto Pinto ( Alberto Pinto - Epstein Files Connection | Epstein Exposed ) is very likely of a still living university professor ( https://ccrma.stanford.edu/\~apinto/ ). So this can be really bad.

I just joined so I’m not sure if there is a way I can edit these myself? Otherwise should I start making a list of all the wrong pictures so they can be removed by an admin?

5 Likes
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This is a very valid point.
Found more cases:

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Agreed. I don’t know what many of these people look like, wouldn’t guess it could be wrong. Anything that muddies the water should be eliminated.

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Comment removed because I clearly haven’t studied this setup enough yet.

I need to track down, “how we are moderating for data quality and correcting for known defects” before I comment further.

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@EpsteinExposedAdmin

Take a look.

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I checked half the files with pictures, here is the list of the wrong ones so far :

https://epsteinexposed.com/persons/leon-black -

https://epsteinexposed.com/persons/alberto-pinto -

https://epsteinexposed.com/persons/david-rodgers -

https://epsteinexposed.com/persons/riccardo-mazzucchelli -

https://epsteinexposed.com/persons/barron-hilton -

https://epsteinexposed.com/persons/guy-lewis -

https://epsteinexposed.com/persons/duke-of-rutland -

https://epsteinexposed.com/persons/viscount-cranborne -

https://epsteinexposed.com/persons/viscount-william-astor -

https://epsteinexposed.com/persons/alejandra-villarreal -

https://epsteinexposed.com/persons/steve-scully -

https://epsteinexposed.com/persons/steve-miller -

https://epsteinexposed.com/persons/alan-greenberg -

https://epsteinexposed.com/persons/lynn-forester-de-rothschild (not sure, maybe it’s an old picture Edit : no, wrong picture, homonym) -

https://epsteinexposed.com/persons/warren-spector -

Also noticed multiple times it was a picture of the right person but from decades ago, even if more recent ones can easily be found.

I’ll try to check the remaining files tomorrow.

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Does anyone know, where images for dossiers (or in general, for that matter) come from? It might be not the best idea to take just any random image off the web due to possible copyright issues :confused:

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Looks like it’s first result when you search the name on wikimedia commons (at least the few I checked).

So license can be different for each picture, but shouldn’t be more restrictive than cc-by-sa.

In that case images are free to be used, but author should be credited, and the license mentioned.

So yes, that’s also a problem.

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Thanks for the thorough audit @Wja, and to @troubledcappuccino for flagging even more. This is a real problem and I appreciate you all catching it.

You are correct that the photos come from Wikimedia Commons. The system grabs the first result for the name, which obviously fails for common names or people who share names with more famous figures (Australian Jack Lang vs French Jack Lang, basketball coach Leon Black vs investor Leon Black, etc).

I am going to go through every name on the list you provided and either find the correct photo or remove it entirely. For the ones where no reliable free-use photo exists, I would rather show no photo than the wrong person’s face. Nobody should have their image wrongly associated with this case.

Regarding copyright: all the photos currently on the site are sourced from Wikimedia Commons under CC-BY-SA or similar free licenses. @troubledcappuccino is right that attribution should be included, and I will make sure that is in place as well.

If anyone finds more wrong photos as you continue checking, please drop them here and I will add them to the fix list. Thank you for the careful eye on this.

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Update: All 18 flagged photos have been addressed. This is now deployed.

Replaced with correct images (7):

  • Barron Hilton (was showing his grandfather Conrad Hilton Sr.)
  • Guy Lewis (correct DOJ official portrait)
  • Duke of Rutland (11th Duke, photo at Belvoir Castle)
  • Viscount Cranborne (7th Marquess of Salisbury)
  • William Astor (4th Viscount, House of Lords portrait)
  • Alice Fisher (correct DOJ AAG portrait, was showing a nursing pioneer)
  • Jack Lang (correct French minister, was showing the Australian politician)

Removed entirely (11):
Leon Black, Alberto Pinto, David Rodgers, Riccardo Mazzucchelli, Alejandra Villarreal, Steve Scully, Steve Miller, Alan Greenberg, Warren Spector, David Stern, Lynn Forester de Rothschild

These were removed because no free-license (CC or public domain) image of the correct person exists on Wikimedia Commons. Showing no photo is better than showing the wrong person.

@Wja @troubledcappuccino thank you both for the thorough audit. If you find any more as you continue checking, keep posting them here.

Regarding @troubledcappuccino’s copyright question: all replacement images are either CC BY-SA (Wikimedia Commons) or public domain (US government official portraits). Attribution will be added to the image display component.

1 Like
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Hello,

Sorry I was busy this week. Here is the second part of the dossiers with wrong pictures.

Also I noticed Mohammed bin Salman has a duplicate.

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Thanks again @Wja for the thorough second pass. All 19 flagged photos have been removed and the Mohammed bin Salman duplicate has been merged into a single entry.

Removed (19 photos):
Tom Rutherford, Steve Wynn, Roy Black, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Nicola Caputo, Mona Juul, Mark Fisher, Larry Gagosian, John Turner, Jay Clayton, Jack Horner, Hans Peterson, Ed Romero, Bruce Moskowitz, Brian Roberts, Alfred Taubman, Adam Hollander, Alastair Campbell, Gerry Francis

MBS Duplicate:
Merged mohammed-bin-salman-al-saud into prince-salman (kept the entry with 131 document links, added the full name as an alias).

I am currently researching correct replacement images for several of these people — those who are well-known public figures (Steve Wynn, Larry Gagosian, Jay Clayton, Prince Bandar, etc.) should have correct free-license photos available on Wikimedia Commons. Will update once replacements are in.

This will go live with the next deploy. Thanks for keeping data quality high — this kind of community audit is exactly what makes the project stronger.

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Update: Correct photos sourced and restored

After researching all 19 reported persons on Wikimedia Commons, we found verified, freely-licensed photos for 8 of the 19:

Person Source License
Steve Wynn Wikimedia Commons (Wynn Resort photo) CC BY-SA 3.0
Prince Bandar bin Sultan Kremlin.ru (2008) CC BY 4.0
Mona Juul Control Arms / Flickr CC BY 2.0
Jay Clayton SEC.gov official portrait Public domain
Jack Horner Jonathunder (2015) GFDL 1.2
Brian Roberts Scott McLeod / Flickr CC BY 2.0
Alfred Taubman Tribeca Disruptive Innovation (2010) CC BY-SA 3.0
Alastair Campbell LSE Library / Flickr Commons No restrictions

The remaining 11 persons have no correct free-license photos available on Wikimedia Commons:
Tom Rutherford, Roy Black, Nicola Caputo, Mark Fisher, Larry Gagosian, John Turner, Hans Peterson, Ed Romero, Bruce Moskowitz, Adam Hollander, Gerry Francis

These will stay without photos until correct images are sourced. The 8 replacements will go live with the next deploy.