Musk trolls Wikipedia: $1 billion for name change

Wikipedia likes to tout itself as a neutral source of knowledge, but critics accuse it of becoming a place where U.S. elites and spies wage an "information war" against the public.

Elon Musk has offered to donate $1 billion to Wikipedia if the online encyclopedia changes its name to "Dickipedia" (in German, for example, "Pimmelpedia"), accusing the community-published website of being biased. In a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday, Musk claimed that "Wikipedia is inherently hierarchical and therefore subject to the biases of higher-ranking editors, regardless of their merits."

Musk compared Wikipedia's approach to the new "Community Notes" feature he introduced on X, claiming there is a "fundamental difference." The mechanism on X allows users to add clarifications to posts that many people find controversial, but requires a consensus of "people with historically different viewpoints," he explained.

"Crucially, even I, as the majority shareholder of the company, cannot change the outcome of a [community] note."

Musk's "offer of donations" came in response to a call for donations from Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales. Musk urged editors to add information about his commitment to "the [cow emoji, bunch emoji] on my wiki page... in the interest of accuracy". He also claimed that the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs the Wikipedia servers, doesn't need large funds to keep the service running. "You can literally put a copy of the entire text on your phone!" wrote Musk.

Co-founder: Wikipedia is being misused for "information war"

X users soon added a community note to this post in which they wrote that Wikipedia receives several billion page views and several million page edits per month, and that the Wikimedia Foundation's finances are regularly audited, according to media reports. The note has since disappeared.

While Wikipedia touts itself as a neutral source of knowledge, critics accuse it of neglecting this basic principle. Co-founder Larry Sanger denounced the encyclopedia in August as a place where U.S. elites and spies wage an "information war" against the public.

Musk and Wales have clashed before over content moderation policies. In May, the Wikipedia co-founder criticized the X owner for allegedly bowing to Turkish pressure to censor posts on his platform ahead of the country's parliamentary elections.

"What Wikipedia has done: We have stood up for our principles and fought all the way to Turkey's Supreme Court and won. That's what it means to treat free speech as a principle rather than a slogan," Wales stressed, responding to Musk's explanation of the situation.