The world's richest man has joined a growing chorus of right-wing voices attacking Wikipedia as part of an intensifying campaign against free and open access information.
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The world's richest man has joined a growing chorus of right-wing voices attacking Wikipedia as part of an intensifying campaign against free and open access information. Why do they hate it so much?
Elon Musk and the right’s war on Wikipedia
The world's richest man has joined a growing chorus of right-wing voices attacking Wikipedia as part of an intensifying campaign against free and open access information.
Citation Needed (www.citationneeded.news)
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@[email protected] the working class being educated is a threat to them
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@[email protected] they literally just want to establish control over information. that's it.
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Recent tweets by Elon Musk, Libs of Tiktok, Mario Nawfal, and others have claimed that Wikipedia is spending “$50 million for DEI”, misrepresenting Wikipedia’s actual budget and financial statements to claim Wikipedia is now “Wokepedia”.
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Then, Musk amplified an erroneous and months-outdated claim that Bill Clinton had been deleting information about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein from Wikipedia.
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Musk’s recent Twitter rampage reveals a man with a grudge against Wikipedia, looking for anything to support his position, regardless of whether it’s true. But why have Musk and others on the right chosen Wikipedia as a favorite punching bag?
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Attacks on press freedom and free expression have become commonplace, even among the right’s self-described free speech champions. But neither Trump, Musk, nor anyone on the right can control Wikipedia as they wish.
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The right’s frequent claims that right-leaning sources and viewpoints are “banned” on Wikipedia are also either misguided or intentionally deceptive.
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Most of Musk’s ire towards Wikipedia stems from his anger that articles about him do not repeat his own attempts to write his personal and professional history.
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Molly Whitereplied to Molly White last edited by [email protected]
Only after failing to rewrite his own history on Wikipedia did Musk’s criticism expand to broader complaints, such as Wikipedia’s supposed systemic bias.
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However, even many of his complaints about supposed widespread bias still boil down to disgruntlement at how he personally is covered on Wikipedia.
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@molly0xfff A great reminder that today is a great day to donate to Wikimedia.
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Musk has occasionally brought up the question of why the Wikimedia Foundation needs such a large budget. (The Foundation’s annual budget for 2024–2025 is 0.3% of Musk’s proposed pay package, by the way.)
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There certainly can be reasonable conversations about whether the Wikimedia Foundation needs to spend as much as it does, and the community has these conversations regularly. Most of the conversations I’ve seen from Musk and allies, however, are not such conversations.
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Attacks on Wikipedia from Musk and his allies aren't just about an online encyclopedia — they're part of a broader assault on any information source that refuses to be controlled.
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Disclosures for this piece:
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If you enjoyed this reporting, please consider signing up for a free or pay-what-you-want subscription — it really helps me to keep doing this work. Citation Needed is an independent publication, entirely supported by readers like you.
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Keep up with the happenings in the tech world without all the boosterism. Cryptocurrency critic, technology researcher, and software engineer Molly White publishes Citation Needed, a newsletter that features weekly explainers of developments in the cryptocurrency industry, with summaries of the latest disasters featured on her well-known project Web3 is Going Just Great. She also does deep dives into important events in the broader technology industry, with added critical context that is too often missing.
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Allan Svelmøe Hansenreplied to Molly White last edited by
@molly0xfff For people always calling for others to "do their own research" - they truly hate information they do not control and have difficult manipulating.
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Dimes to donuts that it is theater about something else they are not admitting; a sidereal ambush distraction. I would look deeper for some ancillary grift, but I don't have time to wade in deep. So I just assume whatever they are saying has some ulterior motive and I move on without accepting it as truthful or meaningful.
The biggest red flag to me is when someone is expending energy to 'convince' others. Why? It presumes that others are stupid and need to be educated, as if they don't have their own lives and needs and are incapable of staying focused on what should matter to their own paths in life. The centralization of focus by the popinjay media and politicos draws energy away from building our own lives to play in their sewer.
When I see stuff like this in the news I ask myself, "Why are they presenting this issue? What are they potentially trying to distract us from?" Rarely should we consider at face value any narratives presented to us by the rich, powerful, and political personages.