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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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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Also, don’t forget there are audio versions of all of my newsletters (100% real human, no robo-voice)! You can listen on the article page linked at the top of the thread, or in your favorite podcast player.
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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.
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All fascist movements seek to control access to information.
All hierarchies depend on chokepoints on information.
Every form of systemic bigotry relies on ignorance.
You can't create a Greater Fool economy without information asymmetry.
The war on expertise has an agenda.
1. Ending democracy
2 Entrenching oligarchy
3. Undermining education. Every wannabe feudal lordling needs an illiterate peasantry
4. Enacting regressive policies
5. Enriching the already rich. -
@molly0xfff Because it has become so biased to the left on any political or generally controversial topic that even its creator says it can no longer be trusted?
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@molly0xfff you voice them yourself?! Whoa!
Sadly I can't stand the fake-robo voices (at least most of em), so I finally can listen to some news-posts
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@bison I do! I hate the robo-voices too, they’re too uncanny.
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@bontchev you should probably read the linked article
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@molly0xfff that’s really cool. I had totally assumed it was a robot-voice reading because the UX matches what many big name publishers are doing. Might be worth calling that out in the caption underneath.
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@dc good idea!
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@molly0xfff Thanks for mentioning this, subscribed! Seems you’ve been doing the recorded versions since Nov 2023. Did I skip the audio player without realising it every time?! Maybe it needs more visual differentiation, I’m used to these inline players being some 3rd party TTS widget so I must naturally scroll straight past. Could make the footer text more prominent + add a podcast icon (does a free one exist or does everyone just use Apple’s?)
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@molly0xfff Hi Molly.
I'm curious: Do lies of omission count as lies (or misinformation, of whatever term we're all using at the moment)?
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@Octale I imagine it would depend on the context
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