In recent days, Elon Musk’s old battle against Wikipedia has become active again. The richest man in the world accuses the online encyclopedia of being run by a group of far-left activists. A year ago Musk offered Wikipedia a billion dollars in exchange for a change in the name: “The offer still stands.”
Elon Musk’s battle against Wikipedia is cyclical. Sometimes it disappears from his feed, obscured by other themes, other times it returns and imposes itself. Maybe even with a little too much fake news. The December 24th the DogeDesigner account published a post on Musk’s old promise: “Elon Musk once offered a billion dollars to Wikipedia to change its name to Dickipedia.”
To understand the play on words just remember that dick is used as a synonym, with a vulgar meaning, of penis. Elon Musk commented on DogeDesigner’s post: “True. The offer is still valid.” Not only that. Musk he also relaunched another post in which he invites his followers to check where the donations sent to Wikipedia go. But where does it all come from?
The battle against Wokepedia
The main accusation made against Wikipedia is that of being a portal that in public professes to be neutral but which in fact is deployed. Only on October 25 he wrote: “Wikipedia is controlled by far-left activists. People should stop donating.” Not only that. Besides Dickipedia one of Musk’s favorite names for the online encyclopedia is Wokepediaa nickname with which Musk accuses Wikipedia of carrying out what he defines as “woke ideology”.
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Not only that. The criticism of Wikipedia for Musk has also gone from accusations directed at Jimmy Walesco-founder of Wikipedia. In July 2022, Wales himself responded to Musk: “Reading too many senseless things on Twitter makes you stupid.” Of course the point in all this remains one. Net of accusations and responses, Is there really a problem with Wikipedia as Musk claims? The best answer is probably: “Yes, but not in the ways it is posed.”
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia written by users. Entries are subject to multiple stages of review, yet there are pages that can always escape scrutiny. One remained open for some time page on the Turkish fortress of Amberlihisara Turkish stronghold that never existed. Mistakes, sure. On which some time ago we tried to answer some questions about the reliability of Wikipedia, especially now that artificial intelligence is able to write totally credible pages of events or places that never existed. There are certainly flaws in the system. It is more difficult to think that the entire encyclopedia is directed by one great director with political purposes.
