Elon Musk has started a war on Wikipedia after the outlet made reference to his gesture at Trump's inauguration, which many have compared to the Nazi salute. While Wikipedia did not directly accuse Musk of doing a Nazi salute, he still flagged the organization for being far-left, previously calling it "Wokepedia." On X Musk called for people to "Defund Wikipedia until balance is restored!" This is just another instance of him attacking media sources who seem to represent conflicting views to his own.
What is the conflict between Musk and Wikipedia?
Musk has had minor conflicts with Wikipedia for months. In October 2024, he offered to donate $1 billion to Wikipedia to change the name to "Dickipedia." In December 2024, he was already calling for people to stop donating to the site after a far-right X account incorrectly claimed that the Wikimedia Foundation "devotes $50 million a year to 'diversity and inclusion' projects," said Le Monde. "In reality, this sum mainly finances the encyclopedia's development, lawyers' salaries and cybersecurity measures."
The conflict has ramped up since Trump's inauguration. After Musk's call to defund the website, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said on X that the description on the website of Musk's actions was not inaccurate and that "Elon is unhappy that Wikipedia is not for sale." He added that "if Elon wanted to help, he'd be encouraging kind and thoughtful intellectual people he agrees with to engage." In addition, claims that Wikipedia has been coopted by the far-left are inaccurate. While it is "certainly not immune to bad information, disagreement or political warfare," Wikipedia's "openness and transparency rules have made it a remarkably reliable platform in a decidedly unreliable age," said The Atlantic. "Evidence that it's an outright propaganda arm of the left, or of any political party, is thin."
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Is there a larger problem at play?
Musk has been "increasingly critical of legacy media organizations, which he claims misrepresent his beliefs and actions," said Newsweek. "The opposition to him from Wikipedia represents a break from other tech companies, which have become increasingly friendly towards Donald Trump and his officials in the wake of his election victory." But Wikipedia does not operate like other media organizations. "Thanks to the contributions of a global community of hundreds of thousands of volunteer editors, Wikipedia continues to be a reliable, trusted resource for all," said a spokesperson for the Wikimedia Foundation to Newsweek.
Wikipedia has a nonprofit model, and "the people who are constantly writing and rewriting Wikipedia entries are disaggregated volunteers — rather than bendable to one man's ideological views," said The Atlantic. Instead, Musk's actions, some say, represent an attack on free speech. "He is highly tolerant of inaccuracy, misinformation, criticism, even hate," Seth Stern, the director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said to The Independent. "But when the subject of the speech is himself, or his agenda, his objectives, and his companies, it's quite the opposite."
Many worry that Wikipedia contributors could be targeted next. According to documents obtained by the independent news organization Forward, the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank responsible for Project 2025, wants to "use facial recognition software and a database of hacked usernames and passwords in order to identify contributors to the online encyclopedia, who mostly work under pseudonyms." It is not yet clear what the organization would do after identifying the contributors.
