Elon Musk wants something he can't have: Wikipedia

One of the targets in Elon Musk's long and huge list of complaints is the existence of the world's most famous encyclopedia. Musk's latest attack – “Fine Wikipedia until it's back to balance!” He posted an update on his own Wikipedia page on X last month, which describes the page Sieg Heil– Arm movements he performed in his inauguration day speech. The entry read at one point: “Musk stretched his right arm upward toward the crowd twice.” “The gesture is comparable to a Nazi salute or a fascist salute. Musk denies any meaning behind the gesture.” There is little to be frustrated. Wikipedia page does not accuse Musk of making Sieg Heil salute. But this doesn't seem to matter to Musk. Wikipedia is an “extension of traditional media propaganda!” he posted.

Musk's outbreak is part of the ongoing crusade against the digital encyclopedia. In recent months, he has repeatedly tried to get Wikipedia authorized and hinted on X that it is “controlled by left-wing activists” and called on his followers to “stop donating to Wokepedia.” Other prominent figures who share his politics also turned their attention to the platform. Sequoia Capital partner Shaun Maguire released last month following Musk's gesture. Another tech investor, Chamath Palihapitiya, wrote: “Wikipedia lies.” Pirate LineSince August, publications popular in technical rights have published at least eight stories.

Wikipedia certainly cannot be immune to information, disagreements or political wars, but its openness and transparency rules make it a very reliable platform in an era of absolutely unreliable. The evidence shows that this is a little thin piece of evidence from the propaganda department of the left or any political party. In fact, one of the most notable things about the site is how it avoids profit-driven algorithm chaos, which drowns out search engines and social media platforms and provides bad or political information. If anything, the website run by nonprofits and maintained by volunteers has become a shelter in a broken online landscape, rather than an ideological prison, which is the “last bastion of common reality” as writer Alex Alexis Madrigal once called it this thing. This seems to be exactly why it is under attack.

Wikipedia has long been politically skewed to the extent that entries have been politically skewed. (Accusations of liberal bias lasted for a long time: In 2006, the son of famous conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly launched the “conservative” to fight it. The Internet. From demographics. In theory, it is indeed a Wikipedia entry written and edited by human skewed people: A 2020 survey by the Wikimedia Foundation, a nonprofit that runs Wikipedia, found that about 87% of the site’s contributors are male More than half live in Europe. In recent years, the foundation has placed more emphasis on identifying and filling these so-called knowledge gaps. Research shows that diversity in Wikipedia’s editorials has reduced information on the website, a spokesperson pointed out to me . However, for the contingents against wisdom, this effort proves that the site has been taken over by the left. Pirate Line Accordingly, Wikipedia has become a “top-down social activity and advocacy machine”.

In 2016, two Harvard Business School researchers examined more than 70,000 Wikipedia articles related to American politics and found that they “look on democracy” toward similar 'views' British Encyclopedia article. Despite this, the discovery is subtle. The entries about civil rights are more of a democratic tendency. Articles about immigration are more about Republican tendencies. “Data cannot be supported by data,” said Shane Greenstein, an economist who co-authored the study. Since then, things may have changed, but he is “very suspicious.”

Anyway, the attack will continue. In June, the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, published a report that shows that certain organizations and public figures are consistent with the right and the Public figures tend to be larger. When asked about bias on the site, a Wikimedia spokesperson told me: “Wikipedia is not affected by any person or group” and that the editor of the site “does not write letters to persuade, but explain.” and inform. ” (of course they like to write: a debate about spelling yogurt relatively yogurt Similar lengths Odyssey. in the end, yogurt Win, but lists the other three spellings in the first sentence of the article. .

Musk has not pointed out any specific mistakes about his inauguration gestures in his recent short story on Wikipedia. When he captures injustice, he and his basic questions in Wikipedia circles seem to be more about control. Musk has had an impact on the astonishing part of online life with his approach to global technology and platforms. He has turned X into his own personal version, which he uses to articulate his far-right political views. Musk literally sees some people's access to the Internet through his satellite-Internet company Starlink. Even other technology platforms that Musk does not own are consistent with him. In early January, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta would withdraw from third-party fact-checks on its platform, explicitly inspired by X. (Zuckerberg also announced that the company's trust and security team will be transferred from California to Texas and borrowed from Musk again.)

One thing Musk has no control over is Wikipedia. Although the site is far from perfect, it is still different from many internet and the fact remains important. The person who constantly writes and rewrites Wikipedia entries is a volunteer (a volunteer who is more bent than a person's ideological perspective) believes it is in the public interest. The site is structured to nuisance to anyone who controls the way information is spread. With this in mind, the campaign against Wikipedia is best understood as opposing a fashionable fantasy in the “wake up” technological environment: freedom of speech, the organization claims to defend enthusiastically, and as long as they like your stuff, it can be considered a long time. Must say. Try to increase the diversity of the views represented on the website, that is, try to achieve More Speech – interpreted as “censorship”. As Wikipedia tried, this group was interested in representing multiple truths, rather than a strange fact: its own truth. (Musk, Maguire and Palihapitiya did not respond to requests for comment.)

Ironically, Wikipedia is similar to the version of the internet that Musk and his peers are most awesome about. Musk often touts X's community notes feature, which encourages users to correct and contextualize misleading posts. This sounds like…the philosophy behind Wikipedia. Indeed, in a recent interview, X's vice president of product explained that community notes drew direct inspiration from Wikipedia.

Wikipedia-haters seems to believe that the strike is big enough, and often enough, and that the site may just break into the digital Smith. Just as Twitter's user base split into X, Bluesky, Mastodon and Threads, one can imagine a slew of pathetic rivals, Wikipedias, each declaring their own ideological supremacy. (Musk and others on his track also accuse Reddit of being “captured by the far left.”) Musk cannot buy Wikipedia like the Twitter he did. In December 2022, he bought a social platform a few months later New York Post The reporter suggested that he do so. Jimmy Wales, one of the website's co-founders, replied: “Not for sale.” The following year, Musk offered to give the site $1 billion, changing its name to “Dickipedia.”

Even if he can't buy Wikipedia, Musk may be able to slowly undermine its credibility by blowing up more than 215 million followers by divesting the site and calling for a refund. (The Wikimedia Foundation’s annual budget is $189 million. Meanwhile, Musk spent about $288 million in support of Trump and other Republican candidates in this election cycle.) Anyone who defends freedom of speech and democracy will Hope Wikipedia survives and remains independent. In the context of degraded networks, the success of volunteer-run websites trying to gather all the knowledge around the world is worth celebrating, not destroying. This is especially valuable when so many famous tech figures join Musk, using their deep pockets to make clear their political agendas clear. At the inauguration of Donald Trump, the CEO of the company that runs six of the world's most popular websites sat on Dais with Trump's family. There is no such representative in the next audience: Wikipedia.