In another totally funny and mature move, Elon Musk says he’ll give $1 billion USD (about $1.37 billion CAD) to Wikipedia if the website rebrands itself to “Dickipedia.”
The “offer” was made on X (Twitter) after Musk shared an image of a message from Wikipedia asking for money.
I will give them a billion dollars if they change their name to Dickipedia https://t.co/wxoHQdRICy
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 22, 2023
“Have you ever wondered why the Wikimedia Foundation wants so much money? It certainly isn’t needed to operate Wikipedia. You can literally fit a copy of the entire text on your phone! So, what’s the money for? Inquiring minds want to know…” he tweeted posted.
Amusingly, Musk was quickly fact-checked once again by his own website, with people pointing out that the Wikimedia Foundation is actually quite transparent about how it uses its money. In its latest annual report, the company outlined how it received about $160 million USD (about $219 million CAD) in donations last year, of which $88 million USD (about $120 million CAD) went towards salaries and wages for its employees while $2.7 million USD (about $3.7 million CAD) was spent on internet hosting. Meanwhile, Musk has been looking into different X user fees to make up for huge swaths of departing advertisers and billions in debt.
It’s yet another irresponsible and ill-informed move from the Tesla CEO, but in a separate comment, he basically admits why he has a grievance with Wikipedia. “Please add that to the [bull emoji] [poop emoji] on my wiki page,” he said in response to his initial post about the proposed name change. Given how Musk — a so-called “free speech” maven — has previously attempted to censor his critics, it’s no surprise that he’d take issue with information about him on Wikipedia.
Of course, Wikipedia isn’t perfect, but its status as a free encyclopedia for the entire world that is routinely fact-checked and updated by millions of users makes it a valuable resource. Meanwhile, Twitter X has continued to get worse under Musk’s ownership, particularly in terms of a rise in misinformation and hate speech.
But hey, why should we expect a 52-year-old business magnate to actually be mature and responsible?
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