Billionaire Elon Musk has been in the news ever since his takeover of Twitter, which was later changed to X. The Founder of SpaceX and Tesla posts on the microblogging platform regularly, often intriguing users across the globe. Recently, the billionaire said that he would pay Wikipedia $1 billion if they changed their name. “I will give them a billion dollars if they change their name to Dickipedia,” he said, adding that he would do so “in the interests of accuracy.”
When a user urged Wikipedia to go ahead with the name change, Mr Musk set another condition. “@Wikipedia, Do it! You can always change it back after you collect,” the user said. To which, the billionaire replied, “One year minimum. I mean, I’m a not fool lol.”
In another post, he shared a screenshot of Wikipedia’s homepage which mentioned “Wikipedia is not for sale” and “a personal appeal from Jimmy Wales”. Mr Musk added, “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 …”
(Please add that to the ?? on my wiki page)
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 22, 2023
Mr Musk, in a follow-up post, also asked if a cow and a poop emoji could be added to his Wikipedia page.
Since being shared, his post has amassed 9.9 million views and over a lakh likes.
“They’re always asking for donations, so be careful. They might come to collect,” said a user.
“Sounds like that cage match challenge,” commented a person.
A third person commented, “Buy it and put AI in charge of updating it autonomously.”
“Typical rich guy… Only willing to donate if the institution names itself after him!” remarked a user.
Another person added, “Looking at the replies I just can’t imagine these people are waking the same earth as me lmao.”
In May this year, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales took a dig at Mr Musk for censoring critics of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, a day before the country’s highly contested presidential election. In a post, Mr Wales called out the billionaire for not supporting free speech when he caved to Turkey’s demands to restrict content. In his post, Mr Wales mentioned that when he faced a similar situation, Wikipedia pushed back.
“Did your brain fall out of your head, Yglesias? The choice is have Twitter throttled in its entirety or limit access to some tweets. Which one do you want?” Mr Musk said.
In response to Musk’s tweet, he said, “What Wikipedia did: we stood strong for our principles and fought to the Supreme Court of Turkey and won. This is what it means to treat freedom of expression as a principle rather than a slogan.”
Wikipedia was blocked in Turkey for more than two years when the telecommunications watchdog cited a law allowing it to ban access to sites deemed obscene or a threat to national security.
