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Elon Musk and the right’s war on Wikipedia
- On January 2, 2025 Molly White, aka GorillaWarfare, published a 4,500 word article titled Elon Musk and the right’s war on Wikipedia This version is only the first half to give our readers the major points but we highly recommend the second half as well. Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
When Elon Musk launched his latest crusade against Wikipedia this Christmas Eve, it wasn’t just another of the billionaire’s frequent Twitter tantrums. His gripes about the community-written encyclopedia expose something far more significant: the growing efforts by America’s most powerful right-wing figures to rewrite and control the flow of information. While Musk’s involvement began with grievances about his own coverage on the website, his recent attacks reveal his growing role in this broader campaign to delegitimize Wikipedia, and the right’s frustration with platforms that remain resilient against such control.
"Stop donating to Wokepedia," Elon Musk urged in a tweet sent in the early hours of December 24. This was only the opening shot: over the following week, the world’s richest man and the United States' new unelected First Buddy unleashed a barrage of attacks aimed at convincing his 200 million Twitter followers to boycott the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit supporting the volunteer-maintained Wikipedia project. While Musk’s grudge against Wikipedia stretches back years, his latest campaign borrowed its arguments entirely from fellow travelers in the far-right conspiracy theory swamp he increasingly calls home.
First was Chaya Raichik, also known as "Libs of TikTok," who on December 23 screenshotted a pie chart of budget categories from the Wikimedia Foundation’s 2023–2024 annual plan.[1] Apparently not bothering to read past the labels, Raichik dashed off a tweet condemning the Foundation for spending $50 million on "diversity, equity, and inclusion",a the right’s latest bogeyman, and urging her own substantial follower base to "Stop donating to Wokepedia".[2]b Musk agreed, amplifying her post with the comment: "Stop donating to Wokepedia until they restore balance to their editing authority."[3]
That the "safety & inclusion" link is not purple in this screenshot taken from Raichik’s tweet suggests she didn’t even bother to visit the page to determine what that category encompasses.
Two days later, Musk retweeted Mario Nawfal, who had ripped off Raichik’s same post to produce his own, with the bold and all-caps headline “Wikipedia blows $50M on wokeness". Nawfal added, "That’s $50 million for DEI instead of, you know, improving the actual site. … Sure, inclusion is nice, but maybe they could use some of that money to ensure they’re a reliable source of information first? Just a thought."[4]
temp break for editing
editWhat Nawfal, Raichik, and Musk either failed to understand or deliberately misrepresented was that these budget categories they’ve dismissed as "DEI" directly support Wikipedia’s reliability. The funding goes to programs to expand coverage of underrepresented topics, recruit editors with expertise in neglected subject areas, develop tools to identify and counter coordinated disinformation campaigns, improve article and source reliability, and protect the project and its editors from attempts to censor or restrict access to Wikipedia content. Far from detracting from Wikipedia’s mission, these programs work to directly address the types of concerns Musk and others raise.[5] Then, in the early hours of December 31, Musk reposted a video from a self-described “Conspiracy Realist/Coincidence analyser” account, “@BGatesIsaPsycho”, which had in turn taken the video from antisemitic conspiracy theoristc and self-described “OSINT journalis[t] exposing globalism” Ian Carroll. “No more donations to Wikipedia until they start being truthful”, Musk added, atop a video where Carroll claimed that “someone deleted all of Bill Clinton’s connections to Jeffrey Epstein from Wikipedia”, suggesting that Clinton himself was behind the edits. This, again, was a complete misrepresentation: the text was moved, not deleted, and not likely by Bill Clinton.d If Carroll had cared to look at the public article editing history, he would have seen that the extremely long biographical article on Clinton was in fact split[6][7][8] — as overlong articles often are[9] — into separate subtopic articles, "Bill Clinton sexual assault and misconduct allegations" and "Post-presidency of Bill Clinton", both of which are linked from the primary page. The Epstein-related section was restored to the primary Clinton article by a different editor three weeks later,[10] shortly after Carroll published his video but months before Musk reshared it.
Musk followed up the Epstein video retweet, two hours later, with a retweet of a video from an account called "End Wokeness", which is possibly run by white nationalist Jack Posobiec.[11] The video was a clip from a three-year-old interview by The Epoch Times with Larry Sanger, a jilted co-founder of Wikipedia who left about a year after its creation, who has created a string of failed Wikipedia competitors in the more than twenty years since. Sanger’s original complaints were about Wikipedia’s whole ethos, namely that the project doesn’t limit editing to subject-matter experts or other authority figures.e However, over the last five to ten years his grievances have shifted, and Sanger now mostly complains that Wikipedia has become “leftist propaganda” — primarily due to his concerns that Wikipedia articles don’t cite right-leaning publications like Fox News or The Daily Mail as much has he believes they ought. This axe-grinding, paired with the appeal to authority in his co-founder title, has earned him airtime on the right-wing media circuit, including on Tucker Carlson and elsewhere on Fox News, Christopher Rufo’s Substack, and generally in the same places he’s complained are not considered sufficiently reliable for Wikipedia.f Musk’s recent Twitter rampage reveals a man with a grudge against Wikipedia, looking for anything to support his position, regardless of accuracy. While Musk once spoke reverently of Wikipedia, you have to dig back years to find it.
His more recent mentions of the site include multiple direct appeals to founder and current WMF board member Jimmy Wales, beginning in 2022, to complain that the site is "losing its objectivity",[12] is "overly controlled by mainstream media",[13] and "has a non-trivial left-wing bias".[14] He’s bashed the site at least ten times since then as "Wokepedia"[15] and lamented its "capture" by the "woke mind virus".[16] His requests that people not donate to the Wikimedia Foundation date back at least a year.[17]
But why have Musk and others on the right chosen Wikipedia as a favorite punching bag?
Control
editThe rise of the MAGA right in the United States has sparked some startling changes in attitudes towards press freedom and freedom of expression. Although many on the right, including Musk,[18][19] have styled themselves as valiant defenders of free speech, their actions expose them as opposite: only willing to defend speech they find agreeable, while hostile towards and desperate to clamp down on criticism or opposing views. Musk, for example, has directed that “cisgender” be blocklisted on Twitter as a "slur", and posts by most accounts that contain the word are automatically hidden from view (unlike posts containing the long list of slurs he has apparently deemed acceptable).[20] He has brought SLAPP lawsuits against critics, including one dismissed by a federal judge as clearly intended to "punish [the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate] for CCDH publications that criticized X Corp. [Twitter] — and perhaps in order to dissuade others who might wish to engage in such criticism."[21] He spent $44 billion to acquire Twitter, ostensibly over concerns that conservative voices were being unfairly silenced, but really so that he could be the one to dictate which speech was and was not allowed on the platform.
Similar attacks on speech are becoming only more common throughout the American right, with president-elect Trump’s longstanding hostility to the media escalating at a rapid clip. In recent months, Trump has suggested he wouldn’t mind if reporters were shot,[22] threatened to jail journalists, editors, and publishers who refuse to reveal confidential sources, threatened to investigate or pull broadcasting licenses for news organizations that reported on him unflatteringly,[23] and filed SLAPP suits of his own against news publications and pollsters.[24]
This hostility to information sources outside their control extends far beyond the media. Right-wing groups have launched coordinated campaigns to ban books from schools and libraries, particularly those discussing race, gender, or LGBT topics.[25] They’ve pushed legislation like the "Kids Online Safety Act" that, while framed as protecting children, would require platforms to restrict access to information deemed "harmful" or "inappropriate for minors", which is likely to include resources for LGBT youth and information about reproductive or gender-affirming healthcare, sexual education, or mental health.[26] And they’ve supported state-level laws requiring internet platforms to implement age restrictions that threaten privacy and are vulnerable to weaponization against content deemed “obscene”.[27] The common thread connecting these efforts is not protecting children or promoting “family values,” but controlling what information people can access.
But neither Trump, Musk, nor anyone on the right can control Wikipedia as they wish. A 2022 tweet from a New York Post reporter, musing about how much Musk would have to spend to buy Wikipedia, was met with a clear rebuke from Jimmy Wales: "Not for sale." [28] The site later echoed the sentiment in its fundraising appeals, nodding at the idea that Musk should just "buy Wikipedia" like he did with Twitter when it reassured potential donors that “there is no danger that someone will buy Wikipedia and turn it into their personal playground."
Attempts to coerce changes to Wikipedia’s content via the legal system would likely fall flatter than lawsuits Musk and his ilk have threatened or filed against critics, because the Wikimedia Foundation has proven itself remarkably willing to fight back against formidable adversaries. In 2017, the Wikimedia Foundation denied Turkey’s attempts to force the site to alter information about the Turkish government’s support for terrorist organizations. When Turkey blocked Wikipedia access in response, the Foundation took the case to the Turkish supreme court, and access was restored in January 2020 after the court ruled the ban violated human rights to freedom of expression. The Foundation has likewise resisted threats from the United States, refusing to submit to legal threats from the FBI in 2010 after they demanded Wikipedia stop using an image of the FBI seal,[29] and in 2015 filing suit against the NSA over its upstream mass surveillance program, kicking off a years-long legal battle with the agency (which was eventually decided in favor of the NSA).
This isn't to say Wikipedia is impervious to influence. While obvious vandalism and heavy-handed manipulation attempts typically fail quickly, more subtle influence campaigns can succeed, at least for a time, by working within Wikipedia's rules and social dynamics. Coordinated editing campaigns have sometimes pushed biased content, particularly in areas of the project that attract less attention. Governments have been accused of attempting to manipulate Wikipedia to favor their interests or spread propaganda, while paid editing firms have manipulated articles about corporations and politicians. But Wikipedia's transparency makes manipulation visible and correctable: every edit is publicly logged, discussed, and reversible. And a decree by a government or billionaire does not ultimately determine what content stays or goes.
While some news outlets and other entities have proven willing to back down in the face of threats and demands from powerful figures (or has lacked the resources to do anything but), Wikipedia has not. This resilience against control helps explain why figures like Musk find Wikipedia so infuriating. They can buy platforms, threaten lawsuits, or pressure advertisers, but they cannot simply purchase or coerce control over Wikipedia.
References
edit- ^ m:Budget allocations section of the "Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2023-2024/Finances" page.
- ^ Tweet by Libs of Tiktok
- ^ Tweet by Elon Musk
- ^ Tweet by Mario Nawfal
- ^ "m:Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2023-2024/Goals/Safety & Inclusion" page.
- ^ Removal from the Bill Clinton article, 18:11 UTC on 22 July 2024.
- ^ Addition to the "Bill Clinton sexual assault and misconduct allegations" article, 18:12 UTC on 22 July 2024.
- ^ Addition] to the "Post-presidency of Bill Clinton" article, 18:12 UTC on 22 July 2024.
- ^ From the Wikipedia editing guideline on article size: "Very large articles should be split into logically separate articles." At the time the page was split, the Bill Clinton article was 13,022 words long. According to rough rules of thumb on Wikipedia, articles greater than 9,000 words "Probably should be divided or trimmed, though the scope of a topic can sometimes justify the added reading material." At 15,000 words, articles "Almost certainly should be divided or trimmed."
- ^ Restoration of the section to the “Bill Clinton” article, 06:31 UTC on 12 August 2024.
- ^ "Who is End Wokeness?", Ryan McBeth. (Video).
- ^ 12
- ^ 13
- ^ 14
- ^ 15
- ^ 16
- ^ 17
- ^ Tweet by Elon Musk on March 5, 2022.
- ^ Tweets by Elon Musk mentioning "free speech"
- ^ "Musk says 'cis,' 'cisgender' considered slurs on Twitter", The Hill.
- ^ "Musk tried to 'punish' critics, judge rules, in tossing a lawsuit", The Washington Post.
- ^ "Trump campaign defends his remarks about violence toward journalists", ABC News.
- ^ "Jailed reporters, silenced networks: What Trump says he'd do to the media if elected", NPR.
- ^ "Trump’s media lawsuits could do serious damage to America's free press", Vox.
- ^ "Banned in the USA: Narrating the Crisis", PEN America.
- ^ "Don’t Fall for the Latest Changes to the Dangerous Kids Online Safety Act", Electronic Frontier Foundation.
- ^ "Pornhub Is Now Blocked In Almost All of the U.S. South", 404 Media.
- ^ Tweet by Jimmy Wales on December 7, 2022.
- ^ "F.B.I., Challenging Use of Seal, Gets Back a Primer on the Law", The New York Times
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