Billionaire businessman, owner of social media platform X (formerly Twitter), and the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk has reportedly offered $1 billion donation to Wikipedia, the renowned internet encyclopedia platform – to change its name to ‘Dickipedia’ for at least one year. Musk terms the proposition ‘in the interests of accuracy’.
Elon Musk shared the proposal through a post via his X handle on Sunday that says “I will give them a billion dollars if they change their name to Dickipedia”
In response to the post by Elon Musk, political journalist Ed Krassenstein said that Wikipedia can accept the billion dollar offer and change the name back to ‘Wikipedia’ after collecting the donation. “@Wikipedia, Do it! You can always change it after you collect.” said Krassenstein
@Wikipedia, Do it!
— Ed Krassenstein (@EdKrassen) October 22, 2023
You can always change it back after you collect.
Responding to Krassenstein and Wikipedia, Elon said, “One year minimum. I mean, I’m not a fool lol.”
Backing Elon Musk, an X account ‘@fuse.gold’ said that they will donate 1,000,000 GOLDX VIP Points to this wonderful cause followed by a laughing emoji. “We’ll happily donate 1,000,000 GOLDX VIP Points to this wonderful cause @elonmusk”.
Seems like Elon Musk has an older bone to pick with Wikipedia. Back in May, Jimmy Wales, chair of Wikimedia foundation – criticised Musk for purportedly censoring critics of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a day ahead of Turkey’s contentious presidential elections.
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. https://t.co/tHkx1Wa06r
— Jimmy Wales (@jimmy_wales) May 13, 2023
As reported by LiveMint, according to Wales, when Wikipedia encountered similar pressures, they took a resolute stand and even fought their way up to Turkey’s Supreme Court, thereby emphasising the importance of upholding freedom of speech as a principle and not just a catchphrase.
