Elon Musk has already accustomed us to his controversial, shocking, and often simply boorish behavior. The richest man in the world treats his account on X (formerly Twitter) as a stream of consciousness without any filter.
A large part of the Internet community is probably impressed by Musk’s behavior. The others are shaking their heads when they see another of Elon’s stunts. The billionaire has been in trouble with the law many times for his posts on social media –
However, the new owner of portal X doesn’t care about it. One may even get the impression that the more outrage he causes, the more it encourages him to issue further – to put it mildly – controversial opinions.
Elon Musk makes an immoral proposal to Wikipedia
This time, Musk took aim at Wikipedia. The richest man in the world was greatly irritated by the fact that Jimmy Wales, the founder of the largest online encyclopedia in the world, appeals to users for donations to continue the website’s operation. Such an appeal for funding appears under articles posted on Wikipedia.
It is worth noting here that Wikipedia, as a free and ad-free website, is supported entirely by funds collected by the Wikimedia Foundation. It is a non-profit organization whose main goal is to keep wiki-type websites open and available free of charge. The founder of the foundation, like Wikipedia itself, is Jimmy Wales.
Elon Musk posted a screenshot of Wales’ appeal on X with the following comment:
I’ll give it to them [Wikipedii – red.] billion dollars if they change their name to Ku***opedia
In previous posts, Musk questioned Wikipedia’s financing model.
Have you ever wondered why the Wikimedia Foundation needs so much money? This is certainly not needed to operate Wikipedia. You can literally fit a copy of her entire text on your phone! So why this money? Inquiring minds want to know…
– said Elon Musk.
The billionaire’s question was answered by X users themselves using the so-called Community Notes (notes placed under tweets that allow you to add context to a given piece of information or refute fake news).
Wikipedia records over 25 billion visits per month and 44 million article edits per month, which is associated with significant operational costs.
The non-profit Wikimedia Foundation is financially audited by external auditors and their reports are publicly available
– we read in the Community Notes posted under Elon Musk’s entry, which, strangely enough, were very quickly deleted by the website’s administration.
Elon Musk photo X
Elon Musk could easily check where exactly the money that is donated by Wikipedia users goes. All he had to do was visit the Wikimedia Foundation website. This organization operates in an extremely transparent way, and in its online archives
Transparency is the basis of our organization. The Wikimedia Foundation develops its annual plan and operating budget through an open process, subject to input from our community of volunteer editors and approval by the Board of Directors
– we read on the Wikimedia Commons website.
Elon Musk doesn’t like the creator of Wikipedia. It was about the elections in Turkey
Elon Musk’s dislike of Wikipedia, as well as Jimmy Wales himself – like virtually everything related to the richest man in the world – is, of course, personal. In May this year, Wales openly criticized the (then) Twitter administration for blocking accounts belonging to Turkish oppositionists.
In order to ensure the operation of Twitter in Turkey, we have blocked the accounts of some users
– wrote Twitter’s international relations department the day before the presidential elections in this country.
Elon Musk then explained that his company was forced to take such actions because otherwise Turkey threatened to completely block the website. Such a situation already occurred in 2014. However, Musk’s translations did not convince the founder of Wikipedia. “We have been blocked in different places around the world at different times, we have never censored ourselves and we never will,” he said on the BBC Tech Life podcast.
If governments around the world feel that they can control what their opponents say online or prevent them from speaking in order to gain political advantage, there will be more such censorship
– added.
Source: Gazeta
Mabel is a talented author and journalist with a passion for all things technology. As an experienced writer for the 247 News Agency, she has established a reputation for her in-depth reporting and expert analysis on the latest developments in the tech industry.
