Elon Musk urges people not to donate to Wikipedia following the website's $50,000,000 purchase
Elon Musk has urged people not to donate to Wikipedia following the website's $50,000,000 purchase.
This is after Wikipedia spent $50 million on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
It looks like the billionaire doesn’t approve of the way the website spends its money because he has urged his supporters not to give any cash to the nonprofit.
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Musk even took to his own social media platform X, formerly Twitter, to encourage people to stop donating.
He said: “Stop donating to Wokepedia until they restore balance to their editing authority.”
His tweet was responding to a post made by an account known as the ‘Libs of TikTok’ who shared a pie chart claiming that 29% of Wikipedia’s budget from 2023 to 2024 went on targets for equity, safety and inclusion.
On the Wikipedia Foundation website, it said: “Supporting equity represents the second largest part of our programmatic work, with grants and Movement support representing the majority of the budget within the equity goal.”
On the site, it was also shared that the organization has a goal of spending $31.2 million on equity and $20.5 million on safety and inclusion.
$86.1 million was spent on infrastructure while $39.2 million went on effectiveness.
In another tweet shared by Musk, one user wrote: “WIKIPEDIA BLOWS $50M ON WOKENESS.
“Turns out nearly 30% of Wikipedia’s budget last year went to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. That’s $50 million for DEI instead of, you know, improving the actual site.
“Critics are calling it ‘Wokepedia,’ accusing the platform of prioritizing ideology over function.
“Meanwhile, the internet’s collective eye-roll is almost audible.
“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.”
Reposting the tweet, Musk added: “Where your donation to Wikipedia goes.”
According to a report by the Manhattan Institute titled ‘Is Wikipedia politically biased?’, it said the site has a ‘mild to moderate tendency…to associate public figures ideologically aligned right-of-center with more negative sentiment than public figures ideologically aligned left-of-center’.
Larry Sanger, who played a crucial role in launching Wikipedia back in 2001 alongside Jimmy Wales, has claimed that ‘nobody should trust Wikipedia’, arguing that it has an army of left-leaning volunteers who cut out news that doesn’t fit their political agenda.
Sanger spoke to Unherd.com in 2021 where he said that ‘teams of Democratic-leaning volunteers’ remove content that they don’t agree with.
He added: “Can you trust it to always give you the truth? Well, it depends on what you think the truth is.”