Elon Musk Has Been Posting Critically Of Wikipedia, Offers $1 Billion To Buy It If They Change Name To 'Dickipedia'
Noted website "tinkerer" and entrepreneur Elon Musk appears to have his sights on another widely used and largely beloved website: Wikipedia.
The billionaire has been tweeting (or X-ing) critically about the free internet encyclopedia over the past several days, seeming to take issue with the site's regular request for donations. The unexpected line of attack started with a conspiratorial tweet wondering why Wikipedia needs money to operate when "You can literally fit a copy of the entire text on your phone!"
Twitter's Community Notes popped in under Musk's tweet to explain where the money goes, citing Wikipedia itself.
Musk didn't stop there, adding that he would buy Wikipedia for $1 billion on the condition they changed its name to "Dickipedia."
He may have given away his motivations for this seemingly unprompted line of antagonistic questioning on Wikipedia when he added, "(Please add that to the 🐄💩 on my wiki page)."
Changing "Wikipedia" to "Dickipedia" would arguably be just as confusing as changing "Twitter" to "X," as "Dickipedia" was the name of a Huffington Post comedy series profiling people they thought were jerks. Others have come up with the idea of a Dickipedia before, usually envisioning it as a library of male genitalia.
It seems unlikely Wikipedia will accept Musk's offer, as nearly a year ago, Wikipedia owner Jimmy Wales made his feelings about a potential Musk purchase of the website clear.
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Red Left Hand
What does 11+% Fundraising mean? Do they spend 14 million on ads?
Bobbobbobbob
Think if we all pitched in enough we could raise the funds for Musk to fuck off forever?
LilaBirby
wikipedia is not for sale.
it tells people that.
Revic
At first I thought he was trying to drum up public approval for some future stupid business move, but I was overthinking it. It's the same thing that motivates basically all his public meltdowns: His feelings got hurt.
So now he's pretending he can't find the Wikimedia Foundation's public financials page so he can cast aspersions by "just asking questions" he'd know the answers to if he actually wanted them, since he can't just buy it out.
Gumshoe
I hate this "just asking questions" BS where you ask some leading question that you clearly imply has some sinister answer that can't be said out loud, when the reality is that you could have just looked up the answer yourself and found that there was a pretty reasonable explanation for it.
Rhettorical
We've known that Wikipedia has been awful for years. Elon talking about it is finally bringing that front and center to a much larger audience.