Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has appealed to the public to stop donating to the internet ‘encyclopaedia’ Wikipedia for allegedly letting itself be misused as a platform “controlled by far-Left activists.” This is not the first time the Tesla and SpaceX founder has attacked Wikipedia for allegedly running Left narratives.
Mr Musk’s latest post on X, the microblogging platform owned by him, referred to a report by the US-based news website Pirate Wires that alleged “a coordinated campaign led by around 40 Wikipedia editors has worked to delegitimize Israel, present radical Islamist groups in a favourable light, and position fringe academic views on the Israel-Palestine conflict as mainstream over past years, intensifying after the October 7 attack.”
Mr Musk, who is also a strong supporter of Republican presidential candidate and former US President Donal Trump, in the post on X said, “Wikipedia is controlled by far-Left activists. People should stop donating to them.”
Wikipedia is controlled by far-left activists.
People should stop donating to them. https://t.co/Cjq2diadFY
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 25, 2024
In the report, Pirate Wires said six weeks after October 7 (Hamas’ terror attack on Israel), one of the Wikipedia editors successfully removed the mention of Hamas’ 1988 charter, which called for the killing of Jews and the destruction of Israel, from the entry on Hamas.
The group also appeared to attempt to promote the interests of the Iranian government across a number of articles, including deleting huge amounts of documented human rights crimes by [Islamic Republic Party] officials, the US news website that reports at the intersection of technology, politics, and culture said.
In India too, Wikipedia has been accused of being misused by ‘super editors’ – longtime users who can lock topics on the website to prevent more edits – to run certain narratives.
READ | “If You Don’t Like India…”: Delhi High Court’s Tough Talk For Wikipedia
Asian News International (ANI), one of the largest news agencies in South Asia, last month filed a Rs 2 crore defamation case against Wikipedia’s parent foundation for allowing certain malicious edits to a page with information about the news agency.
The Delhi High Court then issued contempt notice to Wikipedia over withholding information about edits to an entry on ANI, after the news agency said Wikipedia did not reveal details about three accounts that made the edits. Wikipedia eventually removed the entry over which ANI filed the defamation case.
The Delhi High Court on October 25 raised concerns over Wikipedia’s open-edit platform model, with Justice Subramonium Prasad calling it “dangerous” due to its public editing access, legal news website Bar and Bench reported.
Wikipedia has also become a narrative battleground over the Manipur crisis, with allegations that far-Left editors attribute their content only to sources created and influenced directly or indirectly by them. Malicious edits made by ‘super editors’ and locked by them on Wikipedia are seen as a huge problem.
