New Delhi: Free online encyclopaedia Wikipedia and Internet search engine Google have become part and parcel of our daily life.
Wikipaedia, one of the world’s top 10 websites, depends on public donations to sustain itself.
However, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has appealed to the public to stop donating to Wikipedia as he believes the Internet encyclopaedia lets itself be misused as a platform which is controlled by ‘far-Left activists’.
In a post on X, the microblogging platform owned by him, Musk referred to a report by 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.”
Musk attached the Pirate Wires report and wrote: “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
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO, who is strongly backing the candidature of Republican candidate Donald Trump for the upcoming US Presidential election, has attacked Wikipedia earlier also for allegedly running Left narratives.
It’s not a good time for Wikipedia as it been mired in controversy in India too, having 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.
News platform ANI (Asian News International) filed a Rs 2 crore defamation case against Wikipedia’s parent foundation last month for allowing certain malicious edits to a page with information about the news agency.
After Delhi High Court issued contempt notice to Wikipedia, it had to remove the entry over which ANI filed the case.
