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The world's richest man has joined a growing chorus of right-wing voices attacking Wikipedia as part of an intensifying campaign against free and open access information. Why do they hate it so much?

citationneeded.news/elon-musk-

Citation Needed · Elon Musk and the right’s war on Wikipedia
More from Molly White

Recent tweets by Elon Musk, Libs of Tiktok, Mario Nawfal, and others have claimed that Wikipedia is spending “$50 million for DEI”, misrepresenting Wikipedia’s actual budget and financial statements to claim Wikipedia is now “Wokepedia”.

Then, Musk amplified an erroneous and months-outdated claim that Bill Clinton had been deleting information about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein from Wikipedia.

Musk’s recent Twitter rampage reveals a man with a grudge against Wikipedia, looking for anything to support his position, regardless of whether it’s true. But why have Musk and others on the right chosen Wikipedia as a favorite punching bag?

Attacks on press freedom and free expression have become commonplace, even among the right’s self-described free speech champions. But neither Trump, Musk, nor anyone on the right can control Wikipedia as they wish.

The right’s frequent claims that right-leaning sources and viewpoints are “banned” on Wikipedia are also either misguided or intentionally deceptive.

Most of Musk’s ire towards Wikipedia stems from his anger that articles about him do not repeat his own attempts to write his personal and professional history.

Only after failing to rewrite his own history on Wikipedia did Musk’s criticism expand to broader complaints, such as Wikipedia’s supposed systemic bias.

However, even many of his complaints about supposed widespread bias still boil down to disgruntlement at how he personally is covered on Wikipedia.

Musk has occasionally brought up the question of why the Wikimedia Foundation needs such a large budget. (The Foundation’s annual budget for 2024–2025 is 0.3% of Musk’s proposed pay package, by the way.)

There certainly can be reasonable conversations about whether the Wikimedia Foundation needs to spend as much as it does, and the community has these conversations regularly. Most of the conversations I’ve seen from Musk and allies, however, are not such conversations.

Attacks on Wikipedia from Musk and his allies aren't just about an online encyclopedia — they're part of a broader assault on any information source that refuses to be controlled.

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bison ✅

@molly0xfff you voice them yourself?! Whoa!
Sadly I can't stand the fake-robo voices (at least most of em), so I finally can listen to some news-posts :BlobhajHeart:

@bison I do! I hate the robo-voices too, they’re too uncanny.