Elon Musk tells people not to donate to Wikipedia following $50,000,000 diversity initiatives
Elon Musk has told people not to donate to Wikipedia following $50 million diversity initiatives.
The tech mogul is urging people not to give money to the nonprofit behind Wikipedia.
His reasoning is because the organization spent over $50 million on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
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Taking to his own social media platform X, formerly Twitter, Musk wrote: “Stop donating to Wokepedia until they restore balance to their editing authority.”
This tweet was in response to a post uploaded by the ‘Libs of TikTok’ account who shared a pie chart that claimed 29% of Wikipedia’s budget for 2023-2024 was spent on targets for equity, safety and inclusion.
According to the Wikipedia Foundation website, 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.
The nonprofit also 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.”
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’.
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.”
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.”