Elon Musk Offers to Also Ruin Wikipedia
Behind the X owner’s trolling is a years long obsession with the internet’s favorite encyclopedia, says Depths of Wiki creator Annie Rauwerda.
Someone get this asshole to get into a submarine
In the Black Sea.
I've never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure
Yeah humans. Not ppl with a god complex
Alternate headline:
“Massive shitcunt threatens to destroy the actual best part of the internet to the surprise of absolutely no one”
is what they meant to say
Incidentally, do you guys remember when this fuckhead was a darling of the left?
These are strange times.
He was a darling because he was a literally unknown person who introduced themselves with a controlled media profile who sold a way to approach the fossil fuel problem. The nice thing about the left is their views evolve rapidly to current events and Elon has been inescapable in media, so naturally he reveals his true neocon form.
The nice thing about the left is that they have some critical thinking abilities.
Made it more broad and concise for you.
Incidentally, do you guys remember when this fuckhead was a darling of the left?
And when was this? I cannot remember a time when a celebrity capitalist parasite was a "darling of the left."
When he was spending money on electric cars, solar, renewable energy storage and (relatively) low-cost space travel.
Yanno, before he got addicted to Twitter and became terminally online.
It honestly baffles me how many people have forgotten that Musk was heralded as basically being irl Batman because electric cars prior to Tesla were actual trash, there was little to no research being done on how to make space cheaper, and renewables only worked as long as the sun was shining and the wind was blowing (iirc the power wall was originally developed for renewable energy storage; Tesla also developed solar roof tiles so you could turn your roof into one big solar panel). He was using his money to actually help develop cleaner transportation, cleaner energy development and space travel instead of filling Olympic swimming pools with cash like most rich fucks.
Then he started posting on Twitter and everyone realized he was an idiot with too much money who got lucky with Tesla and SpaceX.
(Yes, I know he wasn't the founder of Tesla; however it was his money and idiocy-induced stubbornness that made the company successful)
it was before he was an actual celebrity and was only known for creating Tesla/SpaceX. He was also "only" a millionaire and well before Tesla stock went nuts, and he also wasn't posting like crazy on Twitter so people only knew him via Tesla and SpaceX's achievements, both of them legendary underdogs looking to overthrow the well-established big industry corporations.
Tbh I liked him when the whole GME thing happened, because when Robinhood screwed over all the GME holders Elon blew the lid off of Dogecoin and I basically made all my profits back. I also thought him poking fun at the SEC while all that happened was pretty ballsy and I respected that.
But now he's made it known that he's a conservative bootlicker, transphobe, antivaxx, corporate shill... 🤷♀️
I don't know what you call left or who you hang out with, but this has literally never happened.
Maybe you're confusing "centrist" (aka right wingers) with leftists just because they oppose building concentration camps (on the fact of it only) or something like that.
Stop posting Musk's fucking face. This isn't tech
I'm so tired of seeing mean gross old white men scowling all over my damn feed any time anyone shares an article.
THIS oh gawwwd, couldn't agree more. Tired of reading news about this guy talking unintelligent crap. Dear people, for him even negative publicity is still publicity and for us it is a waste of our attention, 1 cent of which he doesn't deserve.
Twitter saboteur wanting to move onto sabotaging Wikipedia, the biggest reference source in the world that's only accessible via the internet, on his crusade against truth and facts? Of course it's tech news.
I mean the post has convinced me to donate to Wikipedia. It's newsworthy. I hate Musk as much as you, but I can't just stick my head in the dirt.
There's nothing wrong with wanting to unplug from it, but don't begrudge others for not wanting to.
He runs a social media platform of influence. It's tech.
Don't like it? Hide the post and move on.
I've been blocking these users.
Goodbye Gork.
Yeah I looked at their posts but didn't see any muskness
Someone should tell Elon that an unprofitable website and a non-profit website are not the same thing.
Deeply unwelcome. I hate that this is even a thought that he has had.
Twitter was public. Wikimedia is a 501 non-profit.
He can't buy it.
No, I know. Still feels less than good
I completely hate how something that is a rare Bastian of maintaining free and reliable factual information for the world is just a silly game for him. It sickens me. This is the kind of cartoon character rich villain that throws money a people and shouts at them to dance for him.
Yeah and pollute it with fascist content.
reliable
Wikipedia
It's literally a meme how you can't trust anything you see on there except for the most objective, undeniable facts, because you never know what page has been camped by an editor with an agenda or just a possessive streak. On anything even slightly subjective. I know there's good editors, I know it's a majority of them, but the problem is that the bad ones exist and so you can't trust any given page isn't poisoned.
Also, relatedly, the entire backend is an ever-growing morass of petty politics and tangled policies that serve mostly as a barrier to entry. They've been saying admin and power-editor retention is a huge problem for well over a decade, and yet they keep making it worse. At this point, the majority of their admins are from 2005, with only 10% from after 2010, because nobody bothers getting started when the prerequisites to making even a small edit can be learning the wikipedia legal system.
It is an encyclopedia. It is not a place for subjective content. Just because you keep getting your opinion edits rolled back does not mean that that's a bad thing. A Wikipedia page SHOULD be filled only with objective facts. Again, it is an encyclopedia.
Also, you can trust that a given page is not poisoned by checking the sources yourself. They're all right there at the bottom. Anything without a citation can be ignored but most things of substance are going to have a citation, because an encyclopedia is a place in which to collect objective facts with sources to back them up.
TIL: memes are a reliable source of information. As opposed to wikipedia
I donated to Wikipedia, today. A few bucks to a very valuable site.
Wikipedia is not the Achilles heel of free access to information. The Achilles heel are the sources: libraries, websites.
Consider donating to the internet archive instead or as well. If the sources are poisoned, Wikipedia just repeats bullshit. It's secondary literature.
A few years ago, I set up a monthly donation. Of all things I can use for free on the internet, Wikipedia deserves it the most.
He doesn't need anyone to do that, he buys attention
so, lets not do it for free
This attention is only flowing donations to wikipedia.
The entirety of the Musk sycophant Twitter sphere lost their mind about Wikipedia’s finances this week. Only because this dipshit tweeted a lie. Crazy how people can’t fathom that a non-profit that runs one of the most successful websites ever has high costs because they pay their engineers well. These people truly believe that everyone working at a non-profit should get starvation wages.
I work at a very large non profit and I am paid quite well. The work is extremely difficult and anxiety inducing but the payoff isn't really the money but the good I know I am helping to do.
But the good pay makes it so you have the mental energy to dedicate to the job and not need to worry as much about your finances and maybe have to leave, or do a worse job. I'm for genuine non profit work still being paid fair wages and more within reason. So much of the world relies on non profit programs for something!
As a fairly high up Fed that used to work for a well paid 501c3 same as you I know what you mean.
Wikipedia does funnel money into charity causes that aren't related to their mission of bringing knowledge to the world. I personally have a hard time reconciling that with the constant begging for donations. I'd rather they set up an endowment or focus the money on items related to the mission.
That being said, paying people well to get bright people working on their mission is a no brainer.
First I'm hearing this also - what unrelated causes to they support?
Sauce?
Wikipedia as an organization does this?? News to me so I'd love a source on that. I would not be surprised if people that work at Wikipedia donate to charitable causes or speak out about social issues, but that's a very different thing called free speech
Even internally, there's a lot of complaints about the tone of the donation drives. What's scary is that these are the pleas that passed. Worse ones were vetoed by community vote.
Ive responded elsewhere in this thread, and think we are otherwise aligned against this cunt, so maybe, just maybe this is a good time to give Wikipedia one of your hard earned dollars? One dollar.
Damn, finally got me to donate to Wikipedia. Years of successful ignorance down the drain - fucking thanks Elon. GUH
Well done
Done! Never did before, but I guess the headline had the right effect.
Well done
I gave them 10, just in case
Well done
Hmm, it says I can't donate from my region
Tax billionaires out of existence.
One can only dream
Of course the community driven, anarchic nature of Wikipedia is a threat to the status quo of capitalists dominating society. Musk can't stand this, because it shows how ultra wealthy, incompetent dicktators like him are unnecessary.
Wikipedia is anything but anarchy. There's so much bureaucracy it would surprise even Kafka.
I also don't think Elon's psyche is built around an abstract notion of economic systems. He's simply a narcissist that desires shiny things, in a very basic and unrefined way. Rich people just want to add baubles to their menagerie.
Can we just put a bell on him at this point and let him run around in his own birthday party?
Community driven? Wikipedia? That shit has mods worse than reddit admins.
Wikipedia is by its own standards a propaganda organ for the status quo (a mainstream encyclopedia that summarizes mainstream science, history and journalism).
Time to put your tinfoil hat on and refuse to check any references for yourself.
and WireMin
sorry this is not open source. Who is behind it, what is their gain and how do I trust whatever they claim in their website?
According to their FAQ: https://wiremin.org/#/FAQ
"We will release the design and/or reference code to the public when the initial version is stabilized."
EDIT: After having fully read the FAQ, I must admit, their DHT (distributed hash table) protocol sounds very neat. Being something of a protocol geek, I'll be the 1st to admit that I may be biased, so if a 2nd pair of knowledgeable eyes could try burst my bubble, just in case I'm missing something. I'd appreciate it. Thanks.
According to them, albeit with no documentation, source plus a firstname.lastname@gmail address as a contact. The lead developer seems to be an O’Reilly publisher of MySQL books but I can’t confirm that until I hear back from the developer.
Basically, these are some features:
It really is quite impressive, technically & they seem to have coded themselves out of the equation as they can't even see your password or recovery passphrase.
Be that as it may - as you rightly point out, all we need now is the source, without which, I doubt I could back it.
I've reached out requesting info on whether it will be full or partial source, roadmaps, transparency, funding for devs etc before downloading & trying this but it sounds fantastic - too much so, when compared to, say Discord or X.
PS: My interest in this mostly academic intrigue, I don't work for them or know them, I just found out about this a few hours ago. Most of the wording here is copypasta.
I once wrote commercial protocols in the IoT space that were loosely based around early XMPP - until Google killed it. Which is why I'm so happy about the fedi existing despite the best efforts of Google.
Anyway, this protocol seems to resemble the functionality of the FOSS app Syncthing, at least on the surface. Of course with the addition of other tech. I'd love to see one or two features like this in Lemmy or Mastodon, even if I had no interest in the code. The cost of infrastructure & the need to administer it, for example, would disappear overnight.
DON'T YOU THREATEN SOMETHING I ACTUALLY CARE ABOUT, FUCKER.
But seriously, I can't imagine the fine folks at Wikimedia seeing what happened to shitter and thinking there's any value in having him in charge.
You suck, Lonnie. Go away.
Yeah I can't wait to read all articles with facts replaced by Republican fantasy. Trump actually won the last election with 99% votes? Oh it must be true then.
Oh I bet he reeeally hates Lonnie as a nickname 😂
Is Musk in this thread?
Nah, but his paid meme troll farms probably are.
No but when he Googles himself - which I am sure he does daily, then he'll know to stay within the confines of his X domain. We're claiming back the internets. :)
Seriously though, some young person might still look up to him as a space role-model without ever knowing that the guy is a waste of space.
Ah. So this os the end goal - obtain very popular and influential things on the internet - in this case communication and knowledge/facts, and destroy them in such a way that only technofascists like himself can even find them remotely useful.
It’s the ultimate way to fuck up any democratic society and plunge the world further into chaos. What a dumpster fire.
Seize the means of information.
What's it feel like Musky to make a shitty world more shit because you're an emotionally unstable needy little bitch? Where's the fucking Mars colony you stupid whiney piss baby
Is he just a greedy idiot, or is this part of some multi-step plan to make sure the internet is filled with disinformation? At this point I think both things are true. Can't he just run off to Mars already
So he did get Twitter just to ruin it and take it away from the left. This proves it, because he wants to do it again to Wikipedia whilst calling it "Wokipedia" like a broken, right wing soundboard. Neither platform allowed lies and, since it's the right and their only move is lies, in his view that makes them biased. Elon intentionally sabotaged twitter because it wouldn't let him and his rich cunt friends lie and now they want to do it to Wikipedia. He genuinely doesn't have a moral foundation, it's just lies and manipulation all the way down to his shriveled, rotten core.
I found this interesting article when trying to understand why he's doing what he's doing with Twitter. What was Elon Musk’s strategy for Twitter? - NBC News
On the day that public records revealed that Elon Musk had become Twitter’s biggest shareholder, an unknown sender texted the billionaire and recommended an article imploring him to acquire the social network outright.
Musk’s purchase of Twitter, the 3,000-word anonymous article said, would amount to a “declaration of war against the Globalist American Empire.” The sender of the texts was offering Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO, a playbook for the takeover and transformation of Twitter....
The text messages described a series of actions Musk should take after he gained full control of the social media platform: “Step 1: Blame the platform for its users; Step 2: Coordinated pressure campaign; Step 3: Exodus of the Bluechecks; Step 4: Deplatforming.”
That pressure campaign is against the Anti Defamation League which Musk has been trying to do.
So I guess he's doing it all for far right adulation.
What a fucking loser
Please make this a post of its own somewhere. I've long suspected that the intent was to ruin Twitter for political motives rather than do anything socially constructive with it. Finally, this is undeniable proof from a court of law.
I can understand his anger, but only because of who he is and what Wikipedia is.
Wikipedia attempts to have a neutral point of view (NPOV). It is extremely nuanced but it basically means being impartial, relying on the verifiable facts & sources and not giving undue weight or emphasis on fringe views. The site also has a lot of active maintainers who go in and strive for that NPOV, deleting vandalism or other acts meant to shift away from it. It's certainly not perfect but it clearly works in the main.
NPOV is a hard thing to take for someone like Musk. He says & repeats incredibly dumb things on a daily basis and is highly susceptible to misinfo. He also has a massive ego, narcissistic personality disorder and an incredibly thin skin. He doesn't like it when somebody says something he doesn't like to hear and he doesn't like it when he can't control the person saying it. I have no idea why Wikipedia is pushing his buttons but I imagine that their bio about Musk is not pretty and it riles him up no end.
Yeah. I assume Wikipedia has the words "massive fuck up", more than once, in the section covering Musk's aquisition of Twitter.
I could go read it, but I've read enough about that clown for a lifetime.
"Wokipedia" should not be confused with Wookieepedia the star wars focused wiki. Though it isnt as abjectly insane as Transformerspedia though there is some cross-over.
“I will give them a billion dollars if they change their name to D**kipedia.”
This is what we’re working with. A small child.
Small children don't carry on like this. He's an embittered teenager.
He'll probably rename it "X-pedia".
Dot commmmm
Musk is always looking for his next high. He desperately wants that bong hit of attention that getting his name in the news brings to him. He's an attention whore, who can afford to burn through billions of dollars. I'm surprised he didn't buy Reddit years ago.
When he started talking about buying Twitter, I was quite sure his entire goal was manipulating how the website felt about him - as in, blocking the kid tracking his plane and banning people who offended him.
He now wants Wikipedia, and my opinion is only reinforced: he wants to edit his page.
That's what he wanted everyone to believe - offering 420 jokes as a share price he was willing to pay. He was ready to pay anything & even said so in an interview - that X is not about money, it's more than that. Though he complained about how much he paid for it, he got a bargain for the ability to centralise, control, monitor & distort the dissemination of knowledge, perception of culture, international wars, to prolong or incite culture wars.
Imagine one guy deciding which governments could use it as an emergency response tool, tracking millions of accounts; many of whom were in positions of influence ie politicians, law enforcement, judiciary, reporters, authors, financial types, companies of all sizes, government agencies, local councils & everything in between.
I remember thinking what a bargain he got that ability for. How much would any dictator pay for this sort of ability?
Reddit had no bluetick businesses, journalists, authors, government reps, entire countries used it for emergency news etc . . . he wanted to destroy those, while shit-posting at the same time.
At least it reminded me to renew my annual donation to Wikipedia. Fucking Muskunt.
Hell I think this has concern me to start doing an annual donation. Fuck Musk.
“I will give them a billion dollars if they change their name to Dickipedia.”
is such promise legally binding in US? it would be fun to take billion dollars from him and i am pretty sure we could all survive wiki being renamed for a day...
is such promise legally binding in US?
Absolutely not.
and you know that, or are you mistaking your thoughts and wishes with facts?
https://www.google.com/search?q=is+verbal+promise+legally+binding+in+usa
It'd be for 1 year minimum. And of course it is legally binding, these are the terms. Generally speaking, the only things that are not legally binding are contracts that involve illegal activity or contracts with a minor. Everything else can be enforced.
To address the arguments below...Elon Musk hasn't drawn up a contract because the offer has not been accepted. Of course he would draw up a basic, legally enforceable contract with these terms...if Wikipedia accepted, and said yes, I want $1B. Please draw up contract. This is how the world works. 🙄 Contracts, legal obligations, ability to enforce them.
So what you're saying is that, no, that tweet alone is not legally binding.
Just facists destroying faith in everything that’s not them. Normal modus operandi. These people need sheep who are so confused what to believe that they don’t trust anyone anymore and instead substitute trust for blind faith.
What about we all fund his trip to the Mars or whatever, but only one way.
Dude can afford to send himself to Mars, but I'd prefer we don't and send him into the sun instead. Mars don't need to be contaminated by filth like him.
Hell no. Wikipedia is the last untainted place of the internet
Hahahaha, oh wow.... Wikipedia is so biased on some topics that heads are spinning while reading some pages.
Yeah, it's not perfect and there is some drama but it's still amazing and one of the few remaining pieces from the dream many of us had for the Internet before almost everything else sold out.
[citation needed]
Hasn't he learned anything from Wikia/Fandom?
The WoWWiki and RuneScape Wiki communities ditched Wikia due to them plastering the fuck out of their wikis with tonnes of intrusive ads.
Heck, the WoW community had to ditch Wowpedia (WoWWiki's successor) to found a new wiki because Gamepedia was bought out by Fandom, the company that Wikia eventually became. Fandom ended up pulling the exact same shit soon after.
As for RuneScape, its wiki is hosted by Jagex themselves.
Musk buying Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation would end in financial disaster. Nothing would be stopping people from jumping ship to an alternative.
He can't just buy a foundation, it's a non-profit not a company.
If Musk bought Wikipedia I would demand my yearly donation refunded.
There is enough nazi information on Wikipedia already, the educational and informative kind of info that lets you see how bad nazis are.
Just wanted to note that Jagex does not host the 2 wikis, but they provide funding, domains and some other stuff but Weird Gloob is fully responsible for the wiki's and servers it's running on.
He always talks a lot of shit and pussies out. He don't do anything unless by court order.
Not really. When it comes to targeting our communication and transportation systems for hostile takeover, he's doing a rather efficient job.
Elon, if you want to make money from the internet, move into a Skinner box panopticon where users can pay to give you electric shocks.
I would pay for that
He would make a fortune!
Is Wikipedia even buyable by cunt muffins like Elmo?
It is a non-profit organization.
Not really, but Jimmy Wales is a ayn rand libertarian knob, so there may be parts of the org that he would happily let Elon fuck with.
Hes the ceo of fandom/wikia as well, the plague destroying game wikis with deep enshittification, so yeah. Not confident hes going to turn down this offer.
God-tier title
I'm sure this isn't credible, but:
https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/?sh=63510bfb7999
Credible or not, the guy certainly isn't searching his couch cushions.
Don't you dare fucking touch Wikipedia
I wonder if he didn't have his family's money, could he have been successful?
That’s the story of most ultra rich people. It’s hard to fail when you have that much money.
They do fail - upward. Everyone else gets to bounce off the ground & climb up again, they just move on to something better.
When you have 1M$, making another one is easy. That first one is hard though.
It's also really easy to lose the first 1 mil.
These wealthy entrepreneurs think they're brilliant risk takers, but overlook the fact that what would be a huge risk for most people is not much of a risk for them.
I think the connections were more important than the money. Reliable sources are hard to come by, but by all accounts he and his dad hate each other. Some accounts say he stole thousands of dollars from him, but it was likely less than a million that he was able to get. Moreso got lucky and had good connections so sell things.
You have a great point there.
nope!
Wikipedia does not appear to be in any danger of running out of money: https://www.dailydot.com/debug/wikipedia-endownemnt-fundraising/
I think it's a good thing they have an endowment to give the site more financial security, but... how big does it need to be before they stop the begging advertisements? They've already far outpaced the goal they set in 2016.
Just a heads up, you can download all of wikipedias Text in a couple Gigabyte iirc. So we could easily "fork" and mirror it.
This does lend credence to the "He's intentionally tanking Twitter" theory.
To the contrary, he's trying to say what he made on Twitter has more credibility than Wikipedia.
🖕
Please for the love of whatever you hold dear, do not touch that website
If my 5€ donation from last year has any power, I will veto this.
Oh look, another article giving him the attention he so craves.
Can we just not?
As much as it sucks, this is newsworthy. Not taking him seriously is how Twitter got ruined. Well, super-ruined anyway. It was already kinda crap.
I mean arguably its moreso giving Wikipedia the attention it deserves and can materially capitalize up the ass. Sorry, this is one Elon Musk Show episode I can get behind. Its for the public good even if his intentions are inverse to that. Wikipedia is way fucking bigger than Elon Musk imao
Authoritarian DICKtator muskovite having a tantrum.
Out of context, your comment may sound somewhat childish but this all started with Elon's comment:
“I will give them a billion dollars if they change their name to Dickipedia.”
we should make wikipedia into an everything app
Let the clown wring his hands over something he can't control.
Downvote Musk spam.
The billionaire doesn’t need your help ensuring him and his businesses stay in the 24 hour news cycle. Don’t be a useful idiot.
I agree. Why do these people go crazy over this pile of shit?
And there's really no excuse here. Musk actually buying Twitter was arguably a notable tech story. Him musing about Wikipedia is decidedly not.
So he says he'll give them a billion dollars if they change their name to dikipedia. As someone who has donated to Wikipedia in the past I'm 100% in favor of this move.
I agree. Then change it back after the check clears.
With Musk you shouldn't do anything until after you get your money. Musk must pay in advance.
I agree, changing the name won't change that much, more money for dikipedia I mean Wikipedia.
This guy seriously has the mentality of a three year old.
Don’t mistake intent for ability. Elon doesn’t feel cost or expense, he’s that rich. So while we can all laugh at the money it takes to wreck the communication platform called twitter, a person so rich could be doing exactly what they want; silencing and platforming anyone they choose, while swaths of people can be silenced or deplatformed for Saudi investors all while Elon muddies the waters of “free speech”. The cost is what we laugh about but consider the actions of someone who could dump that money for their own political ends and at the end of the day their feet still haven’t touched the ground.
It’s not a surprise if he were to eyeball Wikipedia and the thought should be a terrifying.
Stop giving this asshat free publicity for stupid shit, ffs.
He's right! By my calculations if we all stop free publicity for Musk his publicity costs necessary to cover for the loss of free publicity will easily bankrupt him by 4045. Who will be laughing then Musk?!
You sound like someone that preheats the microwave.
Super rich and powerful people hate anything they can't have or control. They are used to getting everything they want if they pay enough money or pull enough strings.
The idea of a successful thing being completely beyond their reach torments them, they seethe with rage at anything their blood-stained, filthy dollars can't buy, it galls them and I am absolutely filled with glee at the thought.
I set up a monthly donation to Wikipedia last night as a result.
I downloaded Wikipedia last night as a result.
W
he defo be flexin' with them mad dumps he be droppin' on the throne
Fuck no
Wikipedia should've agreed. Imagine for minimum a year, the whole world opening Wikipedia, gets reminded on the clown Elon Musk, again and again.
I am waiting for the day when governments will have had enough of him (unless he bought those governments because that fucker is fucking rich) - and "Elon Musk" becomes "Felon Musk".
