Terming Wikipedia as a platform "controlled by far-left activists" tech billionaire Elon Musk urged people to refrain from donating further to the digital knowledge repository.
In an October 25 post on social media platform X, where he holds a 44% stake, he wrote, "Wikipedia is controlled by far-left activists. People should stop donating to them".
This reaction was prompted by an investigative report by Pirate Wires titled 'How Wikipedia’s Pro-Hamas Editors Hijacked the Israel-Palestine Narrative', revealing how 40 Wikipedia editors, in a seemingly coordinated campaign, have 'worked to delegitimise 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".
The report further said, "Six weeks after October 7, one of these editors successfully removed mention of Hamas’ 1988 charter, which calls for the killing of Jews and the destruction of Israel, from the article 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".
Per Pirate Wires investigation, Tech For Palestine, a tech group, had launched a separate but complimentary campaign post-October 7 that 'violated Wikipedia policies by coordinating to edit Israel-Palestine articles on the group 8,000 member Discord'.
However, this is not the maiden time Wikipedia has been at the receiving end of the tech mogul's attack for being 'far-left' as in November 2023 Musk had vehemently censured the open-access digital encyclopaedia platform, prompting retaliation from its founders.
He even mockingly offered $1 billion, on X, if Wikipedia had rechristened itself to 'Dickipedia' and called out it for having a 'non-trivial left-wing bias'.
In response, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said at a tech summit, "A lot of people are fleeing Twitter, a lot of thoughtful and serious people are fleeing Twitter. I think it’s a real problem. Twitter was, and now I guess X sort of is… the default public square for the world and if it’s being overrun by trolls and lunatics. It’s not good for any of us".
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