Elon Musk recently stirred debate by urging people to stop donating to Wikipedia, alleging it is dominated by “far-left activists.” Musk, the owner of X (formerly Twitter), cited a report from the news platform Pirate Wires that criticizes Wikipedia’s alleged editorial bias, specifically accusing a faction of pro-Hamas editors of shaping the narrative on the Israel-Palestine conflict to delegitimize Israel.
Musk shared the Pirate Wires report on X, stating, “Wikipedia is controlled by far-left activists. People should stop donating to them.” The report alleges that a coordinated group of about 40 editors has altered Wikipedia’s content over recent years to depict radical Islamist groups in a favorable light and reframe fringe academic views as mainstream. This issue, according to the report, escalated after the recent attacks on October 7.
In a separate controversy, Wikipedia came under legal scrutiny in India. The Delhi High Court issued a contempt notice to the platform, demanding that it disclose information about users who edited the entry for the news agency Asian News International (ANI). Wikipedia reportedly did not comply with an order from the court, prompting the court to suggest the platform could face a ban in India if it continued to disregard the legal request. ANI has alleged that defamatory edits were made to its Wikipedia entry, leading to this legal action.
Adding another layer to the ongoing tension, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales had previously taken a public jab at Musk’s platform, X, claiming it lacks credibility compared to Wikipedia. Speaking at the Web Summit in Lisbon, Wales commented that he was pleased to see large language models (LLMs) used in AI like ChatGPT and Bing drawing on Wikipedia for reliable data rather than X, which he described as “not a great source of truth.”