Elon Musk's crusade against 'wokepedia': Freedom of speech or misinformation?

Billionaire Elon Musk has called on his supporters not to donate to Wikipedia, which he called "Wokepedia," until it "restores balance in its editorial power." According to data from the digital marketing platform Semrush, in November 2023, the virtual encyclopedia was the fourth most visited website in the world, with approximately 7 billion monthly visits. The site is managed by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organisation based in San Francisco, United States.

Musk's post appeared on platform X, which the world's richest man owns. It responded to a post from the Libs of TikTok account, which publishes far-right content. After the billionaire took over Twitter in 2022, moderation practically disappeared from the platform, making it an outlet for hate speech and disinformation, which are more or less controlled on other social media.

The Libs of TikTok post that Elon Musk reacted to shared a chart from the annual financial report of Wikipedia for the years 2023/24. According to the chart, during this time, 29% of the encyclopedia's budget was allocated to "security and inclusivity" and "equity." In 2023, Elon Musk offered the Wikimedia Foundation 1 billion USD for changing the site's name to "Dickipedia" ("dick" is a slang term in English). The offer was not accepted.

In an email to American Newsweek, a spokesperson for the Wikimedia Foundation explained that the equity-related expenses "concern enabling more people to share reliable knowledge on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects." They wrote, "Wikipedia is based on the assumption that it gets better when more people with different perspectives (including political) add sources, edit, create, and check content."

The Wikipedia spokesperson added: "This goal focuses on legal actions that protect freedom of speech, prevent censorship, and advocate for legal regulations that keep Wikipedia accessible to all users." Wikipedia has been accused of bias from both sides of the ideological spectrum. In a July 2018 article, the newspaper "The Guardian" accused Wikipedia of being "dominated by men and pro-Western," pointing to studies that showed only 16% of the site's editors were women.

Meanwhile, in January 2024, David Rozado, a professor of computer science at New Zealand's Otago Polytechnic, published a study showing that "Wikipedia more often presents right-wing individuals in a negative light than their left-wing counterparts." This accusation, which also arises from the right, especially the far-right, regarding media, is worth examining more closely.

Should progressive and conservative views indeed be "equally" represented in places that are supposed to be dedicated to facts, like encyclopedias or media? The fact that right-wing views more often "fall victim" to fact-checking is not the result of a "woke" conspiracy but rather because regressive conservatism often contradicts data and objective information. At the core of right-wing stances is an attachment to tradition and the past, as well as a desire to maintain the status quo, fuelled by (often imaginary) fears about the consequences of changes demanded by progressive individuals.

Elon Musk's fight for "freedom of speech" is, in fact, a battle for the right to "equally" amplify xenophobic, racist, or homophobic content, which, while capturing attention and fuelling conservatives' fears, helps maintain the status quo. It provides an outlet for the frustration caused by enormous social inequalities in the USA, of which Musk is one of the main beneficiaries. Hence, the owner of X's dislike for Wikipedia. Edited by millions of users, it is closer to hard facts, whose widespread availability is inconvenient for billionaires.