Elon Musk offers Wikipedia $1 billion to change name to D*ckipedia

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and owner of X (previously known as Twitter), has made an audacious donation offer to the popular online encyclopaedia, Wikipedia. However, his donation comes with a peculiar condition.

Musk stated, "I will give them a billion dollars if they change their name to D*ckipedia." He cheekily added, "Please add that to the [cow and poop emojis] on my wiki page. In the interests of accuracy."

This unexpected offer from the tech magnate appears to be rooted in a prior tweet where he questioned the Wikimedia Foundation's funding needs. Musk remarked, "It certainly isn't needed to operate Wikipedia. You can literally fit a copy of the entire text on your phone! So, what's the money for? Inquiring minds want to know ..."

However, the response to his query was swift. Wikipedia's Community Notes pointed out the extensive operational demands of the platform, highlighting that it manages "over 25B page views per month and over 44M page edits a month." This results in significant operating costs. Additionally, the notes shed light on the Wikimedia Foundation's transparency practices, mentioning that they employ third-party financial auditors and their reports are readily available to the public.

The relationship between Musk and Wikipedia has had its share of disagreements in the past. In a notable instance in May, Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, took issue with Musk's decision to limit certain content on X ahead of Turkey's presidential election. This was reported by Business Insider, which also commented on the increasing compliance of the social media platform with governmental censorship and surveillance requests during Musk's tenure.

Furthermore, in 2018, Musk revealed his plans to launch a website named Pravda. The purpose of this platform would be for the general public to evaluate the "core truth" of articles and to "track the credibility score" of journalists, editors, and the outlets they represent.