The billionaire Elon Musk caused a stir last weekend with a series of provocative tweets, in which he offered the sum of US$1 billion in exchange for changing his name of Wikipedia for “Dickipedia”.
This offer was presented amid criticism from Musk regarding the donations requested by Wikipedia for its ongoing maintenance.
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The online encyclopedia uses these donations to cover its operating costs and to fund independent audits shared with the public.
(Image: disclosure)
The name suggested by Musk alludes to the English term for the male sexual organ and is also used as an insult translatable as “idiot”.
In a conversation thread where Musk pledged the generous sum, one user suggested that the Wikimedia Foundation, the organization behind Wikipedia, simply change its name to receive the offer.
However, Musk responded emphatically that he is “no fool” and insisted that the name “Dickipedia” should remain up for at least a year.
To date, the Wikimedia Foundation has not issued any official comment on this controversial name change proposal.
What may come as a surprise to many is that this is not the first time that Musk and those responsible for Wikipedia have had public disagreements.
In May 2023, Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, criticized Musk for censoring tweets from critics of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan just before the country's presidential elections.
Wales accused Musk of compromising freedom of expression by meeting Turkey's demands to restrict content on platform X (formerly known as Twitter).
He emphasized that, faced with similar circumstances, Wikipedia remained firm in its stance of not censoring information.
In response, Musk claimed that his options were to limit access to Twitter across the board or restrict access to Twitter. access to specific tweets, arguing that he was acting based on the law and circumstances of that time.
