Mr Musk asked if a cow and poop emoji could be added to his Wikipedia page.
Billionaire Elon Musk has since his takeover of Twitter, which later became known in recent years, said that he would pay Wikipedia $1 billion if they changed their name. “I will give them a billion dollars if they change their name to Dickipedia,” he said, adding that he would do so “in the interest of accuracy.”
When a user asked Wikipedia to make the name change, Mr. Musk imposed another condition. “@Wikipedia, do it! You can change it at any time after collecting it,” the user said. To which the billionaire replied: “A year at least. I mean, I’m not an idiot lol.”
In another post, he shared a screenshot of the Wikipedia homepage with the statement “Wikipedia is not for sale” and “a personal appeal from Jimmy Wales.” Mr Musk added: “Have you ever wondered why the Wikimedia Foundation wants so much money? It’s certainly not needed to run Wikipedia. You can literally fit a copy of the entire text on your phone! So what is the money for? Ask.” Heads want to know…”
(Please add this to the 🐄💩 on my wiki page)
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 22, 2023
Mr Musk also asked in a follow-up post whether a cow and poop emoji could be added to his Wikipedia page.
Since his post was shared, it has received 9.9 million views and over 1,000 likes.
“They are always asking for donations, so be careful. They could come to collect money,” said one user.
“Sounds like that cage match challenge,” someone commented.
A third person commented: “Buy it and hire the AI to update it autonomously.”
“Typical rich guy… Only willing to donate if the institution names itself after him!” remarked one user.
Another person added: “Looking at the replies I just can’t imagine these people waking up on the same earth as me lmao.”
In May this year, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales criticized Mr. Musk for censoring critics of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, a day before the country’s closely contested presidential election. In a post, Wales criticized the billionaire for not supporting free speech as he gave in to Turkey’s demands for content restrictions. In his post, Mr. Wales mentioned that Wikipedia pushed back when he faced a similar situation.
“Have you lost your mind, Yglesias? You can choose to throttle Twitter completely or limit access to some tweets. Which one do you want?” Mr. Musk said.
In response to Musk’s tweet, he said: “What Wikipedia did: We stood strong for our principles and fought in the Supreme Court of Turkey and won. This means treating freedom of expression as a principle and not a slogan.”
Wikipedia was blocked in Turkey for more than two years as the telecommunications regulator cited a law that allowed it to ban access to websites deemed obscene or a threat to national security.