Elon Musk Makes $1 Billion Offer To Wikipedia, But Not To Buy It

On Sunday, Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk made Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, a $1 billion offer.

At first, most people thought the billionaire was trying to buy Wikipedia as he did X, formerly known as Twitter, but he doesn’t want to buy it. He offered them the $1 billion for a name change.

I will give them a billion dollars if they change their name to Dickipedia https://t.co/wxoHQdRICy

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 22, 2023

From The Hill:

The owner of X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, wrote his offer in a post on his site. He had previously posted a screenshot of a personal appeal from Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales stating that the website is “not for sale.”

“I will give them a billion dollars if they change their name to Dickipedia,” Musk wrote.

“Please add that to the [cow and poop emojis] on my wiki page,” he continued in another post. “In the interests of accuracy.”

When one user, journalist Ed Krassenstein, suggested the online encyclopedia take the deal, saying that it “can always change it back after you collect,” Musk added a condition to his offer.

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One year minimum. I mean, I’m a not fool lol.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 22, 2023

“One year minimum. I mean, I’m a not fool lol,” he wrote.

Musk had made multiple posts earlier Sunday criticizing the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that hosts Wikipedia, for asking for money.

“Have you ever wondered why the Wikimedia Foundation wants so much money? It certainly isn’t needed to operate Wikipedia,” he wrote on X. “You can literally fit a copy of the entire text on your phone! So, what’s the money for? Inquiring minds want to know …”

In May, Wales took a dig at Musk after his decision to restrict some content on the social platform leading up to Turkey’s tightly contested presidential election.

From Business Insider:

Wales was weighing in on a Saturday exchange between Musk, a self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist,” and Bloomberg columnist Matt Yglesias about Twitter’s Friday announced that it would “restrict access to some content in Turkey” following “legal process.” Twitter’s Global Government Affairs account had tweeted about the changes ahead of Turkey’s presidential election held on Sunday.

“The Turkish government asked Twitter to censor its opponent’s right before an election and @elonmusk complied,” Bloomberg columnist Matt Yglesias tweeted Saturday.

In response, Musk tweeted: “Did your brain fall out of your head, Yglesias? The choice is have Twitter throttled in its entirety or limit access to some tweets. Which one do you want?”

Wales wrote in a tweet Sunday that Wikipedia “stood strong for our principles and fought to the Supreme Court of Turkey and won. This is what it means to treat freedom of expression as a principle rather than a slogan.”

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What Wikipedia did: we stood strong for our principles and fought to the Supreme Court of Turkey and won. This is what it means to treat freedom of expression as a principle rather than a slogan. https://t.co/tHkx1Wa06r

— Jimmy Wales (@jimmy_wales) May 13, 2023

With the way things are going, don’t expect these men to break bread anytime soon.