Elon Musk urged his supporters not to donate to the non-profit that runs Wikipedia, after the organization had budgeted more than $50 million to spend on the controversial. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Initiative.
“Stop donating to Vokpedia until they restore balance to their editing authority,” Musk wrote on Twitter on Tuesday. Where he has around 210 million followers.
The Tesla mogul and key adviser to President-elect Donald Trump was responding to a post by right-wing commentator “Libs of TikTok,” who shared a pie chart that showed 29%. Wikipedia’s $177 million budget for 2023–24 was targeted towards “equity” and “safety and inclusion”.,
The Wikimedia Foundation site said it aimed to spend $51.7 million of its budget: 17.6% ($31.2 million) on equity, and 11.6% ($20.5 million) on safety and inclusion. Infrastructure received the lion’s share of $177 million at 48.7% ($86.1 million), followed by effectiveness at 22.2% ($39.2 million).
According to the nonprofit, “Supporting equity represents the second largest portion of our programmatic work, with grants and movement support representing the majority of the budget within the equity goal.”
The post seeks comment from the Wikimedia Foundation and Musk.
DEI, a set of business practices which aims to diversify the workforceHas been criticized by conservatives as a means Enact reverse discrimination that disadvantages whites And does not emphasize merit.
Some of corporate America’s biggest players enthusiastically embraced DEI following the police-involved death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020.
But a public pressure campaign by right-leaning influencers like Robbie Starbuck This has led companies to roll back DEI policies.
Walmart, Ford Motor Co., Molson Coors, Jack Daniel’s parent company Brown-Forman, Boeing and Harley Davidson were among some of the major brands that have cut DEI initiatives in recent months.
Wikipedia, the free, online collaborative encyclopedia that claims more than 4 billion visits to its website per month, has long said it is politically neutral. But studies have shown that it suffers from a left-leaning bias.
earlier this year, Wikipedia removed reference to Vice President Kamala Harris As a “Border Jar” in one of its entries. After President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed him to run against Trump.
Harris and his supporters Denied that he was a “border king” Despite the fact that Biden entrusted him with overseeing The administration’s immigration policies during his presidency.
In June, A report from the liberal Manhattan Institute found that Wikipedia had a “mild to moderate tendency…to associate public figures ideologically aligned to the right of center with more negative sentiments than public figures aligned to the left of center.”
Wikipedia articles about right-leaning public figures have more “prevalent associations of negative emotions” such as anger and disgust – in contrast entries about left-leaning public figures are more likely to include “positive emotions”, such as happiness. There is a possibility. According to the author’s study.
In May 2012, American Economic Review published a study Which examined 28,000 articles about American politics on Wikipedia. According to the researchers, “Wikipedia’s political entries lean toward Democrat on average.”
Larry Sanger, who played a role in the launch of Wikipedia with Jimmy Wales in 2001, has said that “nobody should trust Wikipedia” because its army of left-leaning volunteers cuts out any news that serves their political agenda. Doesn’t fit.
In 2021, Sanger told news site Unherd.com He agrees with the claim that “teams of Democratic-leaning volunteers” remove content that doesn’t suit their tastes — including revelations about the Hunter Biden laptop scandal that was first exposed by The Post .
“Can you trust it to always give you the truth? Well, it depends on what you think the truth is.” Sengar said.
There have been disagreements between Wells and Sanger over the establishment of the site. Sanger claimed that he co-founded the online encyclopedia with Wells.
Wells, for his part, has said that Sanger was a subordinate employee and not a co-founder.
Wikipedia users criticized Wells for editing his own biographical Wikipedia entry to minimize Sanger’s role in creating the site.
