Elon Musk has called on his supporters to cease donations to Wikipedia, dubbing the online encyclopedia “Wokepedia” due to what he claims are plans to spend of over $50 million on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
The New York Post reports that in a recent post on X/Twitter, Elon Musk expressed his disapproval of Wikipedia’s budget allocation for the 2023-24 fiscal year. Musk, who boasts nearly 210 million followers on the platform, was responding to a post by conservative commentator “Libs of TikTok,” which shared a pie chart revealing that 29 percent of Wikipedia’s $177 million budget was earmarked for “equity” and “safety & inclusion.”
According to the Wikimedia Foundation’s website, the nonprofit organization behind Wikipedia has set a goal of spending $51.7 million on DEI-related initiatives. This amount is broken down into 17.6 percent ($31.2 million) for equity and 11.6 percent ($20.5 million) for safety and inclusion. The bulk of the $177 million budget, 48.7 percent ($86.1 million), is allocated to infrastructure, while 22.2 percent ($39.2 million) is dedicated to effectiveness.
The adoption of DEI policies by major corporations gained momentum beginning in 2020. However, public pressure campaigns by right-leaning influencers have recently prompted some companies, such as Walmart, Ford Motor Company, and Boeing, to scale back their DEI initiatives.
Wikipedia, which attracts an estimated four billion visits per month, has long maintained a stance of political neutrality. However, studies have suggested that the site is plagued by a leftist bias. Earlier this year, Wikipedia removed references to Vice President Kamala Harris as a “border czar” after President Joe Biden bowed out of the race and endorsed her to run against Trump. Harris and her supporters denied the “border czar” label, despite Biden assigning her the task of overseeing the administration’s migrant policies during his presidency.
A report by the libertarian Manhattan Institute in June found that Wikipedia tends to associate right-of-center public figures with more negative sentiment compared to their left-of-center counterparts. The study also indicated that articles about right-leaning figures are more likely to include “negative emotions” such as anger and disgust, while entries about left-leaning figures tend to feature more “positive emotions” like joy.
Larry Sanger, who played a central role in the launch of Wikipedia alongside Jimmy Wales in 2001, has been critical of the site’s alleged bias. In a 2021 interview with Unherd.com, Sanger agreed with the claim that “teams of Democratic-leaning volunteers” remove content that doesn’t align with their political agenda, including the revelations in the Hunter Biden laptop scandal first reported by the Post.
Read more at The New York Post here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
