Elon Musk offers $1 billion donation to Wikipedia, sets one condition

Elon Musk’s offer: Tesla chief Elon Musk has offered to donate $1 billion to Wikipedia, the self-titled "Free online encyclopedia", provided it changes its name to Di**ipedia. Musk's comment comes along with a screenshot of a "personal appeal" from Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia which says "Wikipedia is not for sale".

Musk, who's known for his eccentric posts on X (formerly Twitter), said that the suggestion for Wikipedia is in the "interests of accuracy." The name change should last for at least a year, he added.

Not the first time

Elon Musk has been at loggerheads with Wikipedia for quite some time now. In 2022, when Musk released "Twitter files" targetting the social media platform's former management, Wikipedia voted for deletion of the same from its database as the editors deemed it "not notable". Musk had replied saying "Wikipedia has a non-trivial left-wing bias".

Musk had had a spat with Jimmy Wales too. Earlier this year, Wales criticised Musk for allegedly censoring critics of Turkish President Recep Erdogan.

"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," Wales said in response to Musk.

"If Elon is now saying ‘We don't care about freedom of expression if it interferes with making money’ then he should just say that," he wrote in a separate tweet.