Changing Twitter to X wasn’t enough to satiate billionaire Elon Musk’s taste for wacky ways to light fire to money and here's the evidence: the tech mogul recently offered Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, $1 billion to change its name to “Dickipedia.”
Musk’s seemingly joke — but potentially serious — offer was made in a post on X after a series of posts about Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, who said his website was “not for sale.”
“I will give them a billion dollars if they change their name to Dickipedia,” Musk wrote. It's impossible to know what's going on in Elon's mind, but it's worth noting that he similarly offered to step aside from the CEO's role on X based on Twitter opinion, and then he stuck to it.
Musk went on in Wikipedia another post, saying that he would like them to add the cow and poop emojis to his own Wikipedia page, saying it would be “In the interests of accuracy.”
Those thinking Wikipedia could game the system and take the money but then switch its name back right after would be wrong, as Musk did add a stipulation to the offer.
“One year minimum. I mean, I’m a not fool lol,” he wrote.
Wikipedia is user-funded through the Wikimedia Foundation, a nonprofit that hosts the digital encyclopedia. Musk criticized the foundation in a series of posts on Sunday, suggesting that the money donated was being used by something else.
“Have you ever wondered why the Wikimedia Foundation wants so much money? It certainly isn’t needed to operate Wikipedia,” Musk wrote in a post. “You can literally fit a copy of the entire text on your phone! So, what’s the money for? Inquiring minds want to know …”
Thankfully, the question on Musk’s post was answered by a feature he added to the website, “Community Notes.”
Users noted that Wikipedia handles “over 25B page views per month and over 44M page edits a month, requiring substantial operating costs.” The note went on to tag where the Wikimedia Foundation spends its money, noting that the organization runs a yearly expense tab of $146 million.
Wales has not been an avid supporter of Musk, often speaking out against his opinions and stances.
Most recently, Wales condemned Musk’s decision to censor critics ahead of the Turkish presidential election in May.
“What Wikipedia did: we stood strong for our principles and fought to the Supreme Court of Turkey and won,” Wales wrote in response to a post from Musk, who defended his decision. “This is what it means to treat freedom of expression as a principle rather than a slogan.”