Elon Musk has called on his followers to halt their donations to the nonprofit organization behind Wikipedia, after it allocated over $50 million of its budget for contentious diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, the NY Post reports.
“Stop donating to Wokepedia until they restore balance to their editing authority,” Musk urged on X, where he commands nearly 210 million followers.
The Tesla CEO, who also serves as an adviser to President-elect Donald Trump, was reacting to a post shared by right-wing commentator “Libs of TikTok.” The post included a pie chart revealing that 29% of Wikipedia’s $177 million budget for the 2023-2024 period was designated for “equity” and “safety & inclusion” efforts.
The Wikimedia Foundation’s website stated that its goal for the budget was to allocate $51.7 million for equity-related initiatives (17.6% or $31.2 million) and $20.5 million (11.6%) for safety and inclusion. The largest portion of the budget, 48.7% ($86.1 million), was directed toward infrastructure, with 22.2% ($39.2 million) allocated to effectiveness.
According to the nonprofit, “Supporting equity represents the second largest part of our programmatic work, with grants and Movement support representing the majority of the budget within the equity goal.”
DEI, which focuses on diversifying the workforce, has been criticized by conservatives as a means to promote reverse discrimination, favoring minority groups while minimizing the importance of merit.
After the police-involved killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020, many major corporations enthusiastically adopted DEI practices. However, mounting pressure from right-leaning activists like Robby Starbuck has led some companies to scale back their DEI initiatives.
Big names like Walmart, Ford Motor Company, Molson Coors, Brown-Forman (parent company of Jack Daniel’s), Boeing, and Harley Davidson have all reduced their DEI programs in recent months.
Wikipedia, the widely-used free online encyclopedia, has long claimed political neutrality. However, research has shown that it suffers from a significant left-wing bias.
Earlier this year, the site removed the reference to Vice President Kamala Harris as a “border czar” in an article after President Joe Biden, having dropped out of the presidential race, endorsed her as his running mate. Despite Biden’s assignment of Harris to oversee migrant policies, Harris and her supporters denied the title of “border czar.”
A report by the libertarian Manhattan Institute published in June revealed that Wikipedia displays a “mild to moderate tendency…to associate public figures ideologically aligned right-of-center with more negative sentiment than public figures ideologically aligned left-of-center.”
Additionally, articles about right-leaning public figures often carry “more prevailing associations of negative emotions” like anger and disgust, while articles about left-leaning individuals tend to evoke “positive emotions” such as joy.
In 2012, a study published by the American Economic Review analyzed 28,000 political articles on Wikipedia. The researchers concluded that “Wikipedia’s political entries lean Democrat on average.”
Larry Sanger, who co-founded Wikipedia with Jimmy Wales in 2001, has argued that “nobody should trust Wikipedia,” claiming that the site’s army of left-wing volunteers removes content that does not align with their political views.
Sanger, speaking to Unherd.com in 2021, agreed with the assertion that “teams of Democratic-leaning volunteers” actively delete information they disagree with, including coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop story, which was initially reported by The New York Post.
“Can you trust it to always give you the truth? Well, it depends on what you think the truth is,” Sanger said.
Sanger and Wales have had a longstanding dispute about the founding of Wikipedia. While Sanger claims he co-founded the site, Wales maintains that Sanger was merely a subordinate employee, not a co-founder.
Critics of Wales have accused him of editing his own Wikipedia entry to downplay Sanger’s role in creating the platform.
{Matzav.com}