Elon Musk offers Wikipedia a billion dollars if it changes its name to “Dickipedia”

Musk is willing to donate $1 billion to the popular online encyclopedia in exchange for them changing their name.

Musk made public his proposal through his X (formerly Twitter) account, writing: “I will give you a billion dollars if you change your name to Dickipedia. Please add that to the cow and poop emojis on my wiki page. In the interest of accuracy.”

Journalist Ed Krassenstein encouraged Wikipedia to consider Musk’s proposal. “Do it. You can always change it back after you get paid”, he wrote. To which Musk replied, “One year minimum. I mean, I’m a not fool.”

This offer from Musk stems from an earlier tweet in which he criticized the Wikimedia Foundation for its need for funding. “Certainly not needed to run Wikipedia. You can literally stick a copy of all the text on your phone!” tweeted Musk. “So what’s the money for? Inquiring minds want to know…”. The answer to this question is found in Wikipedia’s own Community Notes, which explain that managing more than 25 billion page views per month and more than 44 million edited pages per month entails substantial operating costs. In addition, the Wikimedia Foundation employs third-party financial auditors whose reports are public, providing transparency on how they use the funds.

It is worth noting that Elon Musk and Wikipedia have clashed before. In May, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales criticized Musk for his decision to restrict certain content on his X platform just before Turkey’s presidential election. In addition, the social media platform had reportedly become more compliant with government requests for censorship and surveillance under Musk’s leadership.

In 2018, Musk expressed his intention to create a website called “Pravda,” where the public could rate the “core truth” of any article and track the credibility score of journalists, editors and their publications.

On the other hand, Usher receives a day in his honor and a key to Las Vegas.