Elon Musk vs. Wikipedia: The Billionaire Who Wants to Own the Truth

Elon Musk has spent the better part of the last decade collecting industries like they’re Pokémon cards. He’s got cars. He’s got rockets. He’s got social media. He’s got AI. He’s even got a satellite network that controls internet access in war zones. But there’s one thing he doesn’t have, and it’s driving him absolutely nuts: Wikipedia.

Musk’s latest tantrum—“Defund Wikipedia until balance is restored!”—erupted on X after a particularly unflattering update to his Wikipedia page. The entry in question noted that during an Inauguration Day speech, Musk made an arm movement that many compared to a Nazi salute. Wikipedia didn’t say Musk was throwing up a Sieg Heil, just that people noticed and commented on it. But in Musk’s world, any fact that doesn’t flatter him is propaganda. “Wikipedia is an extension of legacy media!” he fumed.

If you’ve been paying attention, you know this isn’t just about a single edit. Musk and his group of right-wing tech bros have been on a crusade to delegitimize Wikipedia entirely. The playbook is predictable: call it “woke,” claim it’s “captured by the far left,” and, most importantly, tell followers to stop donating. That last part is crucial because Wikipedia runs on donations, not ad revenue or billionaire whims. Musk can’t buy Wikipedia, so the next best thing is to starve it.

Why Wikipedia Matters More Than Ever

Here’s the thing about Wikipedia: it’s one of the last places on the internet where facts still matter and have a fighting chance. Yes, it has its flaws. Yes, it’s written and edited by volunteers who are overwhelmingly male and largely from the West. But in an era where search engines are basically advertising-enriched trash and social media is a free-for-all of misinformation, Wikipedia is remains mostly reliable. It’s open-source, transparent, and backed by a framework that prioritizes verifiability over vibes.

For all the handwringing about bias, studies don’t support the idea that Wikipedia is some leftist indoctrination machine. In 2016, Harvard Business School researchers found that while Wikipedia articles on civil rights leaned more Democratic, those on immigration leaned more Republican. Hardly the ideological gulag Musk and his friends describe. But let’s be real—facts don’t matter to them. Their problem with Wikipedia isn’t bias. Their problem is control, or in this case, a lack thereof.

Musk is a man who collects influence the way other people collect frequent flyer miles. He turned X into a megaphone for his political views. Starlink literally dictates internet access in war zones. Even platforms he doesn’t own are taking cues from him—Meta recently downgraded its third-party fact-checking, citing X as inspiration. The one thing Musk can’t control is Wikipedia, which remains defiantly independent. That makes it an existential threat to his version of reality.

The War on Shared Reality

This attack on Wikipedia isn’t happening in a vacuum. The same people trying to gut Wikipedia’s credibility have also gone after Reddit, claiming it’s been “captured by the far left.” They’ve championed “alternative” news sources that cater to their own ideological slant. The end goal isn’t a better, more balanced information ecosystem—it’s a fragmented one, where every faction has its own version of the truth, and no one can agree on what’s real.

The beauty of Wikipedia is that it’s one of the last holdouts of a shared reality. It’s not perfect, but it’s also not controlled by a single billionaire or a boardroom of executives looking to juice ad revenue. It’s a messy, volunteer-run experiment in collective knowledge, and against all odds, it works. That’s exactly why Musk and his allies want to tear it down.

Musk can’t buy Wikipedia. He can’t fire its editors. He can’t flood it with ads or tweak its algorithm. But he can try to discredit it, to make people question whether it’s worth supporting. And if that campaign succeeds, we don’t get a better, more truthful alternative—we get chaos. We get a web where every billionaire and political faction spins its own digital fiefdom, and truth becomes whatever the loudest voice says it is.

Wikipedia isn’t just a website. It’s one of the last remaining defenses against that future. And if you care about free speech, free knowledge, and the idea that facts should matter, then you should be rooting for it to survive.