• Public

  • Public
  • Network
  • Groups
  • Featured
  • Popular
  • People

But neither Trump, Musk, nor anyone on the right can control Wikipedia as they wish. A 2022 tweet from a New York Post reporter, musing about how much Musk would have to spend to buy Wikipedia, was met with a clear rebuke from Jimmy Wales: “Not for sale.”28 The site later echoed the sentiment in its fundraising appeals, nodding at the idea that Musk should just “buy Wikipedia” like he did with Twitter when it reassured potential donors that “there is no danger that someone will buy Wikipedia and turn it into their personal playground.” Attempts to coerce changes to Wikipedia’s content via the legal system would likely fall flatter than lawsuits Musk and his ilk have threatened or filed against critics, because the Wikimedia Foundation has proven itself remarkably willing to fight back against formidable adversaries. In 2017, the Wikimedia Foundation denied Turkey’s attempts to force the site to alter information about the Turkish government’s support for terrorist organizations. When Turkey blocked Wikipedia access in response, the Foundation took the case to the Turkish supreme court, and access was restored in January 2020 after the court ruled the ban violated human rights to freedom of expression. The Foundation has likewise resisted threats from the United States, refusing to submit to legal threats from the FBI in 2010 after they demanded Wikipedia stop using an image of the FBI seal,29 and in 2015 filing suit against the NSA over its upstream mass surveillance program