Wikipedia throws shade at Elon Musk in site's donation message

If we didn’t already love Wikipedia for being the unofficial source for our many school essay questions, then its takedown of Twitter and Tesla owner Elon Musk’s latest temper tantrum is a sight to behold.

A reminder of the latest instalment in the Musk soap opera: the tech billionaire suspended multiple journalists who were reporting on his ongoing warping of Twitter, and his decision to shut down an account tweeting publicly available information about the use of his private jet.

The accounts were later restored after Musk tweeted out a poll on whether he should “unsuspend accounts who doxxed my exact location in real-time”.

All of this led to the creation of a Wikipedia article documenting the whole sorry saga, titled the “Thursday Night Massacre” - in reference to the term the user purporting to be the original author of the webpage said “was trending on Twitter after the incident and was used by several journalists to describe the event afterwards”.

It’s certainly a striking name, and other Wiki users have branded it “misleading”, “editorialising” and “a bit of a stretch”.

Musk, predictably, hated it.

Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter

“A two-day suspension of maybe seven accounts for doxing got an actual Wikipedia page?! Wikipedia is controlled by MSM [mainstream media] journalists. Can’t trust that site anymore,” he fumed.

Yet the Wikimedia Foundation (the non-profit which hosts Wikipedia) soon hit back, updating a message appealing for donations to take aim at the new Twitter owner.

It reads: “Wikipedia is not for sale … We are the non-profit that hosts Wikipedia and 12 other free knowledge projects. Being a non-profit means there is no danger that someone will buy Wikipedia and turn it into their personal playground.”

Ouch.

As was to be expected, the note was soon shared by Twitter users, who loved the “shade” being thrown in Musk’s direction.

One wrote: “I gotta say Wikipedia using its fundraising box to effectively subtweet Musk Twitter is pretty funny (and effective).”

TV writer and producer Robert King added: “The best thing that happened to Wikipedia is Mr Musk. I’m donating money hand over fist to Wikipedia. Join me.”

“I do like that Wikipedia’s current donation drive message is ‘Wikipedia is not for sale. No one will ever buy it and turn it into their personal playground.’ Nice potshot, there,” tweeted another.

And it seems that’s not the only Twitter drama giving Musk a headache, as he’s also had to contend with embarrassing tweets from his own mother, Maye Musk.

On Saturday, right-wing political commentator Larry Elder shared a tweet suggesting if “you gave an American lefty a gun with two bullets” and they saw Hitler, former Chinese Communist Party leader Mao Zedong and Musk walking down a street, they would “put both in Elon Musk”.

Ms Musk wasn’t happy, slamming the tweet as “hateful and threatening” before confirming she had reported Mr Elder to Twitter for the “threat”.

Musk would later to reply to his mother, presumably with a hint of exasperation, with the words: “it’s fine”.

Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.