These criticisms are a major subject in a new interview with Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, published today in The New York Times. On the topic of the probe, Wales says that Comer and Mace’s “idea that something being biased is a proper and fit subject for a congressional investigation is frankly absurd.” On the topic of Musk, Wales has much more to say, none of it betraying much concern. “For many people, their level of trust in Elon Musk is extremely low because he says wild things all the time. When he attacks us, people donate more money. That’s not my favorite way of raising money, but the truth is, a lot of people are responding very negatively to that behavior,” Wales says.
Wales makes it sound like he hears from Musk fairly regularly; not constantly, but at least twice in the past year. One was after the election (“He texted me that morning. I congratulated him,” says Wales) and another was after the inauguration when Musk performed what many with functional sight would describe as a Nazi salute. Wales says that he pushed back on Musk’s criticisms that time, because the Wikipedia page about the incident “was very matter-of-fact.” Wales explains, “he made this gesture, it got a lot of news coverage, many interpreted it as this and he denied that it was a Nazi salute. I don’t see how you could be upset about it being presented in that way. If Wikipedia said, ‘Elon Musk is a Nazi,’ that would be really, really wrong. But to say, ‘Look, he did this gesture and it created a lot of attention, and some people said it looked like a Nazi salute?’ That’s great. That’s what Wikipedia should do.”
Even if Wales stops short of outright condemning Musk’s behavior, he’s not exactly deferential to him either. “I don’t think he has the power he thinks he has, or that a lot of people think he has, to damage Wikipedia. We’ll be here in a hundred years and he won’t,” Wales says. “…All the noise in the world and all these people ranting, that’s not the real thing. The real thing is genuine human knowledge, genuine discourse, genuinely grappling with the difficult issues of our day. That’s actually super-valuable. So I hope Elon will take another look and change his mind. That’d be great. And in the meantime, I don’t think we need to obsess over it.” You can read the whole interview, which also delves into Wales’ thoughts on Wikipedia in relation to the shooting of Charlie Kirk and his co-founder Larry Sanger’s interview with Tucker Carlson, here.
