News Brief
Kuldeep Negi
Oct 25, 2024, 02:04 PM | Updated 02:04 PM IST
Save & read from anywhere!
Bookmark stories for easy access on any device or the Swarajya app.
Billionaire Elon Musk has slammed the Wikipedia for its 'left-leaning' bias, saying that the free online encyclopaedia is controlled by "far-left activists".
He also urged people to stop donating to the platform.
"Wikipedia is controlled by far-left activists. People should stop donating to them," Musk said.
Musk's remarks came in response to a report in the US news website "Pirate Wires" which alleged that around 40 'Pro-Hamas' Wikipedia editors led "seemingly coordinated campaign" to "delegitimize Israel, present radical Islamist groups in a favorable light, and position fringe academic views on the Israel-Palestine conflict as mainstream over past years, intensifying after the October 7 attack".
According to the news website, six weeks after 7 October attack on Israel, "one of these editors successfully removed mention of Hamas’ 1988 charter, which calls for the killing of Jews and the destruction of Israel, from the article on Hamas".
"The group also appeared to attempt to promote the interests of the Iranian government across a number of articles, including deleting “huge amounts of documented human rights crimes by [Islamic Republic Party] officials”," the report said.
It further alleged that a group called Tech For Palestine launched a separate but complementary campaign after 7 October, which "violated Wikipedia policies by coordinating to edit Israel-Palestine articles on the group 8,000 member Discord".
"Tech For Palestine abandoned its efforts and sent its members into a panic after a blog discovered what they were doing; the group deleted all its Wiki Talk pages and Sandboxes they had been using to coordinate their editing efforts, and the main editor deleted all her chats from the group’s Discord channel," the report added.
Kuldeep is Senior Editor (Newsroom) at Swarajya. He tweets at @kaydnegi.