One of Wikipedia’s co-founders is calling out his own creation. Larry Sanger, who helped start Wikipedia over 20 years ago, is now asking Elon Musk (and the Department of Government Efficiency, aka DOGE) to investigate whether government actors have been quietly infiltrating the so-called “free encyclopedia.”
Sanger took to X, formerly Twitter, to tag Musk directly, writing:
“Hi @ElonMusk. Wikipedia co-founder here. May I ask you to determine what branches of the U.S. government—if any!—have employees paid to edit, monitor, update, lobby, etc., Wikipedia? Such operations should be defunded, if any. If there are none, we’d like to know. Agree?”
Nothing like a casual nudge to the world’s richest man to see if Uncle Sam is sneaking around Wikipedia articles.
If you’re thinking, “Wait, doesn’t Sanger love Wikipedia?”—oh, no. He left the organization in 2002 and has been one of its harshest critics ever since. By 2005, he says, the site had already veered sharply into left-wing bias.
VISIT OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL“I like to call myself its founder now because I kind of want to distance myself from it,” Sanger told Fox News Digital.
He added:
“For people who don’t know me: – I left WIkipedia in 2002. – I have been a critic since 2004. – The Wikipedia process is almost as opaque to me as it is to you. – Yes it’s biased, I’ve said so for a long time. See my blog (LarrySanger.org). – I do Encyclosphere.org.”
Ouch. That’s like someone saying, “I started this band, but I really don’t want my name associated with their new album.”
You can have someone create a Wikipedia page about you by someone you don’t even know. This is done all the time for celebrities. The problem is, the leftists long ago made it so that they can write lies about you on the page about you, and you can’t make them remove them. Oh, they have a process for that, but many people have reported that it doesn’t work.
According to Sanger, Wikipedia abandoned its commitment to neutrality—a policy he helped establish in its early days. The site still claims neutrality is one of its “guiding principles,” defining it as:
Content should be “represented fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias.”
But Sanger’s not buying it.
“Neutrality means you can’t tell what position a person takes on the topic,” he explained. “Any of the controversial issues that the topic of the article raises, you can’t tell what position they take on them. Almost no Wikipedia articles these days rise to that level.”
Ah yes, the classic double standard—Republicans get the laundry list of “controversies,” while Democrats get a virtual press release.
With Trump’s administration pushing to root out waste, fraud, and abuse in the government, Sanger sees an opportunity to take a closer look at Wikipedia’s alleged “government interference.”
He’s convinced there’s enough evidence to at least ask whether the government—or even foreign actors like China and Russia—have a hand in editing the world’s largest encyclopedia.
“So I just want to know what the heck they’ve been doing there,” he said. “It seems to me this is a thing that needs to be discussed.”
That’s putting it mildly.
“I actually want the heat to be on both the government and on Wikipedia to take this sort of behavior in hand,” he added.
If there’s one person who enjoys stirring up controversy (besides Sanger), it’s Elon Musk. And it seems like he’s on board.
After Sanger’s request gained traction, he took things up a notch and directly asked President Trump to issue an executive order banning government workers and taxpayer dollars from being used to edit Wikipedia.
His message to Trump?
“Good idea,” Musk replied.
And just like that, Wikipedia might be getting the Elon treatment. If nothing else, this will be fun to watch.
#wikipediabias #elonmusk #mediamanipulation
