- Wikipedia's founder Jimmy Wales warned Elon Musk that the company is "not for sale."
- Wales' was responding to a tweet asking Elon Musk how much he thought Wikipedia was worth.
Wikipedia's founder Jimmy Wales warned Elon Musk that the online encyclopedia is "not for sale," on Wednesday.
Wales was responding to a tweet by a journalist asking Elon Musk: "I wonder how much Wikipedia would cost?"
—Jon Levine (@LevineJonathan) December 6, 2022
Musk had blasted the company a few days earlier for apparently considering the deletion of a page about the so-called "Twitter Files" saying it has a "left-wing bias."
On Tuesday, one user tweeted that Wikipedia was "voting on the deletion of the entry for Elon Musk's Twitter Files," because editors considered it a "nothing burger," that is "not notable."
The user posted screenshots of Wikipedia editors voting on the deletion of the article with one saying the content of Hunter Biden's laptop was a "nothing event about another nothing event."
Musk responded saying: "Most of Earth: 'The MSM is biased.' Wikipedia: 'Cite MSM source to confirm this claim.' Wikipedia has a non-trivial left-wing bias." He then tagged Wales asking "what are your thoughts?" Wales did not respond.
Musk had teased the release of the "Twitter Files" last week saying he would expose "free speech suppression" by the platform before he took over. Under Musk's instructions, journalist Matt Taibbi, published a thread of tweets on Friday showing internal communications between Twitter executives and Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaign.
The campaign had asked Twitter to remove leaked explicit pictures of Hunter Biden after he reportedly left his laptop at a Delaware repair shop. Posting the photos on Twitter constituted a violation of the company's revenge porn policy.
Critics, however, viewed it as the social media platform's bias towards Democratic politicians, with Musk even calling it "a violation of the Constitution's First Amendment."
Musk fired Twitter's deputy general counsel James Baker on Tuesday, accusing him of secretly vetting the "Twitter Files" and engaging in "suppression of information important to the public dialogue."
In an interview with i24NEWS in November, Wales said Musk's "diagnosis of what's wrong with Twitter is completely wrong."
"Twitter has a real problem with trolling and abuse, it doesn't have a problem with not enough freedom of expression," he added.
Wikipedia did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment about Wales' tweet.