Now Elon Musk is attacking Wikipedia In the Tesla CEO’s world, no media source can be considered trustworthy, particularly those that criticise him. Dave Lee Oct 26, 2023 https://www.afr.com/technology/now-elon-musk-is-attacking-wikipedia-20231025-p5eewj Not content with trashing one treasured website this year, Elon Musk has turned his sights on another: Wikipedia, the crowdsourced encyclopedia founded in 2001, which has become to represent the very best of what the internet has to offer. The world’s richest person and owner of social media platform X, seems to have been rattled by a report published by NewsGuard, a company that rates the trustworthiness of information sources. Last week, it offered some troubling statistics around misinformation on X pertaining to the Israel-Hamas conflict almost a year after Musk bought the website for $US44 billion. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is an adviser to NewsGuard. Not for the first time, Elon Musk is making enemies of people who fervently back the free speech principles he apparently cares so deeply about. AP “Have you ever wondered why the Wikimedia Foundation wants so much money?” Musk wrote on X, referencing the non-profit organisation that operates Wikipedia and its appeals for user donations. “It certainly isn’t needed to operate Wikipedia. You can literally fit a copy of the entire text on your phone! So, what’s the money for? Inquiring minds want to know…” Musk then suggested he would give Wikipedia $US1 billion ($1.6 billion) if it changed its name to a juvenile alternative. The Trumpian broadside was just the latest from Musk against sources of information that disseminate credible information. Yes, Wikipedia’s articles can be updated by anyone, but they are tightly edited by a team of thousands of mostly volunteer editors, and its guiding principle has always been that every stated fact requires a citation from a trusted, verifiable news source with recognised standards. Millions of college graduates can vouch for the system. Of course, in Musk’s world, no media source can be considered trustworthy, particularly those that criticise him. Indeed, he claims his own Wikipedia entry is false, despite being heavily moderated and containing verified facts. One of his followers on X suggested someone had been paid to write a negative Musk entry on “Wokipedia”. Musk agreed, naturally. Unlike X which, as a private company, no longer has to share details on its financial condition since being purchased by Musk, the Wikimedia Foundation regularly publishes its audited accounts. In the 12 months ending June 2022, it received $US165.2 million in contributions from some 13 million donations. That year, it spent $US88 million on salaries and wages; $US15 million on awards and grants; and $US2.7 million on internet hosting – keeping Wikipedia and its related websites online. In a Q&A accompanying the release of those numbers, Wikimedia Foundation itself draws attention to the most glaring detail – the payroll spend, which increased by just over $US20 million year-on-year. Since 2020, it has added more than 200 roles, as projected in its annual plans. Those new jobs have been focused on expanding Wikimedia Foundation’s programs globally and not throwing Silicon Valley-esque salaries at employees. Also of note are the internet hosting costs. While Musk is right to say Wikipedia can be stored on a single smartphone, making it available to 25 billion visitors every month is no trivial matter. Compared to the operating costs of comparable sites,Wikipedia is run on a shoestring. (Twitter’s operating expenses in 2021 – the last full year available – were $US5.6 billion.) And keeping the encyclopedia online is about more than just hosting. It requires protections against cyberattack, legal fees to protect user privacy, and experts to combat efforts at misinformation. Not for the first time, Musk is making enemies of people who fervently back the free speech principles he apparently cares so deeply about. Building Wikipedia could have made Wales one of the richest people on the planet, but he instead has a reported net worth in the low millions of dollars. Long a prominent activist for an open internet, Wales has previously called for “very strong implementation of a right to free speech in Europe – essentially the language of the First Amendment in the US”. Indeed, unlike Musk, who readily admits he will take down content in countries that demand it, Wales has consistently shown his mettle and stood up to Chinese efforts at censorship. Wikipedia is one of humanity’s finest achievements. A collectively written and edited knowledge base of almost 60 million articles in 336 languages, freely available to anyone with an internet connection – and indeed to many without. I once joined a group of activists in South Korea who would load the Korean version of Wikipedia onto USB sticks and send them into the North using hot air balloons, to be picked up and plugged into clandestine laptops – such was the yearn for its contents. Wikipedia would be, if we ever decided to designate such things, a digital wonder of the world, maybe one of the last surviving relics of the early internet, when the possibilities of what could be achieved together seemed endless and exhilarating. That it has stood the test of time is down to good governance and selfless volunteer work. Its financial record, just like every single other thing that happens on the site, is out in the open. Its model allows it to be the only website among the 10 most visited globally that doesn’t sell our data, pummel us with targeted advertising, or demand a subscription. No wonder Musk is attacking Wikipedia. If he only cared to look, he would see his complaints are bogus. Wilfully ignorant or just ignorant – take your pick. Dave Lee is Bloomberg Opinion’s US technology columnist.
Elon Musk gives X employees a year to turn app into finance platform: ‘You won’t need a bank account’ By Ariel Zilber Published Oct. 27, 2023 https://nypost.com/2023/10/27/busin...ees-a-year-to-turn-app-into-finance-platform/ Elon Musk has given his employees at social media platform X a year to roll out a payments processing mechanism that will enable people to do away with their bank accounts. “When I say payments, I actually mean someone’s entire financial life,” Musk told his charges at an all-hands meeting on Thursday. Audio of the meeting, which was held to mark the one-year anniversary of Musk’s acquisition of the company, was obtained by the tech-centric news site The Verge. “If it involves money, it’ll be on our platform,” Musk said, adding: “I’m talking about, like, you won’t need a bank account.” Musk appeared virtually at the meeting from his hometown of Austin, Texas — a move that raised eyebrows given that he had famously forced employees back into the office upon taking over the firm. Linda Yaccarino, the former NBCUniversal executive who Musk tapped to be CEO of X, was also absent from the company’s San Francisco headquarters. She conferenced into the meeting from her office in New York, according to Fortune. Elon Musk with one of his son walks on the pit lane after the 2023 United States Formula One Grand Prix at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas, on Oct. 22. AFP via Getty Images Upon taking over Twitter, Musk demanded that remote workers report back to the office. Some employees embraced the boss’ “hard core” vision and slept on the office floor after working grueling hours during the chaotic days and weeks after the acquisition — during which Musk laid off most staffers and instituted sweeping changes to the site’s content moderation policies. Since purchasing the site formerly known as Twitter last year for $44 billion, Musk has laid out a vision for X becoming an “everything app” similar to China’s WeChat, which combines instant messaging, social media, mobile payments, video conferencing, and other features. Musk has given his employees at X one year to turn the site into a payments processing app. AFP via Getty Images After rebranding Twitter as X, Musk signaled he would turn the platform into a super-app, offering a range of services from messaging and social networking to peer-to-peer payments. To that end, X recently announced it was launching an early version of video and audio calling for some users. Musk described a post on the platform instructing users on enabling the feature as an “Early version of video & audio calling on X”. The latest functionality comes amid a series of new features and changes to the platform’s core experience under Musk, who acquired the social media company nearly a year ago. Musk acquired the site formerly known as Twitter one year ago on Oct. 26. He is seen above at Twitter headquarters in San Francisco shortly after the acquisition. AP Teasing the feature in August, Musk had said users would not need a phone number for the features, which will be available on Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android and personal computers. Musk has hit work cut out for him at X, which was already struggling financially when he acquired it in a deal that closed Oct. 27, 2022, and the situation appears more precarious today. Musk took the company private, so its books are no longer public — but in July, the Tesla CEO said the company had lost about half of its advertising revenue and continues to face a large debt load. “We’re still negative cash flow,” he posted on the site on July 14, due to a about a “50% drop in advertising revenue plus heavy debt load.” Musk acquired Twitter and later rebranded it as X. He said he wants to turn it into an “everything app.” ZUMAPRESS.com “Need to reach positive cash flow before we have the luxury of anything else,” he said. According to research firm Similarweb, global web traffic to Twitter.com was down 14%, year-over-year, and traffic to the ads.twitter.com portal for advertisers was down 16.5%.
Elon Musk Was Staggeringly Wrong About Sam Bankman-Fried by Victor Tangermann Yesterday Getty / Futurism https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-wrong-about-sam-bankman-fried Last night, a New York jury found the disgraced CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX guilty on all seven charges, including wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and conspiracy to launder money. He's now facing over 100 years in prison. And while many were able to predict his fate, other high-profile figures were dead wrong about whether he'd face justice. Case in point is Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who predicted just under a year ago — around the time the exchange collapsed in on itself — that due to Bankman-Fried's donations to the Democratic party, there would be "no investigation." The tweet exemplifies Musk's continuous slide toward the right, as well as a growing willingness to engage with and further conspiracy theories. And at the heart of it, isn't his whole thing supposed to be predicting the future? Mind Virus To be clear, Musk wasn't wrong about Bankman-Fried's political affiliations. The crypto baron made numerous well-documented donations to Democratic committees and candidates. He spent around $40 million during the 2022 election cycle and around $6 million on a PAC that supported Biden's 2020 campaign. But Musk was dead wrong about what those political affiliations would mean for Bankman-Fried. That's probably not surprising. Especially ever since he's taken over Twitter, Musk has been engaging with right-wing commentators, making personal attacks aimed at Democrats, and spreading baseless conspiracy theories about the left singling him out. He's long complained about a "woke mind virus" infecting the masses, which makes about as much sense as it sounds like. But instead of Democrats conspiring together to let Bankman-Fried off the hook, like Musk predicted, pretty much the opposite happened. Regulators are making a huge example of Bankman-Fried, sending a clear warning to the crypto community that defrauding investors will always be a crime, whether it's wrapped up in a pseudo-philanthropic guise or not. And that couldn't be more relevant these days, with the Biden administration still actively debating how to regulate an industry that has long been known to play things a little fast and loose. To his credit, Musk does seem to have had the right hunch about Bankman-Fried's questionable business practices early on. In Walter Isaacson's recently published Musk biography, the mercurial CEO recalled how he rejected Bankman-Fried's request to join his bid to buy Twitter, in which SBF suggested that Twitter's tech could be moved onto a blockchain. "My bullshit detector went off like a red alert on a Geiger counter," Musk told Isaacson.
‘Vast worldwide sewer’: Paris mayor quits X with swipe at Elon Musk ‘This platform and its owner act deliberately to exacerbate tensions and conflicts,’ Anne Hidalgo says. By Nicolas Camut November 27, 2023 https://www.politico.com/www.politi...musks-x-says-its-become-vast-worldwide-sewer/ Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo on Monday announced she would leave X, formerly Twitter, because the social media platform has become a "weapon of mass destruction of our democracies" in recent years. Without naming him, Hidalgo pointed to Elon Musk's responsibility for changes made to the site since he took over the company in October 2022. "This platform and its owner act deliberately to exacerbate tensions and conflicts," Hildago said in a statement posted on X, adding it had become a "vast worldwide sewer." "It's a clear political project which wants to do without democracy and its values in favor of powerful private interests," the socialist mayor said, adding: "I refuse to endorse this fateful scheme." Hidalgo is the first high-profile French politician to announce they are quitting the platform. X has faced criticism over the spread of disinformation since Musk bought the company, which culminated in recent weeks related to content about the Israel-Hamas war. These concerns prompted the European Commission to say it would "temporarily suspend advertising on this platform until further notice," in an internal note obtained by POLITICO earlier this month.
US election: Elon Musk offers voters $47 for petition signatures 7th October 2024 https://punchng.com/us-election-elon-musk-offers-voters-47-for-petition-signatures/ Elon Musk By Makua Ubanagu Billionaire CEO Elon Musk has unveiled a new initiative that offers $47 to registered U.S. voters who refer others to sign a petition promoting free speech and the right to bear arms. The programme specifically targets voters in key swing states, aiming to maximise political influence in the upcoming elections. “For every person you refer who is a swing state voter, you get $47! Easy money,” Musk announced via X on Sunday. The petition is hosted on the website of Musk’s America PAC, a political action committee that aims to gather 1 million signatures from voters in battleground states. The PAC, backed by several tech entrepreneurs, was established to support former President Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential bid. The petition emphasises the importance of protecting the First and Second Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. The First Amendment ensures freedoms of speech, religion, the press, and assembly, while the Second Amendment protects citizens’ right to bear arms. Musk recently took to the stage at a Donald Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where he voiced his support for Trump’s campaign. During his speech, Musk issued a stark warning, saying this could be “the last election” if Trump fails to secure victory. He also addressed claims that Democrats are allegedly planning to curtail Americans’ rights, including free speech and gun ownership. Musk in another post added, “Sign our petition to support the Constitution! Also earn $47 for every person you refer to sign the petition if they’re in a swing state. Goal is to get 1M voters in swing states to show support for free speech & right to bear arms.”
My day inside the world’s most hated car Journalist Saahil Desai drove around Washington, DC, in a Tesla Cybertruck. In the town that Elon Musk is tearing apart, he didn’t go unnoticed. Saahil Desai Apr 1, 2025 – 5.00am https://www.afr.com/life-and-luxury...de-the-world-s-most-hated-car-20250331-p5lny3 On the first Sunday of the northern spring, surrounded by row houses and magnolia trees, I came to a horrifying realisation: My mum was right. I had been flipped off at least 17 times, called a “motherfucker” (in both English and Spanish), and a “fucking dork”. A woman in a blue sweater stared at me, sighed, and said, “you should be ashamed of yourself”. All of this because I was driving a Tesla Cybertruck. I had told my mum about my plan to rent this thing and drive it around Washington, DC, for a day – a journalistic experiment to understand what it’s like behind the wheel of America’s most hated car. “Wow. Be careful,” she texted back right away. Both of us had read the stories of Cybertrucks possibly being set on fire, bombed with a Molotov cocktail, and vandalised in every way imaginable. People have targeted the car – and Tesla as a whole – to protest against Elon Musk’s role in Donald Trump’s administration. But out of sheer masochism, or stupidity, I still went ahead and spent a day driving one. As I idled with the windows down on a street in the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood, a woman glared at me from her front porch: “Fuck you, and this truck, and Elon,” she yelled. “You drive a Nazi truck.” She slammed her front door shut, and then opened it again. “I hope someone blows your shit up.” Journalist Saahil Desai got plenty of opprobrium, and just a little acclaim, as he cruised DC in a Cybertruck. AP Earlier that day, my first stop was the heart of the resistance: the Dupont Circle farmers’ market. The people there wanted to see the organic asparagus and lion’s-mane mushrooms. What they did not want to see was a stainless-steel, supposedly bulletproof Cybertruck. Every red light created new moments for mockery. “You fucker!” yelled a bicyclist as he pedalled past me on P Street. The diners eating brunch on the footpath nearby laughed and cheered. Then came the next stoplight: A woman eating outside at Le Pain Quotidien gave me the middle finger for a solid 20 seconds, all without interrupting her conversation. The anger is understandable. This is, after all, the radioactive centre of DOGE’s blast radius. On the same block where I was yelled at in Mount Pleasant, I spotted a hand-drawn sign in one window: CFPB, it read, inside a giant red heart; and at one point, I tailed behind a black Tesla Model Y with the bumper sticker Anti Elon Tesla Club. But the Cybertruck stands out on America’s roads about as much as LeBron James in a kindergarten classroom. No matter where you live, the car is a three-tonne Rorschach test: It has become the defining symbol of the second Trump term. If you hate Trump and Musk, it is a giant MAGA hat, Pepe the Frog on wheels, or the “Swasticar”. If you love Trump and Musk, the Cybertruck is, well, a giant MAGA hat. On Monday, FBI director Kash Patel called Tesla vandalism “domestic terrorism” as he announced a Tesla task force to investigate such acts. Alex Jones has trolled Tesla protesters from the back of his own Cybertruck, bullhorn in hand. Kid Rock has a Cybertruck with a custom Dukes of Hazzard paint job; far-right podcaster Tim Pool owns one and says he’ll buy another “because it will own the libs”; and Kanye West has three. Trump’s 17-year-old granddaughter was given one by the president, and another by Musk. When I parked the car for lunch in Takoma Park, where “I support federal workers” signs were staked into the grass, I heard two women whispering at a nearby table: “Should we egg it?” (In this economy?) Over and over again, as pedestrians and drivers alike glared at me, I had to remind myself: It’s just a car. And it’s kind of a cool one, too. It can apparently outrace a Porsche 911, while simultaneously towing a Porsche 911. Or it can power a house for up to three days. My day in the Cybertruck wasn’t extremely hard-core, but the eight onboard cameras made city driving more bearable than I was expecting. Regardless of what you do with it, the car is emissions-free. “The underlying technology of the Cybertruck is amazing,” Loren McDonald, an EV analyst at the firm Paren, told me. And the exterior undersells just how ridiculous it is. Just before I returned the car on Monday morning, I took an impromptu Zoom meeting from the giant in-car touchscreen. It has a single windshield wiper that is so long – more than 1.5 metres – that Musk has compared it to a Samurai sword. After 10 hours of near-constant hazing, I navigated to an underground parking lot to recharge the truck (and my battered self-image). Someone had placed a sticker just beneath the Tesla logo: Elon Musk is a parasite, it read. Still, even in DC, I got a fair number of thumbs-ups as my Cybertruck zoomed by in the areas most frequented by tourists. Near the National Mall, a man in a red bandana and shorts yelled, “that’s awesome!” and cheered. Perhaps it was an attempt at MAGA solidarity, or maybe not. Lots of people just seemed to think it looked cool. One guy in his 20s, wearing a “make money, not friends” hoodie, frantically took out his phone to film me making a left turn. Even in the bluest neighbourhoods of DC – near a restaurant named Marx Cafe and a Ruth Bader Ginsburg mural – kids could not get enough of the Cybertruck. One girl in Takoma Park saw me and started screaming, “Cybertruck! Cybertruck!” Later, a boy spotted the car and frantically rode his scooter to try to get a better look. Just before sunset, I was struggling to change lanes near George Washington University when two teens stopped to stare at me from the sidewalk. I was anxiously checking directions on my phone and clearly had no idea where to go. “Must be an Uber,” one said to the other. By 9pm, I’d had enough. On return I got a nervous look from the valet at my hotel, with its “Tibetan Bowl Sound Healing” classes. I can’t blame anyone who sees the car as the stainless-steel embodiment of the modern right. This week, a county sheriff in Ohio stood in front of a green Cybertruck and derided Tesla vandals as “little fat people that live in their mum’s basement and wear their mum’s pyjamas”. But it is also a tragedy that the Cybertruck has become the most partisan car in existence – more so than the Prius, or the Hummer, or any kind of Subaru. The Cybertruck, an instantly meme-able and very weird car, could have helped America fall in love with EVs. Instead, it is doing the opposite. The revolt against Tesla is not slowing down, and in some cases people are outright getting rid of their cars. Is it really a win that Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona exchanged his all-electric Tesla sedan for a gas-guzzling SUV? Then again, Republicans aren’t buying the Cybertruck en masse. It is too expensive and too weird. Buying any Tesla might be a way to own the libs, but the right has proved maddeningly resistant to going electric. “Your average MAGA Trump supporter isn’t going to go buy a Tesla,” McDonald, the EV analyst, said. Before the car shipped in November 2023, Musk predicted that Tesla would sell 250,000 a year. He hasn’t even sold one-fifth of that in total—and sales are falling. (Neither Tesla nor Musk responded to a request for comment.) Onlookers take photos of the Tesla Cybertruck as it makes its first appearance in Melbourne for the city’s motor show. Paul Rovere Musk made a lot of other promises that haven’t really panned out: The Cybertruck was supposed to debut at less than $US40,000 ($63,000). The cheapest model currently available is double that. The vehicle, Musk said, would be “really tough, not fake tough”. Instead, its stainless-steel side panels have fallen off because Tesla used the wrong glue – and that was just the most recent of the car’s eight recalls. The Cybertruck was supposed to be able to haul “near infinite mass” and “serve briefly as a boat”. Just this month alone, one Cybertruck’s rear end snapped off in a test of its towing power, and another sank off the coast of Los Angeles while trying to offload a Jet Ski from the bed. The Cybertruck, in that sense, is a perfect metaphor for Musk himself. The world’s richest man has a bad habit of promising one thing and delivering another. X was supposed to be the “everything app”; now it is a cesspool of white supremacy. DOGE was billed as an attempt to make the government more nimble and tech-savvy. Instead, the cuts have resulted in seniors struggling to get their Social Security cheques. So far, Musk has only continued to get richer and more powerful while the rest of us have had to deal with the wreckage. “Let that sink in,” as he likes to say. The disaster of the Cybertruck is not that it’s ugly, or unconventional, or absurdly pointy. It’s that, for most people, the car just isn’t worth driving.