Exclusive: Wikipedia is a charity and “the idea of selling it does not make any sense,” the founder Jimmy Wales tells Al Arabiya News.
#Wikipedia #ElonMusk #AlArabiyaNews #GNT
#Wikipedia #ElonMusk #AlArabiyaNews #GNT
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00:00Now, Mr. Musk, first of all, do you know Elon Musk? Do you have any exchanges with him directly
00:06or is this all being played out in the public arena?
00:08Yeah, I know him and he's very friendly. Friendlier privately than publicly, let's just say.
00:15All right, well, he of course paid US$44 billion for Twitter, which he renamed X. And then
00:22back in October 2023, he offered to buy Wikipedia for US$1 billion, I think it was, with various
00:28conditions. You rejected that offer. What would it take to make you reconsider?
00:35No, I mean, so Wikipedia is a charity. So we're like the Red Cross, say. So the idea of selling
00:42Wikipedia doesn't actually make any sense. But also, I think it's really important,
00:47culturally important that we have a place where people come together to try and understand the
00:52world, to have civil discourse, really looking into the facts, really trying to write things
00:57in a fair and neutral way. It's never going to be perfect, of course, but if we don't have that
01:01space, it becomes really hard to make progress in the world, because instead we just get people
01:06screaming at each other. You get all the kinds of misinformation and disinformation, which Elon
01:11Musk is notorious for spreading things that aren't true. And, you know, we really need to say,
01:16OK, slow down. Let's think. There are a lot of problems in the world. Let's chew on all the
01:21sides of the issue and make sure we understand each other before we act, because the alternative
01:27is violence and basically making bad decisions.