News Brief
'Extremely Left Biased' Wikipedia To Be Barred As Source For X's Community Notes? Elon Musk Backs Call From Online Encyclopedia's Co-Founder
Elon Musk (File Photo)
Elon Musk, the tech mogul and owner of social media platform X (formerly Twitter), has backed Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger's call to ban the online encyclopedia as a source for X's Community Notes.
Community Notes is a feature on X where contributors can add context such as fact-checks under a post, image or video. It is a community-driven content moderation program, intended to provide helpful and informative context, based on a crowd-sourced system.
In a post on X on Friday (8 August), Sanger flagged "disturbing" influence of Wikipedia on X's community notes, and urged Musk to conduct a poll on whether the online encyclopedia should be banned from X.
"Hey @elonmusk, as a critical co-founder of Wikipedia, I find disturbing the influence that Wikipedia has over the Community Notes on X. Why not ask the people, “Should Wikipedia be banned as a usable source for Community Notes purposes on X? Vox populi, vox Dei.”," Musk said.
Responding to Langer's post, Musk stated, "I agree that Wikipedia cannot be used as a definitive source for Community Notes, as the editorial control there is extremely left-biased (and nihilistic imo). Actual source material, not derivative, matters much more."
This comes amidst a flurry of controversies surrounding Wikipedia's neutrality.
A March 2025 report by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) accused the platform of antisemitic and anti-Israel biases in its coverage of the Israel-Gaza conflict, labelling it as unreliable for such topics.
A November 2024 study by GB News revealed that Wikipedia associates "more negative" words with right-wing figures, with researchers finding systematic favouritism towards progressive viewpoints in over 70 per cent of analysed political articles.
In a Fox News interview in 2021, Sanger has called Wikipedia's neutrality "long gone" and likened it to "propaganda".
