A co-founder of Wikipedia has called on President Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency to investigate whether U.S. government officials have influenced the online encyclopedia.
Larry Sanger, who left Wikipedia in 2002, took to social media late last month to make a request of Elon Musk, Trump's DOGE chief.
"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?" Sanger wrote Feb. 26 on X.
"Such operations should be defunded, if any. If there are *none*, we'd like to know. Agree?"
A Wikipedia critic for nearly 20 years, Sanger also asked Trump to assure that the federal government does not fund Wikipedia.
"Hi, @realDonaldTrump—co-founder of Wikipedia here—could I persuade you to use an executive order to make it a policy that neither federal worker hours nor federal moneys may be used to edit Wikipedia or pay for Wikipedia editing?" Sanger wrote on X in a post that has received more than 35 million views.
"Thanks in advance. (I voted for you.)"
Musk responded to Sanger's comment by saying, "Good idea."
Sanger's messages to Musk and Trump appeared about three weeks after Wikipedia was accused of favoring left-leaning media sources, while almost completely blacklisting major conservative outlets including Newsmax, according to a new report by the Media Research Center (MRC).
The MRC report assessed how Wikipedia categorizes news sources, finding that conservative outlets are labeled as "generally unreliable" or effectively blacklisted.
Sanger recently told Fox News that Wikipedia has abandoned its neutrality policy, which insists content is "represented fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias."
"Neutrality means you can't tell what position a person takes on the topic," he said. "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."
Earlier last month, Sanger wrote a blog entry in which he detailed his personal journey from skepticism to Christianity.
Sanger's message to Musk likely did not surprise the SpaceX and Tesla CEO, who in December told his 200 million-plus followers on X not to donate to Wikipedia until "they restore balance to their editing authority," mocking it as "Wokepedia."
Charlie McCarthy ✉
Charlie McCarthy, a writer/editor at Newsmax, has nearly 40 years of experience covering news, sports, and politics.
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