883
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] A_norny_mousse@feddit.org 135 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

'Not optimistic he will create anything very useful right now'

Or ever create anything (he's just stealing other people's creations, at best)

[-] overload@sopuli.xyz 60 points 1 week ago

Truly the Thomas Edison of the 21st century.

[-] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago

They'll say aw Topsy at my autopsy!

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] regedit@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 week ago

He thinks he's Nikolai Tesla, but yeah, he's the other guy!

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] TheLowestStone@lemmy.world 21 points 1 week ago

He is not just strealing other people's creations. He is also giving them incredibly lame names.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[-] biotin7@sopuli.xyz 113 points 1 week ago

Remember that Elon overpromises & underdelivers

[-] AlecSadler 46 points 1 week ago

Literally. With everything. In every business he touches. Yet the stock goes up. It's stupid.

[-] MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.works 34 points 1 week ago

Hmm it seems the speculative market loves speculation rather than actual results...

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] kibiz0r@midwest.social 78 points 1 week ago

Jimmy Wales: Libertarian that ended up creating perhaps the most successful collectivist project of all time.

[-] thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org 31 points 1 week ago

this is a perfect example of why we should always allow an escape space for everyone. Sometimes that person in the space you are polar opposed too will create something that defies even their own rules

[-] snowboardbumvt@lemmy.world 14 points 1 week ago

In what way does Wikipedia defy Jimmy Wales own rules?

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 27 points 1 week ago

I consider myself libertarian and absolutely love Wikipedia! In fact, if I didn't have to work, I'd work on FOSS full time.

Libertarians have no issues with collectivism, they only have issues with forced collectivism. Libertarians love private unions, co-ops, non-profits, etc.

[-] snowboardbumvt@lemmy.world 33 points 1 week ago

That's how most libertarians I've talked to think. There are some people who call themselves libertarians who actually just want the government out of the way so mega corps can control everything, but i don't think Jimmy Wales is one of them.

[-] vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 7 points 1 week ago

There's an element of vibe contrarianism in any pronounced political ideology. Meaning that libertarians often hate what they perceive as anti-libertarian, communists often hate what they perceive as anti-communist, and so on.

In that regard yes, there are plenty of libertarians who just want to kill anything with leftist vibes with fire.

But the world of ideas is far richer than the existing conventions and established ideologies, and every person has their own trajectory in that.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Did those "libertarians" vote for Trump last election? What's their take on Jan 6? I have a sneaking suspicion they're conservatives who like weed, not libertarians.

You're right that libertarians don't want government involved in as many parts of daily life as possible. That's where the support comes from for things like drug legalization/decriminalization, gay marriage, gun rights, etc. Wikipedia is part of that, it was created and is maintained independently, and whether it's funded by donations, ads, or subscriptions is irrelevant. As long as government isn't involved, libertarians are happy.

Here's a quote I love from Penn Jillette (from memory, may have mistakes):

Government should only use violence for things I am willing to use violence for. I would use violence to stop a rape or a murder. I would not use violence to build a library.

He goes on say he supports libraries and would fund one if someone came around asking for donations.

That's pretty much exactly what Wikipedia is, it's a privately created, publicly available library that runs on donations, which is a libertarian wet dream. If everything good could be funded that way (charities for a social safety net, police for law enforcement, military for national defense, etc), that would be a libertarian utopia. Since that's not feasible, libertarians want as many functions as possible to exist outside of government and carefully audit the rest.

I personally believe a social safety net cannot be independent, so I support something like UBI to replace our coercive and often subjective welfare programs and ensure everyone is above the poverty line. I also believe small companies should have legal protections (e.g. limited liability structures we have today), and large companies shouldn't (they can buy insurance if they want), so a lawsuit or bankruptcy could go after shareholder and executive team assets.

Many libertarians disagree with me on specifics (a libertarian's most bitter rival is another libertarian), but we agree on the foundational idea that less is more when it comes to government.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[-] antonim@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 week ago

Lemmy itself is a good example of this. Most of the userbase heavily disagrees with the main developers' political opinions, yet the software works well for everyone.

[-] MrMakabar@slrpnk.net 24 points 1 week ago

Reading his Wiki page, he does sound rather reasonable. Support for Occupy Wallstreet, running as a UK Labour candidate, openly calling not to elect Trump and also calling the US Libertarian Party "lunatics".

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] antonim@lemmy.dbzer0.com 61 points 1 week ago

He also gave the example of a German Wiki community member who wrote a program to verify the ISBN numbers of books cited, and was able to trace notable mistakes to one person. That person ultimately confessed they had used ChatGPT to find citations for text references and the LLM “just very happily makes up books for you,” Wales said.

Well this won't be a problem with Grokipedia, because it only uses sources that are available online as pure text (I'm pretty sure not even PDFs are used by it).

Wales thinks the public and the media often give Wikipedia too much credit. In its early days, he says, the site was never as bad as the jokes made about it. But now, he says, “We are not as good as they think we are. Of course, we are a lot better than we used to be, but there is still so much work to do.”

Amen, it's nice to see the level-headedness.

[-] koshka@koshka.ynh.fr 53 points 1 week ago

It's going to become an AI written clone of Wikipedia with all the personal opinions of Elon mixed in. I don't see it going anywhere.

[-] NotSteve_@piefed.ca 7 points 1 week ago

If you check it out, its not going to become that because it IS that. Its all AI rewritten articles from Wikipedia with Elon's alt right biases applied. Some of the less political pages aren't even really rewrites but just copy/pastes

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 38 points 1 week ago

It will be a another propaganda mouthpiece, and have all the credibility of Fox News.

[-] Zorque@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago

Or conservapedia, the fox news of wikipedias.

[-] pupbiru@aussie.zone 9 points 1 week ago

doesn’t mean it can’t do damage - like fox news

[-] eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 32 points 1 week ago

It'll effect things as much Conservapedia does. A laughing stock to gawk at and nothing more.

I bet by the end of next year it's dead.

[-] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago

One key difference: Conservapedia was young earth creationist, Grok is not. That amount of difference unfortunately enough to convince a lot of average Joes of credibility.

[-] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 5 points 1 week ago

Conservatives will use the nazipedia and everyone else will mock them for it

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (6 replies)
[-] LillyPip@lemmy.ca 30 points 1 week ago

It’s not about making something useful. He and a few others are cloning everything any of their cult might use to further fence them in from external information and entertainment.

They’re having a harder time in entertainment, because artists tend to be more liberal, but they’re gaining ground there, too. After a certain point, they’ll just radically censor everything else.

[-] Bristlecone@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago

This is what scares me. The fact that they are doing it at all. It's providing more spaces for people to shut themselves in completely with the information they want. These fucking desperate bigots will never be satisfied until the entire world reflects their bigoted ass beliefs, but since that will never happen they will fight a civil war for Elon out of sheer ignorant self obsession, instead

[-] tino@lemmy.world 27 points 1 week ago

Anybody going there to test "how bad it is" is giving them traffic, which they can use to brag about its success. Personally, I'd rather completely ignore it and disregard whoever mention it one day as a source, which will never happen hopefuly.

[-] axexrx@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago

So set the VPN to Iran so it looks like it's only popular with 'ayrab terrorists' to take always his talking point?

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] ReHomed@lemmy.cafe 19 points 1 week ago

Elon Musk NEVER creates anything very useful as of now

[-] ShankShill@sh.itjust.works 14 points 1 week ago

Elon Musk NEVER creates.

[-] ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk 18 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

All he has to do is force it in front of people's eyes instead of Wikipedia. It doesn't actually have to be useful, just in the way.

load more comments (3 replies)
[-] dantheclamman@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago

They needed a safe space for their ideas. Less scary stuff like pronouns that make their brains hurt

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] cley_faye@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago

Ultimately, this could highlight the incredibly high value of wikipedia as a common ressource, and might lead to better things there.

Maybe.

[-] ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk 12 points 1 week ago

Awww... I wish I had that level of optimism.

[-] PlanterTree@discuss.tchncs.de 14 points 1 week ago

What does Grokipedia say on the genocide in South Africa?

[-] MeowerMisfit817@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago

well, the website only has one button, that redirects to the actions of Grokipedia with the options to buy or sell some.

I guess you have to interact with their actions to use the thing?

[-] Sibshops@lemmy.myserv.one 13 points 1 week ago

The first thing I noticed about grokipedia is that it doesn't do a good job at qualifying the strength of sources.

[-] fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 week ago

That was an intentional design choice no?

[-] samus12345@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

References

  1. ^ Trust me, bro
load more comments (1 replies)
[-] abbiistabbii 12 points 1 week ago

I mean basically it's "Conservapedia but it takes itself seriously".

[-] kadaverin0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 1 week ago

It's been fun watching Elon go from space Jesus to shorthand for any billionaire vanity project that will amount to nothing.

[-] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Anyone who knew much about space knew that was nonsense from the start, as colonizing a subantarctic volcano is literally more practical than colonizing Mars.

And that's assuming paradigm shifts in spaceflight. Turns out, they did not materialize at all. With SABRE air-breathing engines and Virgin-style stratolaunches dead, things actually went way worse than I expected years ago.

Don't get me wrong. SpaceX is great, Starship is cool, research in space is awesome. But ever since I've first read Musk's public thoughts, he struck me as 'not scientifically grounded,' and I wondered how that incongruity would shake out.


TL;DR: Truth never mattered, and it still doesn't :(

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] magguzu@midwest.social 8 points 1 week ago

How long until AI models start training off Grokipedia, and we have the biggest game of hallucination telephone?

[-] VerticaGG 7 points 1 week ago
[-] ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago

A collection of hallucinations sounds more like a bad piece of comedy

[-] BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

They are going to clone Wikipedia, then use some flimsy excuse to get it shut down under something like "anti conservative bias". He'll position Nazipedia to replace it.

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] SethTaylor@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

It will burst into flames, like his cars

[-] isVeryLoud@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

All cars can catch fire, some more often, others more intensely. Doesn't matter if it's a swastikar or not.

Instead of pitting EVs against ICE, let's all push to reduce car dependence and instead encourage the development of public transit!

load more comments
view more: next ›
this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2025
883 points (100.0% liked)

Technology

76648 readers
3059 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS