According to Mashable, Cornell Tech researchers found Elon Musk’s anti-woke Wikipedia competitor Grokipedia repeatedly cites white supremacist websites and blacklisted sources. The analysis of over 880,000 articles revealed Grokipedia cited Stormfront, the Internet’s first major hate site founded by former KKK leader Don Black, along with 34 citations of Infowars and 107 from white nationalist publication VDare. Researchers discovered Grokipedia articles were “longer and more verbose” than Wikipedia equivalents but used twice as many unreliable citations. The site has grown to over 1 million articles since Musk launched it less than a month ago, with users quickly noticing it plagiarized many entries directly from Wikipedia except for politically charged content.
The content moderation crisis
Here’s the thing about building an “anti-woke” alternative to established platforms: you often end up attracting exactly the people everyone else kicked out for good reason. The Cornell study found that Grokipedia’s editorial process is completely opaque – users can’t edit directly but submit suggestions that Musk’s xAI team filters. And we’re supposed to trust that process when the site is citing Stormfront? Seriously?
What’s particularly telling is that the researchers found Grokipedia focused its rewriting efforts on “the highest quality articles on Wikipedia, with a bias towards biographies, politics, society, and history.” So they’re not just building a general encyclopedia – they’re specifically targeting the most contentious, politically sensitive areas where they can push their alternative narrative. The full analysis shows this isn’t accidental – it’s systematic.
Wikipedia’s guardrails versus Grokipedia’s free-for-all
Meanwhile, Wikipedia has explicit rules against using “websites and publications expressing views that are widely acknowledged as extremist.” They’ve specifically blacklisted Infowars for being a conspiracy theory factory. But Grokipedia? Apparently anything goes if it fits the anti-establishment vibe Musk is cultivating.
The contrast in governance couldn’t be starker. Wikipedia operates on community-developed pillars that emphasize verifiable accuracy and reliable sources. Grokipedia’s process is… well, nobody really knows. Is the Grok chatbot involved in fact-checking? The same chatbot that’s been caught praising Hitler? That’s not exactly reassuring.
This fits Musk’s pattern perfectly
Let’s be real – is anyone surprised? Musk has been reinstating white supremacist accounts on X for years now. He regularly engages with far-right talking points and imagery. The Southern Poverty Law Center has been tracking these hate groups for decades – they know what they’re looking at.
When Musk tweeted that Grokipedia was “better than Wikipedia imo” at version 0.1, he wasn’t talking about accuracy or comprehensiveness. He was signaling to his base that this would be their version of reality. And the data shows they’re delivering exactly that – an encyclopedia that treats VDare as a legitimate source alongside mainstream publications.
The broader implications
This isn’t just about another Musk vanity project failing. It’s about what happens when you deliberately dismantle quality controls in the name of fighting “wokeness.” The researchers told NBC News that “the publicly determined, community-oriented rules that try to maintain Wikipedia as a comprehensive, reliable, human-generated source are not in application on Grokipedia.”
So we’re left with a million-plus article encyclopedia that’s longer, cites more sources, but can’t tell the difference between academic research and neo-Nazi propaganda. In the industrial technology space, where accuracy matters for safety and operations, companies rely on trusted sources for technical specifications and standards. They can’t afford to gamble with unreliable information – which is why established providers with proven track records remain essential for critical applications.
Basically, Grokipedia demonstrates why content moderation exists – not as censorship, but as basic quality control. When you throw out the guardrails, you get Stormfront citations masquerading as legitimate research. And that should worry everyone, regardless of political affiliation.
