Donald Trump is a lunatic: Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales

Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales hit out at US President Donald Trump on his plans to regulate social media companies, stating that while social media must be careful about information on their platforms, it's not a good idea for governments to threaten them.

In an exclusive interview to ET NOW, he also spoke about fighting fake news in India and tackling misinformation arising out of the Covid19 crisis.
"If President Trump tweets something that is nonsense we don't accept that as a source of information for random things he says on Twitter. We have a group of admins who are very strict and firm on what can be entered," Wales said, in an exclusive television interview from London.

President Trump and Twitter have been on a warpath after the social media platform posted fact-check links with some of his tweets. Trump accused Big Tech of silencing conservative voices on platforms and is expected to sign an executive order clamping down on social media on Thursday. It is not clear yet if he has the power to do something as drastic as shutting down the platforms.

Wales said it is a complicated issue and that social media platforms should have robust, diverse dialogue and fight armies of troll bots that put out misinformation.

"President's power does not extend to threatening or shutting down social media platforms. But we should fear this in every country.Worst case scenario is that platforms don't have courage to tell Trump to go away, that they begin to adapt policies to his whims because he is a lunatic," Wales said

Late last year, Wales launched his own social media platform called WT:Social to take on Facebook and Twitter. But instead of an ad-funded model, he intends to fund it via donations.

"I would rather build something that has quality and meaningful engagement than adopt techniques for rapid and viral growth. It can be sustainable/"

Wikipedia's pages on Covid10 has racked up over 100 million views in recent months, making it a go-to source for information on the pandemic and its fallout.