Why Does Wikipedia Think I’m Evan Spiegel?

For fifty-one weeks retired of the year, I’m 100 percent not the CEO of Snap, the institution down Snapchat. That’s Evan Spiegel, the company’s billionaire cofounder. No 1 successful their close caput would question that. But for 1 week retired of the year, specifically past week, immoderate radical whitethorn person thought I was the societal media firm’s apical executive. If you looked connected Wikipedia, it definite seemed similar I was.

Starting connected Sunday, erstwhile you clicked connected Spiegel’s Wikipedia page, determination was a representation of me. The aforesaid happening happened if you ran a Google Search for Evan Spiegel oregon asked Google Gemini astir him. At the clip of publication, that’s inactive the case.

How did this happen? Despite what the net mightiness person you believe, I’m Maxwell Zeff (friends telephone maine Max). The photograph connected Spiegel’s Wikipedia leafage was taken astatine a TechCrunch league past year. I’m a newsman successful my twenties, and portion I constitute astir exertion companies for a living, I’ve ne'er met Spiegel and person hardly ever written astir Snapchat.

But present I’m the CEO—according to Wikipedia. This archetypal came to my attraction connected Monday, erstwhile I was scrolling done societal media and I saw a random relationship station “that doesn’t look similar Evan Spiegel” with a screenshot of my photograph connected his Wikipedia page. I paused for a second, wondering if I was seeing things. I reposted the photograph connected Twitter and said, “Very flattering but that is so me, and not the CEO of Snap.” My followers were amused, responding with comments specified arsenic “Congrats connected the promotion” and “when yacht invitation max.”

The adjacent day, I was inactive Wikipedia Evan Spiegel. A Snap worker texted a communal person a screenshot of a Google hunt for Spiegel, saying, “Not Max being the 2nd photograph that comes up connected Google present …” A time later, much colleagues, friends, and household members had started to notice. One texted me, “Why are you Evan Spiegel?” I didn’t person a bully answer. Before I knew it, I had spent a full week arsenic Wikipedia Evan Spiegel. I decided to bash immoderate sleuthing.

On April 26, idiosyncratic with the username “Artem G” changed the photograph of Evan Spiegel to 1 of maine with the remark “Newer photo,” according to the page’s revision history. Then, a fewer days later, idiosyncratic changed it back, correctly stating: “That’s Maxwell Zeff, not Evan Spiegel.” Within hours, Artem G hopped backmost connected and reverted the change, returning my look to the Wikipedia leafage saying, “Nah, caller photograph is better, instrumentality it to the speech leafage if you must.”

Artem G’s cognition and dedication piqued my interest. For the uninitiated, the speech leafage is wherever Wikipedia editors spell to settee disputes. Who was this idiosyncratic who felt adamantly that I should beryllium Wikipedia Evan Spiegel and was consenting to propulsion down successful the speech leafage to support maine there?

I scrolled a spot further down and recovered that Artem G had really tried to marque maine Wikipedia Evan Spiegel different time, backmost successful February, but the photograph had stayed up for lone a fewer hours. I clicked connected Artem G’s contributions leafage to spot what different Wikipedia pages helium had made changes to. There were lots. He’d made hundreds of contributions to assorted pages—ranging from Swiss scientists to abstraction artifacts to Claude—just successful the past month.