Save StorySave this storySave StorySave this story<\/p>\n
For fifty-one weeks out of the year, I\u2019m 100 percent not the CEO of Snap, the company behind Snapchat. That\u2019s Evan Spiegel, the company\u2019s billionaire cofounder. No one in their right mind would question that. But for one week out of the year, specifically last week, some people may have thought I was the social media firm\u2019s top executive. If you looked on Wikipedia, it sure seemed like I was.<\/p>\n
Starting on Sunday, when you clicked on Spiegel\u2019s Wikipedia page, there was a picture of me. The same thing happened if you ran a Google Search for Evan Spiegel or asked Google Gemini about him. At the time of publication, that\u2019s still the case.<\/p>\n
How did this happen? Despite what the internet might have you believe, I\u2019m Maxwell Zeff (friends call me Max). The photo on Spiegel\u2019s Wikipedia page was taken at a TechCrunch conference last year. I\u2019m a reporter in my twenties, and while I write about technology companies for a living, I\u2019ve never met Spiegel and have barely ever written about Snapchat.<\/p>\n
But now I\u2019m the CEO\u2014according to Wikipedia. This first came to my attention on Monday, when I was scrolling through social media and I saw a random account post \u201cthat doesn\u2019t look like Evan Spiegel\u201d with a screenshot of my photo on his Wikipedia page. I paused for a second, wondering if I was seeing things. I reposted the photo on Twitter and said, \u201cVery flattering but that is indeed me, and not the CEO of Snap.\u201d My followers were amused, responding with comments such as \u201cCongrats on the promotion\u201d and \u201cwhen yacht invitation max.\u201d<\/p>\n
| Got a Tip?<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n |
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| Are you a current or former tech worker who wants to talk about what's happening? We'd like to hear from you. Using a nonwork phone or computer, contact the reporter securely on Signal at mzeff.88.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n The next day, I was still Wikipedia Evan Spiegel. A Snap employee texted a mutual friend a screenshot of a Google search for Spiegel, saying, \u201cNot Max being the second photo that comes up on Google now \u2026\u201d A day later, more colleagues, friends, and family members had started to notice. One texted me, \u201cWhy are you Evan Spiegel?\u201d I didn\u2019t have a good answer. Before I knew it, I had spent a whole week as Wikipedia Evan Spiegel. I decided to do some sleuthing.<\/p>\n On April 26, someone with the username \u201cArtem G\u201d changed the photo of Evan Spiegel to one of me with the comment \u201cNewer photo,\u201d according to the page\u2019s revision history. Then, a few days later, someone changed it back, correctly stating: \u201cThat\u2019s Maxwell Zeff, not Evan Spiegel.\u201d Within hours, Artem G hopped back on and reverted the change, returning my face to the Wikipedia page saying, \u201cNah, new photo is better, take it to the talk page if you must.\u201d<\/p>\n Artem G\u2019s attitude and dedication piqued my interest. For the uninitiated, the talk page is where Wikipedia editors go to settle disputes. Who was this person who felt adamantly that I should be Wikipedia Evan Spiegel and was willing to throw down in the talk page to keep me there?<\/p>\n I scrolled a bit further down and found that Artem G had actually tried to make me Wikipedia Evan Spiegel another time, back in February, but the photo had stayed up for only a few hours. I clicked on Artem G\u2019s contributions page to see what other Wikipedia pages he had made changes to. There were lots. He\u2019d made hundreds of contributions to various pages\u2014ranging from Swiss scientists to space artifacts to Claude\u2014just in the past month.<\/p>\n I decided to create a Wikipedia account and reach out to Artem G on the talk page. He didn\u2019t respond to me. But after I reached out, he had continued editing other Wikipedia pages, including one about an archaeological site in southern Greece. Since he seemed to be ignoring me, I would have to keep digging on my own.<\/p>\n I realized that I had worked with a videographer named Artem G at a previous job\u2014was it possible it was the same person? I reached out to him, and he denied being the Wikipedia editor, claiming he was too busy working on a script for a Cold War\u2013era spy thriller movie. I had now gone down two rabbit holes, and I still had more questions than answers.<\/p>\n After several dead ends, I reached out to Spiegel for answers. I wondered if the CEO of Snap had as confusing a week as I did. When I pinged his chief of communications, she told me how weird this all was (agreed) and said she would try to dig into it herself. Eventually, Spiegel got back to me.<\/p>\n \u201cThanks for letting me know. I hadn't seen that,\u201d Spiegel told me over email. \u201cI'm quite happy to leave it up if that's alright with you. I do see some similarities.\u201d<\/p>\n Perhaps I\u2019m stuck as Wikipedia Evan Spiegel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Save StorySave this storySave StorySave this story For fifty-one weeks out of the year, I\u2019m 100 percent not the CEO of Snap, the company behind Snapchat. That\u2019s Evan Spiegel, the company\u2019s billionaire cofounder. No one in their right mind would question that. But for one week out of the year, specifically last week, some people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49894,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-49893","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49893\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} |