What's going on with Evan Spiegel's Wikipedia photo?

A weird little Wikipedia story from recent days

I started Edit History largely because of a frustration with the way Wikipedia is covered in the media. There is a tendency of journalists to write about Wikipedia without fully understanding it. And I mean both the negative and positive coverage of Wikipedia. There tends to be a lack of due diligence when journalists write about Wikipedia.

I don’t need to list the various examples of this. I also don’t need to list the notable exceptions, which do exist.¹

I’ll also say that this isn’t surprising. Wikipedia is an enormous website with decades of history and drama, some of which isn’t accessible to the public.

Today I’m going to focus on the latest headline to catch my eye: journalist Maxwell Zeff’s amusing, well-written and bizarre Wired article that tells of his recent (personal) Wikipedia experience: “Why Does Wikipedia Think I’m Evan Spiegel?”

Let’s recap the initial situation, as described by Zeff in his Wired article

On 2 May 2026, Wired published an article by senior writer Maxwell Zeff that opens with the sentence:

For fifty-one weeks out of the year, I’m 100 percent not the CEO of Snap, the company behind Snapchat.

Zeff goes on to describe how on 26 April 2026, an editor named Artem.G removed the existing photo of Snap Inc.² CEO Evan Spiegel and, to Zeff’s befuddlement, replaced it with a photo of Maxwell Zeff.

Here’s Spiegel:

The photo of Evan Spiegel on Wikipedia. Not Maxwell Zeff. In fact, I’m going to avoid including a photo of Maxwell Zeff so that we can all avoid further confusion.

Zeff then describes how he attempted to reach out to Artem.G via Wikipedia, which did not work. During this time, a different editor (using a temporary account) attempted to change the photo back to the original, which Artem.G reverted.

When Zeff didn’t hear anything back from Artem.G, he reached out to Evan Spiegel, who hilariously responded to Zeff by indicating he did not care at all: “I’m quite happy to leave it up if that’s alright with you.”

The article ends with the issue entirely unresolved, with Zeff declaring: “Perhaps I’m stuck as Wikipedia Evan Spiegel.”

But that’s not exactly what happened…

There is one thing that Zeff got wrong in the article. But he didn’t get it wrong on purpose. I know this, because Maxwell Zeff and I have exchanged emails on the matter. (More on that below.)

But even before emailing Zeff, I assumed good faith as to Zeff’s narrative, because a) I thought there was no reason for him to lie and b) I would want someone to do the same for me if I were in his shoes.

And yes, “assume good faith” is a Wikipedia policy:

Assuming good faith (AGF) means assuming that people are not deliberately trying to hurt Wikipedia, even when their actions are harmful. This is a fundamental principle on Wikipedia. Most people try to help the project, not hurt it. Otherwise, a project like Wikipedia would have been doomed from the beginning.

Now, we could immediately begin talking about all the times that “assume good faith” has gone wrong. Vandalism, COI edits, bad actors, propaganda, edit wars, etc. But that’s what we’re talking about this time.

Here’s what Zeff got wrong: he never wrote on Artem.G’s talk page. He thought he did, but he didn’t.

Instead, he wrote on the talk page for the temporary user 2026-26144-93. Said editor had made a total of one edit ever, at least with the account in question. Here was their only edit ever:

Yes, their only edit—three days after the Zeff photo was first uploaded to Spiegel’s article—was to attempt to change the photo from Zeff back to Spiegel.

While attempting to visit Artem.G’s talk page, it appears Zeff ended up on the talk page for temporary user 2026-26144-93³. This is not necessarily surprising, as Zeff has no history of editing Wikipedia. It’s an innocent mistake.

Here’s the message he left:

Hey Artem G, I’m reaching out because you seem to have changed Evan Spiegel’s photo to a photo of me, Maxwell Zeff, several times. I wanted to reach out and let you know that those photos are me onstage at a TechCrunch event. Here’s a link to a YouTube video of the event:⁴

I see that you frequently make changes to lots of Wikipedia pages, so I’m sure this was an honest mistake. But I wanted to let you know.

Also, I should let you know, I was interested in writing about this confusion for a story. I’d love to chat for the story, if you’re up for it.

Here’s a screenshot of that message:

It’s not surprising Artem.G never got back to Zeff, considering no one really checks the talk pages for other users, especially not a random user who has only made one edit ever.

So yeah, this explains why Zeff never heard back from Artem.G. But why did any of this happen in the first place?

Let’s take a look at Artem.G’s talk page.

Shortly after Zeff’s article went live, an editor left the following message on Artem.G’s talk page:

The photo you added to Evan Spiegel infobox is not him but a journalist. See: User talk: ~2026-26144-93 and Wired story

Artem.G, to his credit, quickly responded with:

Oh my. Thanks for correction! He writes that he reached out to me on the talk page, but I can’t see his message. I’m sorry if it caused much trouble for him, hope Maxwell will see it and accept my apologies. Will open a deletion request on commons for the photo. I uploaded it to the commons because Google images showed it to me as a photo of Spiegel, not because I wanted to prank Maxwell.

This could have been the end of it, if it weren’t for a different editor who came rampaging in to make their first ever Wikipedia edit (or, at least, their first edit with a temporary account with no previous edits.)

Here’s what said temporary account, which is not to be confused with the other two temporary accounts in this story so far, had to say:

I’m having some difficulty assuming good faith on this one. Another editor reverted your photo replacement and put a clear edit summary stating the pic you put was not one of Spiegel. You either didn’t bother reading the edit summary or you read it and dismissed it; you undid that editor’s correction and put a haughty, snotty, high-handed, scornful, scoldy edit summary to the effect of “Naw, newer pic is better. Take it to the talk page if you must”.

Even if that had been appropriate behavior on your part (it wasn’t), it was equally inappropriate of you to just thoughtlessly, trust Google without bothering to put any editorial effort into it -- or, y’know, using your own damn eyes and seeing the glaringly obvious. No, you just threw in a random pic and flung smugness at someone making a whole lot better and more genuine effort than yours.

And that’s assuming it was just lazy carelessness. Despite your show of contrition here, it looks to me like a childish prank blew up in your face the second time you did it the same way, on the same article, months apart.

But “if we must” (to borrow your phrase) assume good faith, then fine: learn from your mistake, as it were, and be better going forward.

Yeesh.

The response to the above diatribe was a major defense of Artem.G from various other editors, all of whom probably saw the Wired article and came to Artem.G’s talk page to see Zeff’s edit. They did not see Zeff’s edit, as it was elsewhere, but they did see that monologue from 2026-26673-09 against Artem.G.

A few other things happened:

• An editor⁵ compared it to the Emily St. John Mandel situation (which, yes, I’ve written about before)

• The same editor suggested reaching out to Stephen Harrison.

• Several editors suggested reaching out to Zeff and Wired about correcting the article; one attempted via Signal; another wrote a response to Zeff’s message on the 2026-26144-93 talk page.

• 2026-26673-09 responded by doubling down, stating “And you agree you failed to read the edit summary before blithely reverting?”

And then… I got involved.

Wait, why did I involve myself in this?

Good question. The thing was, I showed up on the talk page because I wanted to see Zeff’s message. Once there, I saw no message from Zeff but I did see what was in the process of unfolding. A j’accuse from an anonymous account, attempts to determine how to contact Zeff, a seemingly universal desire to rectify the entire situation.

But it also occurred to me that, unlike most (or all?) of the other editors involved in this situation, I have no anonymity when it comes to my Wikipedia presence (at least not anymore.) I could find Zeff’s email address and send him an email about the situation.

Also, let’s be honest: I wanted to write about it. It’s a fun, weird little Wikipedia story.

So here’s the email I sent to Maxwell Zeff:

Hi Maxwell,

I am a Wikipedia editor who also writes about Wikipedia in my free time. I wanted to let you know that when you attempted to write on Artem G’s Wikipedia talk page, you inadvertently wrote on a different editor’s talk page, which is why he never responded.

Here’s his talk page, where you can see he’s apologetic and embarrassed for this situation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Artem.G#Evan_Spiegel

Anyway, I hope this clears some things up for you. I think the entire thing is a case of good-faith edits gone awry.

I’m also probably going to write about this on my substack, because it’s a pretty interesting story overall.

I’m happy to say that Zeff responded four hours later with a very cordial email.

Not surprisingly, he expressed pretty similar emotions to Artem.G about the entire thing. I won’t include his entire response, but he did say:

I regret that error, and hope that Artem G doesn’t feel too bad about things—looks like we both made some good-faith mistakes!

So… did we resolve this thing?

Hold on. Is this a Wikipedia story with a happy ending?

It occurred to me as I was writing this that my articles don’t typically have happy endings. It’s rare that we reach any conclusion at all, much less one where everyone seems satisfied. This has the structure of a family-friendly sitcom episode. An escalating series of misunderstandings with a resolution at the end, leaving everyone satisfied and having learned a lesson about both the world and themselves.

But perhaps not everyone is happy. The Wired article has attracted two comments. One of the commenters had this to say:

I’m not ruling out the idea that this guy Artem G is crazy, but it’s just as likely he’s working to compromise Wikipedia, just another example of hybrid warfare from Russia (yes, Artem is a common Russian name)

Welp, there we have it, folks. This entire situation has been… a Russian hybrid warfare effort focused on… getting the internet to mistake Snap CEO Evan Spiegel for Wired journalist Maxwell Zeff. Classic Russia.⁶

And one more thing

It’s worth noting that if it were not for Maxwell Zeff recognizing and then writing about his own bizarre personal Wikipedia scenario, this situation could have escalated into an unstoppable (yet low stakes) form of citogenesis and what search strategist Lily Ray calls “the AI slop loop.” Once Zeff’s image was inserted into Wikipedia as Evan Spiegel, it began populating in Google Search and Gemini. If it had been allowed to linger for longer, Zeff-as-Spiegel could have incepted its way across the entire internet. Artem.G was duped by Google twice when trying to find the right image of Spiegel, making a good-faith edit twice that would only deepen the levels of citogenesis were it not for Zeff writing his article.

This is how citogenesis works, whether a prank or vandalism or a good-faith mistaken edit or intentional misinformation. A piece of misinformation enters the internet via Wikipedia or social media or really any other website, gets crawled by the machines and absorbed into training data. Soon it can’t be removed at all.

Anyway, fun stuff! At least we can all be glad that this one worked out. Maybe the real citogenesis was the friends we made along the way.

1. If you want to read some of my responses to (what I consider to be) weak Wikipedia journalism, you can check out “Congrats to Pitchfork on the Wikipedia scandal of 2026” or “Let’s talk about these ‘Wikipedia bans AI writing’ headlines.” And if you want something positive, you can read “The Verge wrote a good article about Wikipedia.”

2. Aka Snapchat

3. Temporary accounts were introduced in late 2025, to replace the IP address editing that previously occurred in the cases of unregistered users. See more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Temporary_accounts

4. I removed said link because I don’t really want a YouTube video in the middle of this article, but here’s the link for anyone interested:

5. One who, oddly, I’ve written about before and seems to be a good editor and a nice person based on our interactions.

6. I’m not saying that such things don’t happen on Wikipedia, but I am saying that’s not what happened this time.