For fifty-one weeks out of the year, I’m 100 percent not the CEO of Snap, the company behind Snapchat. That’s Evan Spiegel, the company’s 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’s top executive. If you looked on Wikipedia, it sure seemed like I was.
Starting on Sunday, when you clicked on Spiegel’s 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’s still the case.
How did this happen? Despite what the internet might have you believe, I’m Maxwell Zeff (friends call me Max). The photo on Spiegel’s Wikipedia page was taken at a TechCrunch conference last year. I’m a reporter in my twenties, and while I write about technology companies for a living, I’ve never met Spiegel and have barely ever written about Snapchat.
But now I’m the CEO—according to Wikipedia. This first came to my attention on Monday, when I was scrolling through social media and I saw a random account post “that doesn’t look like Evan Spiegel” 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, “Very flattering but that is indeed me, and not the CEO of Snap.” My followers were amused, responding with comments such as “Congrats on the promotion” and “when yacht invitation max.”
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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, “Not Max being the second photo that comes up on Google now …” A day later, more colleagues, friends, and family members had started to notice. One texted me, “Why are you Evan Spiegel?” I didn’t have a good answer. Before I knew it, I had spent a whole week as Wikipedia Evan Spiegel. I decided to do some sleuthing.
On April 26, someone with the username “Artem G” changed the photo of Evan Spiegel to one of me with the comment “Newer photo,” according to the page’s revision history. Then, a few days later, someone changed it back, correctly stating: “That’s Maxwell Zeff, not Evan Spiegel.” Within hours, Artem G hopped back on and reverted the change, returning my face to the Wikipedia page saying, “Nah, new photo is better, take it to the talk page if you must.”
Artem G’s 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?
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’s contributions page to see what other Wikipedia pages he had made changes to. There were lots. He’d made hundreds of contributions to various pages—ranging from Swiss scientists to space artifacts to Claude—just in the past month.
I decided to create a Wikipedia account and reach out to Artem G on the talk page. He didn’t 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.
I realized that I had worked with a videographer named Artem G at a previous job—was 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–era spy thriller movie. I had now gone down two rabbit holes, and I still had more questions than answers.
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.
“Thanks for letting me know. I hadn't seen that,” Spiegel told me over email. “I'm quite happy to leave it up if that's alright with you. I do see some similarities.”
Perhaps I’m stuck as Wikipedia Evan Spiegel.
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