Elon Musk slams Wikipedia after suspending ‘recession’ page edits

Elon Musk slammed Wikipedia on Friday for ‘losing objectivity’ after the online encyclopedia blocked users from editing its ‘recession’ page – prompting accusations of interference with the Biden administration.

Musk, the CEO of Tesla and the richest person in the world with an estimated net worth of $263 billion, tagged Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales in a tweet on Friday.

“Wikipedia is losing its objectivity,” Musk tweeted.

Wikipedia has blocked users from revising its ‘recession’ page after visitors to the site engaged in a frantic edit war over the definition of the term, which is being challenged by the Biden administration following the latest economic data showing a decline. of GDP.

A Wikipedia user known as “Soibangla” edited the “recession” page to remove the reference to the standard definition of the term.

The user added a line that read, “There is no global consensus on the definition of a recession.”

On Friday morning, the page featured a padlock icon in the upper right corner indicating that it was placed in “semi-protection” mode whereby “unregistered users…as well as accounts [that] are not confirmed or self-confirmed” would not be able to make changes to the text.

“Wikipedia changed the definition of recession to favor the Biden regime, then locked the page,” right-wing social media personality Mike Cernovich tweeted.

“I can’t make Biden look bad before the midterm elections!” tweeted another Twitter user.

The change comes after dozens of people flocked to the page to make changes to the entry. They were most likely boosted by Thursday’s Commerce Department report that the nation’s GDP fell 0.9%.

This is the second consecutive quarter that the national economy has contracted, which meets the traditional definition of a recession.

But the Biden administration has insisted the economy is not in recession. The president and his aides have firmly refused to use the word in briefings to reporters.

“This is not an economy in recession,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.

“But we are in a transition period in which growth is slowing down and that is necessary and appropriate and we need to grow at a steady and sustainable pace.”

Whether the United States is technically in a recession is a decision that is usually made by the National Bureau of Economic Research, which is a private, nonprofit research organization based in Cambridge, Mass.

The NBER presents itself as an apolitical group that is “committed to undertaking and disseminating unbiased economic research to policy makers, professionals and the academic community”.

The Post has sought comment from Wikipedia.

“Semi-protection is useful when there is a significant amount of disruption or vandalism from new or unregistered users, or to prevent puppets of blocked or banned users from editing, especially when this happens produced on biographies of living people who have recently had a high level of media interest,” according to the Wikipedia page.