Wikipedia comically labels brief Twitter suspension of journos as ‘Thursday Night Massacre’

The pearl-clutching following the temporary suspension of journalists for allegedly doxxing Elon Musk traveled beyond the Twitter-verse and corporate media when even Wikipedia got in on the action, attaching a hyperbolic title to their post that led to swift ridicule.

“Can’t trust that site anymore,” was just one of many assertions after the favored resource for underachieving students let bias shine.

As covered, Musk hit the left where it hurt last week when he announced an update to the terms of service prohibiting doxxing that saw the accounts of CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan, The Washington Post’s Drew Harwell, Business Insider’s Linette Lopez, and others temporarily suspended for sharing links to an account that tracks the whereabouts of the billionaire’s private jet.

Though many of them would go on to be reinstated following a poll conducted by Musk, the initial action was enough to traumatize a host of progressives and inspired CNN to “reevaluate” their relationship with the social media platform.

Not to be outdone, Wikipedia generated an entire article based on this blip in content moderation and emphasized the trending tag “Thursday Night Massacre” that it had been exaggeratedly dubbed by assigning that name to the article.

“The phrase ‘Thursday Night Massacre’ was a trending topic on Twitter following the suspensions,” Wikipedia described, “news site Mediaite also used the phrase in a headline describing the suspension and subsequent fallout, and it has since become a common term for representing the incident.”

The article and the title itself were met with widespread derision with Musk included among those most vocally chiding the move and the actors he suspected were behind it.

“A two day suspension of maybe 7 accounts for doxxing got an actual Wikipedia page!? Wikipedia is controlled by the MSM journalists. Can’t trust that site anymore,” he tweeted.

Others who weighed in included commentators Jack Posobiec, who said, “Wikipedia is just a far-left blog,” and Charlie Kirk who sneered, “Wikipedia editors have taken a one-day tiff over Twitter doxing policies and made it an article twice as long as the Declaration of Independence.”

Anarchist Michael Malice got in on the action and juxtaposed the coverage of the suspensions with the “mostly peaceful protests” that swept the country causing roughly $2 billion in damage and resulting in numerous deaths after George Floyd died while in police custody in 2020.

The page has since been updated to be a redirect page linking to the article that is now titled “December 15, 2022 Twitter suspensions,” but the sentiment conveyed remains the same and many more took time to call out the overblown bias.

https://twitter.com/V_its_me888/status/1604817675359764484

Even Wikipedia’s cofounder Larry Sanger had cautioned last year about the bias on the site saying, “Because there is a lot of influence, Wikipedia is known now by everyone to have a lot of influence in the world. If only one version of the facts is allowed then that gives a huge incentive to wealthy and powerful people to seize control of things like Wikipedia in order to shore up their power. And they do that.”

Or, as Musk more succinctly put it tagging the site’s other cofounder Jimmy Wales, “Wikipedia is overly controlled by mainstream media.”

Kevin Haggerty

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