Twitter Not Blocking Wikileaks As A Trending Topic... But Won't Comment On Possibility Of Shutting Down Account
from the backbone? dept
There was a rumor going around that perhaps Twitter was censoring "wikileaks" as a trending topic. In response, Twitter has denied this, saying that it's simply untrue -- but at the same time the company has refused to comment on whether or not it will allow Wikileaks to keep its Twitter account. This may be interesting to follow. Joe Lieberman, of course, has been making the rounds telling US companies to stop supporting Wikileaks in any way -- leading companies like Amazon, Paypal, Tableau Software, EveryDNS and some others to stop hosting content and/or working with Wikileaks in any way. Yet, during all of this time, Wikileaks has continued to use its Twitter account to communicate with the world. In fact, it's been that Twitter account that has kept many people abreast of how Wikileaks is responding to each censorship attempt. So, it raises the obvious questions: how long until Lieberman or others in the US government start putting pressure on Twitter and how will Twitter respond? I can understand why they're saying no comment now, but they'd better have an answer ready soon, because it's hard not to predict that this question will start to get a lot more attention quickly. It would be nice for Twitter to stand up for free speech rights, rather than cave to political pressure. Hopefully it will do so.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: free speech, twitter
Companies: twitter, wikileaks
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If you do a search for any trending topic, then do a search for wikileaks.... the "new tweets" pile up way faster for wikileaks.
But... twitter has become vital infrastructure... like DNS and money. If the forces of old and evil try to cut these off then we have no alternative than to start using P2P versions.
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And let's just remind ourselves what this is about - Wikileaks has brought into daylight the fact that democratic governments are routinely lying to their electorates.
This isn't good enough. If Authority isn't accountable, it's illegitimate... and accountability is impossible without transparency.
It is not wikileaks that is breaking the law here. It is the US government... and other governments.
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Sarcasm aside, has there been any definitive evidence of such pressure? I hate claiming something without proof, especially if I think i know it to be true. I did study as a mathematician for a while, after all . . .
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So, my opinion of them could very well be changed by knowledge of the nature of pressure they were placed under.
And if no pressure was, or could be applied, well, taht would really change my opinion.
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don't worry the proof will be on wikileaks very soon ...
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This will make a good movie some day
He needs to hurry, don't forget the world ends in 2012.
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Re: This will make a good movie some day
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So as far as they're concerned, the U.S. blocking their site is a step in the right direction.
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Futile gesture? Maybe, but I will sleep a little better as a result.
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Paypal isn't really trustworthy anyway, the web abounds with complaints from people who suddenly found their accounts frozen for no reason. It just seems wise to stay clear of Paypal anyway. Their treatment of Wikileaks just underscores all these problems.
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"If I were human, I believe my response would be, 'Go to hell.' If I were human."
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amazonaws
Twitter's services are hosted on Amazon's EC2 (or AWS).
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Lets back wiki
Also read today about a 12 year old school boy in the UK was arrested at school because he posted on facebook to ask people to join him in a demonstration against his youth club being closed down but this should come as no surprise since the UK police want to stop all student protests when university fees rise by 300% and god know how many more will be murdered like Ian Tomlinson before the year is out.
12 people where arrested today on charges of being terrorists but as usual none will be charged because our policemen are making it up as they go along to keep themselves in overtime.
Google ‘Holly Greig’ if you want to see how members of the justice system are able to rape a little girl and despite a million people knowing about the case are still able to block the investigation and silence the defence lawyer.
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/official-greig-green-petition/
If you come to the UK then don't take pictures at the airports else the police will smash your face in and take your camera because we are all terrorists now.
Go wikileaks the people are behind you and it's so bad in the UK that even Iran has reported to UK to the UN for the violations committed against the British public.
Wake up people and stop acting like cowards for today they come for me but tomorrow it will be you!
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