Slashdot Mirror
Is Twitter Censoring Wikileaks Trends?
comforteagle writes "There are suspicions coming to the surface this morning that Twitter may be censoring WikiLeaks-related tweets from forming a trending topic. Why is still unclear at this point, as during Iranian protests a short while ago Twitter appeared to be in the fray of helping to spread the word. As of this morning it appears that Twitter may have some explaining to do. One of Twitter's engineers has chimed in over the weekend, but some aren't convinced."
For Wikileaks trending. You can see here that Wikileaks was hot on Friday, not Sunday. Google Trends (for Google searches, not Tweets) actually heavily corresponds to this. Further more, if you look at Google Trends, you'll note that the recent trending on Friday wasn't even half of what it peaked at during the Afghan war cable release. It might even be less than that edited journalist shooting video. After checking Google trends for Sunday, "wikileaks" wasn't in the top twenty. I'm checking other Twitter harvesting sites for trends and not seeing anything that would indicate that Sunday should have been a huge day for Wikileaks on Twitter.
By no means conclusive evidence one way or the other though.
My work here is dung.
I can't recall what it was, but Scienceblogs was atwitter with claims that Twitter was censoring a science/religion/something event that was being discussed. It turns out that (shock) people just weren't talking about it as incredibly frequently as they had been when it started trending.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Maybe the type of persons which like to tweet, are short attention spanned twit which are not interested in complex long running news like wiki leaks, but on what DJ hammer took on breakfast. Thus it not appearing in the trends, as the person concerned with it are a minority. I have only anecdotal evidence for it, but I work in IT, with a high percentage of nerd, and all looked at me with big eye when I mentioned wiki leaks last week, and today they just shrugged. The average sheep DO NOT CARE.
Perhaps that so many people are talking about wikileaks, it has stopped trending. Just like what was required for Justin Bieber.
Obviously, everybody should just obsessively tweet #heilwhale until the problem resolves itself.
Extra credit will, naturally, be awarded for terrifying photochops of the failwhale with Chertoff's skull-like face...
This is all so fucked up, we should all go back to basic internet principles. The internet should not be used for anything other than porn.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
According to one of the commenters, this may be a result of adjusting the algorithms to git rid of endless "Bieber" related trends.
At what price Bieber Freedom?
If a forest of trees fall, but no one can report it, did it really happen?
I am amazed at how many fronts have been opened against wikileaks in the past few weeks. Clearly, there are people who want it crushed, but I can't recall ever seeing the number and variety of attacks against another "thorn in the side" as we're seeing against wikileaks.
The takeaway lesson: those who try to learn the truth and spread the truth will be destroyed.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
Blame Justin Bieber
What happened was... all the JB fans were skewing the trending topics by tweeting about him all the time.
So twitter changed TTs from being a measure of amount to a measure of growth (or derivative)
And I think wikileaks grew slower, hence no TTs.
how long until
Yeah, there is nothing newsworthy about the kidnappings, torture, deaths, coverups and treaty violations found in the latest release. No one cares about those things, they're just being drama queens.
Links to the things mentioned above can be found on this post:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1896026&cid=34443616
This sentence no verb.
"And now this. Could it have occurred to those people that the US government isn't behind every one of those things?"
Nope; this is slashdot. Very little critical thinking, but a lot of fanaticism. Many of the people here can't get their tinfoil wrapped heads around the concept of Occam's Razor.
Posts like yours are somewhat frustrating because it fuels other paranoid people into believing that conspiracy is everywhere, when in fact, its nothing but self delusion fueled by others of a like-minded delusion. Much like moon landing conspiracies, there is absolutely no reason to give them anything other than a cursory glance.
You're suggesting that Google and Twitter are part of a massive conspiracy to hide a leak of material which largely, everyone who reads, already knows. Obviously, there are some exceptions, but those exceptions largely only serve to fill in detail and cause governmental chaos. Furthermore, you are suggesting that twitter is purposely censoring while Google is not only censoring but reformulating statistical modules to not only up hold the conspiracy, but but to ensure the results match that of twitter.
Which is more likely? People are just not that interested in reading about fairly well known information, which they are already not interested in reading day to day? Or that there is some massive conspiracy involving all of the world's governments and companies, both large and small?
Exactly. If these feelings persist in other facets of your life, medication might be worth reviewing with your doctors.
Which 'way of life' is "*THE* American" one?
The top 2% of the American population that control 90% of the wealth?
Or the bottom 50% who have zero assets?
This whole thing is hilarious.
Its almost as if one can see a prequel of Snowcrash playing out in real life!
Franchise America will be here soon :) Cognitive dissonance can, in others, be highly entertaining.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Twitter, like Google, has been close to Obama. [Citation Needed] Please refrain from saying something like this without actually backing it up.
Computers can reverse entropy.
You don't need to be competent to try and bully people. Quite the opposite, in fact. By contrast, keeping secret things secret (and deciding in a cogent manner what should be secret) does require competence.
Something bad is coming when people are suddenly anxious to tell the truth.
It would seem to me the burden of evidence rests with the person making the claim.
Eschew Obfuscation
Twitter's trends are based off growth, not volume. This conspiracy shit is getting ridiculous. If this keeps up we're going to log into slashdot and see a story titled: "Assange orders extra hot Skim Vente Pumpkin Spice Latte at Starbucks but given NON-SKIM MILK INSTEAD in Starbuck/Government conspiracy to SLOWLY KILL HIM!!!`1!"
Twitter, like Google, has been close to Obama. Wikileaks is making the Obama Administration (especially Hillary Clinton) look really bad both through the release of what was in those cables
Actually the Clinton state department comes off pretty well in those cables; professional, perceptive, and hard-working.
That's ironic.
1) There's good evidence the CIA *are* behind it.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27005.htm
2) Elected officials (Joe Liberman) took credit for it
http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/01/amazon/
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/12/how_lieberman_got_amazon_to_drop_wikileaks.php
Large scale conspiracies and secrets can be held for fairly lengthy durations. Decades even, when the information is worth keeping secret. Look at projects like the F-117. Likewise, there are some aviation projects which have been ongoing for decades and all we know is, to paraphrase, by even today's standards, they seem pure science fiction.
Conspiracies happen all the time. But, contrary to common misconception, they need not be nefarious. Some times they are a birthday party. Other times, they save lives and no one ever knows; or at least not for many decades.
But, as you rightly point out, there are costs associated with conspiracies. IMOHO, you left out one variable. What is the benefit of a conspiracy in comparison to maintaining it. By that measure alone, the conspiracy cries here are just dumb. Spending political capital on issues which largely don't matter to the public would be as dumb as believing there is a conspiracy here.
Who knows, there may be a conspiracy at work here. But at the end of the day, there is absolutely zero reason to believe there is a conspiracy which means, for now, we're operating in the realm of the truly paranoid.
Usernames can't be trending topics, and a ton of people use the tag #wikileaks.
They show that the highest levels of our government (Secretary of State) were actively aware and involved in knowingly kidnapping, toturing, and otherwise abusing a man they _knew_ to be innocent. That is not newsworthy? That is something we didn't already know about. I mean, we knew it happened, but we didn't know how far up it went.
Swiss bank freezes Julian Assange's (personal) account