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."

Comments

Friday Was the Hot Day

[eldavojohn]

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.

Re:Friday Was the Hot Day

[Amorymeltzer]

The piece specifically talks about comparisons. All of the other idiotic nonsense that did trend didn't compare in level to #wikileaks. The direct link to one of the vastly more interesting ones, imo:

http://bubbloy.wordpress.com/2010/12/05/twitter-is-censoring-the-discussion-of-wikileaks/

Re:Friday Was the Hot Day

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's just that all you WikiLeaks fanboys refuse to acknowledge the true popularity of #mycatissooocute and #whatihadforbreakfast

Re:Friday Was the Hot Day

[GooberToo]

And if you bother to read the comments posted to the link you provided, not to mention twitter's own response, you'll easily see the only story here is that people are delusional in falsely believing that twitter is censoring anything. Its a fact which google's statistics as well as the sites which the linked article even validate.

So really the only story here is that people are going out of their way to create a story about the fact there isn't a story to be created. So in short of that, the new story is one of conspiracy which never existed in the first place while trying to hide the fact there never was a story.

Re:Friday Was the Hot Day

[horigath]

The comparisons on the blog are flawed.

The main example is that of "Inception" which the author cries trended for an extended period. However the example is almost totally wrong.

[Inception] managed to trend essentially uninterrupted from August 8 to August 26. During this stretch, the popularity of the phrase generally fell except for a significant spike around August 17th. It seems strange that Twitter’s algorithm would identify something to be trending in the midst of the sustained fall.

However, the data in fact shows Inception Trending almost uninterrupted from July 13 into early August. By August 8th, when he thinks it is constant, it is becoming less and less regular and by the end of his "essentially uninterrupted" period it is trending less than 50% of the time. On August 26th it was only on the list for a half hour!

The author then points out that #wikileaks hasn't trended, giving the figures to show that it hasn't showed up since July and August. Then of course, he mentions that #cablegate has in fact been trending since then, but avoids mentioning the full details. Given that Twitter tries to consolidate similar tags it seems pretty reasonable that #cablegate was just selected either automatically or manually as the "face" of the leaks on twitter. It trended on the days when news was exploding and discussion was increasing, rather than decreasing (although the author doesn't say how long these trends lasted and given his total misreading of the previous figures it's easy to suspect that it actually trended longer). That's how it's meant to work.

Not the first time

[Sockatume]

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.

Hanlon's razor

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Justin Bieber

[SimonTheSoundMan]

Perhaps that so many people are talking about wikileaks, it has stopped trending. Just like what was required for Justin Bieber.

The obvious solution...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

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...

God dammit

[Dunbal]

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.

I'm amazed

[oldspewey]

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.

Re:I'm amazed

[Blakey Rat]

God people on Slashdot are paranoid.

Or maybe... just maybe... not enough people are tweeting about it? Did that extremely simple, common-sense, explanation ever occur to you?

No they aren't

[JamesP]

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.

Re:Do you really have to ask "why?"

[GooberToo]

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.

Re:You want a reference?

[speroni]

It would seem to me the burden of evidence rests with the person making the claim.

Jesus Christ

[kevinNCSU]

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!"

Re:Maybe no one actually cares anymore

[Urza9814]

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.

Assange's personal bank account frozen

[Martin Spamer]

Swiss bank freezes Julian Assange's (personal) account