Popular social networking site Twitter has released a statement denying allegations of censoring tweets about Wikileaks, the controversial whistleblower site, whose founder, Julian Assange, was arrested on sexual assault charges on Dec. 7.
“Twitter is not censoring #wikileaks, #cablegate or other related terms from the Trends list of trending topics,” read a statement by Twitter released on Dec. 7. However, Twitter traffic suggests otherwise.
This graph from Trendistic.com, a third-party website that shows the popularity of various terms on Twitter, compares Wikileaks to some of Twitter’s official trending topics. It shows the word “Wikileaks” peaking at 3 percent of Twitter traffic over the previous 24 hours. None of the trending topics came close to this level of popularity, except when “Patriots” briefly overtook “Wikileaks” from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. after the Monday Night Football telecast (Dec. 6). Despite its overwhelming popularity, Wikileaks has not been listed on Twitter’s trending topics. Many Twitter users and bloggers have criticized any possibility of censorship.
“(The censorship) is a really bad thing. Wikileaks is important and it reveals information to public,” said Urban student Max Goldberg (’13), who has been keeping up to date with the Wikileaks scandal. “It’s a difficult thing though, because (freedom of the press) is an important national value (but) a certain level of secrecy is required to keep our nation safe.”
Wikileaks has released more than 250,000 confidential government cables since the beginning of what the media is calling “Cablegate” on Nov. 28. Many corporations such as Visa, Mastercard and Paypal have shut down all payments to Assange’s site, reportedly at the request of the U.S. government.
Assange was arrested in London on charges of rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion in connection with a police investigation in Sweden, though many speculate that there is a connection between his recent arrest and Cablegate. Assange, Mastercard, Visa, Paypal, the US government and the Swedish government have all drawn criticism from various news outlets for their handling of the situation.