Is Twitter Censoring Wikileaks Trends? 191
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."
Friday Was the Hot Day (Score:5, Interesting)
By no means conclusive evidence one way or the other though.
Re:Friday Was the Hot Day (Score:5, Informative)
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/ [wordpress.com]
Re:Friday Was the Hot Day (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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I submitted [slashdot.org] the same story, but included your link as well as the one from Student Activism [studentactivism.net] instead of the submitter's link. (Better to use the source material rather than make the /, posting a summary leading to a summary IMO). (I don't particularly care about getting my name up as the submitter (I've submitted a total of 6 stories ever, only one of which has been approved), but I wish they had used the sources instead.)
I read over everything in the source pages and honestly it's rather difficult to say wh
Re:Friday Was the Hot Day (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Friday Was the Hot Day (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Friday Was the Hot Day (Score:4, Insightful)
This tempest sounds like a few people, with enough connections to news people, are convinced that the rest of the world *must* be as interested in this topic as they are. With that as their premise, they conclude Twitter is 'cheating.'
Wishful thinking that people would be more interested in international corruption than, say, the european music awards. [twitter.com]
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the opposite may also be the case, when news people focus intensely on something that the rest of the world could not care anything about (if not for the intense media coverage).
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How can we tell whether the trending data is accurate? What if the trending was still hot for Sunday in terms of tweets posted, but being suppressed by Twitter in terms of tweets visible?
Not the first time (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Same thing was leveled at student protests in the UK [guardian.co.uk] and Twitter were absolutely adamant they were not interfering or being influenced by any authorities.
Phillip.
Hanlon's razor (Score:4, Insightful)
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You've got a point. Potential government corruption isn't important at all, especially for that government's citizens. Television shows and shopping are far more important!
Justin Bieber (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps that so many people are talking about wikileaks, it has stopped trending. Just like what was required for Justin Bieber.
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Actually makes perfect sense. If a topic has stopped growing, by definition, its no longer trendy. Furthermore, that likely means its either petered out or reached critical mass. Either way, trending via twitter no longer matters as its a dead topic or everyone already knows to following.
Trendy:
A fad, sometimes called a trend, meme or a craze, is any form of behavior that develops among a large population and is collectively followed with enthusiasm for some period, generally as a result of the behavior's being perceived as novel in some way. [wikipedia.org]
Come on Twitter empoyees, you know where to leak! (Score:2)
Why would you say that? (Score:2)
If there is this kind of heavy handed crap going on at companies we are supposed to trust, we all know where to send the evidence. I know that not everyone agrees, but somehow I feel better in the world knowing that Wikileaks is on call, doing its thing.
You are going to have them thinking you are a Wikileaks supporter. Then their heavy handed tactics will be directed at you.
No I don't think anyone wants to mess with the government. If you had any idea of just how heavy the tactics are...
Read the article [nowpublic.com]
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You are going to have them thinking you are a Wikileaks supporter.
And it is pretty obvious you are very very against the idea of anyone wanting to support or help wikileaks.
In the last thread alone, due to the fact you are 'Friend of a Friend', I saw 18 posts from you that I counted that had the exact same content. Pretty much the same content as this post. After the first 5 it became annoying trying to skip so many dupes in a row which was the only reason i noticed.
It's one thing to warn others of the dangers you might perceive to be true, but it's another for what you
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You are going to have them thinking you are a Wikileaks supporter.
And it is pretty obvious you are very very against the idea of anyone wanting to support or help wikileaks.
In the last thread alone, due to the fact you are 'Friend of a Friend', I saw 18 posts from you that I counted that had the exact same content. Pretty much the same content as this post. After the first 5 it became annoying trying to skip so many dupes in a row which was the only reason i noticed.
It's one thing to warn others of the dangers you might perceive to be true, but it's another for what you have been doing, which is being actively against any wikileaks support.
You can clearly do as you wish, but I highly suspect your motives of 'just warning others' at this point.
Wikileaks is run by the maniac man Julian Assange, thats why.
The obvious solution... (Score:5, Funny)
Extra credit will, naturally, be awarded for terrifying photochops of the failwhale with Chertoff's skull-like face...
God dammit (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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I agree that television and facebook are the modern "circus", but perhaps it's because of my age: at some point you just realize it will never stop. Even if the "glorious revolution" were to happen, it all turns to shit again within a couple generations and sometimes sooner.
More links to details (Score:4, Interesting)
At what price Bieber Freedom?
If a forest of trees fall, but no one can report it, did it really happen?
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And did it fall on Bieber? Please say it did. ...
Actually, it'd need to be a huge tree to take out all of his fans as well, so that we didn't end up with a "oh noes, teh Bieber is dead" flood instead!
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If a forest of trees fall, but no one can report it, did it really happen?
That's a silly question, of course it did.
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I knew that counteracting the Beliebers' spamming was the cause for the revision of the trending topics system, but interesting to see complaining about the TT system coming from someone besides aggrieved popstar fans.
Yeah, it's somewhat of an annoying black box at any rate.
I'm amazed (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Are you naive? Cyberwarfare is dirty. (Score:2)
There will be unlimited fronts opened up against Wikileaks and their supporters. Vigilantes around the world will be involved in shutting Wikileaks down and in stopping the individuals associated with it.
How did the USA respond after the 911 attacks?
How do you think the USA will respond after the cyber 911?
The Cyber Command probably has been waiting for this moment for a while now.
Re:I'm amazed (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
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Twitter aside, I think my basic point remains [bbc.co.uk]
And how many of these other fronts are also paranoid over-reactions? You're invoking numbers here. You can't fall back on the point when the numbers are shown to be in question (granted, the numbers are implied but not stated - which is the kind of emotional slight-of-hand that gets us in to these messes to begin with).
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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?
And yet here you are, in this comment, calling people names. If your position is the more reasonable one, why the passion in your response? Besides, it isn't as if twitter would be the only thing Wikileaks has had to worry about over the last year or so. Or, what, if trends start to appear then Assange would be free to travel to the US again?
Please just note how by dismissing a single element of what some perceive to be an alarming trend you have DISMISSED THE ENTIRE SITUATION as paranoia.
To me, it seems
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Because I'm sick of having to read paranoid rantings modded-up in every single goddamned story.
So don't click on them. It isn't exactly hard. I personally avoid tons of articles on this site. There was one below here that was entitled something like 'I need a developer' and I was fairly certain it would be a self-referring 'OMG PHBs are so lulz' waste of time. There's no shame in having taste preferences.
So when you encounter an article entitled, 'Is Twitter Censoring Wikileaks Trends?', what, pray-tell did you expect to find within it, exactly?
Who made you the slashdot comment police?
By "single element" do you mean Wikileaks not showing up on Twitter's Trending Topics list? The thing this topic is about? Am I reading this right? You're actually chiding me for being on-topic?
For someone
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So when you encounter an article entitled, 'Is Twitter Censoring Wikileaks Trends?', what, pray-tell did you expect to find within it, exactly?
The usual Slashdot pattern is:
1) "Editor" posts ridiculously biased, or flat-out wrong, article
2) First few comments correct article
But when they post conspiracy theories, we get:
1) "Editor" posts ridiculous paranoid conspiracy theory pretending to be a legitimate article
2) First few comments trip over themselves not only justifying the conspiracy theory, but trying
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Please read the article. The statistics indicate there are way more people tweeting about wikileaks than are tweeting about the currently trending topics. It's about 3 times more popular than the top trends.
And yet I have no idea how the "trending topics" are determined, nor does the article writer seem to know. Considering the change they made to it a little while ago, I wouldn't be surprised if "total amount of traffic" isn't a big factor at all, since the entire point of the change was to de-list topics
Latest Wikileak (Score:3)
Anyway, the latest Wikileak states that there is going to be a huge scandal and uproar about the ne
No they aren't (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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So your position, if I'm summarizing correctly is:
Twitter isn't censoring Wikileaks because Twitter is actually just censoring Bieber?
To me this is still censorship, but perhaps only accidental in the former case.
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No, my point is:
Twitter trending topics calculation is not influenced by volume of tweets, but by tweet growth rate.
Hence Wikileaks tweets does not have what it takes to become a TT (that is, high growth rate)
Wikileaks supporters, beware of the vigilantes. (Score:2, Informative)
What is a target of opportunity?
The website describes it:
"This website is devoted to fighting Terrorism and forced integration of Marxist oriented ideals and values into the American mainstream.
http://www.targetofopportunity.com/ [targetofopportunity.com]
It's about to get really dirty.
http://www.nowpublic.com/world/gestapo-usa-govt-funded-vigilante-network-terrorizes-america [nowpublic.com]
Re:Wikileaks supporters, beware of the vigilantes. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
This may be the first ever cyberwar. (Score:2)
Did you read the sites?
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Yep, fascinating insights into cognitive dissonance. Very cool. Thanks for the links.
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Wow, that is some batshit crazy stuff you just posted. I know there are some bad people in government, but only a true paranoid schizophrenic thinks that there are roving bands of citizens devoted to "swarming" them as a method of government-sponsored harassment using GPS tracking of their cellphones, all with the nefarious goal of convincing the rest of us that said target is crazy.
Maybe the occam's razor answer is right here - that they *are* crazy, and they mis-perceive normal people going about their l
how he leaks it (Score:2)
39-year-old Australian supplied the Metropolitan Police with contact details upon arriving in the UK in October. Police sources confirmed that they have a telephone number for Mr Assange and are fully aware of where he is staying.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/wikileaks-chief-what-will-he-do-next-2148813.html [independent.co.uk]
I do not understand how he can leak information if the authorities know where he sits? Cannot they use the Echelon or NSA to block or modify his traffic?
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Come to think about it, I remember how Alexander Solzhenitsyn or Andrei Sakharov were hated in the USSR by authorities. Still they could not kill them. They could do it with others, but for some reason not with these two. It always puzzled me.
Maybe it is like to kill a mockingbird?
Why Only One Twitter? (Score:2)
By this time in Twitter's huge rise, previous services like IM had already spawned several competing networks inspired by the original pioneer. Twitter is even easier to duplicate. How come Twitter still has a monopoly on the service? After a few years of millions of people using it, the "Twitter" protocol should be either standard or have big gateways for other networks of users to all intercommunicate with it.
I'm surprised Google doesn't offer a competitor, or Yahoo, or Microsoft, or Disney.
Who gives a shit? (Score:3)
Seriously. Twitter is a company and will censor shit as all communication/media companies do from time to time. Twitter isn't "the voice of the people" or any shit like that. It is an inane website for mostly inane people to display their inanity in 140 characters and track the other inane peoples reactions. The only thing Twitter added to the systems that came before it was easy mobile access and popularity tracking, and no one actually seems to use the mobile version any more.
It is killing me that our already dumb society is trying to dumb itself down to thoughts that can fit in 140 characters.
P.S. Someone should invent a social media symbolic language. I bet you could cover the majority of posts with very few symbols.
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: )
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P.S. Someone should invent a social media symbolic language. I bet you could cover the majority of posts with very few symbols.
The have. It's called emoticon. And you're right, 95% of all forum conversations can be expressed in emoticon with just two words :) and :(
Yet another wikileaks discussion on /. ? (Score:3)
And it belongs on /.
For the last few years, things have been moving into the cloud. Somehow decentralized systems like irc have been replaced with centralized social media platforms. Nice cheap hosting and sharing services with some teeny, tiny clauses in their tos have become widely available.
Wikileaks is the perfect storm that tests just how much we can trust the life in the cloud.
Maybe RMS, that guy who looks and talks like Jesus was right all along.
Regarding the Iranian comparison (Score:3)
The summary mentions the role of twitter during the Iranian unrest following the election.
Let me point out the obvious:
* Twitter is a company based in the US. Iran is a non-friendly regime to the US.
* If there were a twitter equivalent based in Iran, you can be sure it would have been busy about the cable leaks.
Got it?
In general, pretending that the parallel with the Iranian incident has any merit can be thought of as a lame effort at sarcasm at best and to be ignorant/uneducated at worst.
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Jesus Christ (Score:5, Insightful)
Post it on wikileaks (Score:2)
> One of Twitter's engineers has chimed in over the weekend
This whistle-blower should post the evidence that twitter is censoring wikileaks on wikileaks.
Test it yourself! (Score:2)
As a commenter suggests in the story:
"A game for Tweetdeck users.
Start two new columns, one for "wikileaks" one for any of the subjects on twitter's worldwide trend list (there's some guy called Mike Ashley who is top trending on two different versions of his name right now).
Now, which column is moving fastest?
That's why nobody believes Twitter isn't censoring."
The Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted. (Score:3)
main problem (Score:4, Informative)
Usernames can't be trending topics, and a ton of people use the tag #wikileaks.
New arrest warrent (Score:2)
Julian Assange (new) arrest warrant arrives in UK [bbc.co.uk]
Assange's personal bank account frozen (Score:5, Informative)
Swiss bank freezes Julian Assange's (personal) account [bbc.co.uk]
Re:Maybe no one actually cares anymore (Score:4, Insightful)
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 [slashdot.org]
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The cable leaks have almost no worthy information. They don't show cover-ups, torture or anything else we didn't already know about. It's the equivalent on getting caught passing a note at primary school.
The Yanks have little to worry about.
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The cable leaks have almost no worthy information. They don't show cover-ups, torture or anything else we didn't already know about. It's the equivalent on getting caught passing a note at primary school.
The Yanks have little to worry about.
If nothing else they prove that everyone knew about these goings-on, and that it wasn't just the local evil men in the field. They clearly illustrate systematic corruption at the highest levels.
You can opine that even this is not new, but that's just your cynicism talking. Joe Public does not believe that Obama is guilty of high crimes. The cables illustrate that conspiracy charges, at a minimum, would in fact stick in a fair court of law.
Re:Maybe no one actually cares anymore (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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If its so , blehhh.... then why are major leaders and govt people so upset and angry!?
Maybe if americans got of their ass, and looked at NONE usa websites, like UK ones they might learn something apart from
the lies that DoD corporates dish out (aka GE/NBC & friends)
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Fair enough, and likely true in this case. However:
Is this really what's happening? I'm more under the impression all the jaded bootlickers were suspiciously silent in the last weeks -- now there is ONE allegiation which turns out to be not true, and BAM! they all come back out of the woods, making their shitty little speeches like yours.
Re:Why is everything a conspiracy? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Why is everything a conspiracy? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Why is it that for some, every time something negative happens for Wikileaks, there must be a conspiracy that is behind it. 1. When the first accusations were leverage against Assange for rape; many were screaming that the CIA was behind it. 2. When Amazon stop hosting Wikileaks, the government MUST HAVE been behind it. 3. When Paypal froze Wikileak's account, more government pressure. And now this. Could it have occurred to those people that the US government isn't behind every one of those things?
I know, right? Next week when Assange dies in a car crash, they'll probably blame that on a conspiracy too.
Re:Why is everything a conspiracy? (Score:4, Interesting)
That's ironic.
1) There's good evidence the CIA *are* behind it.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27005.htm [informatio...house.info]
2) Elected officials (Joe Liberman) took credit for it
http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/01/amazon/ [techcrunch.com]
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/12/how_lieberman_got_amazon_to_drop_wikileaks.php [talkingpointsmemo.com]
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Why is it that for some, every time something negative happens for Wikileaks, there must be a conspiracy that is behind it.
Because this is the kind of thing that is highly embarrassing for the government but they can't openly do anything about it due to the Constitution. Their only options are 1) do nothing or 2) do things secretly.
Since odd things are happening to Wikileaks, it's hard to believe that they are doing nothing. So they are doing secret things to harm Wikileaks.
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Surely such a claim, that the government would exert such power over privately-owned corporations would require at least one example [wikipedia.org], right?
Because it isn't as if they can just haul the most powerful communications companies in the world in to their offices and start making demands, right?
SURELY we'd know about that sort of abuse? RIGHT?
We're being reasonable here. Thoughtful, critical-thinking types who don't just blindly repeat things...
Re:Do you really have to ask "why?" (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Let's put it this way: Top secret documents accessible by people with reasonably high security clearance are now making their rounds around the web and news media. Do you really think nobody is going to think twice about involving potentially thousands of
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Thats what they want you to think...
Re:Do you really have to ask "why?" (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Do you really have to ask "why?" (Score:4, Interesting)
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Not sure about Twitter but Google's ties to the Obama administration are well documented:
http://biggovernment.com/capitolconfidential/2010/11/11/mr-issa-take-note-of-google-and-obama-coziness/ [biggovernment.com]
and
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/07/23/googleburton/ [theregister.co.uk]
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Re:You want a reference? (Score:5, Insightful)
It would seem to me the burden of evidence rests with the person making the claim.
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Twitter, like Google, has been close to Obama.
Are you... joking? I honestly can't tell.
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I'm amazed you found virgin ground between the old line of "The media has a liberal bias (because we've always said they have a liberal bias)" and "Reality has a well known liberal bias."
Sorry to spoil your fun, but I'm going to say that in fact, twitter has a well known conservative bias. For example, whose tweets are the only tweets that the media actually pays attention to? Sarah Palin.
Re:Do you really have to ask "why?" (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually the Clinton state department comes off pretty well in those cables; professional, perceptive, and hard-working.
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This is only slightly less retarded than asking why the mainstream media tends to run interference for Democrats, spinning everything they do in a positive light even if it's something that would have a Republican hanging from a cross on capitol hill.
Yeah and I bet your post will be modded down because everyone here is a commie librul! Wake up LAMESTREAM media. Do you think Clinton would have been censured or Spitzer forced to resign if they were not Republicans? How about all those Democrats like Sanford, Ensign and Vitter who were given a pass on their sex scandal and remained in office?
Don't even get me started on the last Democratic administration in the White House! Between the illegal wiretaps on US Citizens, the erosion of civil liberties, s
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just like they were so nice to Bush,
You know I have trouble telling if you are being sarcastic, or if you truly believe that, but you appear to actualy believe that the mainstream press was nice to Bush. The press continuously played up every accusation against Bush. The mainstream press was talking about how bad the economy was when unemployment was 4.8%. Now that unemployment is 9.8%, they are constantly talking about how the economy is doing wonderful, it's just those "unexpectedly" high unemployment numbers that we need to worry about.
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Washington (CNN) -- U.S. officials at the Pentagon and State Department denied Friday knowing of any efforts to take down the WikiLeaks website or asking companies to do so, and added "Please don't ask me that question again", whilst furtively looking over their shoulders.
oh geee (Score:2)
oh gee. i didnt think it that way ! so, its ok as long as we dont use our freedoms - we wont risk losing them !!!
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"so you are saying that, if assange didnt ABuse, for his own personal aggrandizement, the freedom, noone would censor it ?"
Fixed that for you.
justifications. (Score:2)
it doesnt matter what freedom is used. freedom is freedom. 'you are using freedom for
people can use their freedom for whatever they want. THAT IS WHY IT IS CALLED FREEDOM.
as long as morons like you around, who use various justifications and add prefixes to concept of freedom to allow/disallow it conditionally, there can be no freedom.
the FREE part in the word freedom, apparently, eludes you.
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Rights go hand in hand with responsibilities. Rights without responsibility is nothing more than anarchy.
ok. (Score:2)
if you cant, dont bullshit from your butt. what you are doing is just justifying repression. doesnt matter what your excuse or reason is.
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The second amendment allows one to have a firearm. Murdering someone with that firearm is illegal. Are laws on murders with a firearm unconstitutional because they put a limit on the second amendment?
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Assange is neither, at this point in time.
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Someone claiming to be a former member of the Board of Directors of Wikileaks claims Assange is using funds for his own personal gains, via an e-mail sent through an anonymous remailer with no substantiating details. Looks like an attempt to discredit Wikileaks, and not even a very good one - I'd guess some random kook rather than any kind of government-sanctioned activity.