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Ask HN: Will Twitter Drop WikiLeaks?

8 points by justsee ↗ HN
In the last few days @wikileaks has finally started following one user: TweetBackup.

Considering Amazon, PayPal, EveryDNS, and Tableau Software have terminated services with WikiLeaks, is a similar move by Twitter imminent?

To elevate this question above mere banal 'yes / no' speculation: Twitter has been the poster child for internet freedom of speech and activist movements, for instance during the Iranian elections. As this has become an element of their brand, and at this stage they have less of an economic achilles heel than Amazon et al, is it unlikely they would make a move before any legal decision?

If Twitter did trigger a Terms of Service cancellation of the WikiLeaks account, would this action represent a far larger shift in the internet landscape and mood than any previous action?

3 comments

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veb
Twitter has absolutely nothing to gain from canceling their account. The other big corporations like Amazon, I doubt they cared much but did it as some sort of marketing ploy:

"The govt is saying they're terrorists, and we're good widdle babies and we're gonna do everything right!".

gojomo
Twitter is once again aided by the hard cap on tweet length. @Wikileaks' tweets are headline-like summaries, and quickly repeated widely, so it's hard to characterize the tweets as being 'classified' information themselves.

That means one possible objection that USG and others could have against the @Wikileaks account is muted, and even those who resent service providers who are a conduit for Wikileaks' bulk information won't become equally angry at Twitter.