Twitter denies WikiLeaks censorship claims

Twitter has been forced to deny that it is deliberately keeping WikiLeaks and any associated words off the microblogging site's trending topics, as the furore surrounding the whistle-blowing site continues.

In a fairly unambiguous and lengthy statement published on various sites, Twitter said it "is not censoring #wikileaks, #cablegate or other related terms from the Trends list of trending topics".

In the statement, the microblogging site goes to great lengths to explain why sometimes popular topics don't make it onto the list.

"Sometimes topics that are popular don't break into the Trends list because the current velocity of conversation (volume of Tweets at a given moment) isn't greater than in previous hours and days," it said.

"Sometimes topics that are genuinely popular simply aren't widespread enough to make the list of top Trends. And, on occasion, topics just aren't as popular as people believe."

Now this is all fine and believable, if a little patronising. However, casting our eye briefly over today's list of Trends in London, it's hard to believe that Twitter users are more interested, or indeed talking more, about Newcastle United and its next manager Alan Pardew than the continuing revelations dripping from WikiLeaks and its infamous founder Julian Assange.

Other random topics at the time of writing include Brixton, for no good reason, which kind of undermines Twitter's entire argument.

One thing can be pretty sure. If this continues, Twitter may well find itself on the receiving end of Operation Payback's army of followers, who have already managed to take down PayPal and MasterCard web sites with distributed denial of service attacks.

08 Dec 2010