
Twitter bans and purges links to journalist org for publishing BlueLeaks - notthemessiah
https://gizmodo.com/twitter-bans-journalist-organization-for-linking-to-lea-1844142166
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easterncalculus
I'm definitely interested in how they justify this in comparison to Wikileaks.
BlueLeaks certainly had sensitive information about victims and others that
are innocent, but the line hasn't been officially drawn there by a statement
or ToS policy. I don't see a Twitter statement in the future.

~~~
kanox
From the article:

> The group’s account, @DDoSecrets, was permanently suspended, a Twitter
> spokesperson told Gizmodo, citing the company’s policy against the
> distribution of hacked materials. The policy specifically prohibits accounts
> from sharing “content obtained through hacking that contains private
> information, may put people in harm or danger, or contains trade secrets.”

~~~
easterncalculus
I did actually see that, on second thought I worded my OP in a way that
sounded like they didn't comment at all, when I was referring to if they would
compare it to how they handled Wikileaks in their response.

So I guess trade secrets are not in these leaks, but private information is
certainly what Wikileaks is about. I think that the information of innocent
people is more than enough reason not to host it, though. Just figured they'd
want to clear the air of any accusations of favoritism.

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mindslight
Yet another tiny cut demonstrating how centralized platforms are intrinsically
unsustainable for freedom. How many people will this further discourage from
referring to the primary source for themselves? Instead of a democratic in-
touch society where everyone is one step away from the files, we get pre-
digested articles that vaguely refer to the primary source as if it's some
kind of hot potato instead of simply including a link.

Censorship always seems appealing for protecting sympathetic individuals,
especially at its start when the cases are inherently worthy. But after the
ruling power structure learns which levers to pull, censorship is inevitably
used to protect and perpetuate the status quo at scale. This tragic arc was
foreseeable over a decade ago when this trend of webcrapps was gaining
popularity. Giving one entity power over the communications of hundreds of
millions of users is an inevitable target for authoritarian control, and too
concentrated to resist. But nobody wanted to listen, and now we're living the
results.

~~~
kanox
The argument seems to be that those files contains lots of personal data of
innocent people so it falls outside any sort of free-speech debate.

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msla
The fact Twitter is a private platform places this outside the "Free Speech"
debate as it's usually understood. That's the whole point: Twitter, as a
private platform, can self-censor expression by destroying _your_ expression
without owing you or anyone else even a figleaf justification. Any centralized
platform can do that, and will, with sufficient provocation, or no provocation
at all.

~~~
z9e
Unfortunately however, Twitter and Facebook are the modern day public square.
So we can say they're private and they can suppress speech because of that,
but it doesn't remove the observation of how much impact that has on the
public.

