Category Archive

Update | Click here for an update to this post. The more I dig, the more I think something weird is going on here.

A week ago I wrote a piece on why the hashtag #Wikileaks wasn’t appearing on Twitter’s trending topics lists, concluding that Wikileaks’ failure to trend was an artifact of an actually-quite-reasonable-really algorithm, and shouldn’t be taken as evidence of anything nefarious.

Okay. That was then. But in the intervening week, Wikileaks has seen a truly staggering amount of traffic on the site, and still hasn’t trended once.

How staggering? This staggering:

Back in the summer, the title of the movie Inception peaked at 0.4% of Twitter traffic, soon stabilizing at about half that. It trended for a month and a half. Wikileaks has broken 2.0% of total traffic twice in the last week, and hasn’t yet dipped below Inception’s all-time high.

Want more? Here’s more. Wikileaks had more traffic than “world aids,” the week’s longest-trending phrase, for all but three hours of the week. It out-trafficked Bieber and Obama by wide margins. It was more popular than Jesus by an order of magnitude. At its peak, it appeared more frequently on Twitter than the word “or.”

And here’s my favorite … on five separate occasions in the last week, including eight hours on Friday and two hours on Saturday, “wikileaks” was getting more traffic than “twitter.” On Twitter.

Okay. So does all this prove that Twitter is blocking Wikileaks from trending?

No.

Not exactly. Not quite.

For one thing, as I posted last week, Twitter’s trending topics don’t — and shouldn’t — just reflect raw traffic. As the company explained back in May, when they overhauled their algorithm, it’s designed to catch “topics that are immediately popular, rather than topics that have been popular for a while or on a daily basis.” Since Wikileaks has trended before, it’s now got a higher bar for trending again. (This explains why the alternate Wikileaks hashtag #cablegate trended for a total of 22 hours last week, despite having consistently lower traffic than Wikileaks itself. Because it was a new tag, it got the algorithm’s attention.)

For another thing, not all tweets are equal in Twitter’s eyes. As the site’s trending topics FAQ notes, they take a dim view of folks who try to game the TT list by flooding the service. “The most important thing,” they say, “is to make sure your Tweets are genuine thoughts or impressions and not attempts to insert yourself into a trend.”

This is likely a partial explanation for the incredible trending run that Inception had this summer. Inception wasn’t just a popular movie, it was a controversial and confusing one — one that got people discussing, not just tweeting. I haven’t gone back and checked, but I have a very strong suspicion that an unusually high proportion of Inception’s tweets during its reign were brand-new content — much higher than that of recent Wikileaks tweets.

It’s also possible, given Twitter’s warnings on its FAQ page against “repeatedly tweeting the same topic/hashtag without adding value to the conversation in an attempt to get the topic trending/trending higher,” that efforts to get Wikileaks to trend — or even discussions of why Wikileaks wasn’t trending — could have pushed the topic down on the TT lists. (Which means, for instance, that the folks who are tweeting about Wikileaks’ failure to trend under the #thingsimiss hashtag are likely hurting Wikileaks’ chances of trending.)

Finally, I have to at least acknowledge Twitter’s denial that they muck with the trending topics list for political purposes. A few days ago, a similar controversy arose in relation to the failure of #demo2010, the hashtag of Britain’s student protesters, to trend in that country. Asked for comment, a Twitter spokesperson told The Guardian that there was “absolutely no truth” to the charges. “We have not,” he said, “and will not, do anything to stand in the way of people using Twitter for the open exchange of information.”

So does that settle it? A week ago I thought so. But I have to admit that the sheer scale of the Wikileaks traffic since then gives me pause.

I still think the vast majority of TT conspiracy theories are bunk. Twitter wasn’t censoring #demo2010, I’m certain. There’s no evidence that it censored #cablegate. It’s not censoring #imwikileaks, as some have charged — that hashtag just hasn’t taken off in any serious way.

I’m also unconvinced that Wikileaks trending on Twitter would be all that big of a deal. Huge numbers of people are participating in Wikileaks discussions on the service — if the goal was to stifle conversation, it failed. Trending on Twitter is an easy measure of a subject’s influence, and in a weird way a sort of badge of honor, but it’s not obvious to me that it has a huge effect on a story like this.

To be honest, this is another reason that I tend to doubt that Wikileaks was censored — to do so would pose a huge risk to Twitter’s credibility with its audience, and for very little reward.

But if Wikileaks’ failure to trend is an artifact of Twitter’s algorithm — and that’s still my default guess — it’s a really screwed up algorithm. Because Wikileaks has been the biggest story by far on Twitter this week, by any measure. It’s a huge story. It’s an important story. It’s a breaking story. It’s an evolving story.

It’s the very definition of a trending topic.

So why isn’t it trending?

Update | As I noted at the top of this post, I’ve done a visual comparison and anaylsis of traffic for “Wikileaks” and “Sundays.” You can find that post here, and I expect you’ll find it as startling as I do.

This site’s top ten most-read posts of the last week. Numbers one and ten are my favorites, and number two is going to be getting a major followup later today.

1. Remembering Rosa Parks … And Claudette Colvin

Things we know, and things we don’t know, about the civil rights movement.

2. Why Isn’t #Wikileaks Trending on Twitter, and Should We Care?

I take on the charges that Twitter is messing with its trending topics list.

3. Julian Assange: Condoms, Rape, and “Sex By Surprise”

Unpacking the various claims about what Assange has been accused of.

4. Universities Warn Students: Reading/Discussing Wikileaks Could Cost You a Future Government Job

Columbia and Boston University tell students not to tweet about the leaked cables.

5. DREAM Act Whip Count Update

How the DREAM looks in the Senate. (See also The Latest on the DREAM Act)

6. On the “Why Can’t Whites Have a White Student Union?” Question

An old post brought back to life by the post below.

7. Fake White Student Union Flyers at West Chester University

Anti-racist students choose a bad approach.

8. A Twisted “History of Political Correctness”

What right-wingers see when they look at the left. Seriously creepy.

9. The Latest on the British Student Movement

Things are getting interesting over there.

10. The Trouble With Tribbing

My favorite post title ever.

The Office of Career Services at Columbia University’s School of International and Political Affairs emailed students this week to say that a SIPA alum working at the State Department wanted them to know that posting or discussing Wikileaks documents on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter could jeopardize their chances of getting work with the federal government in the future.

Going further, an assistant dean at Boston University’s law school contacted students there to let them know that even reading Wikileaks cables could “be seen as a violation of Executive Order 13526,” and thus imperil federal employment. After warning them — in all caps — not to post links or comments on the documents online, she helpfully reminded them that “polygraphs are conducted for the highest levels of security clearance.”

Update | You’re gonna love this. Gary Sick, a senior faculty member at Columbia’s SIPA, has blogged about Wikileaks twice in the last week. Both blogposts discussed the contents of the leaked cables, and one even linked to the cablegate archive — the same archive that the university has warned students not to discuss. But wait, it gets better: SIPA’s own website currently includes a prominent link to Sick’s blog.

Second Update | Here’s a post from a student-run blog at SIPA eviscerating the school for warning students not to discuss Wikileaks. Key quote: “Seriously, SIPA? … You claim to provide committed students with the necessary skills and perspectives to become responsible leaders. Apparently that means curtailing their academic freedom and teaching them how to bury their heads in the sand.”

Third Update | A State Department spokesman tells the Huffington Post that the department has “given no advice to anyone beyond the State Department to my knowledge.” On the other hand, the Columbia SIPA email credited “a SIPA alumnus who is working at the State Department” for the advice.

December 7 Update | Columbia’s School of International and Political Studies has repudiated the advice in the email. Says Dean John Coatsworth: “SIPA’s position is that students have a right to discuss and debate any information in the public arena that they deem relevant to their studies or to their roles as global citizens, and to do so without fear of adverse consequences.” Even better, SIPA professor Gary Sick — whose blogposts on Wikileaks I noted above — says that any international relations SIPA student who hasn’t “gone looking for the [Wikileaks] documents that relate to their area of study” doesn’t “deserve to be a graduate student in international relations.”

December 8 Update | Please read this before commenting.

Here’s how a widely-circulated story printed in Slate magazine yesterday described the incidents that led to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange’s Interpol arrest warrant:

“During a business trip to Stockholm last August, Assange had unprotected sex with two women … who upon realizing that they had both slept with him—and that he had blown them both off—jointly approached police about his refusal to take an STD test. At the time, Assange’s Swedish lawyer confirmed that ‘the principal concern the women had about Assange’s behavior … related to his lack of interest in using condoms and his refusal to undergo testing, at the women’s request, for sexually transmitted disease.’ (Assange actually did use a condom with one of the women, but it broke.) … The ‘consent of both women to sex with Assange has been confirmed by prosecutors,’ as a former attorney wrote in an impassioned op-ed.” [bold and italics in original]

But here’s how the New York Times reported the incidents back on November 19:

“According to accounts the women gave to the police and friends, they each had consensual sexual encounters with Mr. Assange that became nonconsensual. One woman said that Mr. Assange had ignored her appeals to stop after a condom broke. The other woman said that she and Mr. Assange had begun a sexual encounter using a condom, but that Mr. Assange did not comply with her appeals to stop when it was no longer in use.”

Note: See second update below for new details on the charges released by Swedish authorities on December 7.

Slate characterizes this as a case in which Swedish prosecutors have confirmed that the sex in each instance was consensual, but are pursuing charges anyway. Their only sources for this claim, though, are two of Assange’s lawyers. And if that wasn’t bad enough, Slate vouches for the lawyers’ analysis in their own account of the incidents, even though it’s clear that whether the sex was consensual is under dispute. (Even the Daily Mail — Slate’s only non-Assange source for their piece — whose own reporting is deeply creepy in many ways, is more honest about the charges than Slate is.)

And that’s another thing — the phrasing of the second quote from the Assange lawyer. According to the Times accounts, both women initially consented to sex, but withdrew consent when a condom broke or was removed. If that’s the case, then the lawyer’s gloss — that the “consent … to sex … has been confirmed” — is technically accurate but fundamentally dishonest. If someone consents to sex with you, then asks you to stop, and you don’t stop, that’s rape.

One final confusing element of this story is Assange lawyer Mark Stephens’ recent claim that “Assange is wanted not for allegations of rape, as previously reported, but for something called ‘sex by surprise.'” I’ve been able to find no reference to such a charge in Swedish law, and no confirmation in any media coverage of the Assange story of any such alteration to the charges.

I have no opinion on whether Assange is guilty of the charges against him. I by no means reject the possibility that he’s being set up — I just don’t know. But I’m getting a strong sense that his lawyers are misrepresenting what’s being alleged, and I’m troubled by the online media’s willingness to go along with those misrepresentations. For more on the media and blogosphere’s questionable treatment of this case see this comprehensive post from reader/commenter Neogaia.

December 7 Update | Assange has been arrested in London in connection with the sex charges against him. The charges are rape, sexual coercion, and molestation — not the mythical “sex by surprise.” (See this excellent post for more on “sex by surprise” — the phrase doesn’t refer to any Sweden-specific crime — it’s actually just a dismissive Swedish slang term for rape.)

Comparing the charges announced by police with those listed in the official English-language translation of the Swedish penal code, we see that Assange’s lawyer’s claim that the charges against him carry a maximum penalty of a 5000 Kroner fine (variously described in US media as $700 or $715) is also false. Rape carries a maximum penalty of six years, sexual coercion and sexual molestation two years each.

Update | The Swedish authorities have released details of the allegations against Assange. They claim that he used his body weight to hold one woman down during a non-consensual sexual act, that he had sex with her without using a condom in violation of her “express wish,” and that four days later he “deliberately molested” her “in a way designed to violate her sexual integrity.” The other complainant alleges that he took sexual advantage of her while she was asleep, and that he did not use a condom.

Update | I should note for clarity’s sake that Assange hasn’t actually been charged with anything. He’s been arrested, and the Swedish authorities have specified the charges they’re considering filing against him, but those charges have not been filed at this time. Sweden is seeking to extradite him for questioning, nothing more.

Update | Again, please read this before commenting.

So yesterday on Twitter someone sent me a link to a video, and asked me whether I’d seen it. The video turned out to be The History of Political Correctness.

“The History of Political Correctness” is an oddity, even on its surface. It’s a cheaply produced 23-minute documentary hosted by a guy named William Lind. The video is festooned with stock footage of marching Nazis and long-haired hippies, and is dedicated to the theory that every left-liberal cultural development of the last half century — from political correctness and the student movements of the sixties to afrocentrism, gay pride, environmentalism, and sexual promiscuity — can be laid at the feet of the social theorists of the Frankfurt School.

This charmingly paranoid thesis is presented in over-the-top terms, as when Lind offers an introduction to the work German philosopher Max Horkeimer:

“Horkheimer wrote, ‘logic is not independent of content.’ That means an argument is logical if it helps destroy Western culture, illogical if it supports it. Such twisted thought lies at the heart of the Political Correctness now inculcated into American university students.”

The video is mostly just loony, but there’s a sinister undercurrent to a lot of the ranting, most notably when Lind turns his attention to sexual liberation and gay rights, which he sees as fundamentally corrosive to society. His views on race and religion are primarily implied rather than stated, but they have been made explicit in other contexts, and an overview of them makes Lind’s perspective clear:

• In 2002 Lind delivered a version of his Frankfurt School speech at a conference of the anti-semitic and holocaust-denying Barnes Review. In that setting, it should be noted, he emphasized the Frankfurt group’s Jewishness considerably more than in the video.

• In a 1999 essay Lind suggested that the United States would have been better off if the South had won the Civil War. In the same essay, he argued that Reconstruction — the period after the Civil War when blacks gained the opportunity to exercise political and economic power for the first time — had done more damage to race relations in America than slavery itself.

• In a 2006 column Lind predicted that Iraq war veterans from the “inner cities” would adopt the tactics of the Iraqi resistance when they returned home to their “ethnic” “gangs,” waging terrorist war against the United States from within.

• In an interview just this October, he argued that “where public transit is heavily used by minorities, everybody else is going to avoid it. They’re doing so not because they’re dirty, nasty racists, they’re doing so out of self-preservation.”

“The History of Political Correctness,” which apparently dates from sometime in the early 1990s, it is having a bit of a surge in popularity right now. (I had never heard of it before I was directed to it yesterday, but a Google blog search turns up a long list of recent hits.) The video has a patina of scholarliness, thanks to the intermittent presence of legitimate historian Martin Jay. But it’s bunk through and through, and it’s bunk delivered in the service of a deeply distorted understanding of American history.