In a characteristically desperate move, the Wikileaks Task Force tweeted out that the organisation nobly devoted to making private documents public is looking to create “an online database with all ‘verified’ twitter accounts & their family/job/financial/housing relationships”. This feels desperate.
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We are thinking of making an online database with all “verified” twitter accounts & their family/job/financial/housing relationships.
— WikiLeaks Task Force (@WLTaskForce) January 6, 2017
Twitter verifies users based on whether their accounts are “of public interest”, meaning that many journalists, along with celebrities, brands and politicians, are verified. Around 237,000 accounts are currently verified on the social platform.
Wikileaks explained to journalist Kevin Collier on Twitter that the organisation wants to do this in order to “to develop a metric to understand influence networks based on proximity graphs”. Whatever that means.
.@kevincollier No it is to develop a metric to understand influence networks based on proximity graphs.
— WikiLeaks Task Force (@WLTaskForce) January 6, 2017
Wikileaks is also threatening to sue anyone who calls their pale king a rapist in response to their latest stunt. (Assange has been hiding away in the Ecuadorian embassy in London ever since Swedish authorities have tried to pursue rape charges against him.)
Whatever Wikileaks’ “reasoning” for wanting to publish the private information of 237,000 Twitter users, this threat is aggressive and further proof that the Sarah Palin-endorsed group has gone way off the deep end.