WikiLeaks is website non grata among the Internet entities that previously provided support since it began publishing U.S. diplomatic cables last month. Facebook however, shows no sign of issuing an eviction notice.
"The Wikileaks Facebook Page does not violate our content standards nor have we encountered any material posted on the page that violates our policies," Andrew Noyes, Facebook's public policy manager said in a statement to ReadWriteWeb.
Founded in 2006, the official WikiLeaks Facebook page has approximately 970,000 followers, and continues to post regular updates.
Other WikiLeaks hosts haven't been so congenial:
- After briefly hosting WikiLeaks following denial-of-service attacks on the classified documents site, Amazon's Web services dropped WikiLeaks, saying it violated terms of service and endangered lives.
- WikiLeaks nameserve provider EveryDNS dumped WikiLeaks, claiming the constant denial-of-service attacks hurt its ability to serve its 500,000 other customers.
- PayPal announced it would no longer handle donations to WikiLeaks soon after, citing violation of its acceptable use policy as regards illegal activity.
- Twitter claimed it wasn't blocking the suspiciously absent "WikiLeaks" from its top trends list, but wouldn't commit to whether it would continue to host WikiLeaks' still-active account.
Hundreds of mirrored sites continue to host WikiLeaks content, and ReadWriteWeb's Marshall Kirkpatrick points out that no matter what Facebook and other Web entities are doing right now, this story is far from over.
"Every company online is likely considering how to relate to Wikileaks," Kirkpatick writes. "Google, for example, appears to have indexed almost 1,500 pages of the site, while Bing appears to have indexed only 10 pages of Wikileaks.ch."
How private Internet companies chose to — or are pressured into — handling the latest WikiLeaks fallout may reveal the future of our ability to access information online.
"The First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees freedom of expression against government encroachment — but that doesn't help if the censorship doesn't come from the government," writes the Electronics Frontier Foundation in a piece that continues:
"In the end, it's not just WikiLeaks that suffers from corporate policies that suppress free speech, here on matters of intense public importance. It's also readers, who lose out on their First Amendment right to read the information WikiLeaks publishes. And it's also the other Internet speakers who can't confidently sign up for Amazon's hosting services without knowing that the company has a history of bowing to pressure to remove unpopular content."
Interestingly, WikiLeaks made a stink on Twitter about Facebook allegedly dumping its 30,000-member fan page back in April, citing Facebook's boilerplate "promotes illegal acts" response.
Turns out, it wasn't the official WikiLeaks page Facebook removed, but a fan page started by someone not directly affliated with WikiLeaks. While the whistleblower site approved of the fan page, even tweeted its support, the fan page still violated specific Facebook terms of service: "You may only administer a Facebook page if you are an authorized representative of the subject of the page."
This time, Facebook's terms of service work out in WikiLeaks' favor.
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