Conservative Twitter users erupted on Friday after the social media platform torpedoed #DNCLeaks from its trending-news feed after Wikileaks released 20,000 emails by Democratic National Committee staff members.
Embarrassing emails sent and received by DNC members had enough momentum to propel the story to Twitter’s top “trending” news feed on Friday afternoon. The #DNCLeaks entry vanished in the evening, but returned 20 minutes later after users cried foul.
The story had 250,000 tweets at the time it was pulled. The Washington Examiner then aggregated a stream of angry feedback.
“Don’t normally tweet political things, but why would @twitter pull the #DNCleaks from trending at #1. Sounds like censorship to me,” one user wrote.
“Twitter is still trying to censor this trend! Now #DNCleak is trending instead of original #DNCLeaks! Keep talking guys, expose corruption,” added another.
“.@Twitters @google actions tonight by trying to stop @wikileaks #DNCLeaks #DNCLeak is a prime reason We need MONEY out of POLITICS,” said a third person.
One of the revelations of WikiLeaks’ latest batch of emails shows the DNC actively worked against Sen. Bernard Sanders during the party’s presidential primary.
“It might [make] no difference, but for KY and WVA can we get someone to ask his belief. Does he believe in a God. He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage,” DNC Chief Financial Officer Brad Marshall said in one email sent to DNC officials. “I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist.”
The #DNCLeaks row for Twitter came just two days after Breitbart technology editor Milo Yiannopoulos accused the company of “a systemic campaign against conservative and libertarian points of view.” The pundit received a lifetime ban from the company on Tuesday after some of his followers sent racist messages to “Ghostbusters” star Leslie Jones.
“If at first you don’t succeed (because your work is terrible) play the victim. Everyone gets hate mail,” Mr. Yiannopoulos tweeted Monday before his account was frozen.
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
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