I've seen a lot of people pointing at 'trending tools' lately but no one questioning whether the tools themselves are valid. What's Trendistic? Where does it get its data? It seems unlikely that it's got a firehose subscription...
The guy is on the record about a whole bunch of details that make it plausible that this is the case short of inspecting the input data to the algorithm as well as the algorithm itself (or by using different datasets and the algorithm as a black box) I don't think you're going to get much proof that this is anything other than what they say it is.
I would assume that if someone did order a wikileaks specific change that it would be leaked in no time.
If I worked at twitter I'd file a ticket because it appears to be a bug. Maybe they use 16 bits to store their counters ;)
That's interesting and relevant, but should in no way mean this post needs to be flagged. I wasn't aware of any of this (post nor rebuttal) for instance.
Being wrong isn't flag-worthy. Being a nearly content-free addition to a topic already discussed on HN, and inviting yet another pointless argument about Wikileaks: that's flag-worthy.
http://studentactivism.net/2010/12/05/wikileaks-twitter-3/#c...
Scan for 'Josh Elman' (twitter) and 'Angus Johnston' the guy that originally raised the issue.