Ok sure, I know this is techcrunch, but I despise it when information comes with hidden agendas. It just smacks of censorship.
It is censorship which a private company like Twitter is perfectly entitled to perform. I have no problem with them doing this. Every company decides on its view of the truth to present to the world.
It does seem Twitter was willing to deprive a benefit (read exposure/revenue) granted to TC on the basis the documents were leaked. In the future if TC had interesting/harmful information on Twitter to reveal they would decide commercially whether to publish by taking into account any negative impact for them in exposure on twitter.
That's unhealthy isn't it? Twitter would be less likely to receive negative/unhelpful press than other similar companies on the basis they can punish those who do it.
I know I'm deliberately talking up what happened here but it is an interesting question, to me at least
Twitter would be justified in what they did, even if their "recommended" list was important enough to be worth an argument, and it's not.
As far as the scale goes, this is what it is - its cost TC 600,000 followers on Twitter - if there is a numeric value to that of even a dollar I still personally find the situation interesting because I find the principal of this kind of sanction to be a moral point of debate.
Moral is a strong word though I admit!! I just can't think of another way to express it.
If removal from the list is 'sanctions' then what would you call not being included in the list at all? Should Twitter be forced to add all news sites to that list (and never remove them)? If so, what constitutes a 'news site?' Should all blogs be included in that list too?
Just because being on the Suggested Users List garners you a steady stream of new followers doesn't necessarily mean that once you are on that list Twitter is obligated to keep you there because you are now 'entitled' to keep that steady stream of new followers from now until the end of time. I will admit that there is a fine line when dealing with these issues, but removal from the Suggested Users List isn't that harsh... it would be different if Twitter banned their account or 'accidentally' screwed up their account beyond repair (forcing them to create a new account with a new name, possibly permanently losing a number of followers in the confusion). Or excluded TechCrunch's twits from search results or something similar.
{edit} Bringing this possible conflict of interests to light is a good thing but jumping up and down like the sky is falling and Twitter is the 'Evil Empire(tm)' is over the top and completely unnecessary {/edit}
Of course it's just going to be a list of popular twitter users... How else could they compile a list? It's not like you've taken some likes/dislikes survey. When you first join, they have no data on you at all.
How would you propose that given a completely random person (from anywhere in the world, any culture) you compile of list of 'interesting' people/website that are relevant to that person's specific interests? Oh, and by the way you're not allowed to know anything about that person other than their email address.