WikiLeaks threatens to start its own Twitter-like service over Yiannopoulos ban

After a verbal spat between WikiLeaks and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey over Twitter's decision to ban noted Breitbart editor and troll Milo Yiannopoulos, the former threatened to start its own Twitter-like service.

"We will start a rival service if this keeps up because @WikiLeaks & our supporters are threatened by a space of feudal justice," The Verge quoted a Wikileaks statement, as saying.

WikiLeaks also called Twitter's action an example of "cyber feudalism" and compared banning people on Twitter to Turkey's recent mass arrests and Stalin's Great Purge in 1937.

WikiLeaks said that Twitter had "banned conservative gay libertarian (Yiannopoulos) for speaking the 'wrong' way" to Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones.

According to an earlier Twitter statement, Yiannopoulos was banned for "inciting or engaging in the targeted abuse or harassment of others" after Jones began posting examples of racist and misogynist abuse she had received on the platform.

Dorsey also replied to WikiLeaks, echoing this language. "We don't ban people for expressing their thoughts," he wrote. "Targeted abuse & inciting abuse against people however, that's not allowed."

Yiannopoulos reacted to the ban, saying that the site has "confirmed itself as a safe space for Muslim terrorists and 'Black Lives Matter' extremists, but a no-go zone for conservatives.