Photo : Frank Augstein ( AP )

If you had an nagging suspicion that we were, in fact, living in an irredeemable digital hellscape, I’m afraid you’re absolutely right. Take, for example, the fact that on Friday afternoon, attorneys for the Democratic National Committee–that is, the official governing body of the Democratic Party—served document dump site Wikileaks official legal documents...by way of Twitter.




Yes, the same website populated by Nazis, shitposters, and Russian bots is now taking the role of process server in a significant lawsuit between a major political party and a semi-clandestine techno-whistleblower site. William Gibson, eat your heart out.


The suit alleges that Wikileaks, the Russian government, and the Trump campaign worked in consort to target the DNC. It comes after the site published hacked Democratic documents obtained during the 2016 presidential election.

The DNC obtained a court’s permission to serve Wikileaks with the suit over Twitter last month, according to CBS. In their motion, attorneys argued that Wikileaks had ignored an emailed notice of their action, but that since “WikiLeaks seems to tweet daily,” Twitter would be an appropriate venue to let them know they’d been served.

As it happens, this is not the first time Twitter has been used to serve notice of a lawsuit. In 2016, a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that the U.S. based non-profit St. Francis Assisi could legally serve a lawsuit to accused ISIS financier Hajjaj al-Ajmi by Tweet, since “efforts to locate him have been unsuccessful.”

Which is all a good reminder to log off—especially if there’s pending litigation you’re trying to ignore.