People realised that indiscriminately dumping material without any attempt at removing names was dangerous. Assange has released names of gay people who live in countries where they could be killed for that; he's released names of Jewish people in Bagdhad; he's identified rape victims.
I don't think the public has "turned" on him. (That is, I don't think he's more unpopular now than he was a year ago.) It's more like we forgot about him. That took away the teflon coating that let him escape international arrest warrants in a South American embassy, a privilege most of us wouldn't get.
This story is best explained by reversion to the mean moreso than extraordinary current events.
A poll last month [1] found 73% of Americans have opinions on Wikileaks. The most common response for Julian Assange, on the other hand, was "don't know" (42%, versus 27% responding similarly for Wikileaks).
I'd guess the 38% who find Assange unfavorable is largely unchanged from, say, 2015. I'd also guess his favorability was higher in 2012. (That's what made Correa's political arithmetic around granting Assange asylum stick.)
Under this hypothesis, people didn't start hating Assange more in 2016. His base of supporters simply eroded until most didn't care about him either way. That turned him into a normal person. Normal people don't get to hang out in embassies all day.
[1] https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/20...
WikiLeak's big coup was cablegate, the main revelations of which boil down to "diplomats are very frank about people when they're not speaking in public." At the same time, Assange seemed to want it to be compared to the Pentagon Papers leak, which revealed that the US military was covering up the course of the Vietnam War. Instead cablegate was a whole lot of quantity over quality, and don't really merit the comparison.
Since then, WikiLeaks has missed out on the big revelations: Snowden's releases, the Panama Papers and Paradise Papers, as well as more regionally important leaks such as Lava Jato. There's no trust among leakers that WikiLeaks is a neutral source for divulging information, and the fact that Assange has seemed to have a specifically anti-US tilt which results in him getting cozy with anti-US anti-press-freedom regimes.
So let me get banned for speaking my piece in a disrespectful manner. I welcome it. Frankly, if I could find a "delete my account" button, I'd hit it in a heartbeat. Sheep, the whole goddamn lot of you.
For me, it has been necessary to realize that the agitation going on inside me when I lash out at others over such issues is itself a form of violence and war. Not the same in degree, of course; but the same in kind, and that matters more.
Assange did this to himself, with posting antisemitic tweets and courting the alt-right. And you have Assange's legal defense campaign posting tweets blaming childfree women for white people in Europe being replaced by brown people, which is both disgustingly misogynist and disgustingly racist.
The counter-culture is highly feminist and anti-racist, and is generally led by women of color, so there goes any sympathy they might have for Assange.
The US center to right hated him from the beginning, with leading figures inside and outside of government, aligned with both major parties, calling for his head. There was some sympathy for him (or at least WikiLeaks ostensible mission) on the left.
Being somewhere between a tool and a collaborator in the Russian influence and spinning partisan lies about the source of the information on top of that to conceal that it was a Russian influence op (which itself tends to create the impression that he was more collaborator than tool) soured that, without durably mitigating the hatred the center to right already had for him.
The rape accusations don't help, especially given where what little sympathy he had had was located.
Mostly he gives me the impression that he's in it for his personal glory, and he believes himself above accountability. I still support the original goal of Wikileaks, but I hate how they squandered their credibility due to Assange's antics.
Clinton has nothing to do with it for me.
They couldn’t make him dead, so they opted to make him irrelevant instead.
24/7 anti-assange propaganda by foxnews, cnn, msnbc, nytimes, wapo, etc and you get the current anti-assange sentiment.
Trump hates him, Hillary hates him, the establishment hates him because he exposed corruption. Corrupt people don't like their corruption exposed. Also, the elites want to start wars in venezuela, syria, etc so punishing assange and setting an example and possibly discrediting/getting rid of wikileaks is in their interest. Wouldn't want truth to get in the way of more wars.
I mean, there are still people who are fans, but it’s no mystery why he’s unpopular with many groupings.
As I say, I’m not getting into the rights or the wrongs of it, but Assange’s unpopularity is no mystery. Whether or not you think he’s a saint, it’s undeniable he’s annoyed not just a lot of powerful people, but an awful lot of plain people.
Sure Russia, China etc. medle in elections including the US one but Trump was elected by the American public and no one else.
It's funny that so many powerful people are quaking in their boots over this guy. Guilty much? Assange is still alive. That tells me that what he has much be unbelievable political dynamite.
The media controls the public, so the question of why the public has turned is the same question as asking why the media has turned.
Never underestimate what nation states can do. They'll bring down your entire economy unless...or they can pay, bribe or blackmail someone into filing rape charges against you. Or plant a bag of cocaine, and then behave like good citizens by calling the equivalent of 911 on you.
Or is it the rape accusations initiated in Sweden?