Why Virtually All the Wikileaks Copycats, Forks, and Rivals Basically Perished
Cryptome is like the "grandpa" of them all (it has a "Cryptome GoFunding Campaign", launched two days ago)
Back in the "courage is contagious" era circa 2010 (a little before that too, but not even remotely to the same extent) Wikileaks-inspired sites or offshoots were seemingly everywhere and some received media attention for years to come (in the Balkans for instance). By 2014 you could barely find even a mention of any. Most had gone offline. There must have been dozens of them, focusing on different regions, languages, disciplines, and "ethos". Some were actual wikis (like Wikileaks used to be; we also had a wiki until last year and we decided to convert it to static pages) and some were just conventional news sites looking for whistleblowers who can share leaked, incriminating material.
Wikileaks, as we all know, went on and on till the arrest of Assange, but it began waning around or after 2017 when it published CIA leaks and became a target for actual assassination, owing to the Trump administration being a bunch of goons. In a sense, Wikipedia's "years active" (in a proper way, not barely surviving) would be about a decade, starting with low-profile leaks when it was born in 2006 and already struggling a great deal by 2018/2019 when its editor could barely maintain asylum (the CIA pressured Ecuador to kick him out, helped by abusive media such as The Guardian).
Wikileaks the Web site has not been updated in a very long time (sad, but true!), though it's still online and complete with some exceptions. We keep hearing from people close to Julian Assange that Mr. Assange has intentions of coming back, but the comeback's capacity may be representative rather than editorial.
Sites that publish leaks rely on trust and a track record of source protection. The CIA leaks resulted in arrest and conviction (we have no reason to think they caught the wrong person, but we doubt the nature of the evidence presented against him). Prior to that, after Aaron Swartz had committed suicide, Wikileaks said that there was a link between him and Wikileaks (stating that even posthumously is an own goal that sends the wrong message). They didn't say he was a source, they were deliberately vague about that, but even saying little about a relationship wasn't necessary.
When we talk about a track record of source protection we talk about the perceived or expected safety when leaking or blowing the whistle. For instance, The Intercept burned so many sources that the co-founders both quit (even the one who compromised a source, the heroic Daniel Hale). It should be noted that the Courage Foundation Web site was down for a long time, but not its cause (Dame Vivienne Westwood and John Pilger didn't live long enough to see Assange liberated and, anecdotally, Pilger's site is still practically dead after his own death).
The main legacy of The Intercept was burning Edward Snowden leaks and dismantling the team Snowden entrusted to report based on these. In the case of the above "offshoots" ( Daniel Domscheit-Berg's for instance), they hardly got off the ground, even with mainstream media support, probably because they were seen as hostile towards Wikileaks - the "original" (Cryptome probably was, dating back 28 years ago and edited by John Young) - and the "small time" "little show", not the coveted publisher that typically guaranteed big impact - not related to income - and resilience in the face of censorship efforts.
Just to be clear, we've always been different from Wikileaks; we're not a leak(ing) site, but we do occasionally publish leaked information to support what we assert in our publications. We redact names when/where necessary and we've maintained perfect source protection record since starting in 2006 (Wikileaks is about a month older than us). We're so stubborn about our principles, such as free speech and source protection, that we'd go to court to protect them. We're uncompromising on those matters. There's no room for compromise.
Cryptome is still around, but it seldom gets mentioned in the media or receives credit (remaining relatively low-profile keeps the founders safer). As far as we know Cryptome remains quite safe to leak to. It covers a broad range of "high-risk" (to talk about) topics. The World Wide Web isn't void of reporting; the issue is, far too much of it is junk or social control media (hearsay). █