The forthcoming MTV reality special about Occupy Wall Street is sure to raise curiosity — if not for the way it presents the movement, then at least for which corporations were willing to advertise on the show.

Twitter apparently has no problem accepting protest-friendly patronage, though. Progressives United, the group founded by Senator Russ Feingold to counter corporate influence in the U.S. political system, has planted its link at the top of searches for #OWS.

Yet for a service still challenged to figure out a sustainable business model, which would require dealing with a system that many protesters are rallying against, this kind of association may just reaffirm the perception that Twitter is too big to succeed.

Being associated with something more psychologically distant, like the Arab Spring, might be a whole lot less complicated as a sideshow to vanity media and sponsor accounts. Occupy, by contrast, risks hitting too close to home.

The expectation that predominantly young, restless and unemployed users will forever feed the fortunes of Web 2.0 services is something that more protesters can relate to than how the financial system works. And, for the past month, pundits have contemplated whether an Occupy Silicon Valley would be more constructive. The exploitation is easier to understand than the banking system, after all.

Dick Costolo, the chief executive of Twitter, recently reinforced that the service won't demand identity disclosure. During the same talk, at the Web 2.0 summit in San Francisco, he remarked on the notion of paying popular sources to tweet.

Likely, he wasn't thinking of the accounts that advocate dissenting views, even if the company has continued to revel in its image of helping to fight on behalf of freedom.

Competing in China isn't high on Twitter's agenda, as founder Jack Dorsey also conceded last week — if only because other microblogging services were able to sweep in to provide an enhanced alternative to the blocked 140-character streams.

So, maybe Twitter has sustained a pass with the #OWS crowd because its utility isn't being duplicated. And, unlike the capitalist system, its role can be handily overthrown if it starts meddling more than the users want.

Recurring suspicion has been raised about whether Occupy was being censored from the localized trending topic lists. But, in fact, it may end up contributing to a traffic boost.

Chances are, Twitter won't be bragging about this if it ever gets around to courting investors on Wall Street.