Twitter for years functioned as an unrestricted mouthpiece for hackers of all stripes, from freewheeling hacktivists like Anonymous to the Kremlin-created cutouts like Guccifer 2.0. But as the company tries to crack down on hackers' use of its platform to distribute their stolen information, it's finding that that's not a simple decision. And now, less than three weeks before Election Day, Twitter has put itself in an impossible position: flip-flopping on its policy while trying to navigate between those who condemn it for enabling data thieves and foreign spies, and those who condemn it for heavy-handed censorship.
On Thursday evening, Twitter's head of trust and safety, Vijaya Gadde, posted a thread of tweets explaining a new policy on hacked materials, in response to the firestorm of criticism it received—largely from the political right and President Donald Trump—for its decision to block the sharing of a New York Post story based on alleged private data and communications of presidential candidate Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden. Gadde wrote that the company was taking a step back on its "Hacked Materials Policy." The company will now no longer remove tweets that contain or link to hacked content "unless it is directly shared by hackers or those acting in concert with them," Gadde wrote. Instead, the company will "label Tweets to provide context."
Despite that new rule, links to the Post article remain blocked, because it also violated Twitter's policy on sharing private personal information, another spokesperson for Twitter posted last night: The paper had published Hunter Biden's email address and phone number in its story. But ..
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