Twitter revises hacked materials policy after banning NY Post story

Twitter changed its policy on hacked materials Thursday night after widespread criticism over its handling of the New York Post’s controversial story about Hunter Biden.

Going forward, posts with hacked materials will only be immediately locked if directly posted by the hackers or by individuals working with them. Labels with context will be added to tweets containing hacked materials.

Twitter said the link to the Post article, which includes unredacted emails purporting to be between Biden and a Ukrainian businessman, will still be blocked from being shared in tweets or direct messages under a separate policy prohibiting sharing personal information.

However, as of Friday morning the link could be posted. The Hill has reached out for clarification.

Twitter executive Vijaya Gadde said Thursday that the decision to make the policy change came after receiving feedback the previous day from users about concerns with how the previous policy could affect journalists and whistleblowers.

“Content moderation is incredibly difficult, especially in the critical context of an election,” she tweeted. “We are trying to act responsibly & quickly to prevent harms, but we’re still learning along the way.”

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said in a tweet Friday that the original link blocking was a mistake.

“Straight blocking of URLs was wrong, and we updated our policy and enforcement to fix,” he wrote. “Our goal is to attempt to add context, and now we have capabilities to do that.”

Dorsey had previously apologized for the confusion the day the initial ban was implemented.

Twitter first blocked the link to the New York Post story on Wednesday morning, shortly after the article was published.

Facebook on Wednesday said it would limit the reach of the story pending review by its third-party fact checkers.

Those decisions to slow the spread of the article with questionable sourcing drew the ire of conservatives, who claimed the platforms were working in concert with the Biden campaign to bury the story.

Updated at 2:06 p.m.