Twitter?s ?Hacked Materials? Rule Tries to Thread an Impossible Needle

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. "If they didn’t take that down, and it turns out to be a foreign op, and it changes the course of the election, they’re going to be right back testifying in front of Congress, hammered with regulation and fines." After all, Twitter faced widespread criticism for allowing itself to be exploited ahead of the 2016 election by Kremlin hackers who distributed information stolen from the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign, as well as by disinformation trolls working for the Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency.In response to those incidents, Twitter implemented its rule against the “distribution of hacked materials” in 2018, which banned posting hacked content directly or linking to other sites that hosted it. "Journalists who are self-aware and honest have to recognize that hackers are often doing work that we need," says Horne.Twitter's rulemaking is muddied further by the fact that the case that led to its most recent changes is itself still far from clear: The New York Post has claimed that its collection of Hunter Biden's communications and photos came from a laptop he abandoned at a repair shop, not from a hacking operation.