Twitter abruptly changes hacked-materials policy after blocking Biden story

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Peter Dazeley)

Twitter has changed its policy on sharing hacked materials after facing criticism of its decision to block users from tweeting links to a New York Post article that contained Hunter Biden emails allegedly retrieved from a computer left at a repair shop.

On Wednesday, Twitter said it blocked links to the Post story because it included private information and violated Twitter's hacked materials policy, which prohibits sharing links to or images of hacked content. But on late Thursday night, Twitter legal executive Vijaya Gadde wrote in a thread that the company has "decided to make changes to the [hacked materials] policy and how we enforce it" after receiving "significant feedback."

Twitter enacted the policy in 2018 "to discourage and mitigate harms associated with hacks and unauthorized exposure of private information," Gadde wrote. "We tried to find the right balance between people's privacy and the right of free expression, but we can do better." Twitter will thus change its hacked materials policy to "no longer remove hacked content unless it is directly shared by hackers or those acting in concert with them." Twitter will also "label Tweets to provide context instead of blocking links from being shared on Twitter."

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