Twitter has changed its “Hacked Materials Policy” in the wake of the social media giant’s controversial decision to block an exclusive report by The Post on Hunter Biden’s emails, the company said Thursday.
Twitter will no longer remove allegedly “hacked” content unless it is shared by hackers themselves or by accomplices and will label questionable tweets rather than blocking them from being shared, Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s legal, policy and trust & safety leader, posted online.
“Over the last 24 hours, we’ve received significant feedback (from critical to supportive) about how we enforced our Hacked Materials Policy yesterday,” Gadde tweeted. “After reflecting on this feedback, we have decided to make changes to the policy and how we enforce it.”
“All other Twitter Rules will still apply to the posting of or linking to hacked materials, such as our rules against posting private information, synthetic and manipulated media, and non-consensual activity,” she said in another post.
The company’s mea culpa comes after it cited the 2018 guidelines when Twitter and Facebook took the unprecedented step of blocking The Post report on Wednesday, sparking widespread outrage.
“So terrible that Facebook and Twitter took down the story of ‘Smoking Gun’ Emails related to Sleepy Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, in the @NYPost,” President Trump tweeted from Air Force One on Wednesday prior to an Iowa campaign rally.
GOP Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas called the censorship decision “unbelievable.”
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey later backtracked on the company’s decision, calling it “unacceptable.”
“Our communication around our actions on the @nypost article was not great,” Dorsey tweeted. “And blocking URL sharing via tweet or DM with zero context as to why we’re blocking: unacceptable.”