[Thread] Twitter updates Hacked Materials Policy, says it won't remove content unless shared by hackers themselves and will label tweets instead of block links

Over the last 24 hours, we've received significant feedback (from critical to supportive) about how we enforced our Hacked Materials Policy yesterday. After reflecting on this feedback, we have decided to make changes to the policy and how we enforce it.

@vijaya 2020-10-17 Vijaya Gadde

Context & Ripple Effects

This is a fast reversal. On October 15 Twitter justified blocking links to the NY Post's Biden story under its Hacked Materials Policy; within roughly 24 hours of what @vijaya calls significant critical feedback, the company is rewriting that same policy rather than defending the enforcement.

First-order effects

Tweets containing hacked-material claims — like the ones Twitter had just blocked — will now stay up with a label explaining the concern, instead of having links blocked outright.
Removal now applies only to content Twitter says was shared directly by the hackers themselves, narrowing who can be deplatformed for distributing leaked material.

Second-order effects

The speed of the walk-back rewards external pressure as an input to policy: enforcement decisions taken one day become negotiable the next, inviting every future removal to be contested publicly.
The move scales up Vijaya Gadde's 2019 experiment with labeling notable rule-breaking tweets — a tool designed for individual high-profile cases becomes the default mechanism for an entire content category.

Third-order effects

If label-instead-of-remove holds, platform moderation shifts toward visible annotation over takedowns, making each gatekeeping call contestable at the point of distribution rather than settled silently behind the scenes.

The trend: Major platforms are retreating from blocking contested political content toward labeling it, converting moderation decisions into public, debatable annotations.

Discussion

@vijaya Vijaya Gadde on x
So, what's changing? 1. We will no longer remove hacked content unless it is directly shared by hackers or those acting in concert with them 2. We will label Tweets to provide context instead of blocking links from being shared on Twitter
@kylegriffin1 Kyle Griffin on x
Breaking WaPo: U.S. intelligence agencies warned the White House last year that Rudy Giuliani was the target of an influence operation by Russian intelligence, according to four former officials familiar with the matter. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ...
@nxthompson @nxthompson on x
Twitter should never let people share hacked materials! Right? Wait, what then about the police docs this past June? Or the Panama Papers? The company's confusing backpedaling is not a help. But there is a tough line to define here. https://www.wired.com/...
@bgurley Bill Gurley on x
Wrt censoring information on social networks, I strongly agree with @benthompson idea of solving the problem with “more speech.” Allow others to tag, highlight, challenge. Asking companies to censor makes them more powerful, not less. Quite ironic considering other concerns.
@ritapanahi Rita Panahi on x
Meanwhile, Facebook's Policy Communications Director was a former Democrat staffer...and it shows. https://twitter.com/...
@dnvolz @dnvolz on x
“Could it be hacked? I don't know. I don't think so,” Giuliani said in an interview late Wednesday. “If it was hacked, it's for real. If it was hacked. I didn't hack it. I have every right to use it.” https://www.wsj.com/...
@joshuahol Joshua Holland on x
But working the refs is effective! https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/...
@ericboehlert Eric Boehlert on x
Twitter found its spine for 12 hrs....then caved to GOP bullying; https://www.nytimes.com/...
@stacyontheright @stacyontheright on x
Selectively enforced policies are censorship. Explain it to the Judiciary Conmittee. https://twitter.com/...
@gregpmiller Greg Miller on x
Trump aides delivered stark warning to the president in December: “Your friend Rudy has been worked by Russian assets in Ukraine” https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ...
@andrewsweiss Andrew S. Weiss on x
The shock of watching Trump/Giuliani gleefully embrace Russian disinformation/influence operations never wears off. @gregpmiller @nakashimae @shaneharris https://twitter.com/...
@kylegriffin1 Kyle Griffin on x
The warnings led national security adviser O'Brien to caution Trump in a private convo that any info Giuliani brought back should be considered contaminated by Russia. The message was, “Do what you want to do, but your friend Rudy has been worked by Russian assets in Ukraine.” ht…
@briannormoyle @briannormoyle on x
Russian intelligence worked Trump's personal lawyer to feed him disinformation and the White House has known about it since last year. Trump shrugged it off when warned about it. Our democracy will not survive four more years of this. #VOTE https://twitter.com/...
@kylegriffin1 Kyle Griffin on x
“Several senior admin officials ‘all had a common understanding’ that Giuliani was being targeted by the Russians, said the former official who recounted O'Brien's intervention. That group included A.G. William Barr, FBI Director Christopher Wray and White Counsel Pat Cipollone.”…
@ericg1247 Eric Garcia on x
So he is a russian spy or an idiot???? https://twitter.com/...
@kylegriffin1 Kyle Griffin on x
The warnings were based on multiple sources, including intercepted communications, that showed Giuliani was interacting with people tied to Russian intel during a 2019 trip to Ukraine. The intel raised concerns that Giuliani was being used to feed Russian misinformation to Trump.…
@kasparov63 Garry Kasparov on x
The Trump administration and his cronies are always shocking and never surprising. https://twitter.com/...
@mikeisaac Rat King on x
But! Twitter will still continue to block links to the NYPost story under a *separate* policy, because the story contains links to email addresses and personal information, which are not allowed on the site. tune in tomorrow for our next installment https://www.nytimes.com/...
@karaswisher Kara Swisher on x
This will make no one feel assured weeks ahead of a major election about how much this is happening in real time — as I wrote about Facebook, it's random and its chaotic: Twitter changes policy that blocked a New York Post story about Biden's son https://www.washingtonpost.com/ .…
@mikeisaac Rat King on x
the NYP*st story raised a fresh round of rancor between conservatives, Twtr and FB, and has raised questions concerning content moderation policies — all a mere 19 days before the most consequential election in years w/ @kateconger https://www.nytimes.com/...
@rokhanna Ro Khanna on x
This is an admirable reversal consistent with 1st Amendment principles that allowed for the publication of the Pentagon Papers and Wikileaks Iraq War logs. Appreciate your willingness to engage in a deliberative process. @jack @vijaya @ryangrim @ggreenwald https://twitter.com/...
@jess Jessica Verrilli on x
This is such a hard job but I have total faith @vijaya and the Twitter team are acting in a principled manner, listening to the feedback, and transparently evolving. https://twitter.com/...
@jeffseibert Jeff Seibert on x
Vijaya has had one of the hardest jobs in tech for years. You may not always agree with her, but I can vouch that she (and her team) considers every issue carefully, and they care deeply. Props for sharing their thoughts clearly and quickly. This is not easy. https://twitter.com/…
@jonrussell Jon Russell on x
Twitter blocking a link being shared sets a terrible precedent for governments in Asia, many of which aggressively clamp down on free speech and use court orders to institute censorship, to make the same request. But of course most people only think/care about the US.
@jackposobiec Jack Posobiec on x
How do you verify what content is hacked and what isn't? Steve Scully falsely claimed his Twitter was hacked just this week https://twitter.com/...
@alexstamos Alex Stamos on x
This seems like a reasonable change. It's appropriate for social media platforms to prevent themselves from being used as the initial distribution point for a hack-forge-leak, but not once the stories hit the press. Twitter and Facebook can't fix bad journalism. https://twitter.c…
@mlpowered Emmanuel Ameisen on x
Another great edition of @platformer. It includes a reference to the French ban on election coverage in the 24 hours preceding an election, something I wish we had in the US! https://twitter.com/...
@mattyglesias Matthew Yglesias on x
What's good about the calls Facebook and Twitter made yesterday isn't the decision but the fact that *they made the decision* and opened themselves up to criticism. Explicit editorial judgment > black box algorithms.
@daveweigel @daveweigel on x
WikiLeaks had a 27-day IV drip of Clinton emails that knocked her off message. Twenty-four hours into Huntergate it's already fizzled as an issue for Biden and become the latest fight in the Posting Wars. https://twitter.com/...
@tedcruz Ted Cruz on x
Big tech has been getting worse and worse and worse. But they crossed a line here with the New York Post... https://twitter.com/...
@yair_rosenberg @yair_rosenberg on x
Glenn is correct. A world in which social media corporations have this power is a world in which it will eventually be abused. People justifying this as an emergency response to Trump need to remember that emergency powers have a way of sticking around long after the emergency. h…
@fmanjoo Farhad Manjoo on x
News flash everything on social media is an editorial decision by the company. Every single thing, the UI, the posts you see, the posts you don't, the metrics, the speed with which everything updates, the colors, it's all human decisions all the way down. It's all subjective
@crimealytics Jeff Asher on x
This is smart and I wonder if the platforms are more than just suspecting a hack and leak. https://twitter.com/...

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