Twitter Will Allow ‘Post’ Story On Hunter Biden To Be Shared, Reversing Course

Twitter
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has changed its mind and will let a dubious New York Post report on Hunter Biden be shared on its platform following several days of intense criticism from Republicans and ahead of CEO Jack Dorsey’s Congressional testimony next week.

It’s a complete reversal from Wednesday when the Post published its story and Twitter blocked users from sharing its URL. At the time, Twitter said the Post story contained hacked material and personal information and sharing those things were against its rules. (Worth noting: It’s not clear if the material cited by the Post is a genuine hack—or if they’re forgeries. Twitter nonetheless decided to treat it as an actual hack.) Facebook also throttled the distribution of the story on its site but didn’t specify what rules the story violated.

This drew widespread criticism from conservations. President Trump was among the loudest voices. On Twitter’s own platform he described the site as a “monster,” and on Fox News, he vowed to bring a “big lawsuit” against the company. Sen. Hawley, of Missouri, and Sen. Cruz, of Florida, vocally expressed their unhappiness, too. Cruz penned an open letter to Twitter, calling its actions “an obvious and transparent attempt by Twitter to influence the upcoming Presidential election,” while Hawley was even more plain spoken about his feelings, calling Twitter nothing less than “a threat to democracy.”

As this pressure mounted on Thursday, Twitter announced a change to its policy: It would no longer block URLs to hacked materials, a move that CEO Jack Dorsey said on Twitter had been “wrong.” Instead Twitter would add a label to tweets sharing the materials that gave users more context about the documents. Yet the Post story still wasn’t allowed to be shared on the platform because it still violated Twitter’s rule against publishing personal information. (The Post’s story’s contains screenshots of purported email addresses, among other things.)

But the story has now been widely shared enough at this point that Twitter no longer considers that personal information to be private. And so, it’s lifting its ban on the story.

It comes at a precarious time for Twitter. Democrats and the left have been pushing social media companies to step their efforts to curb misinformation. But Republicans, who have long complained that Twitter and Facebook unfairly censor conservative posts, are mounting a renewed push to further regulate the industry. They’ll be able to hold Dorsey’s feet directly over the fire on Wednesday in a previously scheduled hearing before the GOP-led Senate Commerce Committee. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google
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CEO Sundar Pichai will testify alongside him.

Then there’s every likelihood that Twitter and Facebook will need to make similar calls about viral misinformation as the presidential campaigns wind down and Americans head to the polls in less than a month.