Twitter reversed course on Thursday and said that they would allow users to post a controversial New York post story damaging to the Joe Biden presidential campaign.
Twitter’s head of legal, policy, trust and safety, Vijaya Gadde, tweeted Thursday evening that after much public input, they would be changing their policies to allow people to post the story and others like it.
On Wednesday Twitter clarified that they had banned the posting of the story because it included personal and private information, something that is prohibited by Twitter’s terms of use. Critics of the social media giant accused it of banning the story in order to help Democrats and influence the election.
Gadde explained why they decided to change course.
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“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,” she tweeted.
Gadde explained that the ban policy was implemented in 2018 but that Twitter had since then developed new tools to aid in stopping the spread of unsubstantiated reports.
“We believe that labeling Tweets and empowering people to assess content for themselves better serves the public interest and public conversation. The Hacked Material Policy is being updated to reflect these new enforcement capabilities,” Gadde continued.
“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,” she added.
She went on to thank everyone for their input.
Some, like reporter Andrew Feinberg were critical of the decision.
“How much did the bullying from GOP senators factor into this decision,” he tweeted to Gadde.
CNN analyst and former FBI agent Asha Rangappa accused Twitter of aiding foreign adversaries in spreading fake news.
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