Twitter’s initial justification for removing the “hacked” material is completely at odds with their past decisions to leave up hacked/illegally obtained materials like the Snowden docs, Trump tax returns, Panama papers, etc. Of course they have since changed their stance.
There’s the possibility of civil damages if it amounts to defamation, but that’s quite a standard to reach. Such damages would fall on the publisher of the story, the NY Post, but not a platform like Twitter (per section 230 safe harbor immunity). There is no legal gray area here.
This is the same reason why those who publicized the now widely rebuked Steele Dossier are not facing legal consequences for it (including Twitter), nor should they.
Of course your original comment said nothing about the accuracy of the reporting and instead only made the claim that there was a legal gray area around publishing hacked materials like these, which is simply not true.
It's clear only to you. You cannot normally legally publish hacked or stolen photos of celebrities. The personal, intimate, or family photos of Hunter Biden almost certainly do not meet the bar for public interest.
Twitter is not liable here. But as a private company they're allowed to have a policy against linking to hacked or stolen material on their platform. It's the NY Post that's in a grey area.
> Of course your original comment said nothing about the accuracy of the reporting and instead only made the claim that there was a legal gray area around publishing hacked materials like these, which is simply not true.
My original comment was in response to someone saying Twitter blocked it because it was Russian propaganda, which is simply not true.
Really? Who would be the judge of that? The suppression itself is hard evidence to the contrary.
Maybe you don't believe Twitter. Maybe Twitter suppressed the story for political reasons and you feel that proves the hacked content is of public interest. But if Twitter was honest then their policy is just to not allow direct links to any hacked or stolen photos. It doesn't mean they're important.
How are personal photos of Hunter Biden with his family important to public interest?