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Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

Leaking confidential information that you agreed to not leak is actionable as a contract violation.

It's not a free speech issue.

Are you suggesting that Twitter will similarly remove leaks of other companies' confidential information? Or is this just a special case where they will be free speech absolutists for everyone else but carefully curate what people are allowed to say about Twitter?

Twitter has a responsibility to its shareholders to protect its information. Why on earth are people jumping to the conclusion they would take on any similar responsibility for another company??

Because not doing so would fly completely in the face of everything Elon claimed he wanted Twitter to stand for. They would be putting their finger on the scale to censor speech critical of Twitter, and Twitter only. (Or maybe other favored groups and politicians too, who knows? Starting off like this on day 1 kills any trust in neutral moderation immediately).

Edit: that said, I'm not sure it's been confirmed yet whether the employee just deleted the tweet themself - which would be a very different story.

Twitter is a beast. I think it would be a mistake to evaluate what it "stands for" based on some edge case of who/what/why behind a single tweet. Consider the fact that most execs at the top of this thing we call capitalism, are routinely caught in ethical dilemmas. Even the individuals you have decided are on your "side" morally, are forced to occasionally compromise their ethics in the short term, to achieve a longer term goal that is far more complex than people are giving credit here when they use terms like free speech so casually.

Wow. Who besides Trump and Musk gets this treatment of "no reasonable person would believe what he says, yet what he says should be taken seriously"

uhm, paul pelosi?

> They would be putting their finger on the scale to censor speech critical of Twitter

That's an entirely different issue. The issue at hand here is Twitter removing Twitter internal confidential material that Twitter employees agreed to not publish as a condition of employment.

This is contract law, not free speech law.

Does Twitter have an NDA with other companies that says Twitter will remove other companies' confidential information?

If they don't, they have no obligation to remove it.

They already do that with video game leaks

It makes sense to punish or reprimand someone internally for leaking confidential information. Something like a firing could be appropriate.

But banning someone or their Tweets on Twitter for posting an internal corporate communication is wrong (at least, it's not the Twitter I want to see). That's using one's privileged position as steward of a public platform to enforce internal rules in an extraordinary way. If how Twitter moderates users on its platform is a free speech issue (I believe it is), this is just as much of one.

Of course it is. The contract is merely an agreement that you won't exercise your right. It's actionable in a civil court obviously. That however says nothing about your right to publish or that the content must be removed just that changing your mind might have repercussions.

It isn't.

Are the Twitter terms of use different for employees than they are for other users?

Cause if they use the service under a personal agreement with Twitter that is separate from their employment, then removing the Tweet isn't really so actionable under their employment agreement.

I mean, I guess it probably isn't separate, but I'm also not sure why people are so eager to pat Twitter on the back for using their position to control the public communications of employees/former employees.

I don't believe this is always true. For instance, whistleblower cases, or NDAs that can be broken by supeona.

Considering there is already some legal questions being raised about the firings - and I'm not arguing in favor of the merits of those cases - there is some possible scenario where an internal leak may be justified.

Being banned from Twitter for breaking their TOS agreement is just a contract violation too.

Will Twitter apply that standard to other leaks of data?

They do that with video game leaks, and I'm sure they do it for movie leaks, music leaks, etc.

Again, what information was leaked?

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