Twitter begins labelling tweets containing news based on hacked or leaked documents

Twitter hacked materials warning: Microblogging platform Twitter has now seemingly started labelling content with its “hacked materials” warning in case the post contains news related to leaked or hacked documents. This comes a few months after Twitter had blocked for some time a news story by New York Post in October 2020 because it had been allegedly based on material that had been taken from the laptop of Hunter Biden, the son of US President Joe Biden. The original decision, however, had to be withdrawn by the microblogging site after public outrage.

Now, though, the microblogging platform is displaying the label more prominently.

The warning came to light when a story shared by The Grayzone news organisation was tagged with the Twitter label “The materials may have been obtained through hacking”. The label is linked to the company’s policy on distribution of hacked material. The tweet was about a news article which allegedly showed BBC and Reuters’ participation in a UK government programme to weaken the state influence of Russia.