Twitter and the social media platform Discord have various policies that could have prompted them to remove leaked Pentagon documents that Biden administration officials say revealed key information about US intelligence-gathering operations.
But the gray areas in those rules and their uneven enforcement make it unclear how, or even if, executives at those companies would decide to remove them.
Starting Saturday, Twitter continued to post tweets featuring Pentagon documents, some of which had been active since at least Wednesday. There is no indication that Elon Musk, who bought Twitter nearly six months ago, will take any action against tweets containing the classified documents.
Two days earlier, Musk appeared to sarcastically respond to a tweet about the leaked material. “Yes, you can remove stuff from the internet entirely, that works perfectly and doesn’t call attention to whatever you were trying to hide at all.” he wrote.
On Discord, a messaging platform popular with video game players, the Pentagon documents may have been circulating since March. Since Discord’s chat groups, known as servers, are not directly run by the company like Facebook or Twitter, the distribution of the Pentagon documents would have been difficult to detect.
Musk did not respond to a request for comment on Saturday, and Discord declined to comment. It is not known whether the companies, both based in the United States, have been asked to remove the Pentagon material.
In the past, Twitter may have removed the material. under rules that prohibit the publication and distribution of pirated materials, two former executives told The New York Times. Under this policy, Twitter would either remove tweets with “real or synthesized hacked material” or place warning labels on the material. Some of the Pentagon material circulating on social media may have been manipulated.
But there were caveats to Twitter’s rules, as outlined in a policy document, which was last updated in October 2020. The rules allowed exceptions for material that forms the basis for news agency reporting. And debates within social media companies about what to allow online have often been similar to discussions in traditional media about whether leaked or hacked material is in enough public interest to warrant publication.
It was unclear on Saturday whether the Pentagon material was hacked or intentionally leaked: the images circulating appeared to be photographs of documents. The documents could fall into a gray area that, at least in the past, would have led to a discussion among compliance officers within the company about whether they qualified for a takedown.
Twitter used its hacked material policy to block circulation of an October 2020 New York Post article that said the FBI had seized a computer allegedly belonging to Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s son, Hunter Biden. Twitter leaders, including then-CEO Jack Dorsey, later called the decision a mistake.
What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What is your motivation for telling us? Have they proven to be reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.
The former executives, who spoke to The Times on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from Musk, said Twitter often received reports of possible violations of its policies by US government organizations.
But since acquiring the company in October, Musk has cut back on the groups responsible for moderation, and more than 75 percent of Twitter’s 7,500 employees have been fired or left. Ella Irwin, Twitter’s director of trust and safety, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Twitter removed or prevented the circulation of content at the behest of governments such as India and at the whim of Musk.
Last week, Twitter also began regulating the circulation and sharing of links to Substack, the newsletter platform, after the startup launched a Twitter-like service. On Friday, many Substack writers discovered that tweets that linked to their Substack pages were unable to be liked or retweeted.
Discord rose in popularity during the pandemic, reaching beyond its gaming roots. By the end of 2021, the platform had more than 150 million active users each month.
Discord provides so-called servers that are essentially chat rooms, where people can discuss their hobbies and message each other or join audio calls. Some servers are public and contain thousands of people, while others, such as servers created just for a group of friends, are private.
This fix has allowed Discord to thrive, but it has also led to problems with harmful content. Ensuring that Discord users follow platform policies and refrain from posting inappropriate or questionable material has largely been left up to the people who create the servers, some of whom delegate to members of server communities. to help enforce the rules.
The private nature of some of these groups means that they can easily escape detection or moderation.
In 2017, white nationalists organized the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on far-right Discord servers. Company executives knew that white nationalists were using the platform, but did not remove them until after the rally.
Discord said it had since beefed up its content moderation team, with the company’s CEO Jason Citron saying in a 2021 interview that 15 percent of its employees worked on trust and safety teams.
Still, the company did not discover Discord messages on a private server posted by the shooter who killed 10 people at a Buffalo grocery store last spring. In the messages, the shooter posted racist comments and appeared to detail how he planned to carry out the attack. After the shooting, Discord said that he was investigating the posts and working with law enforcement agencies.
In its most recent transparency report, which covers the last three months of 2022, Discord said it had disabled more than 150,000 accounts for policy violations ranging from “harassment and bullying” to “unsolicited and exploitative content.” The number of accounts it had disabled was a 17 percent decrease from the previous three months, the company said.
