Jack Dorsey, CSI Invrestigator

But unlike their rapt coverage of the Trump-Russia collusion narrative, the mainstream media largely ignored the story, at least initially. Meanwhile, Twitter and Facebook moved swiftly to halt its distribution, with Twitter banning it entirely in one of the first known cases of a mainstream newspaper’s reporting being banned prior to any form of fact-checking.

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Media outlets routinely publish stories based on unauthorized releases of information. Most of what we know about the internal workings of social media companies, for example, comes from employee leaks. When the New York Times last month published an extensive look at Donald Trump’s tax returns, which it obtained without his consent, the story was covered widely by the media, and social platforms made no effort to restrict sharing of it.

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Twitter went even further, banning outright any sharing of the Post story on its platform, yet its rationale for doing so evolved in the hours after its decision. The company initially banned the link without any explanation, displaying only a generic error message when users tried to share the story, saying, “We can't complete this request because this link has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful.” The company then clarified that the Post story violated its 2018 elections integrity policy that “prohibits the use of our service to distribute content obtained without authorization.” When commentators pointed out that its policy explicitly exempts news coverage, the company pivoted again, this time arguing that the emails reproduced in the Post story “include personal and private information — like email addresses and phone numbers — which violate our rules.” Asked how often they had applied this policy, a spokesperson told the Washington Post only that the platform had done so in the past, but declined to provide further details.