It's a bit like saying hacked internal emails are public if they are discussing public topics.
The reason the media generally doesn't publish hacked documents is so they don't create an incentive for people to hack documents. It's the same reason why many media companies won't publish pictures and sometimes names of mass shooters and child suicides.
You're free to do it. But many media companies don't do it for legitimate practical, ethical, and moral reasons.
But Twitter’s current owner has explicitly attacked the media for exactly this reason, and has claimed repeatedly and self-aggrandizingly to value free speech above such concerns.
Talk about grandstanding over nothing. Then again being an ass gets you more attention so mission accomplished!
Musk was one of the people who was unhappy with the decision to ban links to the Post’s story. “Suspending the Twitter account of a major news organization for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate,” Musk wrote of the decision on the story in April 2022. He even invited former Rolling Stone pundit Matt Taibbi to examine internal documents showing how Twitter handled the decision. (In the course of tweeting his conclusions, Taibbi exposed the email addresses of Dorsey and Representative Ro Khanna.)
Musk claims he bought Twitter to champion free speech. This is undermined by the fact that the site selectively censors posts or accounts for e.g. criticising Israeli policy or publishing publicly available flight data.
Be aware that it fits an ongoing to campaign to limit free speech, especially in regard to goverment officials and public figures. They want to make it illegal or impossible to criticize government or powerful people, both of which are the foundations of free speech - those are the most important forms of speech.
They approach it in multiple ways that I'm aware of:
* They want the Supreme Court to change their precedent - as the current court has done many times for other areas of law - in the 1964 New York Times Co. v. Sullivan case, which established that public officials only have a claim if they prove the critical speech was false and also was published with "actual malice"; that is "with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not." At least one of the conservative justices, I forget which one, has encouraged people to bring such a case to the Supreme Court so the justice could rule on it.
* They use or legally harass people into ceasing publication, including by having the state attack them. Examples include the lawsuit against Media Matters. Even if the defendants win, the financial impact can be enormous. Many can't afford to publish criticism.
In the end, everything comes down to politics. Politics makes the law, so it overcomes rule of law. If you don't get involved and make these things change - like our predecessors did to build the freedom the US already enjoys - freedom, including free speech will diminish.
The legal definition of posting harmful information on the internet under California Penal Code 653.2 is as follows:
You used an electronic communication device to distribute electronically, publish, email, hyperlink or make available for downloading personal identifying information or an electronic message of a harassing nature about another person;
You did so without that person’s consent;
You did so with the intent to place that person in reasonable fear for his/her safety or the safety of his/her immediate family;
You did so for the purpose of imminently causing that other person unwanted physical contact, injury or harassment; andThe personal identifying information or message you shared would be likely to incite or produce that unwanted physical contact, injury or harassment.
That is the most important form of free speech - criticising political candidates.
X (Twitter) blocks links to hacked JD Vance dossier
That said I am all for yelling at elon to try to get him to change the policies, which works a lot of the time, and seems like a pretty reasonable way to manage the margins of these things.
