Twitter sued by computer repair shop owner who turned in Hunter Biden's laptop to FBI

 Asking for $500 million in damages for defamation!

So what did Twitter do to John Paul Mac Isaac to cause him to sue over defamation? Well when they accused him of hacking Hunter Biden's laptop to garner information, they were actually accusing a private citizen of a federal felony with absolutely zero evidence that it was true?

So it does seem relatively serious when a company as large as Twitter decides to accuse a computer repair shop of illegally hacking into the computers. Might as well accuse of auto mechanic of purposely cutting break lines of the cars people bring in for oil changes.

In the case of the Hunter Biden computer, access to his hard drive was permitted based on what Hunter Biden brought is computer in for and because Hunter Biden would have signed a waiver to allow it. Now whether or not the information within the hard drive should have been used as it was is an ethically murky area, but not a matter of criminal question.  

Now what prompted this accusation from Twitter? Well they had to come up with some "reason" to ban the information on Hunter Biden in order to "stop the spread" of this harmful political story to their personal favored candidate. But as a "public forum" living under the rules of section 230, they are not allowed to edit tweets based on politics or simply because they don't like a story. They can only do it if the story violates one of their policies (which are also limited by section 230).

But the Hunter Biden story did not otherwise qualify to be censored for any of the normal reasons. They did not have any proof that it was untrue (it was true). It was being reported by a reputable media source who has been in business for over 200 years. So they were left in a quandary as to how to stop the spread.  

So they determined that the story could not be tweeted because it was "hacked information" and thus illegally acquired by the source in question. They had no evidence that the information was "illegally" obtained from the repair shop, but they used the pretense to censor the story and prevent anyone from tweeting about it.

Since Twitter later recanted all of this and eventually allowed the story to be tweeted, they have already provided an admission that they were wrong. But yet, they still accused a small business owner of being a Federal felon and have neither retracted or apologized for doing so. I certainly don't believe that Twitter did what they did out of spite for Mr Isaac. But they did it none-the-less and in doing so misused the massive power they wield as arbitrators of possibly the most influential public forum ever in existence. 

More to the point, this exposes exactly what sort of issues that might come up as Twitter continues to try to censor and otherwise control the Section 230 public forum that they created. They are treading the legal and ethical boundaries every time they decide to censor something. Any time they do it could be a violation of the law, first amendment, or common decency. Would have been so much easier for everyone involved if Twitter stuck by the same hands off approach that they had for the first 13-14 years of existence. There is simply no need (and quite frankly no legal means) for them to start censoring, fact-checking, and whatever else they want to start doing. Why they suddenly felt this need becomes the question at issue.