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U.S. President Donald Trump鈥檚 re-election campaign鈥檚 Twitter account was briefly restricted on Thursday, causing an outcry from Republican lawmakers who accused social media companies of acting like 鈥渟peech police鈥� and vowing to hold Twitter responsible.

Twitter temporarily blocked the @TeamTrump account from sending tweets after it posted a video about Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden鈥檚 son that it said violated its rules.

The video referred to a New York Post story from Wednesday that contained alleged details of Hunter Biden鈥檚 business dealings with a Ukrainian energy company and said the former vice president had met with an adviser of the company.

Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement that Republican-led Senate committees have previously concluded that Joe Biden engaged in no wrongdoing related to Ukraine. He also denied such a meeting had taken place.

A Twitter spokesman said earlier on Thursday that the @TeamTrump account, and the accounts of White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany and the New York Post, had been blocked from tweeting because of the company鈥檚 policies on hacked materials and posting private information. He said the accounts may need to delete the rule-breaking posts to continue tweeting.

Twitter policy chief Vijaya Gadde said late on Thursday the company has decided to make changes to its hacked materials policy following feedback on its enforcement earlier.

鈥淲e will no longer remove hacked content unless it is directly shared by hackers or those acting in concert with them,鈥� Gadde said in a tweet. 鈥淲e will label Tweets to provide context instead of blocking links from being shared on Twitter.鈥�

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So, what鈥檚 changing?

1. We will no longer remove hacked content unless it is directly shared by hackers or those acting in concert with them

2. We will label Tweets to provide context instead of blocking links from being shared on Twitter

鈥� Vijaya Gadde (@vijaya)

Twitter also said that despite the new policy the New York Post story would still be blocked. A company spokesman said the stories would still be blocked for 鈥渧iolating the rules on private personal information.鈥�

The Trump campaign, with 2.2 million followers, was sending tweets again on Thursday afternoon. It said in a new tweet it was 鈥渞e-posting the video Twitter doesn鈥檛 want you to watch.鈥� A Twitter spokesman told Reuters that the site would not take action as alterations to the video meant it no longer violated its policies.

鈥淚t鈥檚 going to all end up in a big lawsuit and there are things that can happen that are very severe that I鈥檇 rather not see happen, but it鈥檚 probably going to have to,鈥� Trump said when asked about the move by Twitter.

McEnany likewise began tweeting again on Thursday, saying she regained access after deleting her post on the report.

Both Facebook Inc and Twitter took proactive steps on Wednesday to restrict dissemination of the Post story in the hours after it was published.

Facebook reduced how often the story shows up in users鈥� news feeds and elsewhere on the platform, an action spokesman Andy Stone said the company takes temporarily pending fact checker review 鈥渋f we have signals that a piece of content is false.鈥�

Facebook did not respond to Reuters questions on whether its fact-checking partners were working on rating the Post鈥檚 story.

Twitter prohibited its users from posting links to two New York Post articles about Hunter Biden, saying they violated its policies against posting private information and 鈥渉acked materials.鈥�

But Twitter鈥檚 Chief Executive Jack Dorsey tweeted on Wednesday 鈥渙ur communication around our actions on the @nypost article was not great. And blocking URL sharing via tweet or DM with zero context as to why we鈥檙e blocking: unacceptable.鈥�

A Twitter spokesman declined to answer Reuters questions on whether Dorsey had been involved in the decisions on these restrictions on Wednesday or Thursday.

Republicans on the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee responded to Twitter鈥檚 actions by tweeting a link to a copy of the New York Post鈥檚 story on its website. Twitter blocked the link but later said this had been in error and reversed the action.

The @nypost has not tweeted in over a day, suggesting that they are still blocked from posting.

A spokeswoman for the New York Post declined to comment, other than referring Reuters to the Post鈥檚 own coverage.

Sending subpoenas

Republican lawmakers slammed the social media companies鈥� actions on Thursday. U.S. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said the blocking of the story was 鈥渞eprehensible鈥� and that there should be no 鈥渟peech police鈥� in the United States.

After Twitter imposed the restrictions, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee moved to subpoena Dorsey.

Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham and Republican senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley said the committee will vote on sending the subpoena on Tuesday, Oct. 20 and plans to have Dorsey in front of the committee by Oct. 23.

Hawley also called for sending a subpoena to Facebook.

鈥淲e鈥檙e going to finally have an accounting that is long overdue,鈥� Graham said. 鈥淭his to me crystallizes the problem better than anything I could think of.鈥�

Senator Marco Rubio urged Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai to re-examine Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

The CEOs of Twitter, Facebook and Alphabet Inc鈥檚 Google are set to appear before the Senate Commerce Committee later this month at a hearing to discuss Section 230 鈥� a legal immunity which offers tech companies protection from liability over content posted by users and enables them to act in 鈥済ood faith鈥� to remove objectionable content.

Pai said on Thursday the agency will move forward to set new rules to clarify the meaning of the provision.

The calls to reform Section 230 and penalize tech companies have been intensifying but it is unlikely there will be action on the law by Congress this year.