Facebook, Twitter quickly put lid on New York Post story
Facebook and Twitter took unusual steps Wednesday to limit readership of an article by the New York Post about alleged emails from Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s son, one of the rare occasions they have sanctioned a traditional media outlet.
The social media giants took that action before verifying the contents of the article, in which President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and his former top adviser Stephen Bannon claimed to have obtained and leaked a trove of private materials from Hunter Biden.
The leaked documents suggested at one point he gave a Ukrainian executive the “opportunity” to meet the former vice president. The Biden campaign said his schedule indicated no such meeting took place.
Facebook pre-emptively limited the spread of the story while sending it to third-party factcheckers, a decision the company said it has taken on various occasions but is not the standard process.
Twitter allowed the story to surge to a No. 3 trending topic in the U.S., although it later marked the link as “potentially unsafe” and blocked it.
It also temporarily locked White House press secretary Kayleigh Mcenany’s account, as well as the New York Post’s, adding notices to their tweets saying they violated Twitter’s rules on prohibiting publishing hacked materials.
Trump’s campaign account also temporarily was locked.
The moves prompted an outcry from Trump, Republicans and right-leaning publications, which repeated claims of politically motivated censorship Silicon Valley giants.
“So terrible that Facebook and Twitter took down the story of ‘Smoking Gun’ emails related to Sleepy Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, in the @Nypost,” Trump wrote on Twitter.
But Wednesday’s actions were the result of a year of tech companies’ scenario-planning exercises for the 2020 election, including the possibility of a “hackand-leak” situation of potentially unverified emails that could help swing the election.
Earlier in the day, Facebook spokesman Andy Stone tweeted the companywas “reducing” the story’s distribution while it was checked by independent factcheckers.
He pointed to a link on the company website to a year-old policy, which says that if thecompany has “signals” that a piece of content is false, its distribution could be reduced pending factchecker review, part of an effort to take “faster action” to stop viral misinformation.
Stone declined to comment on the signals used in this case, but said similar steps had been taken on several occasions but were not always publicized.
Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh called the campaign’s Twitter handle suspension election interference.
“For Twitter to lock the main account of the campaign of the president of the United States is a breathtaking level of political meddling and nothing short of an attemptto rig the election,” he said in a statement. “Joe Biden’s Silicon Valley pals are aggressively blocking negative news stories about their guy and preventing voters from accessing important information.
“This is like something from communist China or Cuba, not the United States of America.” by