An editor at the New York Post slammed Twitter for banning a link to his outlet’s story pertaining to corruption allegations against Hunter Biden, the son of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
“This is a Big Tech information coup. This is digital civil war,” Sohrab Ahmari said on Twitter. “I, an editor at The New York Post, one of the nation’s largest papers by circulation, can’t post one of our own stories that details corruption by a major-party presidential candidate, Biden.”
This is a Big Tech information coup. This is digital civil war.
I, an editor at The New York Post, one of the nation’s largest papers by circulation, can’t post one of our own stories that details corruption by a major-party presidential candidate, Biden. pic.twitter.com/BKNQmAG19H
— Sohrab Ahmari (@SohrabAhmari) October 14, 2020
The report claims that Hunter Biden set up a meeting between his father, who at the time was vice president, and a senior official at the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma. If true, the information would contradict claims Biden made that he never discussed his son’s overseas business dealing with him.
“I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” Biden said last year. “Here’s what I know — Trump should be investigated.”
The potential meeting between Vice President Biden and Vadym Pozharskyi came to light in an email purportedly from Pozharskyi to the younger Biden, which was obtained by the New York Post. The email was discovered on a computer allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden that was left at a Delaware repair shop.
“Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together. It’s realty [sic] an honor and pleasure,” the email dated April 17, 2015, reads.
Within hours of the story breaking, Facebook and Twitter moved to censor its links.
“While I will intentionally not link to the New York Post,” said Facebook spokesman Andy Stone, “I want be clear that this story is eligible to be fact checked by Facebook’s third-party fact checking partners. In the meantime, we are reducing its distribution on our platform.”
“This is part of our standard process to reduce the spread of misinformation. We temporarily reduce distribution pending fact-checker review,” he added.
Twitter followed suit shortly after, making it impossible to share or direct message links to the New York Post story.
Links posted before Twitter censored the story divert users to a warning from the tech giant.
“The link you are trying to access has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially spammy or unsafe, in accordance with Twitter’s URL Policy,” Twitter says.
Additionally, the New York Post reported that its Twitter account was locked due to distributing the story.
“The Post’s primary Twitter account was locked as of 2:20 p.m. Wednesday because its articles about the messages obtained from Biden’s laptop broke the social network’s rules against ‘distribution of hacked material,’ according to an email The Post received from Twitter,” the Post reported.
