Rep. Elise Stefanik said tech giants Twitter and Facebook have engaged in election interference after censoring a report from the New York Post covering the Biden family’s foreign business dealings.
“Twitter and Facebook are engaging in illegal election interference,” Stefanik tweeted Wednesday. They are censoring, suppressing, and taking down factual front page content from one of the most widely read newspapers in the US. The most read newspaper in #NY21.”
Twitter and Facebook are engaging in illegal election interference.
They are censoring, suppressing, and taking down factual front page content from one of the most widely read newspapers in the US.
The most read newspaper in #NY21.— Elise Stefanik (@EliseStefanik) October 14, 2020
The New York Post published a piece Wednesday detailing that Hunter Biden allegedly set up a meeting between his father, when he served as vice president, and a senior official, Vadym Pozharskyi, at Ukrainian energy firm Burisma. The report contradicts claims Joe Biden made that he and Hunter Biden never discussed his son’s overseas business dealings.
“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 New York Post obtained an email reportedly from Pozharskyi to Hunter Biden, which was found on the younger Biden’s alleged computer left in 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.
After the story broke, Facebook and Twitter moved to censor links to the report.
“While I will intentionally not link to the New York Post,” said Facebook spokesman Andy Stone, “I want [to] 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 made it impossible to share the story on its platform and locked the New York Post’s primary Twitter account because of the piece.
“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 New York Post reported.
Republican politicians and conservative pundits joined Stefanik in slamming Silicon Valley for election interference.
Big Tech is trying to steal the election.
— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) October 14, 2020
Big tech’s cyber warfare on the @nypost Biden story is the type of censorship found in places like China.@Facebook & @Twitter are serving as an arm of the Joe Biden presidential campaign right now worse than ever before.
This election interference is not ok by any measure.
— Lee Zeldin (@RepLeeZeldin) October 14, 2020
Twitter and Facebook permanently crossed the line today. There’s NO turning back now.
They’ve stated, for the permanent record, that they’re anti-competitive monopolies resolutely committed to election interference and full-time liberal activism. ???? pic.twitter.com/O2svIoCsnd— Dan Bongino (@dbongino) October 14, 2020
This is coordinated, criminal election interference. If Facebook/Twitter want to file and function as Democrat PACs, fine. But on no planet should they get away with using their monopoly power to blatantly violate campaign laws without consequence. https://t.co/EiPutaXorc
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) October 14, 2020
Twitter and Facebook are engaging in election interference! @nypost
Election interference in two acts: pic.twitter.com/iY3wVzCtGl
— Douglas Tuman (@ElectTuman) October 15, 2020
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey responded that the move to block the article was “unacceptable.”
“Our 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’re blocking: unacceptable,” he tweeted Wednesday.
Sens. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz have both sent letters to the tech giants demanding answers on the censorship.
Hawley directed a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg with five questions on how the platform came to the decision to censor.
“The seemingly selective nature of this public intervention suggests partiality on the part of Facebook. And your efforts to suppress the distribution of content revealing potentially unethical activity by a candidate for president raises a number of additional questions, to which I expect responses immediately,” Hawley wrote.
Cruz sent his letter to Dorsey, focusing on if political bias played a part in the decision to censor.
“Twitter has apparently decided to preemptively censor this report,” Cruz wrote. “But Twitter’s censorship of this story is quite hypocritical, given its willingness to allow users to share less-well-sourced reporting critical of other candidates for public office. Accordingly, this can only be seen as an obvious and transparent attempt by Twitter to influence the upcoming Presidential election.”
