A big story appeared in the New York Post lately, but it didn’t appear on Twitter or Facebook.
Recently, Twitter explained the reason for censoring the Post expose on Hunter Biden formerly posted that day. It was made impossible for the article to be shared thru a tweet or a direct message. On the other hand, Facebook also has limited access to the story.
Twitter Safety says that the article, which claimed to have shared evidence that Biden has arranged a meeting with his father together with a Ukrainian businessman, has images that “include personal and private information—like email addresses and phone numbers—which violate our rules.”
Moreover, Twitter Safety added that since 2018, the centralized platform had had a policy against “links to or images of hacked materials themselves.”
New York Post commented that Twitter’s assertion that “the story relied on hacked material” a “baseless claim.”
The alleged article also shared an email message from an advisor to Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company where Hunter Biden served. The letter stated, “Thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together.” No evidence showed that a meeting took place.
As it was recalled, Burisma and Hunter Biden have roles in Donald Trump’s impeachment; this has hinged Trump to allegedly look for the Ukraine government to deliver political dirt on elder Biden running that time for the Democratic presidential nomination. While being the vice president, Trump has heard that Joe Biden had pressured Ukraine to fire the country’s top prosecutor, who was looking to Burisma; Trump has assumed that Joe Biden had been doing favors for his son.
The New York Post states that the email, which has been found on the hard drive of a computer in Delaware, has proven this. The shop owner seems unable to track down the owner. However, it was sent to Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer, who represented Donald Trump. Steve Bannon, the former Trump Strategist, gave the scoop to the Post.
Some big problems with the piece have been pointed out; this includes that the emails’ timeline didn’t match up with the metadata.
Though Twitter’s reaction to the story had caused more of a blaze than the story alone, which has been widely ignored and criticized, a part of it is because of its relationship to the presidential partisans Giuliani and Bannon.
Jack Dorsey has publicly apologized for how the ordeal has played out, mainly because it involved the fifth-largest US newspaper by movement.
This election season, the social media platforms have been under heavy scrutiny, coming from both margins of the aisle. The Republicans have argued that the social media company algorithms are prejudiced against the conservative news stories. The majority of the Democrats expect the Big Tech, specifically Facebook and Twitter, to emphasize the methods to fight the misinformation sponsored by the outside governments.
This incident gives more ammunition to the Republican lawmakers; however, it makes no one happy, especially the majority of Twitter users. The company’s delayed response has given some criticisms to form: this is mainly that the platform is trying to stifle free expression.
It also showed that the centralized control attempts can now backfire: The ranked Republican member of the House Judiciary Committee, Jim Jordan, has copy-pasted the article from New York Post as a press release to the official government website.
However, Dorsey understands this. He and Twitter have yet to figure out a way to balance the decentralization with the community standards, the Republican demands with the Democratic desires, and potentially shady article with very awkward truths.
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