Trump slams Facebook, Twitter for taking down controversial article critical of Joe Biden

US President Donald Trump, on October 14, slammed a decision by Facebook and Twitter to limit the distribution of a controversial NY Post article critical of Joe Biden. The two social media platforms had taken steps to limit the spread of the article which had sparked outrage among conservatives over how websites should tackle misinformation ahead of the US election. In an unprecedented move, while Twitter blocked users from posting links to the Post story or photos from the unconfirmed report, Facebook, on the other, place restrictions on linking the article, saying there were questions about its validity. 

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As internet users attempted to share the story, they were shown a notice saying, “We can’t complete this request because this link has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful”. Users who tried clicking or retweeting the link were shown a warning that read, “link may be unsafe”. 

Twitter said that it was limiting the article’s spread due to the questions about the origins of the materials included in the article, which contained material supposedly pulled from a computer that had been left by Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden at a Delaware computer repair shop in April 2019. The micro-blogging website’s policies prohibit ‘directly distributing content’ obtained through hackling that contains private information. 

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Biden’s campaign says ‘no meeting took place’ 

The recent actions around the article drew backlash from several political figures. While Republican Senator Ted Cruz reportedly said that Twitter’s censorship of this story is ‘hypocritical’, Trump’s campaign director Jake Schneider called the blocking ‘absolutely unacceptable’. The article implicates the former Vice President Joe Biden in connection with his son Hunter’s Ukraine business. “Smoking-gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to VP dad,” read the headline. 

According to Guardian, the story focused on one email from April 2015, in which a Burisma board adviser thanked Hunter for inviting him to a Washington meeting with his father. Biden campaign said that it was not told by any other of the social media platforms that any action would be taken regarding the article. While speaking about the article, a campaign spokesperson reportedly said that they reviewed Biden’s official schedules from the time and no meeting, as alleged by NY Post, ever took place. 

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