Yet another attack has been made against free speech and reporting by Facebook and Twitter, which deliberately censored promotion of a New York Post story revealing that Joe Biden was aware of his son’s Ukrainian business dealings.
Andy Stone, policy communications manager for Facebook, tweeted that “we are reducing its distribution on our platform.”
While I will intentionally not link to the New York Post, 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.
— Andy Stone (@andymstone) October 14, 2020
Stone continued by inferring that the article contained misinformation and thus its distribution needed to be limited: “This is part of our standard process to reduce the spread of misinformation,” he said. Censorship occurs before fact-checking on Facebook, according to Stone.
The article in question presented email evidence that Joe Biden had been introduced by his son “to a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm less than a year before the elder Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company.”
The report has been touted as a “smoking gun” and the Trump campaign warned voters that “Joe Biden lied to you!”
Joe Biden had previously repeatedly denied speaking to his son about his business deals.
Another page run by President Donald Trump’s campaign posted a message on Twitter in response to Facebook’s censorship of the article, protesting that the social media site was acting in favor of Biden: “Facebook is actively interfering in the election. Facebook is rigging the election for Joe Biden.”
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, sent a letter to Facebook, demanding that the site give an account of their censorship, strongly hinting at the political bias present in the organization.
The Post noted the apparent double standards being employed by Facebook, when the site “did nothing to restrict access to the recent New York Times story on President Trump’s tax returns.”
Stone’s own professional resume reveals a long history of working for the Democrat Party before moving to Facebook in 2014.
The censorship of the Post article is not limited to Facebook. Sohrab Ahmari, the op-ed editor for the Post, posted that Twitter was preventing him from promoting the article.
Ahmari called out the social media site: “This is a Big Tech information coup. This is digital civil war,” he said.
This is a Big Tech information coup. This is digital civil war.
— Sohrab Ahmari (@SohrabAhmari) October 14, 2020
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
He went on to detail what Twitter had blocked. “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.”
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