Facebook and Twitter Take Steps to Limit Spread of Controversial New York Post Article

On Wednesday, Facebook and Twitter took steps to limit the spread of a controversial New York Post story about Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s son’s work in Ukraine—and in response, conservative figures are decrying the platforms for improperly censoring speech.

The unverified article claims that a “smoking gun” email shows Hunter Biden introducing his father to an executive at a Ukrainian company that Hunter used to work for. The information supposedly comes from a hard drive left at a computer repair shop in Delaware that made its way to Rudy Giuliani. But some, including New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait, believe that, if real, the email (and others) may have been hacked, perhaps by Russia.

On Wednesday morning, Facebook communications director Andy Stone said in a tweet that his platform would be limiting the article’s ability to spread.

“This is part of our standard process to reduce the spread of misinformation. We temporarily reduce distribution pending fact-checker review,” he said in a follow-up tweet.

The Verge notes that “Facebook partners with a variety of fact-checking institutions and downranks content that is rated partially or completely false, adding a warning label and making users less likely to see it.” It also points out that it’s currently not clear whether Facebook might also decide to limit the distribution of articles that are aggregating the New York Post story.

Twitter, meanwhile, is blocking the article from being tweeted entirely, as seen below.

When asked for comment, Twitter specified its Hacked Material Policy states “we don’t permit the use of our services to directly distribute content obtained through hacking that contains private information, may put people in physical harm or danger, or contains trade secrets.” That suggests the platform may be concerned that the emails were stolen. New York Post reporter Noah Manskar tweeted Wednesday afternoon that the Post’s Twitter account had been locked, too