Saturday, October 17, 2020

GOP Alleges Censored Story Amounts to Political Donation

The Republican National Committee on Friday filed a federal elections complaint over Twitter’s decision earlier this week to ban sharing on its platform recent news articles about Hunter Biden, the son of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

CNBC reports the RNC complained to the Federal Election Commission that Twitter’s blocking of The New York Post articles amounts to an “illegal corporate in-kind political contribution” to former Vice President Biden’s campaign, which is seeking to unseat President Donald Trump, the Republican incumbent.

A computer hard drive said to be owned by Hunter Biden was used as source material by the New York Post for the articles subject to Twitter’s ban. A copy of the hard drive was provided to the newspaper by Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, the Post said.

Twitter has said it banned the Hunter Biden articles in question because they were found to be in violation of Twitter’s Hacked Material Policy, which does not “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.”

The social media giant also said it was banning links to the articles because they contained images of hacked material with personal and private information.

Shortly after the RNC’s complaint to the FEC became public Friday, Twitter said it had reversed its ban and would let users share The Post’s articles. A Twitter spokesman said that the company’s decision reflected the fact that alleged personal information contained in the articles had become widely available across the internet.

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