Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said it was “unacceptable” that the social media giant blocked users from sharing a Post exposé about Hunter Biden’s emails without providing a clear message as to why it was taking the action.
The NY Post reports Dorsey released his statement in a tweet Wednesday night — hours after a number of high-profile Republicans, including Sen. Josh Hawley, blasted the social media giant for blocking the stories from being shared on the platform.
“Our communication around our actions on the @nypost article was not great. And blocking URL sharing via tweet or DM with zero context as to why we’re blocking: unacceptable,” Dorsey wrote in the tweet.
Twitter blocked users from sharing an article that indicated Hunter Biden introduced his father Joe to a Ukranian businessman — charging that “hacked materials” were used in the story.
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
The company also locked the Post’s main Twitter account, which is still inactive, hours after it went dark Wednesday afternoon.
Social media giant Facebook also said it would limit the spread of the article, pending a review by independent fact checkers.
No amount of “great” communicating would make suppressing a newspaper article acceptable, especially since Twitter was for two years an open sewer of misinformation about Trump-Russia collusion. https://t.co/9EqRjCagfV
— Brit Hume (@brithume) October 15, 2020
Republican lawmakers on Wednesday demanded answers from Facebook and Twitter about why the social media giants “censored” The Post’s reporting on emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley fired off separate letters to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey questioning the Silicon Valley titans’ moves to limit the distribution of The Post’s exclusive exposé detailing emails that indicate Hunter Biden introduced his father, Joe Biden, to a Ukrainian energy executive.
Meanwhile, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz sent a missive of his own to Dorsey, blasting Twitter’s decision to block users from sharing the story “quite hypocritical given its willingness to allow users to share less well-sourced reporting critical of other candidates for public office.”
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