US election 2020: Trump furious after Facebook, Twitter restrict story about Biden, son Hunter and Ukraine
- New York Post article purports to expose corrupt dealings by election rival Joe Biden and son Hunter in Ukraine
- US president and Republicans outraged by what they called partisan censorship
US President Donald Trump and his political allies reacted with fury after Facebook and Twitter on Wednesday restricted a New York Post article linking Joe Biden and his son Hunter to a Ukrainian energy company that figured in the impeachment investigation of Trump.
Facebook said it would reduce distribution of the article, seeking to slow the pace of its spread before the social network’s fact-checkers have a chance to evaluate its authenticity.
Twitter inserted a warning to people who clicked on the article. The company later said it took action to block links to the story because some of the article’s images contained material that violated Twitter’s rules about sharing personal information and hacked materials.
“So terrible that Facebook and Twitter took down the story of ‘Smoking Gun’ emails related to Sleepy Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, in the @NYPost,” Trump wrote on Twitter as he headed to a rally in Iowa. “There is nothing worse than a corrupt politician. REPEAL SECTION 230!!!”
The president was referring to part of the 1996 Communications Decency Act that protects technology companies from being sued over users’ content on their platforms.