Twitter Goofed It
Updated at 12:25 p.m. ET on October 15, 2020.
Yesterday morning, the New York Post published a bombastic and dubious report—widely criticized by journalists at other outlets—that included screenshots of emails allegedly copied from a hard drive that could possibly have belonged to Hunter Biden. There were numerous holes in the story’s reporting, and the outlet made no obvious attempt to confirm the veracity of the emails, which it said it learned about from the former Trump adviser Steve Bannon.
The article was a common-enough case of shoddy journalism, but it elicited an unusual response from two major social platforms. Within a few hours, Facebook that it would limit the story’s spread on its platform while its users from posting the link to the story. Republican lawmakers were their disapproval, and Senator Josh Hawley even sent a to the Federal Election Commission suggesting that the platforms’ actions might violate campaign-finance law. (Facebook did not immediately return a request for comment. A Twitter spokesperson directed me to a public statement posted last night.)
