Social media executives are about to discover the Streisand effect.
Facebook has restricted its users’ ability to share a potentially damning news report about Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. Twitter has taken similar actions to limit the story’s distribution.
“Given the lack of authoritative reporting on the origins of the materials included in the article, we’re taking action to limit the spread of this information,” a Twitter spokesperson told the Washington Examiner.
The New York Post published an article Wednesday morning purporting to show that Hunter Biden introduced his father, then the vice president, “to a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm less than a year before the elder Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company.”
Roughly six hours after the report went live, Facebook’s policy communications director, Andy Stone, confirmed the story is being suppressed on the popular social media platform pending a fact-check.
“While I will intentionally not link to the New York Post,” said Stone, “I want be clear that this story is eligible to be fact checked by Facebook’s third-party fact checking partners. In the meantime, we are reducing its distribution on our platform.”
He added, linking to a Facebook FAQ from 2019, “This is part of our standard process to reduce the spread of misinformation. We temporarily reduce distribution pending fact-checker review.”
Not long after Stone’s announcement, Twitter took similar action, making it impossible to share the New York Post article on its platform…
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