Checkmate: Twitter Will Have To Block a Government Website To Censor Hunter Biden Bombshell After Creative Move by GOP
After Twitter blocked a bombshell New York Post story on Wednesday alleging to have files from a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden, Republicans came up with a clever plan to get around the big tech giant’s censoring.
The House Judiciary Committee Republicans on Wednesday republished the New York Post story on their official government website.
If Twitter was going to keep playing this game, the company was going to have to block users from being able to see a government website, which certainly would not be a good look for the social media company that has come under fire on numerous occasions for disproportionately censoring conservative voices over liberal ones.
This is election interference. Period. https://t.co/eenLFO5n67
— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) October 15, 2020
Twitter has blocked users from tweeting the link to the @nypost‘s story on Hunter Biden.
So we put it on our website for you to read and share.
Click, share, and RT! https://t.co/tZwybnoW0e
— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) October 14, 2020
“Twitter has blocked users from tweeting the link to the @nypost’s story on Hunter Biden. So we put it on our website for you to read and share. Click, share, and RT!” the House Judiciary GOP said from their official Twitter account.
Twitter did indeed temporarily block the link to the government website just as it had to the original New York Post story. So the GOP pivoted.
“Twitter censored our last link! So, we put the article on @Jim_Jordan’s website. Nice try, @jack. But, we won’t stop,” the House Judiciary GOP tweeted.
Twitter censored our last link! So, we put the article on @Jim_Jordan‘s website.
Nice try, @jack. But, we won’t stop.
Click, share, and RT!https://t.co/DwJTdvqbUB
— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) October 15, 2020
Now, it appears Twitter is no longer blocking the original link.
The original story from the Post alleges to have information taken from a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden, the son of Democratic Presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden, that was abandoned at a computer repair shop in Delaware.
The hard drive allegedly contains graphic pictures of Hunter Biden and emails supposedly showing him peddling political access to foreign entities using his father’s status as vice president, according to the Post.
There is a clear public interest in sharing the details of the story.
However, it should be noted that Twitter does have a policy against sharing any private information, such as email addresses, publicly.
That being said, Twitter has done an awful job communicating its reason for doing so.
Twitter claimed Wednesday, long after the true damage had been done, that it will censor the New York Post article on its platform because “the images contained in the articles include personal and private information — like email addresses and phone numbers — which violate our rules.”
Technically, Twitter is in fact, abiding by its privacy policy. But it’s awfully convenient that the platform has decided to lean so heavily on this policy right as a bombshell story critical of the Bidens is published.
Twitter may, in fact, be abiding by its policy, but it’s not a stretch to say that the platform is doing so for the wrong reason — because it favors Biden over Trump. And Twitter is allowing this policy to get in the way of a significant public interest in learning the truth about a story that could very well affect who ends up leading the free world.
Twitter has also cited its policy against the “distribution of hacked material” in the censorship of the story.
There’s just one problem with that — there’s no evidence in the Post’s story that proves the emails had been hacked.
Twitter’s inability to truly explain their reasoning for blocking the story on the platform speaks to the general sense of elitism the company has: they decide which information the public gets to know and if you have a problem with that, too bad.
Twitter knows what’s best for you whether you like it or not.
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