Name: Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims - BBC News
Uploaded: 2020-10-24T00:02:34.000Z
Duration: 6 min 30 s
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another story in the US that continues to flare up concerns how social media platforms deal with content they feel is incorrect or inappropriate.

Transition words & phrases

This issue is back because of Twitter and Facebook's decision to restrict access to this story in The New York Post.

It's the first time a social media company has proactively blocked an article from a major mainstream news organization.

The New York Post is a newspaper and website owned by Rupert Murdoch.

Story in question was provided to the Post by Donald Trump's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and it alleges a direct link between Joe Biden and Joe Biden's son's business dealings in Ukraine.

It includes a cache of emails and other data purportedly from a laptop owned by Hunter Biden, but which was left at a repair shop in Delaware.

But there are a number of major holes in this story, which is why Twitter and Facebook are both restricting how it's being shared.

Twitter said it took action because the images contained in the articles include personal and private information like email addresses and phone numbers, which violate our rules.

It went on to say it viewed material included in the articles as violations of our hacks materials policy.

While the White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, had her Twitter account suspended after she shared the article.

She's calling the whole thing censorship.

Donald Trump also turned to this on his rally in Iowa last night.

She's the White House press secretary because she's reporting the truth.

The Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has now said that it was unacceptable for the platform to block users from linking to the article without context on explanation for the decision.

So he's saying to some degree, they got this one wrong.

Let's bring in Mariana Spring, the BBC's disinformation reporter, to talk about this.

Mariana saw one commentator in the US saying the tech platforms are flailing in front of this issue, and they do seem to be still working out exactly what to do.

There's increasing pressure on social media sites to tackle misinformation in the build up to the U.

Hence why we've seen a number of tweets posts from both Trump on Biden's campaigns being labeled in recent weeks but this is a whole different thing.

This is a decision to limit the spread off mainstream news article, which makes a number of allegations which people are questioning but nonetheless is seen as a as a step forward in what Twitter and Facebook decided to dio.

Facebook's action was less surprising because they tend to de prioritized stories until they've been checked by third party fact checkers, and then they allow them to be shared more widely.

Whereas Twist's decision to label, uh, this this link with pop up, which essentially says this could be harmful, don't click on it was taken very badly by a number off Republican supporters.

And not just those, really, you know, ardent pro Trump supporters, but actually more moderate Republicans who felt like this was Twitter and Facebook overstepping their mark.

Twitter later went on to explain, as you say, that this was to do with privacy, that they felt that the article included details which breached their terms in terms of sharing private contact details, but also that this was about hacking Onda concern that this information had been obtained through hacking and they don't allow that kind of information to be shared on their platform.

But they do allow news sites to report on hacking.

And that again explains the concern from a lot of commentators.

And when we've talked about hacking in the past with reference the disinformation, there's been a foreign dimension to it, Is there a foreign dimension to this story?

At the moment, we can't answer that question.

We don't know, and that is the case with the number of disinformation campaigns we've seen in the build up to this election.

But it is something we know has happened in the past.

Russian actors have been involved in hacking operations, which which have produced information that people fear could have interfered with or impacted voters and the election.

I think that explains the knee jerk reaction from Twitter.

But nonetheless you can see that this has led Thio another escalation in this battle not only between social media sites on disinformation on their platforms but between social media sites and trump specifically between Twitter and Trump on it will be interesting to see in the weeks ahead how they how they continue.

Obviously, Twitter's apologized in this instance, but where do they draw the line on what responsibility do they have when it comes to tackling political disinformation?

In particular, Mariana was good to have you on.

Thanks for you Help us ever this marijuana spring in the BBC newsroom.

Now it's important, say the Biden campaign denies that Joe Biden ever met with the Ukrainian executive in this story, but it's already being used as political capital by Donald Trump.

He described The New York Post, has a very fine newspaper and said this at that rally in Iowa.

Now we can see clearly that Biden is a corrupt politician who shouldn't even be allowed to run for the presidency.

Let's bring back in Anthony's circa Anthony.

These stories become so complex, so multifaceted, I sometimes struggled toe kind of work out what their political impact is.

Yeah, well, if you remember four years ago, Donald Trump leaned very heavily in the Wikileaks revelations about Hillary Clinton and her emails and the Democratic National Committee emails to paint Hillary Clinton as corrupt as beholden to global interests.

Well, I think he is trying to reprise that again, this time telling talking about Joe Biden and his sons, lobbying connections and saying that his son influenced Joe Biden's positions on Ukraine Now, the documents in this New York Post article we don't know their exact sourcing.

They don't they aren't even a smoking gun in his.

Far as they give evidence that Joe Biden even communicated with any of Hunter Biden's Ukrainian Ukrainian contacts.

But Donald Trump is again trying to use this to paint.

Joe Biden is corrupt were only 2.5 weeks three weeks from the election.

So it's a little late for these things to happen impact, particularly because the American public hasn't seemed to be that interested in this story over the course of the past few months.

 They're much more interested in Donald Trump's handling of coronavirus and the economy, so I would downplayed the impact of this unless there are more revelations to come. 