Amidst the ongoing controversy over social media giants censuring an investigative report by New York Post on Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden, CEO of micro-blogging site Twitter, Jack Dorsey on Wednesday admitted that the company did an “unacceptable” job of explaining the reason behind why the platform blocked users from sharing the report on Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden.
Taking to Twitter, Jack Dorsey said that it was “unacceptable” that the micro-blogging site was blocking users from sharing the report on Hunter Biden’s emails without providing a clear message as to why it was taking such an action.
It is important to note that Twitter had blocked users from sharing the NY Post article that had reported that Hunter Biden introduced his father Joe to a Ukrainian businessman during his tenure as Vice President to seek some favours.
The micro-blogging site had even locked the NY Post’s Twitter account on Wednesday afternoon for posting the article.
Jack Dorsey’s statement on the controversy came hours after a number of high-profile US politicians including President Trump and other Republicans had slammed the social media giant for blocking the investigative piece from being shared on the platform.
US President Donald Trump had blasted Twitter and Facebook for taking down New York Post’s story of emails related to “Sleepy” Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
Jack says Twitter does not shadow ban based on one’s political belief
Ironically, hours after acknowledging that Twitter had done an unacceptable job in not only censuring contents but also failing to provide a reason for doing so, Jack Dorsey refused to accept the fact that the micro-blogging site blocked or shadow-banned accounts based on their ideology.
When he was asked by American political commentator Dave Rubin on the question of Twitter shadow banning certain users based on their political beliefs, Dorsey replied, “No.”
Interestingly, a day after Jack Dorsey expressed his unhappiness over Twitter regulating content on its platform, the micro-blogging site continued to block social media users from posting the links of the New York Post article.
Despite Jack Dorsey’s clarification on the issue, Twitter locked out Indian journalist Abhijit Majumder and suspended him from tweeting for 12 hours after he shared a series of screenshots of the New York Post article that had made allegations against Joe Biden.
On Wednesday, journalist Abhijit Majumder, in a series of tweets, had shared the images of a report published by New York Post that had allegedly exposed Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s links with a Ukrainian gas company. As he shared the images of the NY Post article, the micro-blogging site decided to lock his Twitter account and barred him posting his tweets for the next 12 hours.
Twitter does not do political campaigning, says Jack Dorsey
Exactly a year ago, the micro-blogging site Twitter, which is often criticised for its left-wing bias, had announced its decisions to ban all political advertising worldwide.
In a series of tweets, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey had said that Twitter is all set to ban political advertising on its platform. Dorsey had announced his decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally stating that the micro-blogging site believed that political message reach “should be earned, not bought”.
However, the ongoing NY Post controversy has now exposed the duplicity of micro-blogging site’s so called policy on staying away from political advertisements and campaigning. Several critics have now pointed out that Twitter’s action against NY Post was essentially political as there was an attempt by micro-blogging site to censure contents that exposed Democratic party Presidential candidate Joe Biden.
New York Post investigative report on Joe Biden
In its investigative report, the New York Post had alleged that they had accessed material from a damaged Macbook Pro, which revealed that Hunter Biden, the son of Joe Biden, had introduced a businessman from Ukraine to him while he was Vice President of the United States.
The report had published several documents and mentioned a video that proved that Joe Biden met Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board of Burisma, where the extent of the Biden family’s involvement, and the sacking of a prosecutor, allegedly after pressure from the then VP Biden, is now under scrutiny.
Twitter and Facebook censor anti-Biden NY post report
Hours after the report was posted by New York Post on social media sites, social media giants Facebook and Twitter arbitrarily censored the investigative report of NY Post that implicated Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden.
Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone said in a tweet that Facebook would be reducing the distribution of the said post. In another tweet, he said that it was a standard process that they follow with every questionable story.
Even as Facebook only restricted the spread of the post, it still allowed the users to post the story. However, Twitter took another leap to disallow users to post the link on its platform at all. The micro-blogging site said it had identified the link as ‘being potentially harmful’.
Twitter also explained the reason behind the decision to block the link and added that the images in the article contained personal information like email addresses and phone numbers that are against their policy.
