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Facebook and Twitter take unusual steps to limit spread of New York Post story - The Washington Post

Facebook and Twitter take unusual steps to limit spread of New York Post story - The Washington Post

Facebook and Twitter take unusual steps to limit spread of New York Post story - The Washington Post
Oct 15, 2020 1 min, 49 secs

Facebook and Twitter took unusual steps Wednesday to limit readership of an article by the New York Post about alleged emails from Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s son, one of the rare occasions they have sanctioned a traditional media outlet.

The Biden campaign said his schedule indicated no such meeting took place.

Facebook preemptively limited the spread of the story while sending it to third-party fact-checkers, a decision the company said it has taken on various occasions but is not the standard process.

“So terrible that Facebook and Twitter took down the story of ‘Smoking Gun‘ emails related to Sleepy Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, in the @NYPost,” Trump wrote on Twitter.

Some of the dozens of scenarios Facebook and Twitter prepared for were along the lines of the 2016 campaign, when Russia-tied WikiLeaks dumped the emails of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta.

3 trending topic in the U.S., thanks to viral tweets by White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, right-wing outlets such as One America News, Donald Trump Jr., and later, the Trump campaign.

"For Twitter to lock the main account of the campaign of the President of the United States is a breathtaking level of political meddling and nothing short of an attempt to rig the election,” he said in a statement.

On Facebook, the limitations on the post meant that by Wednesday afternoon, there were fewer than 4,000 clicks, likes and shares of the original New York Post story on Facebook, and roughly 214,000 overall.

Josh Hawley (R-Mo), who said he sent a letter asking Facebook to explain its decision to “censor” the story.

Earlier this month, Facebook took action on a false story spread by the Trump campaign and Fox News, as well as a tweet by a New York Post reporter, that Biden was wearing an earpiece at the presidential debates.

The company also limited the spread of a false story claiming that far-left activists started the wildfires in the Pacific Northwest this summer.

Twitter has held roughly a dozen such exercises since March, including the same scenarios as Facebook, as well as attempts to manipulate its trending topics feature and coordinated online voter suppression campaigns, said spokesman Nicholas Pacilio.

Summarized by 365NEWSX ROBOTS

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