New reporting fuels backlash against tech companies' choice to suppress Hunter Biden laptop story
In a controversial move just before the 2020 election, Twitter and Facebook throttled the reach of a New York Post article that reported on emails allegedly found on the laptop of Hunter Biden, who is President Joe Biden's son. Taking things a step further, Twitter even blocked users from posting links to the story in the wake of some intelligence experts deeming it to be "Russian disinformation."
Twitter's then-CEO Jack Dorsey eventually admitted the move was a "total mistake," but the damage had already been done, with conservative pundits saying that the suppression of the story was proof of Big Tech's agenda to provide cover for the Biden administration.
Fast-forward to this week, new reporting from The Washington Post and The New York Times has confirmed key details from the story. On Wednesday, The Post reported that, “Thousands of emails purportedly from the laptop computer of Hunter Biden" are "authentic communications that can be verified through cryptographic signatures from Google and other technology companies."
“Neither expert reported finding evidence that individual emails or other files had been manipulated by hackers, but neither was able to rule out that possibility," The Post's report stated.
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Writing for The Post this Thursday, business reporter Cristiano Lima points out that the new findings "highlight the fact that tech companies appear to have acted both forcefully and preemptively against a perceived threat that to this day has not been publicly corroborated."
"But the findings are also resurfacing broader debates within civil society about where social media’s obligations to curtail suspected misinformation begin and end," Lima writes. "One crucial question: What role, if any, should they play in restricting reporting by prominent news organizations, particularly when dealing with unverified or dubious sourcing?"
Read the full analysis over at The Washington Post.