Twitter, Facebook Looking To Influence Election by Censoring Post over Hunter Biden Exposé

 

Both Twitter and Facebook took extraordinary censorship measures against The Post on Wednesday over its exposés about Hunter Biden’s emails — and leveled baseless accusations that the reports used “hacked materials.”

The suppression effort came despite presidential candidate Joe Biden’s campaign merely denying that he had anything on his “official schedules” about meeting a Ukrainian energy executive in 2015 — along with zero claims that his son’s computer had been hacked.

The Post’s primary Twitter account was locked as of 2:20 p.m. Wednesday because its articles about the messages obtained from Biden’s laptop broke the social network’s rules against “distribution of hacked material,” according to an email The Post received from Twitter.

Twitter also blocked users from sharing the link to The Post article indicating that Hunter Biden introduced Joe Biden to the Ukrainian businessman, calling the link “potentially harmful.”

“In line with our Hacked Materials Policy, as well as our approach to blocking URLs, we are taking action to block any links to or images of the material in question on Twitter,” a Twitter spokesperson told The Post in a statement.

The company said it took the step because of the lack of authoritative reporting on where the materials included in The Post’s story originated.

Users who clicked the link on Twitter were shown an alert warning them that the webpage may be “unsafe” and could contain content that would break Twitter’s rules if it were shared directly on the platform.

The extraordinary move came after Facebook said it would limit the spread of The Post’s story on its own platform. The social network added that the story would be eligible for review by independent fact-checkers.

US Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) fired off a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday demanding answers about why the platform “censored” The Post’s reporting.

“The seemingly selective nature of this public intervention suggests partiality on the part of Facebook,” Hawley wrote. “And your efforts to suppress the distribution of content revealing potentially unethical activity by a candidate for president raises a number of additional questions, to which I expect responses immediately.”

Hawley later sent a similar letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, blasting the company for what he said was “an unusual intervention that is not universally applied to all content.”

The senator demanded to know how Twitter had determined that The Post’s story was violating its policy on hacked materials and why the company had taken the “unprecedented action” to lock the news org’s account.

“I ask that you immediately answer these questions and provide the necessary justifications so that your users can feel confident that you are not seeking to influence the outcome of the presidential election with your content removal decisions,” Hawley wrote.

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Facebook Finally Moves Against Hamas in West Bank

Facebook has shut down Hamas’ accounts and groups on the social media site amid worsening unrest as Palestinian youths target Israelis in a wave of attacks.

“Facebook has closed, over the past two days, a large number of pages run by and close to the Hamas movement’s media in the occupied West Bank,” the Islamist group said in a statement issued Wednesday.

Hamas said the closures came after a “wide-ranging and organized complaint campaign” that it said was supported by direct pressure applied by the Israeli Telecommunications and Foreign ministries on Facebook’s administration.

The statement added that the closed Facebook pages had “played a key large role in supporting the Al-Quds intifada,” in reference to the spate of protests, riots and violent attacks against Israelis in the West Bank and Israel proper since early October.

“Today and yesterday, [Hamas] pages [based] in Ramallah, Galilee, Nablus, Bethlehem, Qalqilya, Salfit, Tubas and Jenin were closed, as well as the page of Muslim Youth League in the West Bank,” Hamas announced.

It added that Facebook also “launched a campaign against Islamic Bloc pages [based] in West Bank universities, closing the Bloc’s An-Najah, Galilee and Palestine Polytechnic pages.”

“At the same time as the closure of these pages, Facebook has closed and frozen the accounts of dozens of publishers and administrators who run [them].”

Hamas also announced that the page of its official spokesperson, Husam Badran, had been shut down.

A number of Facebook pages close to the Palestinian group have been shut down, including Nabdh Adh-Dhuffah [Pulse of the West Bank] and Kulluna Muqawama [We are All Resistance].

“Before this [Facebook] closed one of the most prominent interactive pages supporting the resistance — Sharik [Participate], which is part of Shabakat Quds Al-Ikhbariya [Quds News Network],” Hamas said.

The social media restrictions on Hamas come amid worsening violence in the West Bank and Israel proper that has left 9 Israelis and 48 Palestinians dead, with many fearing the unrest could portend a third intifada, or uprising.

Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh on October 9 threw his support behind a new Palestinian uprising against the Israelis, saying it is “the only path that will lead to liberation.”

On October 21, a senior Hamas official called on the party’s Palestinian rivals, the Fatah Movement that controls the West Bank, to join the “popular uprising.”

More than a third of divorce filings last year contained the word Facebook, UK Survey!

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg changed his status to “married” Saturday and received over one million “likes” from his followers. But the site he founded isn’t always so marriage-friendly.  In fact, lawyers say the social network 
contributes to an increasing number of marriage breakups.

More than a third of divorce filings last year contained the word Facebook, according to a U.K. survey by Divorce Online, a  legal services firm. And over 80% of U.S. divorce attorneys say they’ve seen a rise in the number of cases using social networking, according to the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. “I see Facebook issues breaking up marriages all the time,” says Gary Traystman, a divorce attorney in New London, Conn. Of the 15 cases he handles per year where computer history, texts and emails are admitted as evidence, 60% exclusively involve Facebook.

“Affairs happen with a lightning speed on Facebook,” says K. Jason Krafsky, who authored the book “Facebook and Your Marriage” with his wife Kelli. In the real world, he says, office romances and out-of-town trysts can take months or even years to develop. “On Facebook,” he says, “they happen in just a few clicks.” The social network is different from most social networks or dating sites in that it both re-connects old flames and allows people to “friend” someone they may only met once in passing. “It puts temptation in the path of people who would never in a million years risk having an affair,” he says. Facebook declined to comment.