Big Tech Companies’ Censorship of Hunter Biden Story
By: Daniel Velasquez
Apparently those who own and run big tech companies like Twitter, Facebook and Google get to decide who can post and what can be posted on their platforms as well as determine what is and is not fake news. They have proven by their actions that if one's post or comments do not align with their views and beliefs they can and will block posts, shadow ban or flat out ban users from their platform.
Twitter and Facebook committed a heinous act of censorship when they blocked the Hunter Biden story by the New York Post, the nation's oldest daily newspaper, founded by Alexander Hamilton in 1801. Aside from having their story blocked, they were locked out of their Twitter account. For those that saw the post and shared it the link was disabled preventing users from being directed to the article and could not share through a direct message. The reason this instance was such a heinous act of censorship is the story potentially involves Joe Biden.
The expose provides emails from Hunter Biden's laptop showing proof of Hunter Biden setting up meetings between his dad, then vice president of the United States, and Vadym Pozharskyi, an advisor of Burisma. Hunter was using his father to cash in on deals with the Ukrainian energy company. Hunter Biden sat on the board of Burisma making $50,000 a month despite not having any background in the energy sector and in return he would use his political leverage to help the company.
At the time, Joe Biden was in charge of Ukraine policy under the Obama administration. During this time, he pressured the Ukrainian president and prime minister into firing the Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin. Shokin mentioned that at the time of his firing he was launching a crime investigation on Burisma and their executive board members, which included Hunter Biden.
Although the method of how the emails and laptop were obtained are sketchy, there are photos of emails, receipts and of a Delaware subpoena that show the laptop and hard drive were seized by the FBI. For Twitter and Facebook to censor the New York Post’s story despite all the evidence is a disgusting act of censorship, and their excuse was just as disgusting.
Andy Stone, a communications officer who previously served as a Democratic consultant and strategist, tweeted the article was subject to be fact checked and it was reducing the spread of the article on their platform.
Facebook’s actions of fact checking are being applied unfairly. Many users were able to freely create posts claiming the Hunter Biden emails and laptop were Russian disinformation without providing any evidence. Adam Schiff, the representative for California's 28th district, claims that the emails and laptop is Russian disinformation. The Director of National Intelligence came out and said there is no evidence to back Schiff’s allegations. Yet Facebook is allowing its users to redistribute Schiff’s claims despite the controversy.
The story should have been left alone. If the Biden campaign is saying the story is false, the burden of proof lies on them. All they have to do is provide proof that discredits the story, but they have not denied the emails and have only stated that there was no meeting with Burisma on their official schedule. One would think if the information was false the Biden campaign would release a statement and put it to rest.
Twitter claimed the story was banned because the information obtained from Hunter's laptop and emails violated their hacked-materials policy, but they quickly changed its hacked-materials policy after public backlash. The policy was changed to only block publications of hacked material shared directly from the hacker or those working with them.
Although there were changes to policy, the story remained blocked, and the New York Post was still locked out of their account. The banning of the story was wrong and clearly political interference to protect Joe Biden. Twitter’s use of the hacked material policy was a reach as the laptop and emails were not hacked.
The hacked-material policy is being enforced inconsistently because the Pentagon papers, Snowden’s NSA documents and Trump’s tax returns were all the product of hacked material or material obtained illegally and none of these were censored, thankfully.
The manner in which information is obtained should not matter, what matters is the content. This policy hurts journalists and whistleblowers, preventing them from coming forward and revealing important information to the American public.
The act of censoring the story is a disservice to the American people. The article should be readily available if anyone wishes to access it, and readers have the right to raise questions and have questions answered regarding Hunter Biden’s emails. Allowing big tech oligarchs to decide who gets to voice their opinion and what content is and is not allowed is dangerous.
No matter where you reside on the political spectrum, this should be concerning. Right now, it is disproportionately conservatives with unpopular views and opinions being censored, but the next time big tech could very well censor progressives on behalf of establishment Democrats. This whole ordeal raises an important question: is it time to amend the First Amendment to include social media?
Big tech companies potentially pose a threat to our individual liberties in a time when social media is the most common outlet to exercise one’s right of free speech. Allowing big tech companies' power to suppress and censor citizens is problematic. After all these are unelected, undemocratic bureaucracies whose only goal is to protect their profit margins.