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Why did Twitter lock Trump campaign's account?
Summary
A look back at the 14–15 October 2020 dispute over a New York Post article on Hunter Biden, Burisma and platform limits on sharing it.
What happened on 15 October 2020, and why did a story about a Ukrainian gas company end up in a fight over social media rules? The answer begins a day earlier, on 14 October 2020.
That day the New York Post reported that newly uncovered emails suggested Hunter Biden had introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a top executive at Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian natural gas firm. The Post said it had obtained the alleged emails from Rudy Giuliani, described as a top adviser to Donald Trump.
The platforms responded quickly. Also on 14 October 2020, Twitter and Facebook announced they were limiting the distribution of the article until it had been fact-checked.
On 15 October 2020, Twitter locked the account of President Donald Trump's campaign. The company said the account had shared private information without that person's permission, in connection with a controversial Hunter Biden video. The account was later unlocked.
Where the story fits
The episode belongs to a wider set of claims linked to the 2019 Trump–Ukraine scandal. Since 2016, Trump and his allies have promoted several conspiracy theories related to it, including accusations against Joe Biden and Hunter Biden. One such theory seeks to blame Ukraine, rather than Russia, for interference in the 2016 US presidential election.
What the two days showed
The sequence was brief but telling. A claim about a Ukrainian company moved from a newspaper report to platform restrictions within a day, and then to an enforcement action against a campaign account the next. Ukraine was the setting for the allegations, but the decisions on 14 and 15 October 2020 were taken by American media and technology companies, and the dispute played out in American politics.
