Home › Politics › Twitter and Facebook curb Hunter Biden email story
Twitter and Facebook curb Hunter Biden email story
Summary
A look back at how a New York Post report linking Hunter Biden, his father and Burisma led to platform restrictions in mid-October 2020.
What happened on 16 October 2020 in the dispute over a report tying Hunter Biden to Ukrainian gas firm Burisma Holdings? It was a day within a fast-moving episode, and the preceding days set its shape.
On 14 October 2020, 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 response from the platforms came the same day. Twitter and Facebook announced that they were limiting the distribution of the article until it was fact-checked.
The following day, 15 October 2020, Twitter locked the Twitter account of President Donald Trump's presidential campaign. The reason given was that the account had shared private information without that person's permission, in connection with a controversial Hunter Biden video. The account was later unlocked.
Part of a longer pattern
The episode belonged to a wider set of conspiracy theories linked to the 2019 Trump–Ukraine scandal. Since 2016, Trump and his allies have promoted several such theories. One seeks to blame Ukraine, rather than Russia, for interference in the 2016 United States presidential election. Others include accusations against Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.
For Ukraine, the story again placed a Kyiv-based energy company at the centre of a United States election argument. By 16 October 2020, the claims about the emails were being handled on the platforms through limited distribution and fact-checking, while the Trump campaign's account remained locked after the previous day's action.
