Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. are under the spotlight today after it was revealed that both companies have limited the distribution of a New York Post article that claims to have obtained scandalous information.

The article claims to have obtained leaked emails and video that was allegedly on a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden. It’s alleged that in April 2019 that laptop was taken to a computer repair shop in Delaware. The hard drive from the machine was then passed on to Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, after which it ended up in the hands of the FBI.

The veracity of the information obtained is highly questionable, with some media outlets claiming that this is a smear campaign in line with Russia’s efforts to disseminate disinformation. For that reason, Facebook down-ranked the story, but given that it’s not obvious at the moment how true it is, it wasn’t taken down.

“While I will intentionally not link to the New York Post, I want [to] be clear that this story is eligible to be fact-checked by Facebook’s third-party fact-checking partners,” tweeted Facebook Policy Communications Manager Andy Stone. “In the meantime, we are reducing its distribution on our platform.”

Twitter went a step further, blocking the sharing of the article completely. “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 said in a statement. Twitter added that since the story contains “personal and private information” such as email addresses and phone numbers it violates the company’s anti-doxxing rules.

“Our communication around our actions on the @nypost article was not great,” Chief Executive Jack Dorsey later tweeted. “And blocking URL sharing via tweet or DM with zero context as to why we’re blocking: unacceptable.”

Not surprisingly, President Trump also took to Twitter to air his views. “So terrible that Facebook and Twitter took down the story of ‘Smoking Gun’ emails related to Sleepy Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, in the @NYPost,” he wrote. “It is only the beginning for them. There is nothing worse than a corrupt politician. REPEAL SECTION 230!!!”

Photo: Jason Howie/Flickr