In a hearing today before the Committee on the Judiciary, the CEOs of Facebook and Twitter faced harsh criticism over their censorship of the New York Post’s bombshell Hunter Biden stories.
Fox News reports that in a hearing today before the Committee on the Judiciary titled “Breaking the News: Censorship, Suppression, and the 2020 Election,” Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg faced harsh criticism and questioning over the censorship of the New York Post’s bombshell story on Hunter Biden.
Breitbart News has reported extensively on the censorship of the NY Post story and outlined the steps taken by social media firms to limit the reach of the article including locking the publication’s Twitter account until they deleted tweets linking to the article.
During the hearing today, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) mentioned the Post in his opening statement saying: “That to me seems like you’re the ultimate editor. The editorial decision by the New York Post to run the story was overridden by Twitter and Facebook in different fashions to prevent its dissemination. Now if that’s not making an editorial decision I don’t know what would be.”
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey addressed the situation stating: “We made a quick interpretation using no other evidence that the materials in the article were obtained through hacking, and according to our policy, we blocked them from being spread. Upon further consideration, we admitted this action was wrong and corrected it within 24 hours.”
Dorsey added that the Post was instructed to delete their tweet in order to unlock their account but the Post pushed for Twitter to reverse their decision to limit their account entirely. Dorsey said that at the time Twitter did not have a policy or process in place to handle the situation. “This incident demonstrated that we needed one and so we created one we believe is fair and appropriate,” he said.
Read more about today’s hearing at Breitbart Tech here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or email him at [email protected]