another story in the us that continues
to flare up concerns how social media
platforms deal with content they feel is
incorrect or
inappropriate this issue is back because
of twitter and facebook's decision to
restrict access
to this story in the new york post this
is a big deal it's the first time a
social media company has proactively
blocked an article from a major
mainstream news organization the new
york post is a newspaper and website
owned by rupert murdoch
the story in question was provided to
the post by donald trump's lawyer rudy
giuliani and it alleges a direct link
between joe biden
and joe biden's son's business dealings
in ukraine
it includes a cache of emails and other
data purportedly
from a laptop owned by hunter biden but
which was left at a repair shop in
delaware but there are a number of
major holes in this story which is why
twitter and facebook are both
restricting
how it's being shared twitter said it
took action because
the images contained in the articles
include personal and private information
like email addresses and phone numbers
which violate our rules
it went on to say it viewed material
included in the articles as violations
of our hacked materials policy
while the white house press secretary
kelly mcinerney
had her twitter account suspended after
she shared the article
she's calling the whole thing censorship
and donald trump also turned to this
at his rally in iowa last night good
kaylee she's so great she's
incredible they closed down her account
she's the white house press secretary
because she's reporting the truth
and this is interesting the twitter ceo
jack dorsey has now said
that it was unacceptable for the
platform to block users from
linking to the article without context
and explanation for the decision so he's
saying to some degree
they got this one wrong let's bring in
mariana spring the bbc's disinformation
reporter
to talk about this marianne i saw one
commentator in the us saying the tech
platforms are flailing
in front of this issue and they do seem
to be still working out exactly what to
do
yep definitely there's increasing
pressure on social media sites to tackle
misinformation in the build-up to the us
election
and hence why we've seen a number of
tweets posts from both
trump and biden's campaigns being
labelled in recent weeks
but this is a whole different thing this
is a decision to limit the spread
of a mainstream news article which makes
a number of allegations which people are
questioning but nonetheless is seen as
as a step forward in what twitter and
facebook decided to do
facebook's action was less surprising
because they tend to de-prioritize
stories
until they've been checked by
third-party fact-checkers and then they
allow them to be
shared more widely whereas twitter's
decision to label
this this link with a pop-up which
essentially says
this could be harmful don't click on it
was taken very badly
by a number of republican supporters and
not just those really
you know ardent pro-trump supporters but
actually more moderate republicans who
felt like this was twitter and facebook
overstepping their mark
twitter later went on to explain as you
say that this was to do with privacy
that they felt that the article included
details which
breached their terms in terms of sharing
private contact details
but also that this was about hacking and
a concern that this information had been
obtained through hacking and they don't
allow that kind of information to be
shared on their platform
but they do allow news sites to report
on hacking and that again explains
the concern from a lot of commentators
and
when we've talked about hacking in the
past with reference to disinformation
there's been a foreign dimension
to it is there a foreign dimension to
this story
at the moment we can't answer that
question we don't know and that is the
case with the number of disinformation
campaigns we've seen in the build-up to
this election but it is something we
know has happened in the past
russian actors have been involved in
hacking operations which
uh which have produced uh information
that people fear could have interfered
with or impacted voters and the election
and i think that explains the knee-jerk
reaction from twitter
but nonetheless you can see that this
has led to
another escalation in this battle not
only between social media sites and
disinformation on their platforms but
between social media sites and trump
specifically between twitter and trump
and it will be interesting to see in the
weeks ahead
how they how they continue obviously
twitter's apologized in this instance
but where do they draw the line and what
responsibility do they have when it
comes to tackling political
disinformation in particular
mariana was good to have you on thanks
for your help as ever uh let's mariana
spring
in the bbc newsroom now it's important
to say the biden campaign denies that
joe biden
ever met with the ukrainian executive in
this story but it's already being used
as political capital by donald trump
he described the new york post as a very
fine newspaper and said this
at that rally in iowa now we can see
clearly that biden is a corrupt
politician who shouldn't even be allowed
to run for the presidency well let's
bring back in
anthony zurker um anthony these stories
become so
complex so multifaceted i sometimes
struggle to to kind of work out what
their political impact is
yeah well if you remember four years ago
donald trump leaned very heavily into
wikileaks revelations about hillary
clinton in her emails and the democratic
national committee emails
to paint hillary clinton as corrupt uh
as
beholden to global interests well i
think he is trying to reprise that again
this time telling talking about joe
biden
and his son's lobbying connections and
saying that his son
influenced joe biden's positions on
ukraine
now the documents in this new york post
article we don't know their exact
sourcing
they don't they aren't even a smoking
gun in as far as they give evidence that
joe biden
even communicated with any of hunter
biden's ukrainian
ukrainian contacts but donald trump is
again trying to use this to paint joe
biden as corrupt
we're only two and a half weeks three
weeks from the election
so it's a little late for these things
to have an impact particularly because
the american public hasn't seem to be
that interested
in this story over the course of the
past few months they're much more
interested in
donald trump's handling of coronavirus
and the economy so i would downplay the
impact of this
unless there are more revelations to
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