Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s confession that the social-media site erred in blocking access to the New York Post’s exposé about Joe and Hunter Biden didn’t go over well.
And the replies to his mea culpa show just how out of touch with his site Dorsey is.
The trouble for Dorsey is this: Blocking access to that story — which showed that Joe Biden lied in saying he never discussed with Hunter Biden the latter’s strangely lucrative business deals in Ukraine — proved the site is in the tank for Biden.
And it showed just how far Twitter’ social-justice warriors will go to ensure a Biden victory on November 3.
The Story and Twitter
The trouble for Dorsey began when someone at Twitter tried blocking access to the shocking story.
The Post secured e-mails from a MacBook Pro left at a repair shop. The owner of the shop turned a hard drive from the laptop over to the FBI and Rudy Giuliani, a top advisor to President Trump. E-mails from the hard drive clearly show Joe Biden lied when he said he had “never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings” in Ukraine.
One e-mail, dated April 17, 2015, thanked Hunter Biden for arranging a meeting with his father, who was then vice president and President Obama’s point man on Ukraine.
A key background detail is Joe Biden’s brag that he forced Ukraine to fire the country’s top prosecutor, who was investigating Burisma Holdings, the company that employed Hunter, a notorious drug addict.
The e-mails, then, belied Joe Biden’s claim that he knew nothing of his son’s lucrative activities, which seemed suspicious given his notorious past.
Twitter acted quickly when the story went viral. It blocked access because the story violated the “Twitter Rules” that forbid sharing “hacked” material, and suspended the Post and White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany.
The e-mails were not, of course, “hacked.”
That move, and a similar effort at Facebook, prompted three letters from Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.): one to Facebook, one to Twitter, and one to the general counsel of the Federal Elections Commission.
Hawley asked Dorsey a series of detailed questions about the social-media site’s policies. Then, in a letter to the FEC, accused Twitter and Facebook of illegal contributions to Biden’s presidential campaign.
Dorsey’s Tweet and Replies
“Our communication around our actions on the @nypost article was not great. And blocking URL sharing via tweet or DM with zero context as to why we’re blocking: unacceptable.”
The tweet was unappreciated.
“This is not nearly good enough,” Hawley replied. “In fact, it’s a joke. It’s downright insulting. I will ask you — and @Facebook — to give an explanation UNDER OATH to the Senate subcommittee I chair. These are potential violations of election law, and that’s a crime.”
But Hawley wasn’t the only user unsatisfied with Dorsey’s explanation.
Conservative writer Steve Sailer observed the obvious: Twitter seems strangely biased when it comes to tripping up a story just when it’s getting legs.
“Have you ever censored news articles referring to the ‘murder’ or ‘killing’ by the police of fentanyl abuser George Floyd, when neither has been proved in a court of law and autopsies suggest neither is likely?” he asked. “If not, why not?”
And Sailer went on:
How many tweets did you blithely transmit promoting the lies that Michael Brown at Ferguson said “Hands up, don’t shoot” or that George Zimmerman was white?
How many stores therefore have been looted and building[s] burned in part due to your activities?
You are still using your monopoly power to censor, @Jack, and thus interfering in the election.
Why don’t you just knock it off and apologize for it?
The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway went after Dorsey, as did Raheem Kassam:
Blocking real news about Hunter and Joe Biden’s corruption for ANY reason is UNACCEPTABLE *and* a donation in kind to the Biden campaign.
Congrats you helped Biden lose the election!
Suppression Failed
How Twitter’s hirsute honcho will proceed, particularly with the threat from Hawley, we are not given to know.
We do know the effort to suppress the story failed. It took off almost the minute Facebook and Twitter tried to kibosh it.
It not only exposed the former vice president’s use of his office to enrich a rogue member of his family, but also the inability of even the social-media tech tyrants to censor news they don’t like.
