Do Facebook and Twitter regret blowing up their reputations to save Joe Biden? Some executives might, but they won’t admit it.
Few stories can better encapsulate the bias of our Silicon Valley tech overlords, who have assumed unique and powerful roles facilitating American elections in the 21st-century tech-dominated era than the Hunter Biden saga this fall.
On Oct. 14., The New York Post published its first in a series of exposés blowing back the curtain on Biden family corruption, an October surprise unearthing groundbreaking revelations in a story that began to unravel over Democrats’ impeachment play last year.
Emails the Post obtained from a Delaware laptop abandoned at a computer repair shop revealed Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden had lied when making repeated denials of ever discussing business with his son. Biden’s lies extended through the primaries.
The 77-year-old candidate even fat-shamed an Iowa voter for bringing the story up of Hunter Biden serving on the board of a Ukrainian energy company despite no prior experience in the industry while raking in upwards of $50,000 a month in excess compensation. At the time of Hunter’s lucrative overseas board gig in Ukraine, Joe Biden was serving as the “public face” of the Obama White House’s policy towards the eastern European ally.
Facebook and Twitter promptly shut down the story after spending two years censoring President Donald Trump and the Republican’s affiliated campaign accounts at least 65 times between each platform while not doing the same to Biden once.
Without providing an explanation for hours after it disabled users’ ability to link the Post’s story, Twitter eventually explained it had blocked sharing because the article included “hacked” content. The nation’s oldest newspaper was also locked out of its account in a suspension that eventually lasted two weeks despite more evidence coming forward to corroborate its reporting and cement its credibility, including the existence of an FBI probe featuring federal investigators who had also retrieved the laptop contents reported by the Post.
Through a spokesperson who had been a Democratic staffer, Facebook released a statement moments after the Post’s first bombshell that the platform would preemptively suppress the story until its third-party fact-checkers censored it officially.
While I will intentionally not link to the New York Post, I want be clear that this story is eligible to be fact checked by Facebook's third-party fact checking partners. In the meantime, we are reducing its distribution on our platform.
— Andy Stone (@andymstone) October 14, 2020
It’s clear however, considering legacy media’s favorite stories of the Trump era, that neither platform enforced its rules consistently.
If they had, they would have censored stories related to the president’s phone call with his Ukrainian counterpart that became the basis for impeachment, the president’s tax returns, Michael Flynn’s phone call with the Russian ambassador, the Democrat National Committee-funded Steele dossier, Donald Trump Jr.’s WikiLeaks emails, The Atlantic’s anonymously-sourced story in September charging Trump with out-of-character remarks disparaging American troops, The Atlantic’s story about a shooting it made up, secretly recorded Trump audio, secretly recorded Melania Trump audio, and smears against the Covington Catholic students at the March for Life in Washington D.C.
Yet, while Facebook claimed the Hunter Biden story first needed to be cleared by the arbiters of truth at the company, some of which are either funded by communist China or run by partisan leftists who have gone on record to trash Republicans as racist, questions remain surrounding Facebook’s selective censorship.
Did the fact-checkers at Facebook ever make their findings public? Have they retracted or altered their checks after last week’s statement from Hunter Biden that he is under an ongoing FBI investigation? Will these entities remain fact-checking partners going forward?
Has Facebook detailed which of its paid Fact Check partners were the basis for it suspending the Hunter Biden story's spread? Have these partners retracted or altered their checks? Will they remain Fact Check partners going forward given such obvious inaccuracy?
— Ben Domenech (@bdomenech) December 11, 2020
Facebook did not respond to The Federalist’s request for answers on these questions.
Legacy corporate media is just as guilty of election interference on behalf of their preferred presidential candidate, chalking up the Post’s blockbuster reporting to Russian disinformation, regurgitating Democrat talking points on the issue. Never mind that the myth of Russian disinformation about the Hunter Biden laptop had been disputed with on-the-record statements from the FBI, the Department of Justice, the Department of National Intelligence, and the Department of State all prior to the November contest. The typical culprits of corporate disinformation stuck to their debunked narrative, including CNN, the Washington Post, and the taxpayer-funded activists at National Propaganda Radio.
Shot and chaser. pic.twitter.com/4O4RIPHYPg
— Courtney Shadegg (@CShadegg) December 10, 2020
We now know that the Biden family is the subject of at least three federal investigations under Justice Department offices in Delaware, in New York probing Hunter Biden’s finances, and in Pennsylvania, where Politico reported prosecutors are examining hospital deals involving Joe Biden’s brother James.
What’s public surrounding the Biden family business ventures leveraging Joe Biden’s political status have likely only scratched the surface of the family’s operations. There still remain transactions detailed in a September Senate report released by Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin where the circumstances remain relatively unknown.
Senate investigators found, for example, that Hunter Biden took $3.5 million from an ex-Moscow mayor’s wife. Senate investigators also flagged a six-figure shopping spree for Hunter Biden, James Biden, and James’s wife paid for by Chinese businessman backed by the Chinese Communist Party as potentially criminal.
Hunter Biden business partner-turned whistleblower named Tony Bobulinski came forward in October to offer further details into the family practices, raising concern that the president-elect might be compromised by China. It’s an extreme claim if true, but it’s one with far more credibility than ever existed for claims that President Donald Trump was compromised by the Russians.
It’s undeniably clear the Hunter Biden stories several months ago had merit, and warranted serious, uncensored coverage in the midst of a presidential campaign as voters made their decision who place in the nation’s highest office for the next four years. While big tech’s election interference might have saved them the election, it likely also came at a long-lasting cost, destroying their credibility as platforms presiding over the 21st-century public square and exposing them as publishers making editorial decisions that hide the truth.
With that will likely come enhanced regulation of the Silicon Valley tech giants wielding unchecked power, a consequence for the tech elites for sure. But worse, the blatantly unfair censorship further erodes institutional trust, which the nation needs for self-preservation and national harmony.
The United States is now well on its way to becoming a nation where two sides can’t even share the same online platform, and that is an ugly predicament.
A Twitter spokesperson declined to comment on this story.
