Facebook and Twitter limited the distribution of a story in the New York Post about a purported email between Hunter Biden and an adviser to a Ukrainian energy company.
The 2015 email indicates that Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to Burisma, thanked Biden for “giving an opportunity” to meet former Vice President Joe Biden.
The former vice president has previously said he has “never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.”
Facebook said it would rely on its fact-checking partners to determine the story’s legitimacy, but until then, it is taking steps to tamp down on its spread.
“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,” Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone tweeted Wednesday. “In the meantime, we are reducing its distribution on our platform.”
Twitter issued a statement about the incident after Fox News reached out about the story, claiming it took action against the article due to the company’s “Hacked Materials Policy.” Twitter is blocking the post from being shared on its platform.
“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 spokesperson said.
Fox News attempted to send via direct message the article titled “Smoking-gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to VP dad” to another user multiple times but was continually met with the same error message.
On Wednesday afternoon, NY Post business reporter Noah Manskar said the outlet’s official Twitter account had been locked due to the Biden story being sourced from allegedly “hacked” information.
“The Post’s primary Twitter account (@nypost) has also been locked because the Hunter Biden stories violate its rules against ‘distribution of hacked material,’ per email we received from Twitter,” he wrote.
The Post’s primary Twitter account (@nypost) has also been locked because the Hunter Biden stories violate its rules against “distribution of hacked material,” per email we received from Twitter https://t.co/wbeYd6c3CA
— Noah Manskar (@noahmanskar) October 14, 2020
— Noah Manskar (@noahmanskar) October 14, 2020
By Audrey Conklin, Paul Conner, Nick Givas
