Facebook limits spread of The New York Post’s Hunter Biden Exposé

By Noah Manskar

October 14, 2020: Breaking News; Washington Post

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Facebook moved Wednesday to limit the spread of The Post’s reporting on bombshell emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop that show he introduced his father, Joe Biden, to a Ukrainian energy executive — a move that led President Trump’s campaign to accuse the company of “interfering” in the election.

The social network may also have independent fact-checkers examine the exclusive story based on the younger Biden’s emails, according to Facebook spokesma n Andy Stone.

“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,” Stone said on Twitter. “In the meantime, we are reducing its distribution on our platform.”

It was not immediately clear from Stone’s tweet whether Facebook would apply that treatment to just one or all of The Post’s stories about Biden’s private correspondence, which was obtained from a hard drive left at a Delaware computer repair shop.

Facebook generally asks fact-checkers to review stories that the company thinks contain misinformation. The Silicon Valley titan says it adds labels to content that’s been fact-checked so “people can read additional context.”

Facebook did not immediately respond to an email asking why it decided to limit the story’s spread and whether a fact-checker has started reviewing it.

The move drew immediate fire from Trump’s campaign, which accused Facebook of trying to tip the 2020 election in Biden’s favor.

“Facebook is actively interfering in the election,” the campaign tweeted. “Facebook is rigging the election for Joe Biden.”

Meanwhile, Twitter warned some users who tried to retweet the article — which has prompted a US Senate probe — that “headlines don’t tell the full story.” Twitter said the label is meant to encourage users to read the article before sharing it.

The prompt “is part of a test we’re doing right now. It does not depend on the outlet of the article, or the contents of the article,” Twitter spokesman Trenton Kennedy told The Post in an email.