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- Texas Sen. Ted Cruz called out Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey for “censorship” for locking The New York out of its account for two weeks.
- The New York Post on October 14 published a dubious article on Hunter Biden that has several red flags pertaining to the sourcing. Dorsey said the story violated its terms of service for distributing hacked materials.
- Cruz questioned Dorsey on Twitter’s handling of the story during a Senate committee hearing on Section 230, the law that states tech companies cannot be held liable for content published on their platforms.
- Twitter has previously locked prominent figures out of their accounts until they have deleted tweets that violate Twitter’s terms of service.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey came under fire from Sen. Ted Cruz for locking the New York Post out of its account for two weeks.
Cruz took aim at Twitter for “making the unilateral decision to censor” the Post, claiming its policy enforcement allows social media companies to dictate to news publishers “what stories they can publish.”
New York Post has been locked out of its Twitter account for two weeks because it has not deleted a tweet linking to a dubious article on Hunter Biden, Dorsey said during a Senate committee hearing on Section 230, the law that states tech companies cannot be held liable for content published on their platforms.
Dorsey said, “They have to log into their account, which they can do right this minute, delete the original tweet, which fell under our original enforcement action, and they can tweet the exact same material…and it will go through.”
Dorsey has since publicly apologized for how the company handled the situation, and said that blocking links to the story was “wrong.”
The New York Post published an article on October 14 purporting to show an email of Hunter Biden communicating with a Ukrainian official about meeting with his father, Joe Biden, when he was vice president.
The story had several red flags, including how the Post obtained the materials and whether they were legitimate. Business Insider, along with other sites, had identified the source of the email who "couldn't get his facts straight" when laying out the timeline of how he obtained the information.
Facebook had also moved to restrict circulation of the article while it was fact-checked.
Twitter has locked prominent users out of accounts in the past. Dorsey previously locked the official President Donald Trump reelection campaign Twitter account after it posted clips relating to the Hunter Biden story. Twitter locked President Donald Trump's account after sharing the email address of a New York Post columnist praising him for battling coronavirus.