The two Silicon Valley giants saw that hostile climate and reacted. Just two hours after the story was online, Facebook intervened. The company dispatched a life-long Democratic Party operative who now works for Facebook Andy Stone, previously a communications operative for Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, among other D.C. Democratic jobs to announce that Facebook was "reducing [the article's] distribution on our platform": in other words, tinkering with its own algorithms to suppress the ability of users to discuss or share the news article. The long-time Democratic Party official did not try to hide his contempt for the article, beginning his censorship announcement by snidely noting: "I will intentionally not link to the New York Post."
Twitter's suppression efforts went far beyond Facebook's. They banned entirely all users' ability to share the Post article not just on their public timeline but even using the platform's private Direct Messaging feature.
Early in the day, users who attempted to link to the New York Post story either publicly or privately received a cryptic message rejecting the attempt as an "error." Later in the afternoon, Twitter changed the message, advising users that they could not post that link because the company judged its contents to be "potentially harmful."
Even more astonishing still, Twitter locked the account of the New York Post, banning the paper from posting any content all day and, evidently, into Thursday morning. The last tweet from the paper was posted at roughly 2:00 p.m. ET on Wednesday.
And then, on Thursday morning, the Post published a follow-up article using the same archive of materials, this one purporting to detail efforts by the former vice president's son to pursue lucrative deals with a Chinese energy company by using his father's name. Twitter is now also banning the sharing or posting of links to that article as well.
In sum, the two Silicon Valley giants, with little explanation, united to prevent the sharing and dissemination of this article. As Los Angeles Times reporter Matt Pearce put it, "Facebook limiting distribution is a bit like if a company that owned newspaper delivery trucks decided not to drive because it didn't like a story. Does a truck company edit the newspaper? It does now, apparently."
THAT THE FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHT of free speech is inapplicable to these questions goes without saying. That constitutional guarantee restricts the actions of governments, not private corporations such as Facebook and Twitter.
But glibly pointing this out does not come close to resolving this controversy. That actions by gigantic corporations are constitutional does not mean that they are benign.
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