The New York Post published a story about the laptop of Hunter Biden, and the company scrambled to figure out how to deal with it.
The congressman's emails were published by journalist Matt Taibbi on Friday along with other details about the social media platform's handling of the story.
Less than a month before the 2020 election, the Post published a story that claimed to contain emails recovered from a laptop that belonged to President Joe Biden's son. The initial suppression of the distribution of the story was due to fears that it could be the result of hacking or a foreign misinformation campaign.
Taibbi's thread gave more details into the decision-making process on the first day the story went live. During this time, the California Democrat sent an email to the head of legal, policy, and trust at the time.
There was a huge backlash on hill re speech.
The policy that bars hacked materials from being shared was the reason for the reply.
He said that he was concerned that the story was being blocked because of the 1st Amendment principles. If the materials uncovering a war crime were hacked and obtained by The New York Times, it should be possible for them to be published.
If a journalist aided the hack, they shouldn't be held accountable for it. To restrict the distribution of that material, especially regarding a Presidential candidate, seems not in keeping with the principles of NYT v Sullivan.
The New York Times Co. v. Sullivan established that malice is required in defamation lawsuits. The right of the press to publish illegally leaked classified material was protected by the New York Times Co. case.
I believe Biden didn't do anything wrong, and I said this as a total Biden partisan. It's become a bigger deal than it would have been if it wasn't for the fact that the story now is about censorship.
Section 230 is a measure that gives social media companies the right to moderate content and bars them from being held liable for content posted by users.
In the heat of a Presidential campaign, limiting dissemination of newspaper articles seems like it will invite more backlash than it will do good.
Khanna said in a statement provided to Insider that he believes the Constitution and First Amendment are sacred. As the congressman who represents Silicon Valley, I was concerned that the actions of the company were against the First Amendment. Our democracy can only thrive if we are willing to engage with people we disagree with.
Taibbi published internal communications and decisions about how to handle the Hunter Biden laptop story after it was promised that they would be made public. The thread shows employees at the micro-messaging service weighing how to respond to the Post's story.
In an interview with Kara Swisher, the former head of trust and safety said it was a mistake to censor the story.
We were not sure what to think. We had no idea what was true. Yoel said there was smoke. It didn't make it to a place where I was comfortable removing this content fromTwitter.
Some of the emails obtained from the laptop were later confirmed by other news outlets.
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