Social media sites Twitter and Facebook took their partisan censorship efforts up a notch this week when they intentionally blocked users from sharing a New York Post article about Hunter Biden’s misdeeds (read more here). Twitter blocked users from sharing the article’s URL and locked the accounts of individuals who shared the story in other ways – including DM (direct message). 

Twitter initially said it blocked the article because it contained information that violated its “hacked materials policy,” but later said it blocked the article because it contained personal information including phone numbers and email addresses.

“Our communication around our actions on the @nypost article was not great,” admits Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. “And blocking URL sharing via tweet or DM with zero context as to why we’re blocking: unacceptable.”

“This is not the American way,” said White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany after she was locked out of her Twitter account for sharing the article with her one million followers. “This is not how a freedom-loving democracy operates. We have to have to hold Twitter accountable, and Facebook too, who is banning the transmission of this story simply because ideologically it hurts the side of the aisle that Silicon Valley prefers. It’s sad, it’s censorship, [and] this is not America.”

Twitter even went so far as to lock down the account belonging to The New York Post.

“This is a Big Tech information coup. This is digital civil war,” wrote NYP editor Sohrab Ahmari. “I, an editor at The New York Post, one of the nation’s largest papers by circulation, can’t post one of our own stories that details corruption by a major-party presidential candidates, Biden.”

Facebook responded to the Post article by restricting viewership while its fact-checkers determine the article’s authenticity. 

“While I will intentionally not link to The New York Post, I want to be clear that this story is eligible to be fact-checked by Facebook’s third-party fact-checking partners,” said Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone. “In the meantime, we are reducing its distribution on our platform.”

Stone added that Facebook is “working to take faster action to prevent misinformation from going viral, especially given that quality reporting and fact-checking takes time.”

Author’s Note: This is outrageous. Social media’s attempts to interfere with the presidential election must end. Twitter and Facebook should not have the authority to block news articles for any reason. 

As critics have pointed out, Twitter and Facebook did not block articles about the obviously-fake Steel Dossier when Trump was running for president in 2016. This is a massive violation of the First Amendment and Twitter and Facebook should be taken offline until November 4th.