Facebook and Twitter are facing a lot of criticism from observers of American politics, three weeks before the presidential election. Senator Josh Hawley, known for being on the Conservative side, accuses them of violating election law. The reason is that a ‘take it with a grain of salt’ article appeared in the New York Post questioning Joe Biden’s integrity, but it was moderated on social media.
The politician asks the two web giants if there had not been an intervention by Joe Biden’s team, while the newspaper in question complains of a “repressive effort”. Other politicians have also pointed out that this “ censure On the contrary helped to make people talk about it.
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Hawley, who qualifies this “intervention” to have been “coordinated” by the two largest social platforms in the world, asks to remove the ambiguity on their policies of use.
Information that cannot be seen by users
A few months ago, Twitter and Facebook updated the “rules of behavior” that must be adopted on their application. Recently, accounts, as well as Groups and Pages, were deleted for failing to follow the discipline on disinformation. Authors of “fake news” or anti-vaccines are regularly blocked, in order to prevent the spread of false news that could influence the decision of voters.
The blue bird social network works in two stages, because it starts by limiting visibility on the news feed. A few hours later, the URL may no longer appear in a tweet or direct message.
Mark Zuckerberg’s employees preferred to simply prevent the post from becoming a buzz, by reducing its reach with special algorithms.
Information of dubious origin
To justify its action, Twitter recalls that the content authorized to be shared must not come from “stolen” or pirated sources. Indeed, the New York Post would have obtained the information from a computer belonging to the son of Donald Trump’s opponent for the presidential elections. The platform here affirms its desire not to interfere with “civic and electoral integrity”.
If Facebook has not yet applied complete censorship on the news, it is because it reserves the right to verify the veracity of the facts with the help of “third party partners”. Joe Biden’s team denies the entire story, while specifying that the New York Post had never contacted them to verify if it was “fake news”.
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