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The Federal Election Commission dismissed Republican accusations that Twitter violated election laws in October. stop people from posting links With an unfounded New York Post article about Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s son Hunter Biden, with a decision likely to set a precedent for future lawsuits involving social media sites and federal campaigns.
According to a document outlining the decision by The New York Times, the FEC has determined that Twitter’s actions in relation to the Hunter Biden article were permissible and were permissible for a valid business reason, not a political one.
The commission’s decision, taken behind closed doors last month and soon to be made public, gives social media giants like Twitter, Facebook and Snapchat more flexibility in controlling what is shared on their federal election-related platforms.
The suppression of the article about Hunter Biden sparked an avalanche of conservative criticism in October, sparking accusations that the tech company improperly aided the Biden presidential campaign, including an official complaint by the Republican National Committee saying Twitter’s actions were “illegal”. . – kind contribution” campaign.
But the FEC disagreed. The commission said Twitter “convincingly explained” that blocking distribution of the article was a commercial decision and, based on the “factual and legal analysis” provided to the complainants, the attack followed existing policies regarding hacked material.
actually twitter reversed Within a day of the decision to block distribution of the Hunter Biden article, the course and its CEO, Jack Dorsey, called the first move “one.” “mistake.”
The FEC’s official vote on the case – the commission split evenly between three Democrat-aligned commissioners and three Republicans – is not yet public, and neither are any additional statements written by the commissioners. Such statements often accompany the closing of cases and can provide further information on the commission’s reasoning.
In addition to dismissing the RNC complaint, the FEC also dismissed other allegations that Twitter violated election laws by “shadow banning” Republican users or limited the visibility of their posts without explanation; suppression of other anti-Biden content; and tagging former President Donald J. Trump’s tweets with warnings about their veracity. The FEC denied these accusations, writing that it is “vague, speculative and not supported by available information.”
Republicans led by Mr. became more and more contradictory He accuses the country’s biggest tech and social media companies and Silicon Valley giants of giving Democrats an edge on their platforms.
Twitter initially said it blocked linking to the Hunter Biden article because of its current policy against distributing hacked material. The article was based on material provided by Trump allies, who spent months trying to smear the elderly Mr. Biden for his son and focused on the Bidens’ involvement in Ukraine.
But Mr Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, accepted In October, blocking connections with “zero context as a cause” had become “unacceptable”.
Shortly after, Twitter said it changed its policy on hacked material and would allow similar content to be posted, including a hashtag to provide context about the source of the information.
The FEC documents reveal one reason why Twitter was particularly skeptical of the Hunter Biden article. According to the FEC, the company’s head of site integrity said Twitter “received official warnings throughout 2020 that ‘malicious state actors’ from federal law enforcement could hack and publish material related to political campaigns and that Hunter Biden could be a target for such an operation.”
The FEC said it found “no information that Twitter coordinated” its decisions with the Biden campaign. In a sworn statement, Twitter’s head of US public policy said he was not aware of any contact with the Biden team before the company made the decision, according to the FEC document.
Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
RNC spokesperson Emma Vaughn said the committee was “considering options to appeal this disappointing decision by the FEC”.
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