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Pompeo calls tech firms ‘inconsistent’ after censorship of Hunter Biden story
By Adam Shaw
Published October 15, 2020
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday hit tech giants like Twitter and Facebook for what he said were “inconsistent” crack downs on accounts.
The remarks were made a day after the two social media platforms shut down accounts for sharing a New York Post story about Hunter Biden's business connections in Ukraine.
“There is a real challenge with some of America’s biggest technology firms banning, suspending accounts in a way that is inconsistent, that is viewpoint driven, that is ideologically driven,” he said in an interview with WIBC Indianapolis. “That’s simply unacceptable.”
He didn’t mention any companies by name, but he had been asked about social media networks that had taken a series of steps to stop the widespread dissemination of an explosive New York Post report this week that purports to show emails from Hunter Biden linking his father, former Vice President Joe Biden, to his Ukraine business dealings.
Republicans and members of the Trump administration have accused the social media platforms, namely Twitter and Facebook, of censorship and implied that the tech giants were in cahoots with the Biden campaign to suppress the story.
Pompeo, however, said that while the State Department had worked to take down a terror threat, it was different when platforms appear to be taking a political viewpoint.
FACEBOOK AND TWITTER REDUCING DISTRIBUTION OF NEW YORK POST HUNTER BIDEN STORY
“It can’t be the case that they can choose a political viewpoint and decide whether they’re going to allow that information to be on their network, on their system, on their social media apparatus simply because they find that the political viewpoint held by those who are trying to communicate are simply exercising their First Amendment freedoms,” he said. “That’s just not the right thing to do.”
On Wednesday night, Twitter sent a series of tweets clarifying why the New York Post articles were in violation of its "hacked materials policy."
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"Commentary on or discussion about hacked materials, such as articles that cover them but do not include or link to the materials themselves, aren’t a violation of this policy," Twitter said. "Our policy only covers links to or images of hacked material themselves."
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey also shared the update and said the company had not done a good enough job of communicating why it took the actions it did.
Fox News’ Marisa Schultz contributed to this report
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/pompeo-tech-firms-inconsistent-hunter-biden