Twitter unfreezes NY Submit’s account after Republican backlash | US & Canada
The social media platform had the newspaper’s ability to tweet after posting articles about Joe Biden’s son that Twitter said was in violation of the hacked materials guidelines.
Twitter has frozen the New York Post account, the US-based social media company said on Friday following a legislative reaction.
The company said it changed its policy on hacked materials and that the Post could resend tweets from their account.
The social media platform suspended the newspaper’s account on Oct. 14 after posting articles about the son of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden that, according to Twitter, violated the guidelines for hacked materials.
“We’re baaaaaaack,” the newspaper tweeted after its account was restored.
We are baaaaaaack https://t.co/D39qdLGMdV pic.twitter.com/SkVtp4o9ew
– New York Post (@nypost) October 30, 2020
Earlier this week, Twitter chairman Jack Dorsey drew fire from Republican lawmakers accusing the company of selective censorship against conservatives.
Dorsey was part of a group of social media company executives who were harassed by lawmakers about their content handling in the run-up to the November 3rd US presidential election, in which President Donald Trump ran against Democratic candidate Joe Biden.
The heads of Twitter, Facebook Inc and Apple Inc virtually testified during a hearing on Wednesday whether to repeal a section of the Communications Decency Act that protects companies from liability for content posted on their platforms.
Republican leaders, including Trump himself, have accused the platforms of anti-conservative bias after Twitter and Facebook blocked a link to a New York Post story based on unverified emails about Biden and his son Hunter.
Twitter was wrong in blocking web links on an unverified political story, Dorsey said on Oct. 16, when responding to criticism of a decision to block links to the Biden story on their platform.
“Directly blocking URLs was wrong, and we updated our policies and enforcement to address it,” Dorsey tweeted. “Our goal is to try to add context, and now we have the opportunity to do that.”
Republican lawmakers beat up Twitter for handling the Biden story. Senator Ted Cruz said during the hearing on Wednesday that the company’s “behavior was by far the most egregious” of any platform.
“Who the hell voted you and made you responsible for what the media can report and what the American people can hear?” Asked Cruz.
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