Name: If ‘unreliable’ is the issue, why did social media never block anti-Trump stories?
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If ‘unreliable’ is the issue, why did social media never block anti-Trump stories?

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This is what totalitarianism looks like in our century: not men in darkened cells driving screws under the fingernails of dissidents, but Silicon Valley dweebs removing from vast swaths of the Internet a damaging exposé on their preferred presidential candidate.That’s what Facebook and Twitter on Hunter Biden, revealing why the illustrious vice-presidential son was hired by a shady Ukrainian energy firm in exchange for at least $50,000 a month.According to e-mails , Hunter introduced the firm’s executives to his father — just when Joe Biden was the second-most powerful man on earth, with outsize influence over the fate of the embattled Eastern European country.That information is squarely in the public interest as we head into an election, right? Yes, but it’s also extremely , and so social-media executives went into action.Andy Stone, a member of Facebook’s p.r. team, said, “We are reducing [the Post story’s] distribution on our platform.” Before joining the social-media giant, Stone worked for Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, yet he insisted that Facebook’s action was “part of our standard process to reduce the spread of misinformation.” Right.Then, Twitter began blocking users from posting the story, with a spokesman telling a Washington Examiner scribe that the move was prompted by “the lack of authoritative reporting on the origins of the materials included” in the report.Misinformation? Lack of authoritative reporting? The story explained exactly The Post got the material, and the supporting evidence. Yet the past four years have seen left-of-center outlets devote millions of column inches to anti-Trump stories that turned out to be utter bunk — yet neither Facebook nor Twitter took similar action as part of any “standard process”:The Post will continue to chase the truth wherever it takes us. But this episode should alarm ­every American. A very few people can unaccountably shape what you read.This is how freedom dies.Sohrab Ahmari is The Post’s op-ed editor. Twitter: @SohrabAhmari

This is what totalitarianism looks like in our century: not men in darkened cells driving screws under the fingernails of dissidents, but Silicon Valley dweebs removing from vast swaths of the Internet a damaging exposé on their preferred presidential candidate.That’s what Facebook and Twitter on Hunter Biden, revealing why the illustrious vice-presidential son was hired by a shady Ukrainian energy firm in exchange for at least $50,000 a month.According to e-mails , Hunter introduced the firm’s executives to his father — just when Joe Biden was the second-most powerful man on earth, with...

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Sohrab Ahmari

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If ‘unreliable’ is the issue, why did social media never block anti-Trump stories?

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