Why did Twitter and Facebook suppress the New York Post after it published the Biden emails, but not the New York Times after it published the Trump tax return info?

by philg

Catching up a bit here on the news… “Twitter Won’t Let The New York Post Tweet Until It Agrees To Behave Itself” (Forbes):

Twitter TWTR +1.2% has kept the Post’s official Twitter account locked since Thursday, the Post says, when the newspaper shared several tweets about its story on Hunter Biden that has been increasingly called into question.

On Thursday, Twitter blocked sharing of the Post story and said the piece violated several of its rules, including a prohibition on sharing personal information and hacked materials. Facebook also reduced distribution of the Post report, but the brunt of conservative displeasure over the social media sites’ limiting access to the Post story fell on Twitter.

The New York Times published information that it says came from Donald Trump’s personal tax returns (but they haven’t published the actual returns so we can’t see for ourselves?). Yet the NYT wasn’t banned by Twitter or Facebook. Aren’t personal tax returns “personal information” and/or “hacked materials”?

I’m sure that there is a justification for how the banning of the Post is consistent with the celebration and approval of the Times, but I wonder what it is!

Related (some NY Post stories you won’t see in the NYT):

33 thoughts on “Why did Twitter and Facebook suppress the New York Post after it published the Biden emails, but not the New York Times after it published the Trump tax return info?”

  1. As they say over at Instapundit “That’s different because… shut up!”
    Also, I had completely missed the Spitzer story! Amazing! So THAT is why rich men’s mistresses tend to be slightly built? I had always wondered.

    • Paul: Since it is always the Russians… if you believe that these emails were fabricated by the Russians, how do you know that the purportedly authentic tax returns that the NYT got hold of weren’t fabricated by the Russians?

    • Phil: I don’t 100% know, I guess they – tax returns – could have been. I guess I’m surprised that if the returns are fake, why hasn’t Trump said they are fake. Maybe too busy at rallies.

    • Paul: If the NYT hasn’t published the actual tax returns, how can Trump say “they’re fake”?

      (Separately, did the Biden family say that the “Biden emails” are fake?)

  3. Kazakhstan is basically a family business owned by the Nazarbayev family and about the most corrupt place on the planet north of Africa. They were big donors to the Clinton “foundation” as well as Hunter. Too bad apart from the Post the media doesn’t find this worth pursuing.

    • Biden is a liar but he’s “their liar.”

      He has a 1967 Corvette to go along with his perfect teeth and all the legislation he championed but now disavows, not to mention all the rest of his principles, which he never had:

    • Philip: This is exactly why it’s useful to be able to look at Biden’s tax returns. CNN:

      Biden was a six-term senator before joining Barack Obama’s presidential ticket, and his financial disclosures often showed that he was among the Senate’s least wealthy members. He has described himself as “Middle Class Joe” on the campaign trail.

      But in the two years after he left the White House, Biden made $15.6 million, largely through speaking fees and book profits. He and Jill made $11 million in 2017 and $4.6 million in 2018, and paid $3.7 million in taxes in 2017 and $1.5 million in 2018, financial documents released by Biden’s campaign last year show.

      It’s amazing to me that you can make $15.6 million from being famous. No wonder there’s so many people who try to become infamous.

    • Rayburn was a great man in American history, and a great man period, and I’m upset these days that we have so few people like him around. What strikes me most about the days we currently live in is the paucity of excellent people when we need them the most.

  7. Trump’s tax returns were leaked to the NYT, not hacked by unknown actors. Twitter’s ban is on hacks, not leaks. There’s a long tradition of journalism based on leaks.

    As to whether the President’s tax returns are personal information, presidential candidates have released their tax returns for decades now.

  8. How is it that Trump cult members are so gullible?

    The NY post article is so sketchy no writer wanted to be credited with it. And that’s saying a great deal given the trashy reputation of the paper. If the hard drive and its contents were bonafide, why were they released to the media at the last second, rather than to the DOJ, who at the direction of Barr would have been all to eager to investigate? Because it’s all BS, and it never would have checked out! On the other hand, if Trump’s tax returns weren’t legitimate, he could easily have provided the actual returns to any number of outlets(papers, accounting firms, etc.) with any number of legal conditions as to releasing them, to refute the Times article. From the Times: “All of the information The Times obtained was provided by sources with legal access to it. While most of the tax data has not previously been made public, The Times was able to verify portions of it by comparing it with publicly available information and confidential records previously obtained by The Times.”

    Nevermind that Trump asked Russia, on live TV, to release Hillary’s emails. Emails which were stolen by a foreign adversary.

    Grow a brain, people!

    • Nevermind that Trump asked Russia, on live TV, to release Hillary’s emails. Emails which were stolen by a foreign adversary.

      Given the security of an unofficial private bathroom-located mail server used by the then Secretary of State, I would expect most any nation or other organization with computer spying interests to have a copy of those emails. So at a minimum the NSA. CIA, FBI, UK/Five eyes, China, Russia and, of course, Israel. Really, it would be almost unconscionable not to hack once you knew about it. And the server was not really a secret, was it? I, for one, read about it in the news long before all the leaking.

      There was also that Anthony Weiner’s laptop (shared with Huma) which apparently had a copy of Hillary’s mail due to some convenient MS Exchange settings. Seized by the police, last I heard of it.

      The DNC leaks, which were separate, were probably done by Seth Rich (RIP) with a USB stick, as hinted by Julian Assange. You can view them at Wikileaks.

    • And, by the way, Trump is unsurpassed at trolling and made me chuckle heartily with that remark. Because the establishment was stonewalling and bleachbitting and shrugging for all they were worth, but that only goes so far if you’ve left your important server embarrassingly open to all and sundry, doesn’t it?

    • The DNC emails were hacked by Russia. That’s well accepted by people living in reality. There is zero evidence that Hillary’s personal email, located on a “bathroom server” (but secured by the secret service), were ever hacked. If they had been, they would have been released. Why hack them and do nothing with them? Seth Rich is a nothing more than conspiracy floated by an organization who accepted stolen election materials hacked by Russia. Only Trump apologists believe such nonsense. One thing no cult member can explain is, why would Russia support the candidate that is best for America?

  9. Facebook and Twitter had a “break glass in case of emergency” strategy that they were planning on deploying on or close to election day. The plan was either to dump something bad on Trump, or to call the election for Biden, then lock-down the Internet to prevent a countermove.

    But an incoming MOAB from NY Post baited them into jumping the gun and deploying prematurely. Now their tactical positioning has been revealed and they are scrambling to regroup.

    It is not about policy or terms of service, and never was.

    • What are you ranting about? Trump is a profit center for Trump, and FB is strongly in the disinfo == money camp.

    • @steve your analysis makes sense, though it assumes though that the other camp got the smoke about this somehow much earlier. maybe it’s possible, as both the camps are trying to make their moves…

      if orange man comes back again, he is going to be unstoppable (with the scotus seat sealed almost..), the big tech should be afraid.

    • GB: I think that there is a way for the Department of Justice report and the blame-Russia perspectives to be consistent. We are informed by the NYT that the Trump Administration and therefore most of the Federal government is controlled by Russians. Ergo, it would make sense that the Russian-controlled DOJ would deny that their Russian colleagues had fabricated thousands of Biden family emails. (Certainly, people in Russia have nothing better to do than mess with Americans’ minds!)

    • If we have the true NYT faith, everything that the U.S. government says and does is essentially Vladimir Putin speaking and doing.

    • GB: Don’t give up on Russia Russia Russia just yet. Time reports that the alleged Hunter Biden emails were being offered for $5 million in Ukraine in September 2019.

      In an interview with TIME, a second person described an offer that was made to him in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, in mid-September 2019. This person declined the offer, he says, and only recalled it in detail when familiar-looking material was published in the New York Post last week. This person alleges that the people offering this material had a buyer in mind for it: they said they wanted to sell it to Republican allies of President Trump. Their asking price was $5 million, he says, adding: “I walked away from it, because it smelled awful.”

      … During a trip to Ukraine in December, Giuliani met with a Ukrainian lawmaker who has since been identified by the U.S. Treasury Department as an “active Russian agent” with longstanding ties to Russian intelligence services. The lawmaker, Andrii Derkach, did not respond to messages seeking comment.

      In a social media post on Monday, Derkach claimed that the “scandalous investigation” published in the New York Post would soon have a sequel based on a “second laptop” purportedly containing the private emails and photos of Hunter Biden. “The facts confirming international corruption are stored on a second laptop,” Derkach wrote. “These are not the last witnesses or the last laptop.”

    • That’s bizarre: a Ukrainian lawmaker is a “Russian agent” ? Apparently, the US Treasury is unaware of geography, history and the current and past tensions between the two countries, but the level of pretend or real ignorance is not entirely surprising.

      Why not designate him a “Ukrainian agent” ? I guess that would be not as useful a propaganda trick. Even “Iranian agent” would be more interesting: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/10/20/proud-boys-emails-florida/

      Anticipating your predictable reaction, no, I am not a Russian, neither have I any warm feelings towards Russia, but “designating” a Ukrainian lawmaker a Russian agent strikes me as truly a new level of idiocy of what passes for elites in this country today.

    • Ivan: Derkach’s father was a KGB officer for 20 years before becoming the head of the security services under Kuchma, and Derkach himself graduated from the KGB’s Dzerzhinsky Higher School. (According to the font of all knowledge, his Ph.D. thesis was on “organization and conduct of meetings with secret agents.”)

      Not sure why you think Ukrainians and Ukrainian politicians must be uniformly anti-Russian. Pro-Russian political parties are a major part of Ukrainian politics.

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