Three former Twitter executives acknowledged that the company mishandled its decision to remove the New York Post‘s story about Hunter Biden before the 2020 election.
But they noted that the Biden campaign did not influence their decision to remove the story.
The former Twitter execs met with the House Oversight Committee, now run by the Republican majority, which is investigating President Joe Biden’s family.
The New York Post published a damaging story about Hunter Biden during the 2020 election that alleged they had received copies of his personal emails.
The Post reported they had procured Hunter’s laptop after it was left in an abandoned computer shop formerly run by a blind technician. The computer was given to the paper through Rudy Giuliani‘s personal attorney.
Former Head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth admitted there was a lot of confusion over what the company should do in response to the article. Twitter could not readily verify the facts of the report.
Fearing the dissemination of misinformation, Twitter executives decided to remove the article from the website.
The Committee grilled the former executives about the move, and for “censorship” they believed happened on the social media app.
The testimony from all three Twitter executives comes after Matt Taibbi‘s “Twitter files” were released over the past few months. The files, released by current Twitter owner Elon Musk, have suggested that the executives may have acted “under orders from the government.”
Most observers say that the Twitter files did not prove any misconduct by Twitter or the Biden campaign. In fact, they showed that the Trump White House asked for a tweet by actress Chrissy Teigen insulting Trump to be taken down.
After the release of the “Twitter Files,” Roth had to flee his home after being inundated with threats of his life.
