Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

By Chris FoxTechnology reporter.css-14iz86j-BoldText{font-weight:bold;}The way Twitter communicated its handling of a controversial article about US presidential hopeful Joe Biden was "unacceptable", its chief has said.On Wednesday, Twitter prevented people from posting links to a New York Post story, warning those trying to click it that the link was "potentially unsafe".It only later explained it had limited sharing because the story contained "hacked materials".Facebook also took action, limiting the report's distribution in its news feed.It said it had done this as part of a "standard process" to give third-party fact-checkers time to review the content and decide if it should be treated as misinformation.However, it is highly unusual for an article published by one of the mainstream popular newspapers to be treated in this way.It is now less than three weeks until Mr Biden, the Democratic candidate, faces the Republican incumbent Donald Trump in the presidential election on 3 November.The moves by Twitter and Facebook have renewed accusations of social media censorship and bias.The New York Post article contained screenshots of emails allegedly sent and received by Hunter Biden, Joe Biden's son.It also contained personal, intimate photos of Hunter Biden, allegedly taken from a laptop computer that was given to a repair shop.Twitter said discussing the claims in the New York Post article was not against its rules, but it had imposed restrictions on the article because it exposed private information such as email addresses and exposed material obtained by "hacking".Jack Dorsey, Twitter's chief executive, acknowledged that it should have informed users as to why it had intervened sooner."Our communication around our actions on the @nypost article was not great.