Facebook’s suppression of a New York Post story that alleged emails show Hunter Biden made millions trading on his father’s influence gave the article half the reach of stories on President Donald Trump’s tax returns and allegations he called fallen soldiers “losers and suckers,” reports Newsweek.
Roughly 1.94 million people engaged with the Hunter Biden story within the first 24 hours of its publication, and a total of 2.12 million readers had as of Sunday, according to data compiled by NewsWhip, a firm that compiles social media performance data.
Facebook said it would reduce visibility of the story until a third party could fact-check it. Twitter initially banned all links to the article, but CEO Jack Dorsey later said his company was wrong to block publication of the piece and allowed it.
In comparison, a New York Times story on Trump’s tax returns was read by 4.12 million people within 24 hours of its publication and 5.37 as of Sunday. An Atlantic article accusing Trump of calling Americans who died in war “losers” and “suckers” was read by 3.69 million people within the first 24 hours and by 6.86 million people by Sunday.
PolitiFact, one of Facebook’s fact-checkers, on Friday discredited the Hunter Biden story.
"None of the emails included with the article, however, point to a meeting having taken place. And an image in the article of the email that the Post calls 'blockbuster correspondence' does not contain any of the metadata — such as a message ID number, and the time and date the email was created — that would help establish authenticity of an email,” it said.
Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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