Facebook and Twitter deserve some credit for rapidly restricting the New York Post hack-and-leak operation that made allegations about Hunter Biden
In a New York Post report, Facebook and Twitter smell a rat — I. — In the run-up to the 2020 election, platforms have been preparing for all manner of threats.
Context & Ripple Effects
The day after the New York Post published its Hunter Biden allegations, the two dominant social platforms split on how to handle material they suspected came from a hack-and-leak operation: Facebook chose to throttle reach pending fact-checking, while Twitter went further and blocked sharing outright. Both moves landed in the final weeks of the 2020 election cycle, when the platforms had been building enforcement playbooks for exactly this kind of leaked-material scenario.
The split matters because it previews the trade-off each company would inherit: Twitter's harder line drew the sharper backlash, with [[a:1160863|Stratechery arguing the blanket block undermined Twitter's core role as an information facilitator]] even as it treated Facebook's slower-spread approach as reasonable.
First-order effects
- Distribution of the New York Post story was immediately curtailed on both platforms, though asymmetrically: Facebook reduced its reach pending fact-check, while Twitter's total share block cut off the Post's primary referral channel in the run-up to the election.
Second-order effects
- The enforcement labels became their own liability — the source behind the laptop stories filed a defamation suit against Twitter over being characterized as a hacker when the content was blocked, turning a moderation decision into litigation.
- Twitter's hard block forced a reputational cost that Facebook largely avoided, giving rival platforms an opening to argue that lighter-touch throttling is the defensible middle path for disputed pre-election content.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, election-cycle leak stories push platforms toward differentiated enforcement — block versus throttle versus fact-check — where each choice generates distinct downstream exposure: user backlash, advertiser scrutiny, and suits like the one now facing Twitter over its labeling language.
The trend: Platform moderation of leaked political material is consolidating into a tiered playbook whose enforcement choices increasingly carry legal and competitive consequences, not just policy ones.