Censoring the Biden story: How social media becomes state media

Chinese citizens watched President Xi Jinping deliver an important speech this week not far from Hong Kong. Well, not the whole speech: Xi apparently is ill, and every time he went into coughing spasms, China’s state media cut away so that he would be shown only in perfect health.

Xi’s coughs came to mind as Twitter and Facebook prevented Americans from being able to read the New York Post’s explosive allegations of influence-peddling by Hunter Biden. The articles cited material reportedly recovered from a laptop; it purportedly showed requests for Hunter Biden to use his influence on his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, as well as embarrassing photos of Hunter Biden.

Many of us have questioned the sketchy details of how the laptop reportedly was left by Hunter Biden with a nearly blind computer repairman and then revealed just weeks before the presidential election. There are ample reasons to question whether this material was the product of a foreign intelligence operation, which the FBI apparently is investigating.

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MIT Tech Review: Tech Censorship Nearly Doubled Attention for NY Post Biden Bombshell

The attempt by the social media Masters of the Universe to stop the spread of the New York Post bombshell article about Joe Biden and his son Hunter’s alleged dealings with Burisma, has nearly doubled the level of attention the story gained.

What is known as the “Streisand Effect” — a social phenomenon that occurs when an attempt to censor information has the unintended consequence of further publicizing it instead — went into overdrive after social media platforms including Facebook and Twitter attempted to suppress a NY Post article about Hunter Biden, according to data published in the MIT Technology Review.

Social media companies reduced the distribution of a New York Post story containing bombshell information indicating that — contrary to his previous denials— Joe Biden allegedly did meet with an adviser to the board of Burisma while he was vice president, arranged by his son Hunter, who was then working as a lobbyist for the company.

Data provided by the media intelligence firm Zignal Labs shows that shares of the bombshell NY Post article have actually “nearly doubled” following Twitter’s attempt at suppressing the story.

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‘The Emails Are Russian’ Will Be the Narrative, Regardless of Facts or Evidence

Fight it all you want, but there’s nothing you can do. “The emails are Russian” is going to be the official dominant narrative in mainstream political discourse, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Resistance is futile.

Like the Russian hacking narrative, the Trump-Russia collusion narrative, the Russian bounties in Afghanistan narrative, and any other evidence-free framing of events that simultaneously advances pre-planned Cold War agendas, is politically convenient for the Democratic Party and generates clicks and ratings, the narrative that The New York Post publication of Hunter Biden’s emails is a Russian operation is going to be hammered and hammered and hammered until it becomes the mainstream consensus.

This will happen regardless of facts and evidence, up to and including rock solid evidence that Hunter Biden’s emails were not published as a result of a Russian operation.

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