The Twitter legal head responsible for suppressing a news story involving President Biden's son Hunter, prior to the 2020 election, reported to Congress on Wednesday that the long-term block on The New York Post's account concerning the story was an error "in hindsight.
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At the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, Vijaya Gadde, who had been dismissed after Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter, accepted that she had approved the block on The Post's October 14, 2020, article about Hunter Biden's laptop and its contents; however, she added that the decision should have been retracted in a more timely manner.
As Fox News reported, Gadde addressed the panel chaired by Representative James Comer of Kentucky and declared that, due to a policy set in 2018, Twitter blocked access to tweets featuring the Post's article from 2020, to avoid "becoming a dumping ground for hacked materials."
The former Twitter legal head remarked that the pictures featured "looked like they may have been obtained through hacking" when it was published.
Confirmations from other media sources have followed the initial report that Hunter Biden's laptop was not accessed by a Russian-led misinformation effort or any hacking activity, as the Biden campaign had asserted.
Gadde asserted that "At no point did Twitter or otherwise prevent tweeting, reporting, discussing, or describing the contents of Mr. Biden's laptop," stating, "people could and did talk about the contents of the laptop on Twitter or anywhere else, including other much larger platforms, but they were prevented from sharing the primary documents on Twitter."
Gadde added, "Over the course of that day, it became clear that Twitter had not fully appreciated the impact of that policy on Free Press and others."
The pre-election Twitter censorship of the Hunter Biden saga sparked a major controversy. The GOP accused Twitter of collaborating with the Biden campaign and the federal government to sway the 2020 presidential election.
A few months ago, Twitter's internal documents were released to the public, dubbed the Twitter Files. This led to the discovery that numerous senior executives at the company had come to an agreement on emergency moderation tactics to impede the circulation of the Hunter Biden story.
On Wednesday, Gadde testified that Jack Dorsey, the prior CEO of Twitter, had testified to Congress that blocking the report was an error and that the company reversed the ban within 24 hours; however, the Post's Twitter account remained blocked.
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