Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has admitted that the social media giant’s censorship of a New York Post story alleging Joe Biden’s involvement in a foreign lobbying scandal was “wrong”.

The controversy began on Wednesday when the Post, citing leaked emails, claimed Hunter Biden had introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a top executive in a Ukrainian energy firm a year before Biden pressured the government of Ukraine to fire a prosecutor who was investigating the company.

Twitter quickly followed up by determining the information to be a violation of its “hacked materials” policy and blocked users from both tweeting a link to the article and sending it to each other via direct message.

Numerous prominent Twitter users were also locked out of their accounts for attempting to post the story and Twitter even blocked a link to the Republican Republican Judiciary website at house.gov that carried a copy of the New York Post article.

After a firestorm of complaints and the prospect of being dragged before another Republican committee, Dorsey acknowledged that Twitter had made a mistake.

“Straight blocking of URLs was wrong, and we updated our policy and enforcement to fix. Our goal is to attempt to add context, and now we have capabilities to do that,” tweeted Dorsey.

Straight blocking of URLs was wrong, and we updated our policy and enforcement to fix. Our goal is to attempt to add context, and now we have capabilities to do that. https://t.co/ZLUw3YD887

— jack (@jack) October 16, 2020

Dorsey’s climb down is remarkable, but his admission that blocking URLs is “wrong” apparently doesn’t extend to other websites that are blocked by the platform.

As numerous respondents to Dorsey pointed out, both video hosting websites BitChute and Banned.video are still blocked by Twitter.

Why is Bitchute still blocked?

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) October 16, 2020

dude you block Bitchute

— Tim Pool (@Timcast) October 16, 2020

@bitchute

— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) October 16, 2020

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After blocking links to the New York Post story about Joe Biden’s foreign lobbying scandal, Twitter has now followed up by blocking a link to the official Republican Judiciary website at house.gov.

Both Facebook and Twitter prompted a censorship firestorm yesterday after they attempted to censor a New York Post article that claimed Hunter Biden had introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a top executive in a Ukrainian energy firm a year before Biden pressured the government of Ukraine to fire a prosecutor who was investigating the company.

Twitter also locked many prominent users out of their accounts for tweeting links to or screenshots from the article, including media organizations, reporters, celebrities and government organizations.

The social media giant claimed it was enforcing a policy that forbids “hacked materials” from being posted on its site, despite the fact that Hunter Biden’s laptop was legally in the possession of the computer repair shop that had it since Biden didn’t pay for the repair.

Twitter also said that it forbids the sharing of “personal and private information — like email addresses and phone numbers,” although just like the “hacked materials” policy this is only ever selectively enforced.

Now the company has taken its censorship blitzkrieg one step further by actually blocking a link to the Republican Judiciary website.

Twitter has blocked users from tweeting the link to the @nypost's story on Hunter Biden.

So we put it on our website for you to read and share.

Click, share, and RT! https://t.co/tZwybnoW0e

— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) October 14, 2020

The official House Judiciary Twitter account tweeted a link to the webpage with the text, Twitter has blocked users from tweeting the link to the @nypost’s story on Hunter Biden. So we put it on our website for you to read and share. Click, share, and RT!”

However, when users attempt to click on the link, they are met with a message that reads, “Warning: this link may be unsafe,” before a description that says the article contains “violent or misleading content that could lead to real-world harm.”

“Twitter is now blocking a government website,” commented journalist Tim Pool.

Welcome To Black Mirror motherfuckers

Twitter is now blocking A Government websitehttps://t.co/xIgEIgDFKX pic.twitter.com/67KQ5K6SbU

— Tim Pool (@Timcast) October 15, 2020

We’ve officially crossed the rubicon.

Social media giants, acting as front groups for the Democratic Party, are now behaving as if they have more power than the government of the United States.

And to a great extent – partly due to the failure of Republicans to regulate Big Tech monopolies – they do.

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Twitter has locked the accounts of anyone who shared the New York Post story regarding Joe Biden’s foreign lobbying scandal, including media organisations, reporters, celebrities, and even government officials.

The story, which has been met with denials from the Biden campaign, claims that Hunter Biden had introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a top executive in a Ukrainian energy firm a year before Biden pressured the government of Ukraine to fire a prosecutor who was investigating the company.

After following Facebook’s crackdown, Twitter prevented anyone from sharing the “potentially harmful” story:

Twitter is prohibiting users from sharing the @nypost’s Hunter Biden story because the link is “potentially harmful.” pic.twitter.com/YiZZBJvLam

— Anders Hagstrom (@Hagstrom_Anders) October 14, 2020

Twitter even prevented editors at the NY Post from tweeting out the story:

This is a Big Tech information coup. This is digital civil war.

I, an editor at The New York Post, one of the nation’s largest papers by circulation, can’t post one of our own stories that details corruption by a major-party presidential candidate, Biden. pic.twitter.com/BKNQmAG19H

— Sohrab Ahmari (@SohrabAhmari) October 14, 2020

Now the company has gone one step further by LOCKING the accounts of anyone attempting to spread the information.

The NY Post’s primary account was locked:

Twitter says this was done because of the lack of authoritative reporting on where the materials in our Biden story originated. Per the story, the emails came off a copy of a hard drive obtained by Rudy Giuliani; original hard drive was left at a Delaware computer repair shop https://t.co/2SoCUJ7gkr

— Noah Manskar (@noahmanskar) October 14, 2020

A reporter with The Daily Caller attempted to share the story, and found his account was also locked:

Twitter has locked the account of our reporter @AndrewKerrNC for tweeting a screenshot from the NY Post story disputing the possibility of the Hunter Biden emails being a hack pic.twitter.com/HwFoFoZnIp

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) October 15, 2020

Several other conservative reporters found their accounts locked:

Actor James Woods had the same experience:

BREAKING: @jack has locked down @RealJamesWoods!

The censorship is out of control. #FreeJames pic.twitter.com/Q0ELuv3hp5

— James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) October 14, 2020

Even White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany’s account was locked by Twitter:

BREAKING: Twitter has locked the personal account of White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany for sharing news Democrats don’t like. pic.twitter.com/eR8HhkgqVY

— Trump War Room – Text TRUMP to 88022 (@TrumpWarRoom) October 14, 2020

Twitter’s actions have been labelled as election meddling and an ‘act of digital civil war’, as the company is not only locking accounts and preventing the spread of the information on its own platform, but discouraging anyone from reading the story in general:

Twitter is not only preventing people from tweeting the NY Post story, they’re discouraging people from reading it at all. pic.twitter.com/mRmmRzwxi6

— Arthur Schwartz (@ArthurSchwartz) October 14, 2020

Media outlets that reported on the DNC/Podesta emails in 2016 would have been prohibited from sharing the links on Twitter under this new "hacked materials policy." That's what all this is about: doing everything in their power to prevent a repeat of 2016. It's 100% political

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) October 14, 2020

The Hunter Biden story would have lasted 6-12 hours at most. Dude is a dirt bag, it's not kind of story that would have impact.

Big Tech's decision to cross the Rubicon for *that* story is far more interesting, relevant, and historically significant.

— Cernovich (@Cernovich) October 14, 2020

The NY Post story was a minor, largely redundant report even if the docs are real.

The extreme act of censorship by tech giants to suppress it, cheered on by journalists, is a major story of historic proportions.

They always had this undemocratic power; today they used it.

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 14, 2020

Even Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey attempted to distance himself, describing his company’s response to the story as “not great” and “unacceptable”:

Our communication around our actions on the @nypost article was not great. And blocking URL sharing via tweet or DM with zero context as to why we’re blocking: unacceptable. https://t.co/v55vDVVlgt

— jack (@jack) October 14, 2020

Was he really referring to the censorship though, or that fact that the reason for the censorship wasn’t well “communicated”?:

Your “communication” is not the problem. The problem is your totalitarian censorship, your election interference, and the fact that you allow genocidal terrorists to threaten Jews while banning elected U.S. officials from sharing American journalism. https://t.co/F0CrgP6GP7

— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) October 15, 2020

Perhaps Dorsey would like to explain this under oath?

.@Twitter @jack this is not nearly good enough. In fact, it’s a joke. It’s downright insulting. I will ask you – and @Facebook – to give an explanation UNDER OATH to the Senate subcommittee I chair. These are potential violations of election law, and that’s a crime https://t.co/Rylva8UJv9

— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) October 15, 2020