Twitter, Facebook and the Burisma emails story, October 2020

What happened on 16 October 2020, after a Ukraine-linked story about the Biden family had spent two days testing the limits of social media platforms?

The story began on 14 October 2020, when the New York Post reported that newly uncovered emails suggested Hunter Biden had introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a top executive at Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian natural gas firm. The Post said it had obtained the alleged emails from Rudy Giuliani, described as a top adviser to Donald Trump.

The platforms responded the same day. Twitter and Facebook announced that they were limiting the distribution of the article until it had been fact-checked.

On 15 October 2020, the dispute widened. Twitter locked the account of Trump's presidential campaign for sharing private information without that person's permission, in connection with a controversial Hunter Biden video. The account was later unlocked.

A familiar theme

The episode belonged to a longer run of claims. Since 2016, Trump and his allies have promoted several conspiracy theories related to the 2019 Trump–Ukraine scandal, according to later accounts. One seeks to blame Ukraine, rather than Russia, for interference in the 2016 United States presidential election. Others include accusations against Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

By 16 October 2020, then, Ukraine was again part of an American political argument: a Ukrainian company at the centre of a newspaper report, two major platforms restricting its spread, and a presidential campaign account locked in the aftermath.