US President Donald Trump has slammed Facebook and Twitter for restricting the distribution of a New York Post article criticizing Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. The New York Post published a series of stories on Wednesday citing emails, purportedly sent by Biden's son. The reports claimed it got those emails from Trump's private lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, reports NPR.org. Facebook limited the spread of the story which was liked, shared or commented on almost 600,000 times on Facebook, according to data from CrowdTangle.

In an unprecedented step, Twitter blocked users from posting pictures of the emails or links to two of the New York Post's stories, citing its rules against sharing "content obtained through hacking that contains private information." Twitter said that the "images contained in the articles include personal and private information -- like email addresses and phone numbers -- which violate our rules". However, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey acknowledged that the company's communication about why it was blocking the articles "was not great".