The New York Post's dubious Hunter Biden article was shared 300,000 times on Facebook even after the company said it limited its reach

• The dubiously sourced New York Post article about Joe Biden's son Hunter has been shared nearly 400,000 times on Facebook, according to data from CrowdTangle.
• After Facebook said on Wednesday afternoon that it would restrict distribution of the article while it was fact-checked, the story was shared more than 300,000 times, Business Insider found.
• The number of interactions with the article is just the latest challenge for Facebook as it tries to mitigate the spread of falsehoods and political misinformation on its platform ahead of the election.

The New York Post article with dubious allegations about Joe Biden's son has been shared on Facebook more than 300,000 times since the company said it was "reducing its distribution."

Posts containing a link to the story have generated nearly 1.5 million interactions on Facebook since it was published on Wednesday morning, according to data from the Facebook-owned analytics firm CrowdTangle. The overwhelming majority of these user interactions — including reactions, comments, and shares — came after Facebook said on Wednesday afternoon that it would temporarily reduce the distribution of the article until it was verified by a third-party fact-checker.

In the nearly 30 hours since Facebook said it was placing restrictions on the Post's story, the URL has been shared nearly 400,000 times on the platform, Business Insider found. The massive number starkly undercuts Facebook's insistence that it has the policies and systems in place to withstand criticism that it doesn't do enough to stop the spread of viral misinformation on its platforms, especially ahead of the presidential election on November 3.

Facebook announced its plan to slow the article's spread just before it had been shared 50,000 times, according to CrowdTangle data viewed on Wednesday afternoon.

The Post's article includes files and emails that were supposedly taken from a laptop that previously belonged to Hunter Biden. In a statement to the Post, a lawyer for Hunter Biden described the story as "widely discredited conspiracy theories."

The story's sourcing has raised questions about its authenticity. The files were provided to the Post through Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump's personal lawyer. The Post said Giuliani obtained the files from an anonymous repair-shop owner, who said the laptop's owner left it for repairs and never returned.

The Post also said it learned of the files' existence from Steve Bannon, Trump's former campaign manager who is facing fraud charges. Giuliani is also the focus of a federal criminal investigation into whether he violated foreign lobbying laws, and two of his Ukrainian associates reportedly tasked with collecting "dirt" on Joe Biden were arrested last year and charged with campaign-finance violations and wire fraud.

Facebook's approach to the Post's story is consistent with the way the platform has dealt with viral political misinformation in the past year. Facebook implemented a policy in late 2019 to "temporarily reduce" the distribution of a piece of content if there are "signals" that it could be false. If fact-checkers find the content to be false, it will be downrated in the algorithm and thus appear less frequently in front of Facebook users, the company said.

It's unclear whether the Post's story has been reviewed yet or if a decision on whether it's false has been reached. Facebook did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

Deciding the authenticity of the story seems to be in the hands of Facebook's network of more than 50 fact-checking organizations, including The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, and the Daily Caller, the right-wing site founded by Tucker Carlson. Though Facebook executives have consistently boasted about the success of its outsourced fact-checking program, critics have slammed it as ineffective and underutilized in mitigating misinformation on a platform where billions of pieces of content are posted each day.

Twitter joined Facebook later on Wednesday in taking action to stem the spread of the story, citing a violation of its policy against distributing "hacked materials." Twitter said it would block users from tweeting the story's URL or "any links to or images of the material in question."

Both Facebook and Twitter are now facing pushback from Trump and GOP officials about their handling of the incident. After Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey apologized on Wednesday night for Twitter's lack of communication about its actions, Senate Republicans said they planned to subpoena Dorsey to testify about the decision.

Are you a Facebook insider with insight to share? Contact Paige Leskin via email (pleskin@businessinsider.com), or Twitter DM (@paigeleskin) using a non-work device. You can also message her securely on encrypted messaging app Signal (+1 201-312-4526)