Which part was true?
Shortly after the Post story broke, social media companies blocked links to it, while other news outlets declined to publish the story due to concerns about provenance and suspicions of Russian disinformation.[8] By May 2023, no evidence had publicly surfaced to support suspicions that the laptop was part of a Russian disinformation scheme.[9][10]
In December 2019, under the authority of a subpoena issued by a Wilmington grand jury, the FBI seized the laptop from Mac Isaac.[1][11][12] FBI investigators handling Hunter Biden’s laptop quickly concluded in 2019 “that the laptop was genuinely his and did not seem to have been tampered with or manipulated”.[13][14] In June 2024, federal prosecutors utilized the laptop as evidence as part of a criminal case against Hunter Biden, alongside testimony from an FBI agent involved in authenticating and investigating the laptop.[15]
The hard drive data had been shared with Trump advisor Steve Bannon before it became publicly known.[1] Trump attempted to turn the story into an October surprise to hurt Joe Biden’s campaign by falsely alleging that, while in office, Biden had acted corruptly regarding Ukraine to protect his son.[16][17][18] A joint investigation by two Republican Senate committees released in September 2020 and a Republican House Oversight committee investigation released in April 2024 did not find wrongdoing by Joe Biden with regard to Ukraine and his son’s business dealings there.[24] PolitiFactwrote in June 2021 that the laptop did belong to Hunter Biden, but did not demonstrate wrongdoing by Joe Biden.[25]
Starting in 2021, news outlets began to authenticate some of the contents of the laptop. In 2021, Politicoverified two key emails used in the Post’s initial reporting by cross-referencing emails with other datasets and contacting their recipients. CBS Newspublished a forensic analysis which examined a “clean” copy of the data obtained directly from Mac Isaac. It concluded that the “clean” data, including over 120,000 emails, originated with Hunter Biden and had not been altered, while other copies circulated by Republican operatives “could have been tampered with”. Other outlets also verified portions of the data, while noting problems in fully authenticating the copies they had to work with.[5][4][3]
Wikipedia is your friend.
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social media companies blocked links to it, while other news outlets declined to publish the story due to concerns about provenance and suspicions of Russian disinformation.
Interesting
And then, of course:
By May 2023, no evidence had publicly surfaced to support suspicions that the laptop was part of a Russian disinformation scheme.[9][10]
Oops. No evidence whoddathought
And then
In June 2024, federal prosecutors utilized the laptop as evidence as part of a criminal case against Hunter Biden, alongside testimony from an FBI agent involved in authenticating and investigating the laptop.[1
Ouch
I read all of that and all I see is a great example of why any government would pressure businesses not to disseminate misinformation.
The Hunter Biden laptop is a complete nothing of a story that bad faith actors would use to destabilize said government and country.
The government imprisoning political dissidents and protesters is the real issue. This is just some billionaire trying to cultivate public support while he continues to engage in lobbying that same government for more tax cuts and subsidies.
Who is to judge what is misinformation? The Biden ministry of truth?
Sorry, never going to agree with you over this.
Suppressing information by any government is unwelcome in my books.
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I gotta read through this.
Let’s flip this around—the U.S. state department and CIA use a similar (non) story through social media to foment public anger against the government of say…Venezuela.
Should the Venezuelan government allow a CIA psy-op to destabilize their country?
Which foreign entity spread this non-story? Re: hunter laptop?
Well the same Trump campaign operatives like Steve Bannon were heavily involved. Same guys involved in a coup attempt in 2020.
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But you compare it to CIA fomenting unrest in Venezuela? So I wonder what foreign entity is involved in the Hunter laptop case. From the excerpt, seems no foreign country.
In any case, I am talking about not wanting the government to decide for me what information is released and what information is intentionally suppressed. Offering financial incentives to coerce into suppressing information is bribery on top of that.
If we believe in freedom of speech. It’s per definition wrong. I don’t want Biden nor Trump to decide for me what information I can read and digest.
First Durov had to flee Russia for refusing to take down opposition content on VKontakte (Facebook in Russia).
Then he didn’t bow down to US and EU pressure to allow them into Telegram and breach privacy security of its users.
They gonna take you down one way or another if you don’t comply 
Do svidaniya konrad
https://x.com/skynews/status/1830332322878533781?s=46&t=eJpgg6uHWRsStnASv-OePg
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Since 1945…
Just can’t help themselves comparing it to the NSDAP, can they. Also in that case, it’s not since 1945, but since 1933. But it was never about accuracy for CNN. Just about making the insinuation.
Anyway, the right is sweeping all over Europe.
Except in the UK…very worrying though, I’ll give you that.
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At least people voted though 
Is it really surprising to see right wing parties rising to power everywhere? Obviously there’s the general swings that you get over time, but I do think the heavy left-leaning approaches that seem to be entrenched in so many elements of our lives has made people react in this way.
You see the same thing with something like trans rights, there is so much media around it now and encouragement to have a specific view that a lot of people that sit in the middle end up becoming more hardline on the topic.
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Well there is that!
What exactly is the media encouraging? I watched a fair bit of TV this weekend and not once did I see an ad telling me to go out and get bottom surgery.
I think when you threaten peoples’ pockets they turn more fearful
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Various things: decolonization is a big one in my country, various things about minority groups or being biracial, gender pay-gap etc.
If you wanna argue there is no encouragement, be my guest, the point I’m making is there is a lot of this type of content in everyday media now and many find it overbearing to the point where they can end up taking the opposite view.
I’m not saying it’s the only content out there but there is a lot of it.
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There’s a massive right wing vote in Britain. Reform splitting the right and the First Past the Post system protected the country but Britain has the same problem with the far right that mainland Europe does.
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