Meta Blocks Links to JD Vance’s Hacked Profile on Threads, Instagram, and Facebook

Meta is tightening its control over content by restricting the sharing of links across its platforms, including Threads, Instagram, and Facebook. This led to the removal of Ken Klippenstein’s post containing a dossier about JD Vance’s alleged hacking of the Trump campaign. The company not only removed the original posts, but also blocked links to copies of the dossier, such as PDFs. Meta spokesperson Dave Arnold emailed Meta’s statement to Techlade:

“We will not tolerate any attempt to use our platform to spread misinformation stolen from foreign election interference operations. Sharing of these materials will result in immediate blocking and is a serious violation of our community guidelines.”

To protect privacy and cybersecurity, Meta has introduced new rules prohibiting the sharing of sensitive stolen information or confidential documents that could impact the election process. This is to prevent malicious activities that aim to manipulate information and cause disruption.

Threads users have reported that Meta is removing posts that contain links. This includes links to externally hosted documents like Scribd or Google Drive. Even posts with links to Google searches for Klippenstein’s Substack article are affected. To get around this, many users have tried to post links by inserting extra spaces, replacing punctuation with words, or even using QR codes. However, Meta does not appear to be preventing people from posting about or searching for personal information.

X has blocked all links to this article, and many other social media users have reported that they are unable to share the document via Google Drive. I have also had trouble sharing Google Drive content between my personal accounts. We have reached out to both X and other cloud storage companies, including Box, Apple, Dropbox, and Microsoft, for comment, but have not received a response as of press time.