Trump’s Claims About Hunter Biden Sends Online Activity Soaring

In Thursday’s presidential debate, President Trump made several misleading claims about the business dealings of the family of his opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Mr. Trump suggested, without evidence, that Mr. Biden had consulted for his son Hunter Biden to help with the younger Biden’s business. Mr. Trump also said that Mr. Biden had used his influence during his time as vice president to help his son land lucrative business deals. Both claims were misleading.

But the comments nonetheless drew attention to Hunter Biden and his work, according to a New York Times analysis of Google searches and Facebook posts during and after the debate.

Searches for “Hunter Biden” on Google more than tripled during the debate compared with before the event, according to Google Trends data. Facebook posts about Hunter Biden also spiked, according to data from CrowdTangle, a social media analytics tool owned by Facebook.

Nearly 70,000 new Facebook posts popped up after the debate mentioning “false, unproven or misleading claims” about Hunter Biden’s business interactions, said Avaaz, a progressive human rights organization that studies misinformation. The majority of the posts came from Facebook pages that had been repeatedly flagged for sharing false or misleading claims, Avaaz said.

A Facebook spokeswoman said the company’s third-party fact checkers had assessed and debunked several claims related to Hunter Biden.

Mr. Trump’s comments at last month’s presidential debate also led to spikes in internet traffic. After he said that the Proud Boys, a far-right group that has endorsed violence, should “stand back and stand by,” searches for the group soared, as did posts about them on Twitter and Facebook.