Donald Trump’s Twitter Ban Reportedly Led To 73 Percent Drop In Election Fraud ‘Misinformation’
According to recently released data from a market research firm, Donald Trump’s permanent ban from Twitter resulted in a significant decrease in social media conversations alleging that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential race through fraudulent means.
On Saturday, The Washington Post covered the results of a study from Zignal Labs, which noted that “online misinformation about election fraud” had gone down by 73 percent in the days since Trump and some of his “key allies” were suspended or banned from Twitter and other similar platforms. The firm stressed that the findings were proof that tech companies have the power to “limit the falsehoods poisoning public debate” when certain political figures aggressively push their narratives.
“Twitter’s ban of Trump on Jan. 8, after years in which @realDonaldTrump was a potent online megaphone, has been particularly significant in curbing his ability to push misleading claims about what state and federal officials have called a free and fair election on Nov. 3,” The Washington Post wrote.
Specifically, Zignal Labs revealed that in the week since Trump was banned from the microblogging service, conversations regarding election fraud had decreased from about 2.5 million mentions to only 688,000 across multiple social media sites. Several pro-Trump hashtags, including #FightForTrump and #HoldTheLine, also became far less prevalent on Twitter and other platforms in the period from January 9 through 15.
As recalled by The Hill, Trump was suspended from Twitter for 12 hours on January 6, shortly after thousands of his supporters stormed the Capitol building in a riot that resulted in five deaths. The president received a permanent ban two days later, with the platform explaining that if he was allowed to continue posting on the service, his tweets could potentially trigger additional violence and chaos.
Trump was also suspended temporarily from Facebook and YouTube in the aftermath of the riots, with the former confirming that the head of state won’t be able to access his account until Biden is inaugurated, at the very least. Per CNET, YouTube also took action against former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon by axing his War Room podcast channel on January 8, while Reddit banned the r/DonaldTrump subreddit on the same day.
While many of Trump’s supporters took to the conservative-oriented social media app Parler not long after the president was banished from Twitter, Google quickly removed the application from its Play Store, explaining that it made the decision because Parler allegedly failed to adequately moderate its content and remove posts that encouraged violence.
