73 per cent drop in misinformation on US election after Trump's social media ban, Study
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After several social media sites, including Twitter, banned Donald Trump and his key allies last week, there has been a 73 per cent reduction in online misinformation about election fraud in the US, found the research firm Zignal Labs based in San Francisco.
The new research by this analytical firm revealed that there has been a dramatic reduction in the spread of misinformation from 2.5 million mentions to 688,000 mentions across several websites from January 9 to 15.
Following the attack on the US Capitol by pro-Trump rioters on January 6th, Twitter banned Donald Trump on January 8th citing the risk of further incitement of violence. Since then, the access of Trump and his allies to social media has largely been cut-off to prevent more unrest in the president-elect Joe Biden's inauguration ceremony.
In the months before and after the 2020 US elections, Trump's Twitter account has been posting lies while campaigning and making baseless claims of widespread voter fraud after the declaration of results.
According to the report, mentions of hashtags #FightForTrump, #HoldTheLine and terms like 'March for Trump' also fell more than 95 per cent. The study shed light on the magnitude of the flow of misinformation happening across such platforms.
"I do not celebrate or feel pride in our having to ban @realDonaldTrump from Twitter, or how we got here. After a clear warning we'd take this action, we made a decision with the best information we had based on threats to physical safety both on and off Twitter," tweeted Jack Dorsey, the co-founder and CEO of Twitter.
Along with Twitter, social media like Facebook, Instagram, Spotify, Snapchat, Shopify, Twitch and others also banned Trump and his supporters which have contributed to this steep drop in election misinformation online.
"We believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our services during this period are simply too great," Mark Zuckerberg wrote in his blog post.
Facebook has announced its ban of Trump's account as 'indefinite' but some others like Twitter and Snapchat have permanently terminated his account citing public safety.