Politics Election misinformation dropped 73 percent following Trump's suspension from Twitter: research

Misinformation surrounding the topic of election fraud dropped by 73 percent after President Trump and several others were suspended from mainstream social media accounts, according to research conducted by Zignal Labs.

© getty Election misinformation dropped 73 percent following Trump's suspension from Twitter: research

The research firm reported that discourse around election fraud dropped from 2.5 million mentions across social media platforms to close to 688,000, following the president's permanent suspension from Twitter, according to The Washington Post.

Twitter first banned Trump's account shortly after a violent mob of his supporters attacked the Capitol building on Jan. 6. The platform said it was concerned that Trump's future posts could incite more violence after the Capitol riots left five people dead, including a Capitol Police officer.

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Legal experts say President Donald Trump and attorney Rudy Giuliani could face criminal charges for inciting the riots on Capitol Hill.The president's comments came shortly before a pro-Trump mob bashed through barricades, windows and doors, injuring police officers and temporarily occupying the Capitol building in a show of force tied to their anger over false allegations of election fraud.

Twitter announced Thursday that it is expanding its policies against election -related misinformation , setting new rules that will likely force the platform to more aggressively fact-check President Donald Trump during the final months of the 2020 campaign.

Twitter last month temporarily suspended Mr Trump ' s son, Donald Jr, for sharing a clip it said promoted " misinformation " about coronavirus and hydroxychloroquine. But in March, Twitter said a tweet by entrepreneur Elon Musk suggesting children are "essentially immune" to coronavirus did not

Twitter announced after Trump's ban that it had also banned over 70,000 accounts linked to the QAnon conspiracy theory.

Facebook has indefinitely suspended Trump's account until at least President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration, and YouTube also suspended his account temporarily.

The research studied online misinformation from Jan. 1 to Jan. 8, the week leading up to Trump's suspension, and misinformation the week after Trump's suspension from Jan. 9 to Jan. 15, according to the Post.

While Trump was on social media, he claimed repeatedly that the 2020 election was "rigged" and "stolen" due to widespread voter fraud. However, state and federal election officials as well as former Attorney General Bill Barr have stated that there was no substantial evidence of widespread voter fraud.

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Holding zip-tie handcuffs, a man in paramilitary gear who moved through the Senate Chamber during the Capitol riot alarms counter-terrorism experts.The man was not with security, who'd recently evacuated U.S. Senators and Vice President Mike Pence from the floor below. Experts say he was among the rioters who disrupted U.S. Congress's certification of Trump's election loss with violence, resulting in five fatalities to date.

Twitter labeled Trump ' s post with a message that read "Some or all of the content shared in this Trump and some of his supporters have weaponized misinformation throughout the election But those labels won't convince Trump supporters who have already embraced conspiracy theories about

Twitter has temporarily suspended the account belonging to Donald Trump Jr, the son of U. S . President The tweet that triggered the suspension linked to a video that contains multiple falsehoods and dubious claims “Tweets with the video are in violation of our COVID-19 misinformation policy.

Popular hashtags that were used to spread election fraud misinformation also dropped significantly in the same time period, according to the research including #FightForTrump, which dropped 95.5 percent, and #HoldTheLine which dropped 94.3 percent.

While election fraud conspiracy theories have gone down online, mentions of "Qanon" and "Q" went up 15 percent. Many who attacked the Capitol claimed they were followers of Qanon conspiracy theories.

However, other Qanon popular phrases like "We Are the New Snow" and "QanonJapanFlynn" went down 98.6 percent and 95.5 percent, respectively.

After Trump was banned, he said he would go to a new social media platform or make his own. Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, and senior advisor, reportedly convinced him not to join Parler, a social media platform that touts free speech.