In the week following Twitter’s permanent ban of President Donald Trump, media intelligence company Zignal Labs found that the spread of misinformation on the social media platform took a sharp fall.
Between Jan. 9 and 15, Zignal found there was a 73 percent decline in tweets about election fraud compared to the week before Trump was banned, according to a report shared with Mashable (first reported by The Washington Post). Along with Trump’s ban, there were sweeping bans on accounts that spread QAnon conspiracies, which undoubtedly also helped to stem the flow of misinformation.
The data shows that when platforms like Twitter and Facebook decide to act against the kind of rhetoric that leads to things like deadly assaults on the U.S. Capitol Building, it can have a tangible impact on the kinds of conversations that are happening on social media. When hatred and dangerous lies are deplatformed, it can stop these movements from snowballing into real-world actions with real-world consequences.
Certain topics within election fraud like “voter fraud,” “stop the steal,” “illegal votes,” and “shredded ballots” saw declines between 67 and 99 percent on Twitter after the account bans. An array of QAnon-related keywords and phrases fell in use as well, although there was an increase in mentions of just “Q” and “QAnon.”
Trump and some supporters have been similarly banned on other platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Twitch, Snapchat, Spotify, and more.
Conversations around election fraud began long before Election Day with Trump preemptively questioning the validity of mail-in votes, then the integrity of ballot machines and election officials. Fans of Trump and followers of the widely discredited QAnon clung to these conspiracies of election fraud, culminating in an attack on the U.S. Capitol building on the day that congress was scheduled to confirm the victory of President-elect Joe Biden.
During and following the attack, Trump did little to condemn the actions of insurrectionists, sometimes even stoking the flames. It wasn’t long before Trump was locked out of his Twitter account. His account bans on Twitter and elsewhere followed over the next day.
Trump’s Twitter account in particular has been targeted by the company after he began tweeting lies about the election. Many of his tweets included a note that said his claims were disputed, and sometimes tweets were not possible to share. But the fact that he could still get his lies out to his followers allowed conspiracies to fester, inspiring right and far-right groups.
Trump’s ban and the ban of thousands of his followers is an important step for reining in dangerous rhetoric in the U.S. that should have happened earlier, considering the effect the ban has had on conspiratorial conversations.