The affair marked the spirits and never ceases to arouse reactions. In the wake of the violent intrusion into the US Congress on January 6, Donald Trump was banned by Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat. The Republican is indeed accused of stirring up violence by his words and his refusal to accept his defeat. He is also used to false electoral information, claiming, wrongly, that the last presidential election is marred by massive fraud.
Conservative activists migrate to other social networks
According to a study conducted by the company Zignal Labs, the departure of the president has brought a real breath of fresh air on social networks in terms of disinformation. Thus, electoral fake news posted on major platforms would be down 73% in the week of January 9 to 15, compared to that of January 1 to 8. In detail, the researchers counted 688,000 false news on the subject, while there were 2.5 million in the seven days preceding the ouster of Donald Trump.
The authors also note that popular hashtags among Republican supporters who dispute the result have also declined significantly. This is the case for #FightForTrump: -95.5%, or even #HoldTheLine, down 94.3%. Other expressions used by sympathizers of the QAnon conspiracy theory have also greatly diminished such as “QAnonJapanFlynn”.
We should perhaps see here one of the effects of the offensive led by Twitter against supporters of the conspiracy movement with the deletion of 70,000 accounts last week. The company justified its decision by arguing that they ” were engaged in sharing harmful content associated with QAnon on a large scale and were primarily dedicated to spreading this conspiracy theory through the service ».
It remains to be seen if these effects will be lasting or if the activists will manage to regain their place on these social networks. We also know that conservative supporters have tended in recent months to migrate to alternative social networks deemed less straddling the moderation of hate speech.
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