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Online Misinformation Dropped Dramatically After Twitter Banned Trump (seattletimes.com) 265

Posted by EditorDavid from the what's-news dept.
The Washington Post reports: Online misinformation about election fraud plunged 73 percent after several social media sites suspended President Trump and key allies last week, research firm Zignal Labs has found, underscoring the power of tech companies to limit the falsehoods poisoning public debate when they act aggressively.

The new research by the San Francisco-based analytics firm reported that conversations about election fraud dropped from 2.5 million mentions to 688,000 mentions across several social media sites in the week after Trump was banned from Twitter... The findings, from Jan. 9 through Friday, highlight how falsehoods flow across social media sites — reinforcing and amplifying each other — and offer an early indication of how concerted actions against misinformation can make a difference.
Kate Starbird, disinformation researcher at the University of Washington, also warned the Post that "What happens in the long term is still up in the air."
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Online Misinformation Dropped Dramatically After Twitter Banned Trump More

Online Misinformation Dropped Dramatically After Twitter Banned Trump

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  • Maybe just related to the timing (Score:3, Interesting)

    by KimDotOrg ( 7630658 ) on Sunday January 17, 2021 @12:09PM (#60955122)
    At this point in time, it's rather pointless to keep going on about election fraud.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Misinformation about election fraud is also banned in Belarus. Our president is reelected for the past 25 years with 99% vote and is preparing his son to take over the presidency.

      • Re:Maybe just related to the timing (Score:5, Informative)

        by Dan667 ( 564390 ) on Sunday January 17, 2021 @12:49PM (#60955368)
        The ban is not on reporting election fraud. The ban is reporting election fraud with no proof from 50 states including 50+ failed lawsuits. Outright lying about election fraud that trump and his cronies has been pushing has been shown how dangerous it is culminating in an attack on the US Capitol. I hope Belarus can find its way, but it is not the same thing at all.

        • I wasn't decided (per my longer comment), but your reply counts as strong evidence the FP was a troll.

    • Re:Maybe just related to the timing (Score:4, Informative)

      by Kitkoan ( 1719118 ) on Sunday January 17, 2021 @12:37PM (#60955282)
      Doubt it's the timing, as this would be the best time for misinformation to be posted. There are supposed to be plans for pro-Trump protests on the 21st all over the US. These groups would want as much misinformation as possible to help really more support from anyone and everyone.

      https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/11/politics/fbi-bulletin-armed-protests-state-us-capitol/index.html

      https://globalnews.ca/news/7580744/capitol-protests-states-trump/

      https://nationalpost.com/news/world/law-enforcement-officials-brace-for-pro-trump-protests-at-state-capitol-buildings

      • This. What happened is that by banning Trump, a massive pipeline linking the right-wing fever swamps to the mainstream media has been slammed shut.

        • Re:Maybe just related to the timing (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Sunday January 17, 2021 @02:15PM (#60955726)

          This. What happened is that by banning Trump, a massive pipeline linking the right-wing fever swamps to the mainstream media has been slammed shut.

          Exactly. They've run their course, their leader's whacked out conspiracies had reached the point of making nothing believable for the cult. When you get to the point where it was supposedly Antifa behind the riots, but that somehow Trump and his lackies encouraged Antifa, and the Brave and peaceful magas just stood there, horrified and powerless against the left wing kooks who had infiltrated their ranks, and apparently the new congresspeople had encouraged the antifa, so they must have been antifa as well, along with the Vice President, then you've reached peak conspiracy, and enter a divide by 0 state.

          Which is the end state of conspiracy based ideology, they fall apart in the end because nothing is real any more.

    • Hmm... Seven-digit UID. Probably young identity. Vacuous FP with empty Subject. Is it a fresh sock puppet? Or just a feeble bid for attention?

      Anyway, I came to the discussion looking for the obvious joke about stifling the biggest BSer and improving the SNR ratio for everyone. (Hence my Subject.) Less Trump = less BS.

      But the deep question underlying the joke is whether the incentive structures of social media can be changed to disfavor misinformation. I hate to be my usual bummer self, but I'm not even imag

  • Cut off the source and there ain't no river, perhaps a drip remaining.

  • Way to bury the lead.

  • May as well crown him "The King of Lies" and make that his main achievement for this life!

  • Trump's Legacy (Score:5, Informative)

    by Camel Pilot ( 78781 ) on Sunday January 17, 2021 @12:21PM (#60955198) Homepage Journal

    Trump's Legacy will be the guy who complained non-stop about "fake news" while being the greatest source and propagator of disinformation.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      A lot of it was from other sources who had an interest in him staying in power.

      Obviously there is the GOP, but also the alt-right/far-right, and of course the people making a packet off QAnon conspiracy theories. Lots of money to be made there.

      Then you have state level actors spewing out misinformation, particularly Russia. Now their guy has lost there is a lot less incentive to do it, at least until the next big opportunity comes along.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      He didn't so much as complain but whined. A screeching, keening whine that usually is connected to lost unlamented spirits. It is as though we have been through a torturer using finger nails on a chalk board for 5 years and is now silent.

  • Try searching Google News for 'Raquel Rodriguez' and see how many corporate media results there are.

  • The one biggest surprise in the Trump era. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RyanFenton ( 230700 ) on Sunday January 17, 2021 @12:26PM (#60955230)

    Was that the online skeptical movement essentially vanished from public view.

    Sure - people that sought them out could find them, and you'd still see the occasional link to snopes, maybe an occasional article mentioning Dawkins - but it was like the community surrounding them became crickets for a while.

    It was like there was so much active lying, so widely accepted, there just wasn't that much to say at the ambitious level of full-on skepticism. Even the word just meant climate skepticism to most people - or even QAnon-level craziness.

    Part of the issue is that the skeptical movement's ambition is to NOT be political - and a huge part of the audience are libertiarians... but the libertarian part saw their bread being buttered by instanity, and I think a large portion just saw those where those discussions would go in polite audiences, and took off to Q-land to be more comfortable.

    Not all of them to be certain - Penn Jillette worked with Trump, and openly said exactly what sort of a dude he was the whole time - and a lot of the libertarians who saw how the Tea party was manipulated were very much against that cycle too.

    But still, I think they balkanized into more libertiarian groups than skepticism groups - at least there was very little popularization efforts for general skepticism in these four years.

    Youtube skepticism also basically disappeared compared to pre-2016. Plenty of free thought talk in places - but no movement, none of the bunker and overcome efforts I would have expected.

    I think that was kind of part of the point of the Trump movement though - there is an enjoyment of cruelty as a form of humor that is at the heart of many kinds of Trump support - a push to support the absurd in ways that dishearten the organizations that bring their competition hope. Not really as a strategy - but as a pent up anger, an action of demagogue as old as society.

    Here's hoping the skeptical community will get some time to recover and have its time in the limelight again.

    Advancement in education, science, and rational skepticism are probably the most important things we have to making America Great Again whatever your politics.

    Ryan Fenton

    • You're surprised people disengaged? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by mykepredko ( 40154 ) on Sunday January 17, 2021 @12:47PM (#60955348) Homepage

      I think you're overthinking things here. Rather than continually challenge the torrent of bullshit that was produced by Trump and his followers every day, a large percentage of the online community simply disengaged from the conversation and moved on.

      It would be interesting to chart replies through Trump's presidency as I think you would see initially there was a large amount of push back and fact challenging which declined over time because there was no acknowledgement of the actual facts and the lies just kept coming. If there was push back in the later years, it was because the lie was so egregious (ie BLM protesters were making Trump Supporters look bad on January 6th).

      The skeptics are still out there but are waiting for a more reasonable administration to challenge and engage with.

    • Re:The one biggest surprise in the Trump era. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Camel Pilot ( 78781 ) on Sunday January 17, 2021 @01:14PM (#60955502) Homepage Journal

      Was that the online skeptical movement essentially vanished from public view.

      Did it disappear or was it just buried under the constant deluge of false distorted information from Trump and his media supporters? Trump continuously painted a fantasy world, starring himself and he did things bigger, better, more boldly than all who came before him while facing enemies far greater than any before. The Fox News late-night "entertainers" followed up each day reinforcing this fantasy. The false information overwhelmed any skeptical movement and none of his followers cared because cult mentality took over.

      Advancement in education, science, and rational skepticism are probably the most important things we have to making America Great Again whatever your politics.

      Now that is quoted for truth 5+. Trump has ultimately set back our culture because he fought against all those things daily and normalized lying, deceit, and hypocrisy.

      • Did it disappear or was it just buried under the constant deluge of false distorted information from Trump and his media supporters? Trump continuously painted a fantasy world, starring himself and he did things bigger, better, more boldly than all who came before him while facing enemies far greater than any before.

        In debating this is called the Gish Gallop, where you throw out so much bullshit your opponent doesn't have the ability to respond to all of it in the time they have. Then you can pretend it's true, since they didn't claim it wasn't, and build on top of it.

        Skilled debaters know how to deal with this, but the media absolutely does not. It gets particularly challenging when you disengage, because supporters will claim (with validity) that you're not listening to the individual, so how do you know what he was saying? You're disagreeing with them as a person, not based on content.

        It's very hard to navigate the firehose of shit without spraying it on everyone in attendance, or looking like you're so hostile that you're boycotting the person altogether. The media just pointed it at everyone and let it rip, which didn't help anyone.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by nagora ( 177841 )

        Was that the online skeptical movement essentially vanished from public view.

        Did it disappear or was it just buried under the constant deluge of false distorted information from Trump and his media supporters?

        This is it. Because literally everything Trump said was a deliberate lie (for philosophical reasons), it became impossible to keep up with "fact checking". By the time anyone had a rational response ready, that lie was already old news.

        MAGA was a classic example of making someone think they're a victim so that you can play the hero rescuing them. America was already great; it probably still is even after being molested for 4 years by an elderly creep.

        • Was that the online skeptical movement essentially vanished from public view.

          Did it disappear or was it just buried under the constant deluge of false distorted information from Trump and his media supporters?

          This is it. Because literally everything Trump said was a deliberate lie (for philosophical reasons), it became impossible to keep up with "fact checking". By the time anyone had a rational response ready, that lie was already old news.

          This.

          There's an old saying of uncertain origin, that is present in many forms, but one is: "a lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can get its shoes on."

    • Monetization caused that (Score:4, Insightful)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Sunday January 17, 2021 @02:10PM (#60955710)
      I watched it happen on YouTube. The skeptical community was making bank off YouTube advertising. Then the algorithm changed and they lost their cash cow.

      Not long after that they switched to right wing politics as a means of getting cash. There's a ton of money and free expertise from the billionaire funded think tanks out there. Guys like Sargon of Arkad & Computing Forever get funding from them as well as advice on how to grow their audiences from professionals who've been doing media manipulation since the 80s.

      That's where your skeptic community went. They followed the money. And, well, that meant doing away with skepticism. Truth just doesn't pay the bills. It doesn't help that SJWs are putting out a ton of crap media (the New Star Trek, unfunny female Ghostbusters, a woman as James Bond when Bond is a male power fantasy, etc).

      That shit pisses off the nerds and they look online for validation and to vent. SJWs make up a tiny, tiny portion of left wing politics (us Democratic Socialists don't particularly like 'em either) but you've got a multi-million dollar media apparatus handing them a microphone to make fools of themselves and by extension the left wing...

      Heck, people have been talking about it as a major problem. Actual journalistic sites have subscriptions, meanwhile the fake news sites spouting "Stop the Steal" and claiming Anti-fa stormed the capital building are readily available. The truth is paywalled, the lies are free.

  • Maybe the opposite? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by morcego ( 260031 ) on Sunday January 17, 2021 @12:41PM (#60955310)

    underscoring the power of tech companies to limit the falsehoods poisoning public debate

    Or, rather, the power of tech companies to SPREAD falsehood.
    The tech companies are, now, doing nothing more than trying to reverse the damage they did, by refusing to take responsibility for years.
    They are not heroes. They are doing the bare minimum after plenty of avoidable damage was done.

  • I can see this as valid correlation (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ErichTheRed ( 39327 ) on Sunday January 17, 2021 @12:41PM (#60955312)

    Trying not to generalize too much, there are basically three camps of Trump supporters:

    1. Those who support him primarily based on party affiliation or religious adherence ("I'm a Republican, he's a Republican, therefore I need to support whatever he does to keep the evil socialist liberals at bay.")
    2. Those who follow him on Twitter, love that he has no filter and sort of believe in his conspiracy theories and the like. ("I'm a Trump fan, everything he doesn't say is fake news. Here, let me like and retweet everything he says to show everyone how smart and non-sheep-like I am.")
    3. The hardcore crazies who are intent on anarchy no matter who is in charge, or so far under his spell that nothing anyone says or does will stop them. ("Dear Leader has given me a sacred duty to stage a coup because he's the only one who can help defeat what QAnon is exposing and prevent Bill Gates from taking over our minds via 5G and the vaccine.")

    Group 1 has mostly migrated to a "let's make life miserable for Biden now" stance, I think. Group 3 would listen to Trump's missives if he had to get on amateur radio and broadcast them using Morse code -- He's the Dear Leader and no one will convince them otherwise. The Group 2 group suddenly doesn't have a bunch of stuff to retweet, like, or follow. The no-mask-wearing Karen types we see on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram just have less of an easy way to instantly spread a message to everyone. It's easy being a keyboard warrior but there's a much higher bar to going down to DC and participating in a riot because your President insinuated you should. Group 2 represents a bigger crowd than Group 3.

  • and is questioning "well, what's misinformation?!!!", they tracked posts that said Trump won the election. Trump had 65 court cases, he won 1, which threw out 2,000 ballots due to them arriving late in the mail (and those likely arrived late because he slowed down the post office). There's been 3 or 4 recounts.

    Trump lost. Bigly. It's misinformation (e.g. a "lie") to suggest he won at this point. so I think the study's premise is fair.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 )
      It's pretty simple, really. The racists, sexists, blackpilled incels, gay-bashers, and so on, have all lost their 'hero', who they were sure was going to 'fix' America, bring back slavery of non-whites (or just deport them all, even if they were born here), take away womens' right to vote, own property and basically make them property of men again, to do with as they please, make it a constitutional right to touch boobies and grab pussy at will without repercussions, and make being LGBTQ a capital offense w

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jbssm ( 961115 )
        If you think 47% of the electorate are "racists, sexists, blackpilled incels, gay-bashers" then you should better start digging your own personal bunker, for the apocalypse is arriving.

  • abuse of power (Score:3)

    by Tom ( 822 ) on Sunday January 17, 2021 @12:47PM (#60955354) Homepage Journal

    So they can silence lunatics, but they don't use that power on anti-vaxxers, religious nutjobs or even on known islamic terrorist groups.

    Wonderful guardians we have there.

    I maintain: That was a demonstration of power. Trump simply gave them a nice excuse to do it, and reducing misinformation isn't on their agenda at all.

    • ..anti-vaxxers, religious nutjobs or even on known islamic terrorist groups.

      Has the possibility occurred to you that perhaps they're allowing them to exist on social media so LEOs can keep an eye on them easier? That Trump was just a bridge too far for them?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tom ( 822 )

        Has the possibility occurred to you that perhaps they're allowing them to exist on social media so LEOs can keep an eye on them easier?

        That's why we've seen them disappear over the years... oh wait... no, we haven't.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jvkjvk ( 102057 )

      > Trump simply gave them a nice excuse to do it,

      Well you have to admit, sedition and insurrection against the United States *are* a pretty nice excuses!

  • I'm jealous (Score:2, Insightful)

    by spiritplumber ( 1944222 )
    I'm jealous of Kate Starbird for having such an awesome name.
  • If this is so simple and so effective, one should wonder why you still have accounts like that of Ayatollah Khomeini calling for the destruction of an all country, for instance...

  • Hey US, here Europe.
    You always told us you were the land of be free. Free speech?

    Those days appear far in the past. Is there any reason why disinformation is so everywhere? You need to ban it. Can you just nod spread truth? Expect reality to overtake lies? Let the debate go on and then see. Is that not what democracy is about, having the talk in open space?

    Well since you are shutting down entire services where free speech was possible, it looks like you are now officially a censored state. Wait, what, call

  • Brought to you by the "No Shit, Sherlock" department...

  • Maybe the traffic dropped when people saw their Fool-in-Chief incite insurrection leading to the deaths of 5 people and it had little to do with Twitter.

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