US Election Fraud Disinformation Drops Massively On Twitter Following Trump Ban

US media is report­ing that online dis­in­for­ma­tion about alleged US elec­tion fraud dropped mas­sive­ly fol­low­ing the deci­sion by Twit­ter to ban Pres­i­dent Trump and key allies. Accord­ing to a Wash­ing­ton Post report:

Jan­u­ary 16, 2021 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. Elec­tion dis­in­for­ma­tion had for months been a major sub­ject of online mis­in­for­ma­tion, begin­ning even before the Nov. 3 elec­tion and pushed heav­i­ly by Trump and his allies. Zig­nal found it dropped swift­ly and steeply on Twit­ter and oth­er plat­forms in the days after the Twit­ter ban took hold on Jan. 8.

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Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ing on US elec­tion dis­in­for­ma­tion com­ing from Trump and his allies has included:

• A report on a Decem­ber 2, 2020 speech by Trump that was gen­er­al­ly described as con­tain­ing wild­ly inac­cu­rate claims about the US elections.

• A Decem­ber 2020 report that the head of the Repub­li­can Par­ty in the US state of Ari­zona had post­ed a dis­in­for­ma­tion video titled “Domin­ion Exposed” in which she says that the video “should ter­ri­fy every sin­gle American.”

• An Octo­ber 2020  post on an exten­sive report detail­ing what was described as the adop­tion by US Pres­i­dent Trump and his allies of infor­ma­tion war­fare tac­tics nor­mal­ly asso­ci­at­ed with author­i­tar­i­an regimes.

As not­ed in the GIOR FAQ:

The US is unique among demo­c­ra­t­ic coun­tries at this point in time because it is the only demo­c­ra­t­ic coun­try that is known to have its own gov­ern­ment and/or a major polit­i­cal par­ty con­duct­ing influ­ence oper­a­tions direct­ed at its own cit­i­zens. This looks like­ly to con­tin­ue for the fore­see­able future.