Trump’s Twitter Ban Was Very Effective For Controlling Disinformation: Zignal Labs

Shortly after the events of January 6, 2021, the storm of a mob of Trump supporters on the US Capitol, the US President was thrown from all relevant social media platforms. This move, while controversial, was definitely effective.

The storm on the Capitol was preceded by weeks of daily Trump false statements and lies. The US President and large parts of the Republican Party ran a downright disinformation and lying campaign to question the election victory of Joe Biden. The Trump camp had no evidence or victories in court to offer, but the false statements were repeated over and over again on Twitter, Facebook and others.

Controversial but effective

The social media companies got too much after the violence of January 6th and they banned Trump, especially Twitter. That was controversial but effective. As reported by the Washington Post, citing the media analysis company Zignal Labs, online disinformation on the topic of election fraud decreased dramatically after the Trump ban, namely by a whopping 73 percent.

According to research by Zignal Labs, between January 9 and 15, 2021, election fraud talks fell from 2.5 million to 688,000 mentions. After the riots in front of and in the Capitol and the lockdown, the use of the hashtag #FightforTrump fell by 95 percent, the rate for #HoldTheLine and “March for Trump” was similar.

Enlightenment against QAnon

Various hashtags in connection with the conspiracy spinning around “QAnon” also fell by 15 percent. However, this is not necessarily directly related to Trump’s ban, the media researchers explain this, among other things, with the increased media reporting and thus clarification of this inflammatory myth.

Whether this effect will persist in the long term is of course not yet foreseeable, but in the short term, the lock has more than served its purpose in the fight against misinformation, according to the social media experts.