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New York, United States:
All it took was a Facebook web page and a hashtag: As election tallies trickled in Donald Trump supporters had been busy going viral, accelerating the unsubstantiated declare that Democrats had been “stealing” the election underneath the rallying cry #StopTheSteal.
It lived simply 48 hours however the web page shortly racked up 350,000 members, folks subscribing to the conspiracy principle the Republican president too has been touting to his 88 million Twitter followers.
Trump’s social media “influencers” — his son Donald Trump Jr, or the spokesperson of the Republican get together Elizabeth Harrington — additionally performed key roles in spreading the falsehood.
And it wasn’t lengthy earlier than the hashtag, already standard with Republicans throughout the 2018 midterms, translated into concrete protests.
The “Stop the Steal” web page known as for demonstrations in states together with Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania the place votes had been nonetheless being counted and the races had been neck-and-neck.
The calls to motion typically got here with allusions aiming to sow violence together with slogans like #civilwar — prompting Joe Biden supporters to sound the alarm, demanding Facebook shut down the web page.
By Thursday noon, the hub for misinformation was no extra.
“In line with the exceptional measures that we are taking during this period of heightened tension, we have removed the Group ‘Stop the Steal,’ which was creating real-world events,” Facebook stated in response to an AFP inquiry.
“The group was organized around the delegitimization of the election process, and we saw worrying calls for violence from some members of the group.”
But the seeds had been planted — and its adherents shortly started denouncing the elimination of the web page launched by the pro-Trump group “Women for America First” as “censorship.”
“It’s what we call a media manipulation campaign,” stated Emily Dreyfuss, of Harvard’s Media Research heart.
“It’s this really memorable phrase that simplifies a super complex issue,” she stated. “It sticks in the brain.”
– Conspiracies abound –
These campaigns aren’t grassroots, Dreyfuss stated, however fairly propagated from the higher echelons of the Trump marketing campaign.
As with one other pro-Trump slogan — #BidenCrimeFamily — that unfold an misguided notion, the hashtag presents “a simple message framed with a specific agenda,” she stated, a bite-sized option to mislead a nation.
The web page’s closure certainly not spells the top of the disinformation marketing campaign — comparable teams and hashtags are already bobbing up.
The slogan “Stop The Steal” continues to be plastered throughout social media, and can be a battle cry at demonstrations or in video clips, pictures that find yourself elsewhere on social media, stated Renee DiResta, a researcher on the Stanford Internet Observatory.
“We see the baton passing also on Twitter, making its way to Facebook and YouTube,” she stated.
“This is presenting enforcement challenges for platforms,” which have been working more durable to combat disinformation since 2016.
Other far-fetched conspiracies have additionally been making the rounds because the November three vote, together with one dubbed #Sharpiegate that claims the felt-tipped pins to fill in ballots might make selections illegible to voting machines.
Launched in a county in Arizona, the thesis shortly debunked by native officers shortly unfold, leading to a Wednesday night protest in entrance of a neighborhood election workplace demanding a recount.
But dealing with disinformation, info typically carry little weight: Once they start spreading, these falsehoods imprint on the minds of individuals suspicious of the method.
Such theories might simply proceed propagating after the election, in accordance with Alex Stamos, director of the Stanford Internet Observatory, in the identical means because the far-right “QAnon” motion, which claims Trump is waging a secret warfare in opposition to a cabal of world elites who’re Satan-worshipping pedophiles.
“It’s highly unlikely to us that this activity is going to slack, even after the inauguration,” Stamos stated.
“This activity will continue and people will build upon these narratives.”
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