De-platforming Trump and Misinformers From Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. The Effect on Disinformation.
The top-tier scientific journal Nature published on June 5, 2024, a research paper on the effects of Twitter de-platforming 70,000 accounts providing fake news. Unfortunately for many (most?) of us, online access to Nature is behind a paywall.
I won’t waste time on an analysis of someone else’s brief analysis of the hidden Nature article “Post-January 6th deplatforming reduced the reach of misinformation on Twitter.” Am I too miserly for not paying for a Nature article or a subscription? Yes, I am. I will include a link here to a brief online review article at TechPolicy.press for the readers consideration.
“The report makes clear that the authors could not reliably identify the magnitude of the observed effects due to the complexity of the events surrounding the insurrection and the volume of the news reporting on it, and that the results may not be generalizable to other platforms or events. But while Twitter normally “benefitted enormously from Trump’s volatile tweets” by keeping the platform “at the center of public discourse,” they say, the events at the US Capitol marked a moment of crisis for the company. “January 6th is a moment that highlights the relationship between real-world violence and misinformation, as well as the attempt at purposeful control over political speech on Twitter by its leadership,” the paper reads. In th [sic] moment of crisis, perhaps the bluntest of content moderation tools appears to have had the intended effect.” Source: TechPolicy.Press [Emphasis mine]
Instead of relying on words and handwaving, the authors of the Nature paper above used actual Twitter data from 500,000 users over June 2020 to February 2021 to extract trends about the very complex behavior surrounding the Jan 6th, 2021, event. Again, from the TechPolicy.press article …
“To answer these questions, the researchers used data acquired during the two most recent US election cycles to compare the misinformation sharing rates on Twitter. The 2020 election share rate among all Twitter users was five times higher than in the 2016 elections, and about twice as high among misinformation sharers. Following the November 2020 elections, and up until January 6th, the rates of misinformation remained “relatively high,” which is in direct contrast with the 2016 elections, where misinformation “declined immediately following Trump’s victory.” These results suggest “a marked change in the misinformation ecosystem on Twitter over time,” according to the paper.” Source: TechPolicy.Press [Emphasis mine]
It is interesting how the “misinformation declined immediately following Trump’s victory.” Golly, why would that be?
A doff of the hat to the authors.