'Talk About a Super Spreader': Analysis Finds Online Election Misinformation Fell by 73% After Trump Barred

“The findings, from Jan. 9 through Friday,” reports the Washington Post, “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.” Credit: Gage Skidmore/Flickr

A new analysis of online misinformation released Saturday showed that false and wildly misleading content regarding the outcome of the 2020 presidential election was reduced by nearly three-fourths overall after President Donald Trump was barred from posting on major social media sites in the wake of the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol building by his supporters.

The research firm Zignal Labs, as the Washington Post reports, calculated that conversations based on misinformation “plunged 73 percent after several social media sites suspended President Trump and key allies last week.”

According to the Post:

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.

Twitter’s ban of Trump on Jan. 8, after years in which @realDonaldTrump was a potent online megaphone, has been […]