Facebook Bans “Stop the Steal” to Remove all Content Ahead of Biden’s Inauguration
No more “Stop the Steal” posts on Facebook
Ahead of Joe Biden’s inauguration, Facebook announced that it is taking down all content, including pictures, videos and posts, mentioning the phrase “stop the steal”. The step was taken as one of the few measures to put off any further turbulence after the deadly attack on the US Capitol last week.
“We began preparing for Inauguration Day last year. But our planning took on new urgency after last week’s violence in Washington, D.C., and we are treating the next two weeks as a major civic event. We’re taking additional steps and using the same teams and technologies we used during the general election to stop misinformation and content that could incite further violence during these next few weeks,” stated Facebook.
Earlier last week Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg talked about the unfortunate event through a post. Here’s what h wrote.
What is Stop the Steal?
Stop the Steal is a phrase used by Donald Trump and his proxies to claim the unproven election fraud. He along with his supporters has been making hate groups on Facebook and other social media platforms in a bid to manipulate people into believing that there was huge fraud in the number of voters during the elections. Even though the allegations are uncorroborated, Trump and his proxies have been using the phrase to organize online protests. The “Stop the Steal” phrase has been used tens of hundreds of times on social media in an effort to publish false statements and garner public sympathy.
What exactly happened?
Following the 2020 US presidential election, in which Joe Bidden won, leaving behind Donald Trump; Trump and his supporters tried to deny the results by persuading and manipulating people’s minds. Furthermore, Trump and his supporters allegedly attacked the US Capitol. A mob of rioters attacked the building, which is the meeting place of US Congress on January 6 in an effort to stop the formal ceremony of Joe Biden’s victory.
The sudden decision
For many, it might be a sudden decision but from where we see it, it is a group of events that led to the ban. Earlier in November last year, Facebook removed the official “Stop the Steal” group from its platform and has continued to remove groups, pages and events that encourage violence in the name of justice for Donald Trump. Facebook and Instagram also removed a recent video of Trump speaking about the protests and his posts about the election results.
This time when things went out of control, the decision was taken to curb the risk of any kind of violence that might take place in the coming days. “We are now removing content containing the phrase “stop the steal” under our Coordinating Harm policy from Facebook and Instagram,” said Facebook.
What else is being done to reduce hate on social media?
From blocking accounts to limiting engagement, banning pages to restricting accounts, social media giants are taking every possible step to stop any kind of mishappening or violence.
A slew of measures have been taken by the social media giant “Facebook” to curb the spread of violence.
- Surged the requirement of Group admins to review and approve posts before they get published
- Automatically disabling comments, which include hate speech or words that can lead to violence
- Use of AI to demote content violating policies
Here’s what Twitter has done:
- Increased enforcement measures for our civic integrity policy
- Deployed tech for urgent human review of potentially harmful comments
- Blocked keywords that encourage violence
Steps taken by other social media platforms
Not just Facebook, but several other platforms, including Reddit, Twitter, and Instagram have taken certain steps to curb the online hate being created by the supporters of Mr Trump.
In an effort to stop any kind of unrest, Twitter removed more than 70,000 accounts since Friday that spread QAnon conspiracy.
“We’ve been clear that we will take strong enforcement action on behavior that has the potential to lead to offline harm,” mentioned an official Twitter blog, adding, “Given the violent events in Washington, DC, and increased risk of harm, we began permanently suspending thousands of accounts that were primarily dedicated to sharing QAnon content on Friday afternoon.”
QAnon conspiracy theory: The theory believes that Donald Trump is under assault of those who worship Satan.
Actions prohibited on certain social media platforms following the ongoing protests
- Unwanted and harmful activity
- Hate speech
- Provoking words
- Threats
- Hateful comments
- Sensitive pictures and videos
- Groups and pages encouraging violence
