‘Burn down DC’: Violence that erupted at Capitol was incited by pro-Trump mob on social media
Capitol locked down; one person shot; Pence evacuated, Senate chamber cleared out
‘I will keep the oath I made’:Pence defies Trump, says he won’t block Congress from affirming Biden’s win
More than 80% of the top posts on TheDonald about the electoral college certification featured unmoderated calls for violence in the top five responses. Posts and comments explicitly called for violence included “WE WANT BLOOD” and called on supporters to murder House leader Nancy Pelosi.
The tumult heightened scrutiny of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube for their role in spreading harmful misinformation and serving as a megaphone for Trump. The platforms have resisted removing Trump’s posts, labeling them instead.
On Twitter, between Jan. 1 and Jan. 6, 1,480 posts from QAnon-related accounts referenced Jan. 6 and contained violent terms or threats including calls for “Patriots to Rise up, Kick The Tires and Light the Fires, and Kick Ass and Take Names!!”, Advance Democracy found. One post by a QAnon-related account claimed “threats of violence” were the only thing “TYRANTS understand.”
Touched off by a Twitter post from Trump attorney Lin Wood, almost 2,440 accounts on Twitter related to the QAnon conspiracy theory used the terms “Pence” and “traitor” in about 2,820 posts from Jan. 5 at 12 a.m. EST to Jan. 6 at 1 p.m. EST, according to Advance Democracy.
On Facebook, pages and private and public groups urged civil war if Democrats were not arrested for election interference, alleged police officers were assisting “Antifa” and claimed “Antifa” members were impersonating “patriots” at the Capitol. A video encouraged protesters to bring pepper spray, tear gas, batons, tasers and knives.
A Facebook page called Red-State Secession shared addresses of “enemies” including members of Congress. One post urged people to prepare “to use force to defend civilization.” Facebook removed the page Wednesday.
“Today’s tragic attack on the U.S. Capitol is the result of a years-long process of online radicalization. Millions of Americans have been the target of disinformation and conspiracy theories until they can no longer tell the difference between reality and fiction. This moment has been building since 2016,” said Emerson Brooking, resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab and co-author of “LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media.” “President Trump lit the fuse. He has repeatedly used his social media accounts to spread falsehoods and to incite violence against American citizens.”
Facebook, Twitter and YouTube did not act quickly enough or go far enough, Brooking said. They labeled and restricted some Trump posts but only late Wednesday began to remove some of them.
“He has put the lives of members of Congress and their staff in peril. By any measure, he has violated social media terms of service,” he said. “He should be removed immediately.”
Facebook and Twitter did not say whether they would act on calls to suspend the president’s accounts.
After a series of inflammatory posts, Twitter locked the president’s account late Wednesday, preventing him from posting messages to his more than 88 million followers. Facebook followed by blocking the president from posting for 24 hours.
“The violent protests in the Capitol today are a disgrace. We prohibit incitement and calls for violence on our platform,” Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone said in a statement. “We are actively reviewing and removing any content that breaks these rules.”
In a tweet, Twitter said it was cracking down on threats of and calls to violence which are against its policies and was exploring “other escalated enforcement actions.”
Some of the more violent content appeared on social media platforms with looser rules.
On Parler, the Proud Boys, a group with a history of violence, promoted a video purportedly of a D.C. police officer expressing support for the radical leftist “antifa” and encouraging violence against Proud Boys. Nationalist Social Club, New England, posted an image from Freedom Plaza claiming the authorities were “in bed with the reds.”
