Facebook: states that it will eradicate references to ‘stop the steal’ through its manifesto
The American online social networking service, Facebook Inc. said on Monday that it is removing all content referring to “stop the steal”, a popular phrase among supporters of President Trump’s unproven claims about electoral fraud, as part of a series of measures to curb misinformation and incitement to violence on its platform prior to the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden.
However, this decision comes after Facebook banned Trump until the end of his presidency and after Twitter finally suspended President Trump after last week’s siege of the US Capitol.
Facebook had previously deleted a few of the original bands Stop the Steal in November, and said it has continued to suppress Pages, groups, and events that violate his policies, including appeals for violence.
In a blog post, Twitter said, we have made it clear that we will take aggressive enforcement action on behaviors that can cause damage offline. On Friday, Twitter Inc. also said that it has deleted more than 70,000 accounts that propagated the conspiracy theory QAnon, whose followers believe that Mr. Trump is being attacked by Satan worshippers.
Meanwhile, Facebook, Twitter and several other leading technology companies, including Snap Inc., Reddit Inc. and others, had already taken action over the last few days to silence the president’s personal accounts.
Facebook states that its decision to take this additional step has to do with the increased calls for violence in the United States.
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said in an interview on Monday that Facebook had removed content from fringe groups like Canon and Proud Boys and Stop the Steal and everything that talked about violence.
Meanwhile, the app stores and web services provider for the alternative social network Parler have also now gave it the green light for the hate speech and calls to violence it hosted.
Lastly, Facebook indicated that they will continue to staff their Integrity Operations Centre at all times, at least until January 22, to monitor the situation and respond to situation in real times. Besides, it will continue to work with law enforcement to delete content, deactivate accounts and respond to lawful requests for user data.
