Content Moderation After January 6

One year ago, a violent mob broke into the U.S. Capitol during the certification of the electoral vote, aiming to overturn Joe Biden’s victory and keep Donald Trump in power as the president of the United States. The internet played a central role in the insurrection: Trump used Twitter to broadcast his falsehoods about the integrity of the election and gin up excitement over January 6, and rioters coordinated ahead of time on social media and posted pictures afterwards of the violence. In the wake of the riot, a crackdown by major social media platforms ended with Trump suspended or banned from Facebook, Twitter and other outlets.

So how have platforms been dealing with content moderation issues in the shadow of the insurrection? This week on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic sat down for a discussion with Lawfare managing editor Jacob Schulz. To frame their conversation, they looked to the recent Twitter ban and Facebook suspension of Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene—which took place almost exactly a year after Trump’s ban.

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