Post-election, extremists use fringe social networks to push fraud claims, violence

Source: Politico | November 13, 2020 | Mark Scott

Cries of voter fraud and calls to arms are gaining ground on alternative networks, then finding their way back to mainstream sites.

Efforts by Facebook and Twitter to squash claims from President Donald Trump and others of electoral fraud are hitting a big obstacle: The messages are running wild on smaller fringe networks popular among the far right — then boomeranging back onto the mainstream platforms.

Extremist groups, white nationalists and conspiracy theorists — some claiming ties to QAnon, which alleges a so-called deep-state plot to undermine Trump — have taken to encrypted messaging apps and online message boards.

There, they promote viral videos of unproven voter fraud, urge supporters to ready their guns in support of Trump and push anti-Semitic and racist claims about election officials, according to POLITICO’s review of multiple Telegram channels, 4Chan discussions and conversations on Parler, a social network favored by more mainstream conservatives.

Such discussions have skyrocketed on these alternative platforms since the Nov. 3 election, creating a safe harbor for those pushing claims of fraud and a venue to push for real-world action.

The fringe forums also have acted as staging grounds for coordinated misinformation campaigns targeting the major social networks, as well as repositories for extreme content, initially posted on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube, that was later removed from those platforms, based on POLITICO’s review.

That highlights the limits of the social networking giants’ expanded efforts to stop election misinformation in its tracks. Groups banned from Facebook, Google and Twitter for spreading falsehoods are moving to other venues and are finding that people who are eager to believe their narratives are not far behind.

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