Twitter flagged Donald Trump’s tweets with election misinformation: They continued to spread both on and off the platform

Zeve Sanderson, Megan A. Brown, Richard Bonneau, Jonathan Nagler, Joshua A. Tucker

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

We analyze the spread of Donald Trump’s tweets that were flagged by Twitter using two intervention strategies—attaching a warning label and blocking engagement with the tweet entirely. We find that while blocking engagement on certain tweets limited their diffusion, messages we examined with warning labels spread further on Twitter than those without labels. Additionally, the messages that had been blocked on Twitter remained popular on Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit, being posted more often and garnering more visibility than messages that had either been labeled by Twitter or received no intervention at all. Taken together, our results emphasize the importance of considering content moderation at the ecosystem level.

Original languageEnglish (US)
JournalHarvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review
Volume2
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - 2021

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Social Sciences (miscellaneous)

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