Facebook and Instagram will now be removing any and all content that contains the phrase “Stop The Steal,” claiming it is linked to violence.
In a statement, Facebook’s Vice President for Integrity, Guy Rosen, and Monika Bickert, their Vice President for Global Policy Management, said that the social media giant would be removing content containing the phrase “Stop the Steal” from both Facebook and Instagram, following the protests at Capitol Hill by pro-Trump patriots.
“We removed the original Stop the Steal group in November and have continued to remove Pages, groups and events that violate any of our policies, including calls for violence,” the statement reads:
We’ve been allowing robust conversations related to the election outcome and that will continue. But with continued attempts to organize events against the outcome of the US presidential election that can lead to violence, and use of the term by those involved in Wednesday’s violence in DC, we’re taking this additional step in the lead up to the inauguration. It may take some time to scale up our enforcement of this new step but we have already removed a significant number of posts.
It comes as Ali Alexander, one of the founders of the “Stop The Steal” movement, was permanently suspended from Twitter, and had his PayPal and Venmo accounts shut down as well.
1. Ali Alexander, who is the leader of "Stop The Steal" and one of the organizers of the insurrection, has had his Twitter account permanently suspended.
Alexander said yesterday that his PayPal and Venmo accounts were shut down as well. pic.twitter.com/F50cc6BSN3
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) January 11, 2021
The banning of “Stop The Steal” from Facebook and Instagram is only the latest move from the company following the Capitol Hill protests. Facebook has banned people from sharing photos or videos from the protestors, and is also removing any praise for the protests and calls for further peaceful protests in Washington DC if they break the recently-imposed curfew.
President Trump was temporarily suspended from both Facebook and Instagram last week, along with many platforms, including Twitter, where he was permanently banned. As National File reported:
“The shocking events of the last 24 hours demonstrate that President Donald Trump intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden,” Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post announcing the ban.
Despite censoring the President’s calls for an end to protestors’ efforts to breach the Capitol (which was ordered closed to the public ahead of electoral vote certification), Zuckerberg went on to claim that President Trump had used Facebook “to condone rather then condemn the actions of his supporters.”
Alt Tech sites, like Gab, Parler, Rumble, and others, have seen massive growth since Big Tech cracked down on the President and his supporters. Gab reported a 750% increase in traffic following President Trump’s removal from Twitter, and Parler reported a 355% increase in app downloads. Parler had its servers shut down by Amazon on Monday morning, with Parler now suing AWS, claiming they are colluding with Twitter.
