Washington (AFP)
When Twitter announced the permanent suspension of Donald Trump's account after the January 6 assault on the US Capitol, the social network justified itself by citing the risk of new incitement to violence.
The announcement came after weeks of contestation over Joe Biden's 2020 presidential victory by the billionaire.
Nearly three months later, the number of posts with erroneous or misleading political claims has dropped dramatically in the United States, a trend for which Twitter and Facebook want to take credit.
With Trump deprived of a megaphone and Biden much more discreet in the media, the lack of an election in the short term is pushing Americans out of politics and paying more attention to the economic recovery and the vaccination campaign against Covid-19.
It's this shift, rather than a fundamental shift in the way misinformation spreads, that is causing this low level of false reporting, experts say.
"The most important factor was to deprive Donald Trump of his audience," argues Professor Russell Muirhead, co-author of "A Lot of People Are Saying" ("Many say that ...", untranslated), a expression that the former US president used regularly before making baseless claims.
"This has resulted in the disappearance of a daily storm of disinformation in the ecosystem," he told AFP.
But the effect is likely to be short-lived, in an online environment where news shapes disinformation.
Vaccine conspiracy theories, for example, proliferated in early 2021.
- "A strange situation" -
"We can expect to see the volume of false information rise as an election approaches," said Russell Muirhead.
Donald Trump had more than 88 million followers on his Twitter account before his suspension.
His tweets and Facebook posts were his preferred means of claiming unfounded - more than 60 appeals from his teams were dismissed by the courts - that large-scale electoral fraud cost him a second term.
"The preponderant subject of disinformation in 2020 was the integrity of this election," analyzes Joshua Tucker, professor of political science and expert in data analysis and social networks at New York University.
"We are in a strange situation where two-thirds of Republicans still believe the election was fraudulent. The two-and-a-half-month waiting period between (the) November election and the nomination made it look interesting. to disinformation for them because there was this unresolved question of who would be president on January 21 ", the day after the inauguration ceremony, he underlines.
"This question lost much of its interest after January 21," he adds.
- A Trump social network?
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But the conspiracy story has not died out.
After Joe Biden's inauguration, proponents of QAnon conspiracy theories claimed Trump would return to power on March 4.
An assertion that led the federal authorities to strengthen security around places of power in Washington.
The date of March 4 has passed without incident, pushing the QAnon nebula even further to the margins, supporting a theory that Joe Biden and the Democrats are part of a global Satanist and pedophile conspiracy.
Why do some keep sharing wrong information?
In early March, researchers claimed Americans are spreading false information on social media simply because they don't consider whether the content is real or fake.
Trump, deprived of his sounding boards that were Twitter and Facebook, hinted at his relative isolation in a few blunt interviews, even though his entourage hinted that he could launch his own social network to help him carry out his job. big comeback.
But Joshua Tucker said he was skeptical about the ability of such a social network to transcend the political sphere.
"Trump is happy to start new things, if he thinks he can make some money. But there are plenty of reasons people are on social media, beyond politics," he explains.
Social networks like "TikTok or Clubhouse target the entire US market. But if you are Trump you start with a disability. Having a platform affiliated with Trump will mean a lot of people will refuse to approach it." , specifies the researcher.
© 2021 AFP