Supporters of US President Donald Trump gathered in front of the Versailles Cuban restaurant in Miami, Florida, November 4, 2020 ... -

Eva Marie UZCATEGUI / AFP

The American election is also played out on social networks.

With the hashtag #StopTheSteal ("Stop the theft"), the pro-Trump camp quickly propagated the baseless theory that Democrats wanted to "steal the presidential election" through massive electoral fraud.

A false rumor that has spread like wildfire since November 3, when the president revived the idea of ​​a Democratic attempt to "steal the election" on his Twitter account to 88 million subscribers.

The thesis was immediately taken up by powerful "influencers" of his camp, such as his son Donald Trump Jr., very active on the networks (6 million subscribers on Twitter), Elizabeth Harrington, spokesperson for the Republican Party, or lesser-known megaphones like Chris Barron.

Does anyone believe that Biden, a candidate who had a tough time filing a room, got 8.89 million more votes than Obama 2012?

This while @realDonaldTrump set vote records never seen before in the Republican Party (achieved 7.5 million more votes 2016) and is “down”?

- Eric Trump (@EricTrump) November 7, 2020

A Facebook group of 350,000 members closed

A Facebook page called "Stop The Steal", created the day after the vote, and which gathered Thursday up to 350,000 members - supporters of Donald Trump who called to "stop the count" and prevent Democrats from "stealing the vote" - was closed by Facebook.

Members of this group were calling for protests in key states where winner suspense persists, from Georgia to Nevada to Pennsylvania.

These calls for action - sometimes accompanied by violent allusions, notably via the hashtag #civilwar (civil war) - have prompted Joe Biden's supporters and civil society to sound the alarm and call Facebook to This is how it works.

"Given the exceptional measures we are taking during this time of tension, we have withdrawn the group Stop the steal, which was organizing events in the real world," said a spokesperson for the group in California.

"This group was formed around the delegitimization of the electoral process and we have seen worrying calls for violence from some members of the group," added the spokesperson.

Supporters of the president have, unsurprisingly, immediately shouted "censorship", denouncing the disappearance of this page launched by the pro-Trump group "Women for America First".

“Facebook closed the Stop the Steal page which had 365,000 members: did social networks treat Black Lives Matter the same way?

“, Launched Chris Barron, in a message retweeted by Donald Trump Jr.

A slogan born on social networks ... taken up in the demonstrations

For Emily Dreyfuss, of the Shorenstein Center specializing in media observation, "Stop the Steal" has proven to be all the more effective as the expression reduces "the super complex question" of the electoral college and the counting to a "message. simple and oriented ”.

Like a previous Trumpist slogan #BidenCrimeFamily, which accused Joe Biden and his family of criminal activities as diverse as they are unfounded, “StopTheSteal” is a well-organized “media manipulation campaign”, whose impetus came from 'influential officials from the Trump camp rather than the grassroots, she analyzes.

No one expects the closure of the Facebook page to spell the end of this campaign.

The expression "Stop the steal" was still used extensively Friday and Saturday on Twitter, and was also used as a slogan in filmed or broadcast demonstrations live, images which then turn on social networks, explains Renee DiResta, researcher at Stanford Internet Observatory , which tracks disinformation online.

“This poses real challenges for the platforms,” even if they fight much more aggressively against disinformation than in 2016, she said.

Many wacky conspiracy theories like #Sharpiegate

The "Stop the Steal" campaign is fueled by many eccentric theories, which have ignited the networks since Tuesday, such as that of #Sharpiegate, in reference to the American pens of the Sharpie brand.

To believe those who propagate it, the use of these felt-tip pens - very common in the United States - to fill out the ballots would be enough to render them illegible by counting machines and therefore invalidate them.

Launched in a county of Arizona, the thesis - very quickly denied by local officials - quickly spread to the point that demonstrators met Wednesday evening in front of the election office of this county to demand a recount.

Against disinformation, facts often carry little weight: once in the open, ideas, even unfounded, are often imprinted in people's minds and taint the people or the democratic processes concerned with suspicion.

These theories are therefore likely to continue to prosper after the election, according to Alex Stamos, director of the Stanford Internet Observatory, and to spread "like the conspiratorial theories of QAnon", a far-right movement which presents Donald Trump as waging a secret war. against the global elites, riddled with satanist pedophiles.

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