A new report released on Thursday found that nearly a quarter of the more than 6,000 posts former President Trump made on Facebook in 2020 contained either misinformation, content that needed further explanation or attacks on others.
Left-leaning watchdog Media Matters found that between Jan. 1, 2020, and Jan. 6, 2021, Trump made 1,443 posts that contained misinformation about the coronavirus and the election or featured rhetoric “dehumanizing or otherwise attacking his critics.” These account for nearly 24 percent of the 6,081 posts he made in all and more than a third of the interactions on his posts.
More than 500 posts from Trump contained misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic, with the former president frequently claiming that the higher case numbers were due to more testing, a claim that has been repeatedly refuted by health experts.
“In the neighborhood where I grew up, people put the stop signs in the places where there were the most incidents,” Media Matters president Angelo Carusone told The Washington Post. “This is not about two posts. This is about a pattern of misinformation, and when you let it go unchecked, you not only get the kind of circumstances that lead to the 6th, but all the downstream effects, including the amplification of conspiracy theories and lies.”
Trump is blocked from his account, having been suspended in January following the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol breach. Fellow social media giant Twitter has permanently banned Trump from its service. Facebook has yet to issue a decision regarding his account.
Media Matters says Facebook has removed other accounts for less, banning pages run by or affiliated with Alex Jones, Roger Stone and Steve Bannon for spreading misinformation or encouraging violence.
Facebook labelled many of Trump’s posts with “authoritative information,” Media Matters notes.
“Despite these labels on Trump’s posts, Facebook did not place any restrictions on Trump’s account until after these false claims inspired violence at the Capitol,” the organization writes.
Trump’s fate on Facebook is being decided by a recently-formed 20-person oversight board. The board revealed in February that it had received roughly 9,000 comments regarding Trump’s suspension, more than 100 times the amounts of comments it had received for their five previous cases combined. The board has said that its ruling will be made by April at the latest.