Facebook Told To Investigate Its Role In Capitol Building Insurrection

Tech giant Facebook has been told to investigate the role the company played in the Capitol building insurrection in January this year.

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Recall a group of Republicans supporters stormed the Capitol building on January 6, 2021 to protest against the results of the 2020 presidential election which projected the then Democrats leader Joe Biden as the winner ahead of the then incumbent president Donald Trump.

The protest resulted in the closure of the Capitol building for a couple of days as the protestors destroyed and took away some of the most valuable items in the building including the staff of speaker Nancy Pelosi among others.

It was alleged that the group of about 3 million Republic supporters that gathered in front of the Capitol building were motivated from the former president’s posts on social media accusing electoral officials of rigging the elections.

Facebook has been denying claims that it played a very vital role in the riot at the Capitol building pushing the blame on other social media platforms, but records shows that Twitter were banning every ‘electoral fraud’ tweet from the former president account whiles Facebook did nothing about Trump’s posts on the platform.

Reports indicate Facebook only began to ban content from or related to ‘Stop the Steal’ a movement that sought to undermine the results of the election, after the insurrection. The week of the election a Facebook group dedicated to ‘Stop the Steal’ gathered hundreds of thousands of members before it was later shut down.

The company’s independent oversight board yesterday upheld the company’s decision to ban former president Donald Trump from the platform but the biggest decision of the meeting was when the board recommended for a deeper review of the role the platform played in the spread of election conspiracy theories that, in the board’s words, “exacerbated tensions that culminated in the violence in the United States on January 6.”