My wife and I attended the “Stop the Steal” Trump Insurrection on Wednesday (as observers, NOT participants) and there are FIVE big take-aways from what we witnessed and heard outside the Capitol that I'd like to share. (We took all the pictures below). 1/22

1/10. The claim that Trump won the election is a big lie.

2/10. A big lie changes reality. To believe it, people must disbelieve their senses, distrust their fellow citizens, and live in a world of faith.

3/10. A big lie demands conspiracy thinking, since all who doubt it are seen as traitors.

4/10. A big lie undoes a society, since it divides citizens into believers and unbelievers.

5/10. A big lie destroys democracy, since people who are convinced that nothing is true but the utterances of their leader ignore voting and its results.

1. (THREAD) So, it seems like the deplatforming debate is once again kicking off, so I thought I would introduce some of the earlier work that was done in this area back when ISIS was buck wild on social media. What have we learned over the last six years might be useful today:

2. One of the earliest studies that discussed the impact of suspensions of ISIS accounts was @intelwire and Morgan's piece: The ISIS Twitter Consensus.

They found that suspensions did have an impact on replies and retweets and overall dissemination.

3. After suspensions, the die-hard supporters dedicated themselves to creating new accounts, but others whittled away: “it appears the pace of account creation has lagged behind the pace of suspensions”

4. On the specific question of how suspensions impact the Twitter network, see this piece by @intelwire and @IntelGirl111, which explores how suspensions impact these groups, including major disruptions to dissemination and decline in follower count:

5. Another study by @Aud_Alexander similarly found that ISIS supporters were finding it hard to “gain traction” after Twitter took a harder stance on the group.