President Trump even declared "fraud" while still counting votes-the development of a strategy would take at least a few months. In the early hours of a cold November morning in Connecticut, after a long night shift, 49-year-old Candy Yiugg was in her bed. She immediately unlocked her phone-like most nights, and started scrolling through social media feeds. But this is different-it was election night. The result is still up in the air. Candy rolled, catching up with the news that night, while waiting for her favorite candidate to speak out. After 1 am, he did:
Tweets and democracy
Research by the BBC’s anti-disinformation department shows that false information about voter fraud has been repeatedly stuffed into influential accounts on social media for several months. It comes from the top. President Trump began posting allegations of Twitter fraud as early as April.
This is not a new topic. Mr. Trump made the claim that election fraud came back in 2016-after he won the election.
But this time, there is evidence that more and more people have seen unfounded statements on social media throughout the past few weeks. Candy is just one of them. Thousands of people have joined the large Facebook group under the "Stop Stealing" banner.
Where does #StoptheSteal come from?
On election night, after the first of many misleading videos about voter fraud became popular, the hashtag #StoptheSteal sprung up on Twitter. The video showed that a pollster was denied entry to the Philadelphia polling station. It has nearly 2 million views on Twitter and is shared by multiple pro-Trump accounts. Soon after the video was released, we conducted an investigation. The officials asked the distinctive man to wait outside-a woman told him that his voting certificate was invalid at that particular polling station.
The video is real, and it turns out that the woman is wrong. The rules are confusing. In the past, only polling investigators were allowed to access specific sites in Philadelphia, but now they can visit multiple sites throughout the city. The situation was later clarified, and the man was later allowed to enter the station and apologized. Of course, none of this is reflected in the video-hashtags have become popular.
