Twitter to hunt for ‘harmful content’ on Jan 6

Twitter has created a team dedicated to following content posted on the site related to the January 6 Capitol riot, just ahead of the one year anniversary.

The team will monitor any posts related to the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot, the company told Reuters in a report published Wednesday, one day ahead of the riot’s one-year anniversary. 

Twitter employees who are part of this new team will watch for tweets or videos that present “harmful content” or “incite violence,” according to the report. The size of the monitoring team is not known. 

“Our approach both before and after January 6 has been to take strong enforcement action against accounts and Tweets that incite violence or have the potential to lead to offline harm,” a Twitter spokesperson said. 

Twitter has long faced accusations of bias and censorship, but that criticism has grown significantly during the Covid-19 pandemic, with numerous high profile figures being suspended from the platform recently, for spreading what the company deems to be misinformation. 

Twitter responded quickly after the riot, suspending the account of former President Donald Trump at the time. Trump gave a speech to supporters in DC shortly before the events at the Capitol, where he continued to claim the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent. Though he told supporters to “go home” during the riot, critics have claimed he partly instigated it, something a House committee is continuing to investigate nearly a year later. 

Numerous conservatives have promoted alternatives to Big Tech companies, including a social media app called Gettr, which functions similar to Twitter, but promises no political bias or censorship. Podcaster and comedian Joe Rogan announced this week that he was opening a Gettr account in light of Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) and vaccine critic Dr. Robert Malone, whom Rogan interviewed recently on his podcast only to find YouTube and Twitter taking down clips, bringing thousands of followers with him. The app has already been labeled “pro-Trump” in the mainstream media.

On the same day Twitter’s new monitoring team was announced, Gettr revealed over 700,000 new users have joined their platform since Rogan’s announcement, something the company has referred to as a “great awakening” and a “Joe Rogan wave.” 

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