US Capitol Riot

On January 6, 2021, as the US Congress was in session to certify the results of the 2020 Presidential election, tens of thousands of people showed up in the nation’s capitol to protest what they believed was a fraudulent election. As the day went on, the protestors (now rioters) clashed with police, broke through barriers and eventually stormed the capitol building, which immediately went into lockdown. These escalations led to the deaths of four protestors, both directly and indirectly.

Politicians and other establishment figures immediately started calling this an insurrection incited by President Trump despite him explicitly advocating for peace. BigTech immediately did their part in helping to bolster this false narrative starting with Facebook removing any videos or photos of the riots as well as multiple platforms suspending the President. These suspensions were later upgraded to permanent bans and expanded to include journalists who were simply reporting on the events taking place.

However, it got much worse as users began to flee these platforms en masse (which caused free speech platforms such as Parler and Minds to experience record breaking traffic). Parler trended as the #1 app in Apple’s App Store until Google and Apple removed Parler’s mobile app from their app stores and Amazon disabled Parler’s web servers, taking the site completely offline. About a week later, Minds was forced to significantly reduce their mobile app functionality in order to avoid facing the same fate as Parler.