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Former president Donald Trump’s supporters have gathered by the thousands across the internet to call for the formation of a new political party named the Patriot Party.
Since Mr Trump left office last month, online groups and pages with variations on the Patriot Party name have sprung up around Facebook.
A recent study by Tech Transparency Project, an organisation dedicated to holding large tech companies accountable, said more than 50 Facebook groups and 85 pages are associated with the movement.
The Patriot Party movement appears to be decentralised but is growing quickly. The study said some groups gained thousands of followers in mere days.
Facebook Workers Warned About Hateful Groups Well Before Capitol Riot
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Photo: Drew Angerer, Getty Images
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Last week, Facebook finally announced it would stop recommending so-called “civic” (see: political) Groups to users in the wake of the violent siege on the U.S. capitol. But according to a new Wall Street Journal report, this decision only came well after data scientists within the company had raised the alarm that Groups had become a blight on the wider community.
Here’s a data point deserving of attention:
More Republicans than Democrats want to restrain or even break up Big Tech. According to a new poll by Vox and Data for Progress, 70 percent of Republicans think “Big Tech’s economic power is a problem facing the U.S. economy.” At the same time, 59 percent of Democrats feel that way.
This partisan split Republicans tougher on Tech than Democrats is further visible on the issue of remedies: 61 percent of Republicans want to “break up” Big Tech that is, apply anti-trust laws compared to 55 percent of Democrats.
The Republican grievance against Big Tech has been growing for the past two decades, and it represents a major change, as the GOP shifts from its once-instinctive support for free markets and corporate behavior (the latter not always the same as the free market, of course) toward a more skeptical, even critical, stance.