The Group That Grew to a Riot

A pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” Facebook group swelled to hundreds of thousands of members within a day in November 2020 before the platform removed it. It was an early node in an online effort, built on false claims of election fraud, that culminated in the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol.

In the days after the November 2020 U.S. presidential election, as votes were still being counted, a Facebook group named “Stop the Steal” drew members at extraordinary speed. According to Time, the group amassed more than 364,000 members in less than 48 hours before Facebook shut it down on Nov. 5, 2020. The group appeared linked to Women for America First, a pro-Trump organization.

The group was built around the false assertion that the election was being stolen from President Donald Trump. Reporting by CBS News said the group had grown to hundreds of thousands of members and had begun organizing in-person events, including at vote-counting sites, before it was taken down.

Facebook cited ‘calls for violence’

In announcing the removal, a Facebook spokesperson said the group had crossed a line. “In line with the exceptional measures that we are taking during this period of heightened tension, we have removed the Group ‘Stop the Steal,’ which was creating real-world events,” the spokesperson said in a statement quoted by CBS News. “The group was organized around the delegitimization of the election process, and we saw worrying calls for violence from some members of the group.”

The takedown did not end the movement. As Forbes reported, new “Stop the Steal” groups quickly popped up in the original’s place: one, “Stop The Steal 2.0,” racked up 77,000 followers in a day, while another under the same name as the original gathered 37,000 followers.

An online effort that fed a riot

The narrative spread far beyond a single group. An investigation by ProPublica and The Washington Post identified at least 650,000 posts attacking the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s victory on Facebook between Election Day and Jan. 6, an average of roughly 10,000 a day, many of them containing threats of violence.

Facebook’s own researchers later concluded that the company had failed to grasp the threat. In an internal report on the Stop the Steal movement, disclosed to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission by whistleblower Frances Haugen, the company acknowledged that its platform had “helped incite the Capitol Insurrection” on Jan. 6, NPR reported. The same report found the first group Facebook banned had grown by tens of thousands of members an hour.

Groups as an organizing tool

Facebook’s internal analysis found the movement spread less through algorithmic amplification than through the platform’s group-invitation features, according to NPR. A small number of “super-inviters” accounted for a disproportionate share of new members, the report said, allowing the groups to balloon quickly once they took hold.

Asked about the platform’s role, Facebook spokesman Andy Stone said, “The responsibility for the violence that occurred on January 6 lies with those who attacked our Capitol and those who encouraged them,” as quoted by NPR. A timeline compiled by Just Security traced the movement from that first November group through weeks of online organizing to the assault on the Capitol.