Following is a statement from the Tech Transparency Project on the recent and long overdue actions taken by social media platforms in the wake of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol:

The recent actions taken by Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube against President Donald Trump's social media accounts are too little, too late. For the past year, the Tech Transparency Project has documented how platforms like Facebook and YouTube have allowed the president's baseless allegations about voter fraud and a "rigged" election to echo across the internet, radicalizing and inciting groups of people, with dangerous results. Facebook has allowed right-wing militias and "boogaloo" groups to openly organize for civil war, often taking Trump's words as inspiration, and the platforms have failed to prevent the spread of dangerous conspiracy theories that have taken hold among large swaths of the population.

The companies have been slow and ineffective in addressing these problems, and Facebook in particular has appeared to be more interested in generating positive P.R. than actually tackling the issues that plague its platform.

With their newfound sense of urgency over Trump's rhetoric, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube owner Google are undoubtedly looking to their future under a new Biden administration, as antitrust and other pressures increase. It's important to remember, however, that these platforms have spent years avoiding responsibility for dealing with the president's obvious violations of their policies as well as allowing violent threats and misinformation to proliferate on their sites.