Tag: QAnon

SAN FRANCISCO – Twitter announced Monday that it had removed more than 70,000 accounts promoting the QAnon conspiracy theory in the past few days as the company stepped up its crackdown on content that could lead to violence after President Trump had been banned from his service last week.

Twitter, which ran the suspensions over the weekend, said it helped curb posts that “have the potential to cause offline damage”. It added that many of the users that were removed had operated multiple QAnon accounts, which increased the total number of accounts that were removed.

“These accounts dealt with the large-scale sharing of malicious QAnon-associated content and were primarily dedicated to spreading this conspiracy theory throughout the service,” the company said in a blog post.

Social media companies have rushed to distance themselves from the violent mob attack in the Capitol building last week that Mr Trump fueled through social media posts and public comments. After the rampage, Twitter and Facebook suspended Mr. Trump’s accounts before eventually banning him from their duties and turning off the president’s megaphones.

Other social media platforms like Snapchat and Reddit have also made efforts to curb Mr. Trump and toxic speech that could inspire people to be violent in recent days. Facebook and Twitter have since expanded their promotions. On Monday, Facebook announced it was removing content related to “Stop the Steal,” a rally for Trump supporters who believe the false claim that the election was stolen from Mr. Trump.

Twitter said it will also step up its crackdown on misleading and false information about the presidential election. Users who persistently violate the Citizens’ Integrity Policy, which prohibits users from distributing content that hinders voter participation or misleads about the outcome of an election, would be permanently suspended, Twitter said.

The actions of Facebook and Twitter have received praise from liberals and others, but have also raised questions about corporate power over online discourse.

The QAnon conspiracy theory has long been in effect for Mr. Trump. His believers position Mr Trump as a hero who seeks to root out a global elite of pedophiles who worship Satan. One woman, Ashli ​​Babbitt, who broke through the Capitol last week and was shot dead, was a QAnon believer.

While the conspiracy theory has been established online for years, it has only been the past few months that social media companies have relocated to remove related content. In August last year, Facebook began setting guidelines banning QAnon groups inciting violence, before expanding the move in October by stating that it would remove any groups, pages, or Instagram accounts that were openly identified with QAnon.

In July, Twitter banned 7,000 QAnon accounts and blocked topics related to conspiracy theory from appearing in trending topics. But the theories have kept popping up on Twitter and other social media platforms, leading to online harassment and physical violence.

The elimination of tens of thousands of QAnon accounts, coupled with the routine removal of bots and spammers, resulted in noticeable fluctuations in the number of followers for some Twitter users.

This led some users – like former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and a Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz – to speculate that Twitter is covertly cutting them off from their followers because of their political beliefs.

After Twitter banned Mr. Trump from the platform, some of his supporters called for a protest in front of the company’s headquarters in San Francisco on Monday. City workers set up barricades and the police guarded to prevent disturbances. But their preparations were ultimately not necessary: ​​the protest only attracted one participant.