What is QAnon? Why Twitter crackdown won’t stop the Donald Trump conspiracy theory sweeping across other platforms
While Twitter’s move seems like it would have wide-ranging impacts on the conspiracy theory, the reality is it has already spread across other apps including TikTok
Twitter has removed 7,000 QAnon accounts, as part of a crackdown on the conspiracy theory which fuels misinformation and harassment on its platform.
Many have called Twitter’s action an unprecedented move to curb the far-right community, but bulletin site Reddit banned QAnon back in 2018 and yet the conspiracy theory and its believers have only grown and spread further on the internet since.
QAnon is present and growing on TikTok for example, highlighting how the community will likely continue to thrive on alternative platforms. It is the far-right theory that there is a supposed secret plot by an alleged “deep state” against President Donald Trump and his supporters.
Pizza Gate
The community, called /r/GreatAwakening on Reddit, had more than 71,000 subscribers before it was banned two years ago, and was host to countless violent threats, including calls to kill Hillary Clinton.
QAnon has proven itself to be violent and dangerous and is born from the 2016 groundless theory that Hillary Clinton and Democratic officials were running a child sex-trafficking ring from a Washington pizzeria, which gained traction online (dubbed PizzaGate), eventually culminating in an indoctrinated vigilante gunman opening fire in the restaurant later that year.
Soon after this YouTube, Twitter and Facebook took steps to clamp down on QAnon and suspended the accounts of users who had pushed PizzaGate.
This did little to stop the community growing however and in 2020, the conspiracy and its believers are still very much present. Despite no evidence behind it, QAnon support has been distilled into mainstream politics, with numerous Republican candidates for Congress openly supporting it.
What is Twitter doing?
Aside from removing accounts, Twitter is also controlling the reach of the content by no longer recommended QAnon accounts and limiting it in trends and searches. The site will also block URLs associated with QAnon from being shared on Twitter.
The action is said to impact 150,000 accounts, NBC News reports.
“We’ve been clear that we will take strong enforcement action on behaviour that has the potential to lead to offline harm. In line with this approach, this week we are taking further action on so-called ‘QAnon’ activity across the service,” Twitter said in a statement.
“We will permanently suspend accounts Tweeting about these topics that we know are engaged in violations of our multi-account policy, coordinating abuse around individual victims, or are attempting to evade a previous suspension — something we’ve seen more of in recent weeks.”
Spreading further
While Twitter’s move seems like it would have wide-ranging impacts on the conspiracy theory, the reality is it has already spread across other apps too and faced a resurgence. TikTok is now host to a growing community of QAnon believers, many of whom are younger and spreading it further globally as a result.
Last month TikTok posts with the #PizzaGate hashtag were viewed more than 82 million times, according to The New York Times. The hashtag has since been removed, but clips of far-right figures including Alex Jones, presenter of InfoWars, and QAnon users are still on the app. Moreover, the app is a breeding ground for other conspiracy theories, including ones on 5G and Covid-19, highlighting a wider issue of misinformation on the app.
In addition to this, QAnon communities continue to grow in secret Facebook groups – a powerful tool in disseminating the ideas to large audiences.
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