Facebook has banned one of the biggest teams loyal to the far-right and fiercely pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theory, Business Insider reported Friday.
A Facebook spokesperson told Business Insider that the organization, titled “Official Q/QAnon,” had been removed Thursday for “repeatedly posting content that violated our policies.” These violations include bullying and harassment, hate speech, and misinformation that can result in serious harm. The organization had more than 200,000 members, making it the second largest QAnon organization on Facebook, where conspiracy theory has spread like gunpowder, largely through many similar teams still living on the site.
QAnon, which has skyrocketed in popularity in recent years, is hopelessly confusing and incredibly simple. Supporters that a secret and extended clique of force agents and politicians (including virtually all prominent Democrats) is involved in human trafficking, pedophilia, ritual youth abuse and other atrocities. These constitute what they call the “deep state”. It is a flexible concept and a disadvantage label that encompasses everything from the very genuine labyrinth of foreign policy, the country’s intelligence and security agencies, rarely called Blob, to a barely veiled repetition of anti-Semitic tropes and the New World Order. feverish dreams.
QAnon has its roots in past conspiracy theories dating back to JFK’s murder, as well as more recent absurdities such as Pizzagate, but its unifying goal is a user (or people) who publishes under a pseudonym in the 4chan, 8chan and 8kun image charts under the nickname. QQ claims to have tangible evidence of the Deep State Clique Array that Trump is struggling in secret and plans to eliminate in a strategically brilliant move, and claims to have given acquired wisdom from those occasions through high-level intelligence or military security clearances. Despite this, he or she basically publishes confusing allusions and cryptic riddles. In the confident chatter of the QAnon community, this is justified as a form of deprogramming in which Q leads them to look for genuine answers rather than declaring them directly; Instead, non-believers might see this as a form of narrative politics that allows QAnon devotees to decide on their own adventure.
Proponents of the theory have committed violent acts or criminals infrequently, and added a guy driving an armored truck loaded with ammunition at the Hoover Dam in 2018, prompting a confrontation with the police. An FBI intelligence bulletin published in 2019 classified QAnon as one of the “marginal, anti-government, identity and marginal political conspiracy theories” that can “most likely motivate some national extremists” to engage in criminal activity. According to the Washington Post, QAnon supporters were arrested in at least nine other incidents, adding “two murders, one kidnapping [and] vandalism in the church.” QAnon fans are also known for their online harassment campaigns opposed to random Americans, whom they have decided as key figures in their imaginary bond of evil.
The White House, which manipulates its own conspiracy theories (often drawn from similar themes) considers Qanon’s aides to be a base of stalwart fanatics and has shown their help by echoing their rhetoric and sharing the content of QAnon’s accounts. Trump’s management has also run classified re-election ads with the iconography Q. About 64 QAnon employees have given the impression or are running for Congress, adding up dozens in this election cycle.
“We have an existing president who uses conspiracy rhetoric more than any other president in fashion history,” Joanne Miller, a political psychology researcher and conspiracy theory expert at the University of Delaware, told Post. “These other people feel emboldened. They feel their unrest is resolved, and that’s because they hate the status quo and need to blow it up. Trump has built this coalition with those other people, and they feel like they’re part of it. and that’s his moment.”
The extent of movement in general is difficult to estimate. Post tickets showed that most people in the U.S. They didn’t know or had very negative reviews, while the Pew Research Center ballot in March found that about 76% of respondents had never heard of it. Pew’s survey found that respondents who get their news basically from Reddit, Twitter and YouTube were much more likely than the general public, Facebook meets the national standard.
Facebook, however, is a major hub for QAnon supporters to interpret Q messages and announce new conspiracy theories. (In many cases, these teams seem to serve as an indirect social outlet for right-wing members who are far from those they enjoy, because of their beliefs.) According to an exam by Marc-André Argentino, a PhD student who specializes in the Internet. Extremism at Concordia University, the pro-QAnon Facebook team club, has skyrocketed in recent months, driven by the new coronavirus pandemic and a reactionary reaction to widespread protests opposed to police brutality. This is partly due to a domino effect in which the length of Facebook teams translates directly into more subscribers and engagement, Argentina wrote.
– Marc-André Argentino (@_MAArgentino) 3 August 2020
– Marc-André Argentino (@_MAArgentino) 3 August 2020
In other words, Facebook still allows those conspiracy centers to thrive, as long as they don’t cause much of a headache, which inevitably happens. The site was rid of five groups, which had accumulated nearly 133,000 exclusive members, connected to QAnon in May, which featured “un authentic coordinated behavior.” Thursday’s action more directly cited the content published to the group, but it will likely result in many users migrating to other existing QAnon groups.
In July, Twitter announced that it would begin to take strong action against QAnon-related content, but only when it was harassment or risk of offline harm. Twitter told Gizmodo that they expected the adjustments to eventually reach 150,000 accounts. Reddit, another site where QAnon metastasized, banned QAnon’s major subreddits about two years ago.