Twitter has announced a crackdown on QAnon, the far-right-wing conspiracy theory movement. It has banned 7,000 accounts and taken several specific actions that could prevent the spread of their propaganda. That is from as many as 150,000 more.
In addition to flagging QAnon-specific content for bans under its existing rules, Twitter says it will block QAnon-related links. Now, no-one can even share them on Twitter and no longer recommend QAnon-related accounts.
Moreover, it will no longer promote the accounts in search or conversations and will cease highlighting them as trending topics.
Social media companies seem to have slowly become aware of the danger posed by QAnon. It is a movement that promotes theories as wild as the existence of thousands of hidden child-eating pedophiles. This is occurring as the 2020 election nears.
In particular, Facebook has been struggling with QAnon moderation after attempting to remove some groups in May. It removed a small cluster of groups and pages promoting the QAnon conspiracy in April. Some said they were part of a “coordinated inauthentic behavior” campaign around the 2020 US elections.
Reports suggest QAnon continues to flourish on the platform.
In 2019, Twitter suspended a single QAnon related account. Even Roku removed a QAnon channel from its set-top-boxes and TV sticks earlier in July.
The streaming platform has removed a channel dedicated to the QAnon conspiracy theory movement. This was after facing criticism for letting it slip through its review and moderation processes last month.
Reddit was ahead of the curve, banning a prominent group from its platform about two years ago. It has finally banned r/greatawakening, the main QAnon subreddit. Then, it banned the backup subreddit where users fled, which was /r/The_GreatAwakening.
Why is Twitter only cracking down now?
Twitter says that, after monitoring closely and talking to experts, the company believes QAnon supporters have continued being active. In some cases, there were reports of increased harassment of Twitter users in recent weeks.
It’s clear that the content that QAnon supporters share is causing actual harm to those who use the service.
With that, they banned the first 7,000 accounts for violations of Twitter’s existing policies. We’ll have to see how well Twitter enforces the new rules.
A part of the company’s Twitter thread on the subject said they will permanently suspend accounts Tweeting about these topics. They were referring to topics that they know are engaged in violations of their multi-account policy.
These included coordinating abuse around individual victims or attempting to evade a previous suspension. It’s something they’ve seen more of, in recent weeks.
In addition, they will no longer serve content and accounts associated with QAnon in Trends and recommendations
Moreover, they will work to ensure they’re not highlighting this activity in search and conversation. They will also block URLs associated with QAnon from being shared on Twitter.
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