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Facebook Is Banning All Accounts And Pages Associated With The QAnon Conspiracy Group

Facebook Is Banning All Accounts And Pages Associated With The QAnon Conspiracy Group

The crackdown is aimed at eliminating misinformation and harmful content from the social media site.

Stewart Perrie

Stewart Perrie

Facebook is banning all pages, accounts and groups associated with the QAnon conspiracy group.

QAnon is a far-right group of people who believe (and we s**t you not) a 'cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles running a global child sex-trafficking ring is plotting against President Donald Trump'.

They also believe Trump is battling against this cabal and is planning a day of reckoning called 'The Storm' where the cabal will be arrested.

The group haven't based any of these beliefs in substantiated fact, however it hasn't stopped loads of people from joining groups and pages associated with the conspiracy theory.

PA

But Facebook is moving to stop their claims from being spread on the social media site, as well as on Instagram, effective immediately.

In a new blog post, the company said: "We are starting to enforce this updated policy today and are removing content accordingly, but this work will take time and need to continue in the coming days and weeks.

"We've been vigilant in enforcing our policy and studying its impact on the platform but we've seen several issues that led to today's update.

"For example, while we've removed QAnon content that celebrates and supports violence, we've seen other QAnon content tied to different forms of real-world harm, including recent claims that the west coast wildfires were started by certain groups, which diverted the attention of local officials from fighting the fires and protecting the public."

The new policy will apply to groups, pages or Instagram accounts who have names or descriptions that suggest they belong to a dedicated QAnon account. It won't apply to individuals who post a lot about the conspiracy theory, nor will it apply to individual content.

It's similar to a ban that happened in May this year, however only applied to less than two dozen accounts who were suspected of 'coordinated inauthentic behaviour' ahead of the 2020 US election.

Back in July, Twitter announced it would be banning thousands of QAnon-related accounts and altered the site's algorithm so that new content would be seen by fewer people.

The war against these accounts and posts could be in vain, as many followers revealed they would go onto private messaging forums like EndChan and 8chan.

It's unclear who exactly started posing as Q on the messaging board 4chan in 2017, which kicked off the whole QAnon conspiracy theory, however it quickly gathered pace.

Their movement was certainly helped by Donald Trump, who retweeted or mentioning QAnon-affiliated accounts on Twitter at least 216 times, according to Media Matters for America.

Featured Image Credit: PA

Topics: News, Social Media, Conspiracy Theory