Twitter has banned thousands of accounts linked to QAnon and is taking aggressive new steps to limit the spread of the conspiracy theory on its Twitter platform. According to NBC News, the company has already banned 7,000 accounts linked to the celebrity hacking conspiracy theory on its platform, and blocked about 150,000 other accounts from appearing in its recommendations.
The company said its actions were in line with its policies prohibiting “conduct that can lead to harm online,” and that conspiracy theory supporters often participate in other rule-breaking campaigns.
We’ve been clear that we will take strong enforcement action on behavior 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 Safety (@TwitterSafety) July 22, 2020
“We will permanently suspend accounts that tweet about these topics that we know are engaging in violations of our account policy, or coordinating abuse around individual victims, something we have seen more of in recent weeks,” the company wrote 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. — Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) July 22, 2020
Twitter also said it will take steps to limit the reach of QAnon-related content throughout its service.
The company will ban accounts and content associated with the conspiracy theory from Trends and Recommendations and will work “to ensure this activity is not highlighted in search and conversations.”
Twitter will also prevent users from sharing QAnon-related URLs, though Twitter did not clarify which sites or forums might be affected.
Twitter’s actions, in particular, are far more aggressive than Facebook’s stance toward QAnon.
Although Facebook banned a small subset of QAnon accounts this year for violating its rules around inauthentic behavior, supporters of the conspiracy theory are still quite active on Facebook and Instagram.
The company also continues to feature groups, pages and accounts associated with the conspiracy theory in its recommendations.
Source: engadget
