Facebook and Twitter promised to stop encouraging the growth of the baseless conspiracy theory QAnon, which fashions President Donald Trump as a secret warrior against a supposed child-trafficking ring run by celebrities and government officials, after it reached an audience of millions on their platforms
But the social media companies still aren’t enforcing even the limited restrictions they’ve recently put in place to stem the tide of dangerous QAnon material, a review by The Associated Press found. Both platforms have vowed to stop “suggesting” QAnon material to users, a powerful way of introducing QAnon to new people.
The QAnon phenomenon sprawls across a patchwork of secret Facebook groups, Twitter accounts and YouTube videos. QAnon has been linked to real-world violence such as criminal reports of kidnapping and dangerous claims that the coronavirus is a hoax. But the conspiracy theory has also seeped into mainstream politics. Several Republican running for Congress this year are QAnon-friendly.
One post that used the QAnon hashtag, which raked up nearly 20,000 likes, claimed that “no one has died from coronavirus.” Another was a photo of a Donald Trump that called him “One of God’s Finest Warriors.” Twitter suspended just one of the accounts -- which had more than 250,000 followers -- after the AP inquired about it.
Facebook, meanwhile, hasn’t followed through on some of its promises and is still directing users to groups that promote it, the AP found.
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