Facebook has taken down or restricted more than 10,000 groups, pages and Instagram accounts associated with QAnon, US-based militia groups, and organizations that promote violent acts at protests. The moves are the result of a shift in the company’s policy toward movements with links to violence that do not meet the criteria for an outright ban.
Facebook will still allow people to post content that supports these movements, but “will restrict their ability to organize” on the platform by removing them from recommendation algorithms, reducing their ranking in news feed and search results, and prohibiting them from using features such as fundraising and advertising, the company said. Facebook will also remove pages, groups and accounts that discuss violence, and said it will study the terminology and symbolism that groups typically use to disguise their intent.
The move against QAnon comes one month after Twitter cracked down on content and accounts dedicated to the baseless conspiracy theory, which was identified as a potential domestic terrorism threat by the FBI and has been linked to numerous attempted acts of violence.
“We already remove content calling for or advocating violence and we ban organizations and individuals that proclaim a violent mission,” the company said in a blogpost. “However, we have seen growing movements that, while not directly organizing violence, have celebrated violent acts, shown that they have weapons and suggest they will use them, or have individual followers with patterns of violent behavior.”
Facebook bans any expressions of support for groups that it designates “dangerous”, such as terrorist or hate groups. The new category comprises groups and movements that have “demonstrated significant risks to public safety”.
In announcing the policy shift, Facebook provided a glimpse into the size of the QAnon community on the site. The Guardian had previously documented more than 170 QAnon groups, pages and Instagram accounts with more than 4.5m aggregate followers.
On Wednesday, the company said it was removing more than 790 groups and 100 pages linked to QAnon. It is also blocking 300 QAnon hashtags and taking down 1,500 advertisements. Facebook is also placing restrictions on 1,950 groups, 440 pages, and 10,000 Instagram accounts linked to QAnon. The company said that those groups are still subject to removal pending an ongoing review.
The company is also removing 980 groups and 520 pages linked to militia organizations and groups that encourage riots, which it said included some that “identify as Antifa”. Facebook is also restricting 1,400 hashtags related to those groups.
QAnon is a baseless internet conspiracy theory whose followers believe that Donald Trump is waging a secret battle against a Satanic “deep state” cabal of Democrats, celebrities, and powerful figures such as Bill Gates and George Soros who run the world while engaging in pedophilia, human trafficking and the harvesting of a supposedly life-extending chemical from the blood of abused children.
The narrative is based on cryptic messages published by an anonymous person or entity – “Q” – who claims to have inside knowledge of a secret battle waged by Donald Trump against the cabal. While Q emerged on the anarchic image board 4chan and currently posts on a successor site to 8chan, the movement coalesced and grew on mainstream social media sites, including Reddit, YouTube, Twitter, Discord and Facebook.
Facebook groups became crucial organizing hubs for QAnon after Reddit banned the movement in 2018 for violating its policies against incitement to violence, harassment and doxxing.
“Facebook is a unique platform for recruitment and amplification,” Brian Friedberg, a senior researcher at the Harvard Shorenstein Center’s Technology and Social Change Project, told the Guardian in June. “I really do not think that QAnon as we know it today would have been able to happen without the affordances of Facebook.”
source https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/19/facebook-qanon-us-militia-groups-restrictions
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