Twitter Announces Widespread Crackdown on QAnon Activity With Potential for ‘Offline Harm,’ Removes 7,000 Accounts
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Twitter announced on Tuesday that it had banned 7,000 accounts and limited 150,000 others as part of a widespread crackdown on QAnon activity on the site that “has the potential to lead to offline harm.”
Last summer, the FBI officially designated the baseless QAnon and Pizzagate conspiracy theories as new “domestic extremism” threats. Pizzagate infamously involved a bizarre myth that the basement of a Washington, D.C. pizza restaurant was a secret den of pedophilia, which prompted one fervent believer to storm the pizzeria with a loaded rifle and start shooting before surrendering to police — he was subsequently sentenced for four years in prison. Some journalists who have studied the even more byzantine and fanciful QAnon phenomenon have labeled it “Pizzagate on bath salts.”
Twitter, which hosts untold number of QAnon conspiracists who use the site to spread its message, announced it had recently begun taking significant steps to block the source of possible threats or violence spurred by the conspiracies. The moves included permanent suspension of thousands of accounts that violate its policies about having multiple users, directing swarms of abuse, also known as “brigading,” or setting up alt accounts to evade previous suspensions. In addition, the social networking site said it will hide QAnon content from trends and recommendations, avoid promoting its themes and accounts in its search function, and block links from known QAnon sites from being shared on Twitter.
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 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
In addition, we will:
1⃣ No longer serve content and accounts associated with QAnon in Trends and recommendations
2⃣ Work to ensure we’re not highlighting this activity in search and conversations
3⃣ Block URLs associated with QAnon from being shared on Twitter— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) July 22, 2020
According to a NBC News story with more detail on the moves, the site had already shut down or restricted numerous sites as of Tuesday.
“This action will impact approximately 150,000 accounts,” Twitter told NBC News. “The company had taken down more than 7,000 QAnon accounts in the last couple weeks for breaking its rules on targeted harassment as part of its new policy.”
