Facebook Finds Millions of QAnon Supporters on Site, NBC Says
Facebook Finds Millions of QAnon Supporters on Site, NBC Says
(Bloomberg) -- Facebook Inc. has found that its site hosts thousands of pages with millions of members that support the QAnon conspiracy theory movement, NBC News reported.
The top 10 QAnon groups on Facebook collectively have more than one million members, according to NBC. Totals from other groups push the numbers of members and followers beyond 3 million. The company’s investigation will help it decide how to take action against the groups, NBC said, citing documents and Facebook employees who spoke anonymously. Facebook is considering taking action similar to how it handles anti-vaccination groups which is to reject advertising and exclude QAnon groups and pages from search results and recommendations, NBC reported.
Facebook’s review is just one step that large tech companies are taking to crack down on the conspiracy theory group, which believes that President Donald Trump is fighting against a “deep state” of government insiders and corruption and Hollywood elites involved in child sex trafficking. A QAnon conspiracy theory last month falsely accused e-commerce company Wayfair Inc. of trafficking of children due to the names of its products and prices on their website. Twitter Inc. said in July that it would ban thousands of QAnon accounts because they violated the company’s terms of service by targeting individuals.
Facebook documents cited by NBC News also say that the company will target militia groups. The company restricted content from a radical anti-government group called the “Boogaloo” in late June.
On Tuesday, Facebook said it removed 22.5 million posts for violating the company’s policies regarding hate speech in the second quarter, more than double the number removed during the first three months of the year.
QAnon is becoming a mainstream belief in some circles of American politics. Republican Congressional candidates in Oregon and Georgia have voiced their support for the movement.
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