Twitter Bans Over 70,000 QAnon Accounts in Conspiracy Crackdown
Twitter Inc. has permanently suspended more than 70,000 accounts dedicated to sharing QAnon-associated conspiracy theory .
(Bloomberg) -- Twitter Inc. has permanently suspended more than 70,000 accounts dedicated to sharing QAnon-associated conspiracy theory content and ratcheted up its enforcement in the wake of the Washington, D.C., riot last week.
Many of the affected accounts were run by individuals who were operating several of them at a time, Twitter said in a statement detailing its actions. As part of its latest measures, follower counts for some users may change by as many as thousands. The company had warned against the sharing of QAnon material in the summer and said accounts that tweet or retweet it will continue to have “limited visibility across search, replies, and on timelines and are prohibited from being recommended to others by Twitter.”
Any tweets labeled for violations of Twitter’s civic integrity policy -- a key reason cited by the company in its initial suspension of departing U.S. President Donald Trump -- will now be limited in engagement. Users will only be able to quote-tweet such posts, with likes, replies and retweets disabled.
Twitter is also blocking certain content from trending on the platform, updating its policies since last week’s events to more closely monitor anything that could infringe its rules on hateful conduct, violent threats, civic integrity and coordinated harmful activity.
Facebook Inc., which also blocked Trump from posting on its platforms, including Instagram, announced it is now removing posts that include the phrase “stop the steal,” a common refrain among those believing the November 2020 U.S. election illegitimate. The company said there is an “ongoing risk of violence associated with the term” following last week’s storming of the U.S. Capitol.
©2021 Bloomberg L.P.