The company has banned 7000 accounts already, with 150 000 expected to be effected
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Believers are the loyal members of the online conspiracy cult-I mean group, QAnon. QAnon first appeared around three years ago as a singular conspiracy theory but is now home to typically pro-Trump, far-right, republican conspiracy theorists whose main belief is that governments and celebrities are colluding to take part in child sex trafficking.
In recent years, Believers have branched out, now spreading and faithfully believing in unfounded conspiracies such as 5G spreading Coronavirus, for example. Most of which are backed up with doctored or out of context ‘evidence’.
On 21st July, Twitter decided to crack down on QAnon, banning thousands of accounts, blocking QAnon-associated URLs from being shared on the platform, and stopping any recommendations to content linked to QAnon.
The company’s reasoning was that these accounts “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,” adding, in a statement on the site, that this behaviour has the potential to lead to “offline harm”.
Already, Believers are attempting to create loopholes, using the code “17” in place of “Q sent me” to get around the ban.
Some QAnon accounts are already trying to come up with ways to evade targeted harassment bans, like saying "17" instead of "Q sent me."
Twitter told us their enforcement team—and machine learning—would be on the lookout for this sort of evolution.https://t.co/Hznllz8FQU pic.twitter.com/DUdl1Ucoct
— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) July 22, 2020
Other users have called out Twitter for hypocrisy and bias, stating that they allow other so-called terrorist and extremist groups like AntiFa.
Not a Q follower but Antifa, Louis Farrakhan, Hamas, Iranian terrorists & more terror groups are on Twitter yet you do nothing. Why are you targeting only QAnon? Will you go after these terror/hate groups? Will you investigate alleged bot use by Dem coalition?
— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) July 22, 2020
QAnon does appear to be of larger threat, though, given The FBI already declared QAnon a potential domestic extremist threat last year.
