Chris Mills Rodrigo
The HillWed, 19 Aug 2020 15:23 UTC
© getty
Facebook on Wednesday banned roughly 900 groups and pages and 1,500 ads related to the QAnon conspiracy theory.
The removals were part of an expansion of the platform's policies on violent rhetoric, which also resulted in 10,000 Instagram pages and nearly 2,000 Facebook groups associated with QAnon having their reach limited.
The QAnon theory baselessly claims that President Trump and the military are working together to expose a shadowy cabal of figures in media, entertainment and politics that are trafficking children.
In a blog post explaining the policy change Wednesday, Facebook noted that groups and pages dedicated to the theory have increasingly become a place to celebrate violent actions, even if some of them are not directly used to organize those actions.The FBI labeled the loose QAnon community a potential domestic terror threat last year.Moving forward, the pages affiliated with QAnon — as well as ones ties to "offline anarchist groups that support violent acts amidst protests" and "US-based militia organizations" — will be prohibited from purchasing ads or selling products in the platform's marketplaces.Nonprofits that Facebook identifies as supporting those movements will also be barred from using the platform's fundraising tools.
QAnon, militia and anarchist protest groups will also be pushed down on users' newsfeeds and search engines.
These steps by Facebook, similar to ones
taken by Twitter last month, come as increasing attention is being paid to the role social media platforms have played in the rapid growth of unhinged conspiracy theories like QAnon.
NBC News
reported last week that an internal Facebook investigation uncovered thousands of groups and pages with millions of members and followers supporting the QAnon conspiracy theory.
The Guardian has reported on similarly large groups.
Comment: From RT:
Nearly 1,000 groups and pages and over 1,500 ads related to QAnon were removed in Wednesday's purge, while lesser restrictions were imposed on a whopping 10,000 Q-related Instagram accounts (along with almost 1,500 groups and pages on Facebook). The survivors were put on notice that Facebook would be monitoring them for "specific terminology and symbolism" being used to covertly discuss or plot violence.
In an unusual move, Facebook even went after liberal darling Antifa - though very gingerly, referring to "militia organizations and those encouraging riots, including some who may identify as Antifa" in its announcement that some 1,500 groups and pages in this category had gotten the ax.
...
However, as Facebook continues to exile ever-broader swathes of online conduct from its platforms, users must invariably ask what constitutes "celebrating violent acts" - a phrase that would seem to describe TV news reporters who wax poetic about "the beauty of our weaponry" as missiles rain down on Syria as much as it does Antifa kids cheering when one of their number lobs a Molotov cocktail into a police car.
...
The purge also fails to take into account the Streisand effect, in which attempting to suppress content backfires and ends up drawing even more attention to that content. Twitter announced a similar purge of QAnon-linked users last month, unleashing another round of pearl-clutching stories about the conspiracy theory and raising its national profile. Indeed, several candidates running for office in November are QAnon supporters - a notion which would have been unthinkable had the cult-like adherents of the phenomenon remained undisturbed on their platforms of choice. However, because a central tenet of QAnon is that the 'Deep State' shadow government doesn't want Americans researching its activities, social media's heavy-handed censorship plays right into their hands.
Facebook also recently expanded its already-sprawling list of banned "hate speech" to include blackface makeup and commenting on "Jewish people running the world or controlling major institutions such as media networks, the economy or the government," acquiescing to a lengthy list of demands from censorship advocates, the Anti-Defamation League, following a month-long advertiser boycott.
See also:
Comment: From RT: See also: