Twitter Suspends Accounts Tweeting QAnon Conspiracy Content

Twitter continues to tighten up against the spread of misinformation on its platform with confirmation it is clamping down on those spreading content from a far-right conspiracy group.

Twitter announced that it will permanently suspend accounts that tweet about conspiracy content from the QAnon group

QAnon for those that don’t know, is a far-right conspiracy group that allege there is a “deep state” campaign against US President Donald Trump and his supporters.

QAnon ban

Essentially the group argue there is a worldwide cabal of Satan-worshiping paedophiles who rule the world, and who control politicians, the media. and Hollywood.

Twitter announced the clampdown via its Twitter Safety account.

“We’ve been clear that we will take strong enforcement action on behavior that has the potential to lead to offline harm,” it stated. “In line with this approach, this week we are taking further action on so-called ‘QAnon’ activity across the service.”

“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,” it warned.

Twitter said that from now on it would “no longer serve content and accounts associated with QAnon in Trends and recommendations”; it would “work to ensure we’re not highlighting this activity in search and conversations; and finally it would “block URLs associated with QAnon from being shared on Twitter.”

The suspension is expected to impact about 150,000 accounts globally.

Twitter said that more than 7,000 accounts have been removed in the last several weeks for violating the company’s rules against spam, platform manipulation and ban evasion.

In 2019 the FBI designated QAnon as a potential domestic terrorism threat, and Facebook this year removed a US network of fake accounts linked to Qanon, Reuters reported.

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