Tag: Twitter

SAN FRANCISCO – Twitter said on Monday it had removed more than 70,000 accounts promoting the QAnon conspiracy theory in recent days, as the company broadened its crackdown on content that may incite violence after expelling President Trump from his service at the last week.

Twitter, which carried out the suspensions over the weekend, said it had acted to crack down on posts that had “the potential to cause harm offline.” He added that many deleted users had exploited multiple QAnon accounts, increasing the total number of deleted accounts.

“These accounts were engaged in sharing harmful content associated with QAnon on a large scale and were primarily dedicated to spreading this conspiracy theory across the service,” the company said in a statement. blog post.

Social media companies rushed to distance themselves from the violent mob attack on Capitol Hill last week, which Mr. Trump fueled in social media posts and public comments. After the rampage, Twitter and Facebook locked down Mr. Trump’s accounts, before eventually banning his services and cutting off the president’s megaphones.

Other social media platforms, such as Snapchat and Reddit, have also taken action to limit Mr. Trump and the toxic speech that could inspire people to violence in recent days. Facebook and Twitter have since expanded their actions. On Monday, Facebook said it would begin removing any content that refers to “Stop the Steal,” a rallying cry for Trump supporters who believe the election was stolen from Mr. Trump.

Twitter said it would also step up its crackdown on misleading and false information about the presidential election. Users who persistently violated its Civic Integrity Policy, which prohibits users from posting content that discourages voter participation or misleads the outcome of an election, would face permanent suspension, Twitter said.

Facebook and Twitter’s actions have been praised by liberals and others, but have also raised questions about the power of business over online discourse.

The QAnon conspiracy theory has long been powerful for Mr. Trump. His believers position Mr. Trump as a hero attempting to root out a global elite of Satan-worshiping pedophiles. A woman who raped the Capitol last week and was shot dead, Ashli ​​Babbitt, was a QAnon believer.

While the conspiracy theory has been spreading online for years, social media companies have only moved in recent months to remove related content. Last August, Facebook began establishing policies banning QAnon groups that called for violence, before expanding the movement in October by saying it would remove any group, page or Instagram account openly identified with QAnon.

In July, Twitter banned 7,000 QAnon accounts and blocked conspiracy theory topics from appearing in its trending topics. But the theories have continued to reappear on Twitter and other social media platforms, leading to online harassment and physical violence.

The elimination of tens of thousands of QAnon accounts, combined with the systematic removal of bots and spammers, caused noticeable fluctuations in the number of followers of some Twitter users, the company said.

This has led some users – like the former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz – to speculate that Twitter was secretly cutting them off from their followers because of their political beliefs.

After Twitter banned Mr. Trump from the platform, some of his supporters called for a protest outside the company’s San Francisco headquarters on Monday. City workers erected barricades and police stood guard to prevent any disturbance. But their preparations were ultimately not necessary: ​​the demonstration attracted only one participant.