There are many bizarre conspiracy theories but none is more bizarre than QAnon.
The crux of the QAnon conspiracy theory is that the world is ruled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who control everything. As one dives further into the conspiracy the more bizarre it becomes and Twitter feels this is dangerous.
We say this because early this morning Twitter said that it would be permanently suspending accounts tweeting about QAnon who are also in violation of Twitter’s policies.
“We will permanently suspend accounts Tweeting about these topics [QAnon] 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,” the Twitter Safety account tweeted out.
Those suspensions have seemingly already begun with 7 000 QAnon accounts having been suspended in the last week according to NBC News.
Along with a suspension Twitter has said it will no longer serve content associated with QAnon in Trends and Recommendations, Twitter will also no longer highlight QAnon content in search results and conversations. Perhaps most shocking is that Twitter will also block URLs associated with the conspiracy theory from being shared on Twitter.
These actions will be rolled out in the coming weeks and are expected to affect some 150 000 accounts.
“We will continue to review this activity across our service and update our rules and enforcement approach again if necessary,” said Twitter.
As one might expect with anything relating to Twitter and banning accounts, this move was met with a multitude of “what aboutisms” and cries that free speech was being trampled on.
As with other decisions, Twitter as a private company is free to enforce which ever rules it wants, if that doesn’t sit right with you, well then find another micro-blogging social network. Nobody is forced to use Twitter.
We’ve been clear that we will take strong enforcement action on behavior that has the potential to lead to offline harm. In line with this approach, this week we are taking further action on so-called ‘QAnon’ activity across the service.
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) July 22, 2020
