Facebook bans QAnon Conspiracy theory across its platforms

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Facebook said on Tuesday that it is banning all QAnon accounts from its platforms, a significant escalation over its previous actions and one of the broadest rules the social media giant has put in place in its history. The change is an update on the policy it created in August that initially only removed accounts related to the QAnon conspiracy theory that discussed violence, which resulted in the termination of 1,500 pages, groups and profiles. Starting today, we will remove Facebook Pages, Groups and Instagram accounts for representing QAnon. We’re starting to enforce this updated policy today and are removing content accordingly, but this work will take time and will continue in the coming days and weeks. Our Dangerous Organizations Operations team will continue to enforce this policy and proactively detect content for removal instead of relying on user reports.

A company spokesperson said the enforcement, which started Tuesday, will bring to parity what we’ve been doing on other pieces of policy with regard to militarized social movements, such as militia and terror groups that repeatedly call for violence. The company believed it needed to limit the ability of QAnon and Militarized Social Movements to operate and organize on our platform. The company is “not going after individual posts but whole accounts that spread the conspiracy theory, which has been tied to acts of violence.