Oakland – Facebook announced Tuesday that it has removed accounts, pages and groups related to QAnon, a far-right movement promoting conspiracy theories and pledging allegiance to President Donald Trump, from its network.
The social network explained that the measure is part of its periodic filtering of “coordinated inauthentic behaviors”, the term the company uses to refer to false accounts created to hinder elections and social relations.
In addition to QAnon’s accounts, those of VDARE, an anti-immigrant website in the United States and other accounts based in Russia, Iran, Mauritania, Myanmar and the former Soviet republic Georgia, were left out.
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QAnon promotes the false hypothesis that Trump is waging a battle against his own government’s bureaucrats to dismantle a child sex trafficking network ruled by pedophiles and cannibals. Fans of this sect maintain that a mysterious government official known only as “Q” has been sending them secret signals.
The hypothesis initially emerged in the dark recesses of the internet, but recently it has emerged through more traditional communication channels. Trump has retweeted messages from related accounts of al QAnon and his fans go to the rallies of the president with clothes or caps alluding to the movement.
Facebook said it detected QAnon’s content as part of its campaign to clean up fake accounts ahead of the upcoming US election in November.
“We are making progress in eradicating this abuse but, as we have said before, it is an ongoing effort,” said the company.
“This means creating better technologies, hiring more personnel, and closer cooperation with law enforcement agencies, security experts and other companies,” he added.
