SAN FRANCISCO | Facebook announced Tuesday the withdrawal of all accounts, pages and groups linked to the conspiracy movement “QAnon”, on its main platform and on Instagram, while the number of followers of this far-right pro-Trump movement has exploded in the run-up to the US presidential election.
The social media giant, regularly accused by civil society of not sufficiently fighting against actors spreading hatred, had already cracked down on QAnon on several occasions. This time, even the pages that “do not contain violent content” will be deleted if they are associated with the movement, the Californian group said in a statement.
Facebook has indeed noticed that supporters of these many conspiratorial theories went from one subject to another to constantly rally new audiences.
“While we removed content related to QAnon that celebrated and supported violence, we saw other content (from the movement) on other forms of danger in real life,” relates the social network.
For example, “claims that certain groups of people are causing wildfires on the west coast (of the United States),” Facebook continues.
The company has specified that it will take several weeks to deal with the occurrences.
In August, it had already withdrawn nearly 800 groups, 100 pages and 1,500 advertisements directly related to this movement on Facebook.
She had also taken steps to reduce the reach of more than 10,000 Instagram accounts and nearly 2,000 groups and 440 Facebook pages, such as limiting recommendations, demoting them on news feeds, making them harder to find. find, stop them from advertising or selling products.
“We have seen movements grow which, even if they do not directly organize violence, celebrate violent acts, show that they have weapons and suggest that they will use them, or have admirers who are susceptible to violent behavior. “, Then explained the group.
Asked about QAnon in August, following Facebook’s measures, the Republican billionaire said he saw them above all “people who love our country”.
“I don’t know much about them. I understood that they like me a lot, which I appreciate, ”he added, suggesting that their recent surge in popularity was linked to the demonstrations that took place in Portland (northwest) or New York. , against racism and police violence.