<https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jun/25/qanon-facebook-conspiracy-theories-algorithm>
n early May, QAnon braced for a purge. Facebook had removed a small subset – five pages, six groups and 20 profiles – of the community on the social network, and as word of the bans spread, followers of Q began preparing for a broader sweep.
Some groups changed their names, substituting “17” for “Q” (the 17th letter of the alphabet); others shared links to back-up accounts on alternative social media platforms with looser rules.
More than just another internet conspiracy theory, QAnon is a movement of people who interpret as a kind of gospel the online messages of an anonymous figure – “Q” – who claims knowledge of a secret cabal of powerful pedophiles and sex traffickers. Within the constructed reality of QAnon, Donald Trump is secretly waging a patriotic crusade against these “deep state” child abusers, and a “Great Awakening” that will reveal the truth is on the horizon.
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QAnon evolved out of the baseless Pizzagate conspiracy theory, which posited that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex ring out of a Washington DC pizza restaurant, and has come to incorporate numerous strands of rightwing conspiracy mongering. Dedicated followers interpret Q’s cryptic messages in a kind of digital scavenger hunt. Despite the fact that Q’s prognostications have reliably failed to come true, followers rationalize the inaccuracies as part of a larger plan.
Q’s initial commentary on the Facebook bans was concise: “Information Warfare,” Q posted on the website 8kun. Two days later, in a post that included a collage of dozens of news headlines about the takedowns, Q went further, speculating that there had been a “coordinated media roll-out designed to instill ‘fear’” in believers and dissuade them from discussing QAnon on social media. “When do you expend ammunition?” Q wrote. “For what purpose?”
The anticipated purge never came. Instead, QAnon groups on Facebook have continued to grow at a considerable pace in the weeks following the takedown, with several adding more than 10,000 members over 30 days.
A Guardian investigation has documented:
More than 100 Facebook pages, profiles, groups, and Instagram accounts with at least 1,000 followers or members each dedicated to QAnon.
The largest of these have more than 150,000 followers or members.
In total, the documented pages, groups and accounts count more than 3m aggregate followers and members, though there is likely significant overlap among these groups and accounts.
These groups and pages play a critical role in disseminating Q’s messages to a broader audience and in recruiting more believers to the cult-like belief system, researchers say.
“Facebook is a unique platform for recruitment and amplification,” said Brian Friedberg, a senior researcher at the Harvard Shorenstein Center’s Technology and Social Change Project who has been studying QAnon for years. “I really do not think that QAnon as we know it today would have been able to happen without the affordances of Facebook.”
More than 100 Facebook pages, profiles, groups, and Instagram accounts with at least 1,000 followers or members each dedicated to QAnon.
Suggested QAnon groups on Facebook. Composite: Eric Pratt/The Guardian
Moreover, Facebook is not merely providing a platform to QAnon groups. Its powerful algorithms are actively recommending them to users who may not otherwise have been exposed to them.
The Guardian did not initially go looking for QAnon content on Facebook. Instead, Facebook’s algorithms recommended a QAnon group to a Guardian reporter’s account after it had joined pro-Trump, anti-vaccine and anti-lockdown Facebook groups. The list of more than 100 QAnon groups and accounts was then generated by following Facebook’s recommendation algorithms and using simple keyword searches. The Instagram accounts were discovered by searching for “QAnon” in the app’s discovery page and then following Instagram’s algorithmic recommendations.
Receiving QAnon recommendations from Facebook does not appear to be that uncommon. “Once I started liking those pages and joining those groups, Facebook just started recommending more and more and more and more, to the point where I was afraid to like them all in case Facebook would flag me as a bot,” said Friedberg. Erin Gallagher, a researcher who studies social media extremism, said she was also encouraged to join a QAnon group by Facebook, soon after joining an anti-lockdown group.
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