Twitter on Monday had announced that more than 70,000 accounts have been suspended following the riots in Washington DC stating that these accounts were engaged in sharing harmful QAnon associated content.
QAnon is often portrayed as a shadowy collection of individuals who claim President Donald Trump is secretly battling a network of paedophiles in the Democratic Party and the establishment.
The social media giant confirmed in a blog post that it has removed the accounts as part of an effort following the riot last week “to protect the conversation on our service from attempts to incite violence, organise attacks, and share deliberately misleading information about the election outcome.”
“We’ve been clear that we will take strong enforcement action on behaviour that has the potential to lead to offline harm. Given the violent events in Washington DC, and increased risk of harm, we began permanently suspending thousands of accounts that were primarily dedicated to sharing QAnon content on Friday afternoon,” it read.
“More than 70,000 accounts have been suspended as a result of our efforts, with many instances of a single individual operating numerous accounts. These accounts were engaged in sharing harmful QAnon-associated content at scale and were primarily dedicated to the propagation of this conspiracy theory across the service,” it added.
The now-banned accounts “were engaged in sharing harmful QAnon-associated content at scale and were primarily dedicated to the propagation of this conspiracy theory.”
It was reported that the social media giant last week permanently suspended accounts for former national security adviser Michael Flynn, pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell and former 8kun administrator, Ron Watkins, as part of efforts to crack down on content related to the QAnon theory. The micro-blogging site also permanently suspended Trump’s account on Friday, claiming that his tweets pose “the risk of further incitement of violence.”
