Facebook has banned all QAnon groups, pages and Instagram accounts in a last-hour attempt to strangle the movement’s rapid explosion across its services.
The social media giant said on Tuesday that it had branded the cult-like online community as a "militarised social movement", meaning it will now remove groups and pages that spread its message even if they advocate no violence.
The company stopped short of banning individual Facebook users who discuss or proselytise the movement, but said it would eject the administrators of any QAnon groups it shuts down.
It comes after months of Facebook being criticised for inaction as millions of users flocked to QAnon groups, often invited by Facebook’s own recommendation algorithms.
According to Newsweek, at least 44 US election candidates have been linked to QAnon, which is defined by elaborate conspiracy theories targeting celebrities and Left-wing politicians and which has been branded by the FBI as a potential terror threat.
About | QAnon
Facebook said: "On August 19, we announced a set of measures designed to disrupt the ability of QAnon and [other] militarised social movements to operate and organise on our platform.
"In the first month, we removed over 1,500 pages and groups for QAnon containing discussions of potential violence… but we believe these efforts need to be strengthened."
The company said it had been persuaded to crack down by several incidents of "real-world harm", including false rumours about America’s ongoing forest fires that overloaded emergency services after spreading inside QAnon groups.
"Additionally, QAnon messaging changes very quickly and we see networks of supporters build an audience with one message and then quickly pivot to another," the company said.
"We expect renewed attempts to evade our detection, both in behavior and content shared on our platform, so we will continue to study the impact of our efforts and be ready to update our policy and enforcement as necessary."
Although the ban came into force immediately, Facebook warned that finding and removing all groups would take time. On Tuesday night, some groups monitored by the Telegraph were still online, although many users were complaining about their other groups disappearing.
QAnon, which began in 2017, is a millenarian movement defined by an all-embracing conspiracy theory proposing that President Donald Trump is waging secret warfare against celebrities and Left-wing politicians who are part of a Satanist sex trafficking cult that harvests children’s blood to make drugs.
Its members anticipate a sudden moment of transformation in which the President’s opponents will be rounded up, potentially in a military coup, and describe themselves as "digital soldiers" dedicated to his re-election.
Accordingly, Mr Trump has been reluctant to criticise the movement, praising its members as "people who love our country" and frequently retweeting its adherents.
Previous actions taken by Facebook include limiting the prominence of many QAnon groups in the service’s main news feed, and offering trustworthy links to users who searched for various child safety terms and hashtags that QAnon has attempted to hijack.
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