QAnon’s “superspreaders” have continued to be active on Facebook, even after the company banned the conspiratorial movement from its platform two months ago, according to a report released Friday.
The report, which identified people who acted as super-broadcasters of QAnon’s conspiracy theory, found that the videos and other content posted by the accounts continued to rack up likes, comments and shares.
“Even after the ban, personal Facebook profiles – many of which are followed by many followers – continue to discuss and promote the conspiracy on the platform,” says the report, released by the think tank Institute for Strategic Dialogue and the non-partisan NewsGuard rating agency. The super-spreaders, he said, “have proven to be a key link in the chain of the plot.
QAnon, a broad conspiracy theory that falsely claims that a satanic cabal rules the world, began in 2017. It gained its largest audience during the pandemic.
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One of the super-broadcasters was Larry Cook, an anti-vaccination activist who started sharing the QAnon plots earlier this year, according to the report. In the month following the ban, Mr Cook continued to make and share videos that included explanations of QAnon for newcomers and claiming that the government was running secret detention camps. Although Mr. Cook was banned by Facebook in mid-November, he still has an account on Instagram, which is owned by Facebook.
Other accounts have remained active on Facebook, including those run by yoga and wellness coaches who share QAnon content, such as false claims linking Covid-19 vaccines to a massive government conspiracy.
“Since August, we have removed more than 1,700 pages and 5,600 QAnon-related groups and disabled the profiles that exploited them,” said Facebook spokesperson Sarah Pollack. She said the company also redirected people looking for QAnon to credible resources such as the Global Extremism and Technology Network.
The report, which has studied QAnon’s growth on Facebook since the start of the pandemic, found that the movement had woven into the fabric of the social network and was proving impossible to suppress entirely.
The recent international spread of QAnon continues, according to the report. Three of the 10 most active communities posting QAnon content on Facebook were German-speaking groups. Fifteen languages were represented in the posts by QAnon followers on Facebook.
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An international super-broadcaster, for example, uploaded a video of an American believer from QAnon that was narrated in Spanish. The video has been viewed more than 786,000 times since April.
Another mainstream account linked to a Brazilian national has posted videos that have been viewed tens of thousands of times. Yet another video mistakenly linked Hollywood celebrities Sandra Bullock and Ellen DeGeneres to QAnon. It has been viewed over 130,000 times since July.
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