Shafaq news/ Twitter announced on Tuesday it has begun taking sweeping actions to limit the reach of QAnon content and banned many of the conspiracy theory’s followers due to ongoing problems with harassment and the dissemination of misinformation.
Twitter will stop recommending accounts and content related to QAnon, including in email and follow recommendations and will take steps to limit content circulation in places like trends and search. This action will affect approximately 150,000 accounts, according to a spokesperson, who asked to remain unnamed.
The Twitter spokesperson also said the company had taken down more than 7,000 QAnon accounts in the last few weeks for breaking its rules on targeted harassment as part of its new policy.
The conspiracy theory centers on shadowy figure adherents refer to as "Q," which started posting anonymously on message boards in October 2017 and claims to have the inside track about a worldwide criminal conspiracy.
Trump has retweeted accounts connected with QAnon. And at Trump rallies, some people wearing T-shirts and holding signs with QAnon images have appeared.
QAnon has begun to leave the dark corners of the Internet and enter the mainstream.
Alice Marwick, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who studies disinformation, said it is a responsible move for Twitter to clamp down on QAnon.
"QAnon has been instigating networked harassment, not just of politicians and celebrities but of private citizens they believe are involved in a satanic pedophile cult," Marwick told NPR.
She predicted that QAnon followers would flock to other platforms.
"They have large presences on Facebook groups and on YouTube. They also have their own sites and message boards, and they're very good at adapting when social platforms change," she said.
Twitter is still assessing the fallout from a coordinated hack of the platform just days ago that compromised the accounts of 130 highly visible users, including Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
The hackers' brazen intrusion made security experts wonder whether Twitter is prepared for what may be an onslaught of attempted breaches and disinformation campaigns ahead of the November presidential election.