An old already-established but banned Facebook page and accounts with different names such as 'Q,' '17,' and known as 'QAnon' have now returned to the social media platform, with more members. The Guardian made a remarkable investigative report about the groups' visibility on the platform, once user searches for Trump supporters, anti-vaccine, or anti-quarantine.
Controversial far-right 'QAnon' is back on Facebook; Here's what it is
In an exclusive report from The Guardian writer Julia Carrie Wong, she discovered an interesting find on Facebook on Thursday, June 25.
Brian Friedberg, a senior researcher at the Harvard Shorenstein Center's Technology and Social Change Project who has been studying the conspiracy group QAnon for years, found more than 100 pages and groups of 'QAnon' groups on his recommendation page. This was after searching and liking pages related to pro-Trump, anti-lockdown, and anti-vaccine.
"Once I started liking those pages and joining those groups, Facebook just started recommending 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 him.
'QAnon' groups or sometimes called '17' referring to the letter 'Q' on the alphabet is one of the biggest conspiracy groups on the platform. The 'Q' represents the anonymous figure that claims knowledge about the famous and powerful pedophiles and human traffickers in the limelight. One of these examples was when Hillary Clinton allegedly had a secret cabal for a 'child sex ring' in Washington D.C.
The group has not yet proved anything on its pages. However, people are still interested in being a part of the 'Q.'
The Guardian found "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, 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."
Facebook opens a platform for 'QAnon'
Facebook already commented on the issues and said that they previously banned all pages and groups related to 'Q.'
"Last month, we took down accounts, Groups, and Pages tied to this conspiracy theorist movement for violating our policies," a company spokesperson said in a statement. "We also remove Groups and Pages that violate other policies from recommendations and demote in search results. We're closely monitoring this activity and how our policies apply."
They also reiterated that what Friedberg found on the recommendation pages had been removed by the platform though Facebook did not show any evidence to prove this claim.
