Posted on 08/19/2020 12:31:04 PM PDT by RandFan
Facebook on Wednesday banned roughly 900 groups and pages and 1,500 ads related to the QAnon conspiracy.
The removals were part of an expansion of the platform's policies on violent rhetoric, which also resulted in 10,000 Instagram pages and nearly 2,000 Facebook groups associated with QAnon having their reach limited.
The QAnon theory baselessly claims that President Trump and the military are working together to expose a shadowy cabal of figures in media, entertainment and politics that are trafficking children.
In a blog post explaining the policy change Wednesday, Facebook noted that groups and pages dedicated to the theory have increasingly become a place to celebrate violent actions, even if some of them are not directly used to organize those actions.
The FBI labeled the loose QAnon community a potential domestic terror threat last year.
Moving forward, the pages affiliated with QAnon — as well as ones ties to "offline anarchist groups that support violent acts amidst protests" and "US-based militia organizations" — will be prohibited from purchasing ads or selling products in the platform's marketplaces.
Nonprofits that Facebook identifies as supporting those movements will also be barred from using the platform's fundraising tools.
QAnon, militia and anarchist protest groups will also be pushed down on users' newsfeeds and search engines.
These steps by Facebook, similar to ones taken by Twitter last months, come as increasing attention is being paid to the role social media platforms have played in the rapid growth of unhinged conspiracy theories like QAnon.
NBC News reported last week that an internal Facebook investigation uncovered thousands of groups and pages with millions of members and followers supporting the QAnon conspiracy theory. The Guardian has reported on similarly large groups.
One of my facebook friends posted a short, 27 second unedited video - with no commentary - of Obama speaking. Facebook flagged it as false. :)
The reason? It was out of context. That is true, but it also makes Facebook an Obama apologist.
When they get rid of all the Russian Collusion groups, let me know.
Facebook kicked me out. They did me a BIG favour.
Leftists are so predictable.
CHRIS MILLS RODRIGO - who the hell is he and what does he think he knows about anything/ Writing crap for a crap website?
It’s harmless stuff... they make it sound like a domestic terror threat!
Black Lives Matter IS Domestic terrorism and they do celebrate their violent acts and organize them, but that’s ok with Facebook.
“The FBI labeled the loose QAnon community a potential domestic terror threat last year. “
When I researched that report last year, I discovered that the footnotes in the document were quite enlightening. The sources cited in that FBI field office “bulletin” were MSM stories and a few individuals which the foot notes said, “May or may not have knowledge relevent to this report”. Yeah - those were their sources. Now when I try to find that report, I can only find the first page and the other 14 pages are missing. But it was pathetic propaganda from one field office bulletin. The MSM is citing the FBI who is citing the MSM.
Not a fan of the Q stuff but they’re not doing anyone harm. FB “community” standards, algorithms and moderators have made it near impossible to post anything off the narrative and that goes for the Babylon Bee also
The purpose of the First Amendment is to protect unpopular speech.
Popular speech needs no protection.
Lawsuits in our corrupt courts cost lots of money. The judiciary sucks.
Are they actively trying to give credibility to Qanon?
I guess I missed the independent fact-checking of the issues that QAnon purports are real.
“ The FBI labeled the loose QAnon community a potential domestic terror threat last year.”
Given that the central ‘conspiracy’ theory is that the FBI is leading the coup, one would not expect an endorsement from the FBI. Right?
Don’t you mean “FASCIST BOOK”?
Not so . There have been about 15 violent incidents including several killings where the perpetrator cited q anon.
Q anon may not be condoning violence but a certain number of its adherents are mentally unstable enough to be influenced by it. That is probably not a good enough reason to ban the entire discussion but one cannot claim that no violence is not connected to this cult.
Ditto....and I tried a couple of times to create other accounts, under other names, using other email addys and as soon as I filled out the info and hit register or sign up or whatever, I got an automatic message saying I can't use FB because my account goes against "community standards"...I swear they have my IP addy flagged. I got kicked off 3 weeks ago!
And they cozy up to an actual domestic terror group like Antifa.
I don’t see anything violent in any of that stuff. I don’t believe in Q but that is because I don’t see it slash them as credible. If they were, Jeff Sessions would be running for the old seat in the Senate right now.
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