As the 2020 elections tighten, social media websites and tech companies have had to fend off disinformation campaigns to influence the vote. This year, especially, tech giants have a new - and rapidly spreading - problem: the QAnon conspiracy theory.
What is QAnon?
QAnon is an unfounded right-wing conspiracy theory derived from an anonymous character named "Q" on 4chan's message boards in October 2017.
The unidentified person claims to be a senior government official within the Trump administration who has access to classified information and intermittently drops coded clues for supporters to decipher. When 4chan was dissolved in 2018, the Q-Drops were moved to 8chan and should now take place on 8kun.
QAnon supporters largely believe in a widely debunked theory that President Trump is fighting against the liberal Washington, DC, politicians and Hollywood elites who deal with satanism, sex trafficking, and pedophilia - a so-called "deep state" of forces trying to undermine him.
None of Q's predictions have come true, but proponents still hold on to the conspiracy and can quickly adjust to growing online trends to spread disinformation. QAnon supporters have also breathed new life into older, vomit conspiracies, such as #Pizzagate - which circulated during the 2016 presidential election over allegations that a sex trafficking ring leaked out of a Washington, DC pizzeria.
The coronavirus pandemic has also become a topic of conversation for the group that falsely claims that COVID-19 is a "bio-weapon". More recently, QAnon supporters have co-opted the hashtag #SaveTheChildren to promote the false belief that "elites" use children's blood to extend their lifespan.
How did QAnon spread?
It is not known how many people seriously believe in QAnon conspiracies. Experts studying conspiracy theories told Digital Trends that QAnon supporters are "deeper than wide" - meaning those who are invested in QAnon theories are followers of the ideology, while the majority of Americans have no idea what the conspiracy completely implies. or have heard only parts of it.
Thanks to social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok, however, QAnon is no longer a fringe group, but mainstream. Posts and accounts related to the QAnon conspiracy theory have triggered thousands of clicks among users - often unintentionally through the website's algorithms.
Backers have used popular social media platforms to coordinate troll behavior and attacks, promote their hashtags, and bring millions in private groups. They are recruiting more people by the hour - and deriving their rhetoric from the shadows of the dark web.
What are Facebook, Twitter and others doing against QAnon?
Tech giants have only just begun cracking down on QAnon accounts, groups, and ads after rampant online conspiracies led to real-world violence.
Twitter, the first to crack down on the group, banned hundreds of thousands of QAnon accounts and blocked the distribution of its popular keywords and symbolism, such as "# WWG1WGA" which means "Where we go, we all go".
TikTok turned off popular QAnon-related hashtags when teenagers took notice on the platform.
Facebook recently said it would not allow QAnon groups to buy ads and removed hundreds of accounts that sparked conspiracies on the site. And YouTube announced that QAnon content will no longer appear on its homepage, even though Digital Trends recently discovered that QAnon content is still showing up on users' feeds.
Despite the efforts of social media platforms, QAnon supporters are agile and coordinated, and have proven adept at dodging Big Tech's efforts to limit the spread of conspiracy theory. QAnon content can be found quite easily once you know what to look for by bypassing the optimized algorithms made by websites.
Even with increasing moderation of content, social media companies cannot completely delete QAnon content from their platforms without violating their own guidelines.
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