Twitter Moves to Ban QAnon Accounts, Limit Activity on Platform

Twitter announced on Tuesday that it was suspending accounts associated the so-called QAnon movement and working to keep activity involving it out of search results on its platform because of "behavior that has the potential to lead to offline harm."

In a series of tweets, Twitter said it will "no longer serve content and accounts associated with QAnon in Trends and recommendations;" work to ensure it was "not highlighting this activity in search and conversations;" and "Block URLs associated with QAnon from being shared on Twitter."

NBC reported the actions will affect 150,000 accounts, quoting an unidentified spokesperson at Twitter, who did not want to be identified because of "concerns about the targeted harassment of social media employees."

More than 7,000 accounts already have been deactivated, according to the spokesperson, because of violations of Twitter's policy on "targeted harassment."

NBC described QAnon as a "right-wing conspiracy theory that centers on the baseless belief that an anonymous tipster is revealing how President Donald Trump is leading a secret war against a so-called deep state."

Neither Twitter nor NBC cited specific examples of the behavior that led to the action, instead the social media company referred to "coordinating abuse around individual victims."

The spokesperson told NBC that Twitter was "acting now because of rising harm associated with the conspiracy theory."

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