Facebook Removes Hundreds Of QAnon Groups

(RTTNews) - Facebook Inc. (FB) Thursday said that it will restrict rightwing conspiracy movement QAnon.

The social media giant has removed 790 QAnon groups from its site and restricted another 1,950 groups, 440 pages and more than 10,000 Instagram accounts related to the right-wing conspiracy theory.

However, the company will continue allow people to post material that supports these groups as long as they do not violate policies against hate speech, abuse and other provocations.

QAnon is a far-right conspiracy theory alleging a secret plot by a supposed "deep state" against President Donald Trump and his supporters. They believe that the world is run by a group of Satan-worshiping pedophiles who are plotting against Trump while operating a global child sex-trafficking ring.

QAnon followers believe that this group includes top Democrats including Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and George Soros, as well as a number of Hollywood celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Tom Hanks, Ellen DeGeneres.

The theory began with an October 2017 post on the anonymous imageboard 4chan by "Q", who was presumably an American individual. Q claimed to have access to classified information involving the Trump administration and its opponents in the United States.

Recently, Qanon groups have attached themselves to false information about COVID-19, the Black Lives Matter protests and the 2020 election.

In July, Twitter banned thousands of QAnon-affiliated accounts and changed its algorithms to reduce the theory's spread.

A Facebook internal analysis reported in August found millions of followers across thousands of groups and pages.