QAnon graffiti found along Main Street of the tiny Mississippi River village of Ferryville, Wisconsin.
Trending / BBC (7/26/20)
It’s bursting into the mainstream – a bizarre conspiracy theory that casts US President Donald Trump as its hero.
QAnon claims that the president is secretly fighting a cabal of high-placed paedophiles in Hollywood and the so-called “deep state”. But why has it had an apparent surge in popularity during the global pandemic?
Since it first emerged in an anonymous post on an online message board in 2017, QAnon has developed into a movement which is now making inroads into the American political psyche.
However, many families of QAnon followers feel they have lost their relatives to a dangerous cult. Several people have been arrested plotting attacks while seemingly under the influence of the conspiracy theory.
This week Twitter banned thousands of QAnon-themed accounts, but it’s likely that at least one adherent will enter the US Congress after elections in November.
What role might this strange belief system play in US politics?
(Commoner Call photo by Mark L. Taylor, 2020. Open source and free for non-derivative use with link to www.thecommonercall.org )
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QAnon: TikTok Blocks QAnon Conspiracy Theory Hashtags
TikTok has blocked a number of hashtags related to the QAnon conspiracy theory from appearing in search results, amid concern about misinformation, the BBC has learned.
It comes days after Twitter banned thousands of QAnon-related accounts.
QAnon is a wide-ranging, unfounded conspiracy theory whose followers support US President Donald Trump.
They believe the president is battling a clandestine “deep state” network of political, business and media elites.
TikTok said it moved to restrict “QAnonTruth” searches after a question from the BBC’s anti-disinformation unit, which noticed a spike in conspiracy videos using the tag. The company expressed concern that such misinformation could harm users and the general public.
“QAnon” and related hashtags, such as “Out of Shadows”, ”Fall Cabal” and “QAnonTruth”, will no longer return search results on TikTok – although videos using the same tags will remain on the platform.
Videos using the “QAnon” hashtag, in particular, have millions of cumulative views and can still be found if a user’s algorithm directs them to the associated content. …