Twitter has banned thousands of QAnon accounts and has limited the QAnon-related activity of tens of thousands more as part of a “strong enforcement action” aimed at limiting the spread of the far-right conspiracy movement and its baseless — and often dangerous — theories.
A spokesperson for Twitter told NBC News on Tuesday that more than 7,000 accounts had been permanently suspended as part of the action and about 150,000 accounts had been affected. The spokesperson said Twitter was taking steps to crack down on QAnon “because of an escalating degree of harm associated with the conspiracy theory,” the network reported.
Followers of QAnon ― who include several Republican candidates for Congress ― believe that an individual dubbed “Q,” who claims to have high-level government clearance, has been dropping “breadcrumbs” of information online about President Donald Trump and others.
Among the unfounded beliefs, QAnon followers have claimed that Trump was in cahoots with special counsel Robert Mueller to uncover a so-called “deep state” cabal of liberal and Hollywood elites who worship Satan and traffic children.
Adherents of the movement have been implicated in multiple crimes in recent years, including armed standoffs, kidnappings and murder.
Twitter said that QAnon content has the “potential to lead to offline harm.” As such, the company said this week that it would take steps to limit the dissemination of such content on its platform, including no longer serving “content and accounts associated with QAnon in Trends and recommendations” and blocking URLs associated with QAnon.
The Twitter spokesperson told NBC that the platform started blocking QAnon websites last week.
The company said it would roll out its actions against QAnon content “comprehensively” in the coming days.