Thread by @Shayan86

Holy hell. Just had a look at my list of QAnon groups and pages on Facebook and it's bloodbath out there. Absolute bloodbath. I'm down to 31 groups and 49 pages. I had 220 groups and 205 pages just last week 😮 On Instagram, I'm down to 258 accounts, I had nearly 400 last week.

The lucky ones that have survived the cull have already pressed the panic button. Warnings are going out to members to avoid any references to Q or QAnon. Backup accounts and channels are already being set up. They all seem to have grasped this time Facebook looks serious.

On my list, there are now only five Facebook groups, nine pages and 19 Instagram accounts remaining with more than 10,000 members, likes or followers. I can't stress how huge this is. Gone are pretty much all the major QAnon groups/pages with tens of thousands of members/likes.

Gab is already attempting to seize on this by saying in a statement that it will be "welcoming all QAnon accounts across our social network". I am sceptical. This is not too different to the "mass migration" to Parler earlier. QAnon followers need the major platforms to recruit.

Facebook really has come down on QAnon like a ton of bricks this time. @_MAArgentino and @noUpside both say they're seeing the same thing. But it's important to note just because the groups/pages are gone, doesn't mean QAnon content is gone too. There are still loads of them.

In the last three months, owing to their hijacking of #SaveOurChildren and #SaveTheChildren, QAnon hashtags generated 17.6 million interactions on Facebook and 34.3 million on Instagram. These hashtags will continue to exist. Be interesting to see how these numbers now change.

Reminder: Between Jan-Aug 2020, the biggest QAnon Facebook groups and pages generated 44 million interactions and 50 million video views in total; while the biggest QAnon Instagram accounts generated 63 million interactions and 133 million video views. Now most of them are gone.

Journalists/researchers reporting on QAnon spent hours and hours in these communities. Read their discussions, attended their watch parties where the "digital soldiers" bounced off ideas, checked their content, etc. Only a few dozen are still up. Adios! But they'll try to return.