In the past 48 hours:
-Twitter banned QAnon accounts
-Twitter banned Trump
-Reddit banned r/donaldtrump
-Reddit banned the head moderator of r/conspiracy
-YouTube banned Steve Bannon's show
-Discord banned TheDonald dot win's channel
-Google banned Parler from its app store
Can now add Twitter banning TheDonald dot win's Twitter account to this list.
Major QAnon accounts that have been banned since this was announced already include:
-QAnon76
-Praying Medic
-intheMatrixxx
-WeTheInevitable (who has ban evaded more than 20 times)
X22 Report, which may have rivaled QAnon76 for the most followers of remaining QAnon accounts on Twitter (more than a half million), has also been banned.
QAnon started on an anonymous message board. Over the course of 3 years, it built a social media infrastructure & following, using it to spread multiple false conspiracy theories, including false voter fraud claims, helping them spread. In part, that has led to today.
(And QAnon supporters are among those storming the Capitol right now.)
In 2020, a false message board conspiracy theory harmed the pandemic response, significantly impacted our political process, & destroyed lives & families.
This year in review of QAnon's impact is divided into multiple sections:
1. How QAnon began on 4chan in 2017 & slowly built a social media infrastructure, endorsements in the far-right, & offline support, leading to early 2020.
2. How the pandemic caused consumption of QAnon content to soar, & how QAnon-connected conspiracy theories & false claims -- some of which reached Trump -- undermined the pandemic & made QAnon a public health threat.
New from me: A 4chan hoax about Chief Justice John Roberts tricked a presidential elector, went viral on social media, & was amplified in multiple Newsmax segments. mediamatters.org/4chan/viral-4c…
The hoax, which originated from a 4chan post, was copied by a white nationalist's site & later invoked in a speech by a Texas presidential elector. Via that speech, the hoax has earned millions of combined views on Facebook & Twitter. It also wound up trending on Twitter.
Given its reach, this might be one of the most successful 4chan "insider" hoaxes in a while (at least since QAnon began on 4chan in 2017).
NEW from me: YouTube has allowed baseless conspiracy theories about interference with voting machines to rack up around 3 million views (& counting). YouTube also made money from the conspiracy theories due to ads airing on some of the videos. mediamatters.org/google/youtube…
Many of the videos pushing the two conspiracy theories -- "hammer" and "scorecard" and "Dominion" -- are clips from Fox News. Before the election, YouTube listed Fox News as an "authoritative" source "for election-related news and information queries."
Besides having ads, some of the videos pushing the conspiracy theories even sold merchandise below the videos -- from which YouTube may also financially benefit. The image below shows in one screenshot the problem with YouTube's business model.