Thread by @Shayan86

THREAD: Major QAnon hashtags were used a total of 20.8 million times on Twitter in 2020.

I calculated the numbers on a quarterly basis using Twitter API and data from @Khoros.

QAnon had its most prolific year since 2018 until the last quarter, when Twitter restrictions came in.

Let's begin with the last quarter. This was when Twitter began serious enforcement against not only old but also new QAnon hashtags, like SaveTheChildren.

Numbers saw a huge drop to just 115k. But then ReleaseTheKraken and CrossThe Rubicon went viral, pushing the total to 202K.

Compare 202K with the total for the third quarter, 4.9M tweets, and see the difference Twitter bans and restrictions made.

This period saw the full adoption of SaveTheChildren (1M) and SaveOurChildren (480K).

Old hashtags fell sharply due to new policies introduced in July.

The second quarter was the biggest of the year with 10.9M tweets.

Pizzagate (1.1M) had a sudden resurgence.

And we saw the rise of TakeTheOath (480K).

There were no restrictions on old QAnon hashtags during this period. Look how massive they were (5.4M for WWG1WGA).

There were 4.8M tweets in the first quarter.

QAnon (2.8M) and WWG1WGA (2.1M) were the most popular ones in the period.

This was the moment QAnon content began spreading outside its usual bubbles due to the pandemic and global lockdowns.

I decided to stick with hashtags rather than terms and phrases to reduce the number of tweets by news organisations, journalists and ordinary users in the data to a minimum.

While some of those tweets still feature in the data, the overwhelming majority are from QAnon believers.

Add up the numbers from all four quarters (4.8M, 10.9M, 4.9M, and 202K) and you arrive at 20.8M tweets.

Once again, this is not a definitive number. For that, I'd have to sift through every tweet from each quarterly sample.

But it's as close to the real figure as I can get.