Twitter says it’s purged more than 70,000 accounts for spreading conspiracy theories associated with QAnon. The company first began cracking down on QAnon over the summer, but now says it ramped up its enforcement following last week’s riot at the US Capitol.
“Given the violent events in Washington, DC, and increased risk of harm, we began permanently suspending thousands of accounts that were primarily dedicated to sharing QAnon content on Friday afternoon,” the company says. “Since Friday, more than 70,000 accounts have been suspended as a result of our efforts, with many instances of a single individual operating numerous accounts. These accounts were engaged in sharing harmful QAnon-associated content at scale and were primarily dedicated to the propagation of this conspiracy theory across the service.”
Twitter further notes that these actions “may have resulted in follower count changes in the thousands” for “some people.” The disclosure comes as a number of Republican lawmakers and others in Donald Trump’s orbit complained about losing thousands of followers over the weekend.
In addition to QAnon, Twitter also says it will further crack down on misinformation about the 2020 election as false election claims has been used to incite violence. The platform has updated its civic integrity policy to reflect that ”repeated sharing of Tweets that receive warning labels” may result in permanent bans.
via https://AiUpNow.com January 11, 2021 at 09:12PM by , Khareem Sudlow,
