Facebook Cracks Down On Qanon Accounts In Disinformation Purge

As part of their ongoing effort to purge the site of the disinformation campaigns that have plagued the platform for years, Facebook has banned numerous groups and pages, including several associated with the Qanon conspiracy theory. Over the last two years, Qanon, a convoluted conspiracy theory that believes a "deep state" is attempting to thwart President Trump's efforts to stop sex trafficking rings, has grown in prevalence on the site.

Facebook reports that they removed five Pages, 20 accounts and six groups associated with the Qanon conspiracy theory. They state that about 133,000 accounts followed one or more of these accounts and 30,000 accounts joined one or more of the groups.

The report is part of the company's "proactive investigations" against disinformation ahead of the 2020 U.S. election. Facebook also announced that they removed 732 Facebook accounts, 162 Instagram accounts, 793 pages and 200 groups as part of "proactive investigations" against disinformation ahead of the 2020 U.S. election. These groups originated in countries around the world, including Russia, Iran, Myanmar, George and the United States. They participated in, what Facebook calls, "Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior" and "Foreign or Government Interference."

"We view influence operations as coordinated efforts to manipulate public debate for a strategic
goal where fake accounts are central to the operation," they write in the report. "There are two tiers of these activities that we work to stop: 1) coordinated inauthentic behavior in the context of domestic, non-state campaigns (CIB) and 2) coordinated inauthentic behavior on behalf of a foreign or government actor (FGI)."

Facebook views these groups differently from typical SPAM accounts, which, they say, are "mostly financially-motivated" operations. Accounts engaging in CIB and FGI look to flood online conversations with misinformation, particularly in times of great strife, such as the coronavirus outbreak.

"We know that people looking to mislead others -- whether through phishing, scams, or influence operations -- try to leverage crises to advance their goals, and the coronavirus pandemic is no different," Facebooks states in the report.

"All of the networks we took down for CIB in April were created before the COVID-19 pandemic began, however, we’ve seen people behind these campaigns opportunistically use coronavirus-related posts among many other topics to build an audience and drive people to their Pages or off-platform sites. The majority of the networks we took down this month were still trying to grow their audience or had a large portion of engagement on their Pages generated by their own accounts."

The report comes as part of Facebook's ongoing attempt to crack down on disinformation on the social media site.