Social Media's Response to QAnon

Written November 2, 2020

Do you remember, in the early days of the internet, when people thought only of how much of a vehicle for easily finding information it would be? That turned out to be true, but has definitely gone in a direction most of us in the late 1990s and early 2000s would not have expected. We were thinking of all the ways so many people could find out good, truthful information, and not how the crowd reading the Weekly World News seriously would shift, and grow, and spread their own information.

This is where we have found ourselves with QAnon. It is a loose set of belief systems that pull together just about every conspiracy theory out there into one. It grows by the environment of distrust in the media, the mask of “asking questions” and “doing your own research” resulting in compounding confirmation bias, and the working of social media algorithms that lead you to groups, videos, and pages similar to what you have already searched. All of this makes falling down the rabbit hole easier than ever.

But what IS QAnon anyway? It is a chain of conspiracy theories positing that there is an elite cabal of satanic, elites, who might be lizard people or aliens, stealing and abusing children for nefarious purposes. Digging into the details of what they believe gets crazier as you go, especially when you see who they think is out to save them. But, this kind of crazy will also sound incredibly familiar to a lot of people. We have seen these ideas before. Repeatedly through history, even.

The idea of an elite cabal ruling the world through consuming children and worshipping the devil is a long running anti-Semitic trope that can be traced back to 1144 when a child was found dead in the woods. Somehow, this was the one hagiographers turned into Saint William of Norwich and wrote, in 1173, of how he was ritually sacrificed by Jews. The false story grew from there and was told and retold with similar ideas like a bad trope. It was used repeatedly as a way of othering people and turning them into monsters. Even as recently as the “Satanic Panic” of the 1980s. The story shifts slightly, but the major components are mostly there. A better context for this and how it relates to QAnon can be found here, if you would like a fuller story.

Basically, none of these ideas are new, and none of them are in any way true. They never were in the past either. The novel thing about QAnon is how it ties together all these different kinds of conspiracy theories, and brings together those on the right, as well as new-age anti-vaxxers. They are also gaining visibility with recognition by the President, as well as support of at least a couple of Congressional candidates.

Currently, the major social media platforms are taking steps to try to curb the influence of the group. Twitter and Facebook are restricting and removing users and groups associated with QAnon, and limiting the algorithmic tendency to lead people to more of those groups. They have long ago been banned from the 8chan and 4chan forums where the conspiracy started, only to pop up on different forums made for them. Of course, making rules against such extremist groups can make it harder for them to be found, but it does not make them go away. They are adept at going underground, and will change key-words and find new platforms as they go. 

We may never get rid of conspiracy theorists completely, they will always be around in one way or another. But to keep them from gaining too much mainstream momentum requires common sense, logical reasoning and some discernment for unreasonable out there ideas. It also requires a level of trust in media sources that has been dangerously eroded in the last few years. It may take time to build some of that back, but in the meantime, if it sounds too crazy to be true, then that is very likely the case.