New and established QAnon groups on Facebook are growing at a rapid pace and helping to spread the baseless and dangerous conspiracy theory to new countries around the world, a Guardian investigation has found. The Guardian has documented more than 170 QAnon groups, pages and accounts across Facebook and Instagram with more than 4.5m aggregate followers. The Guardian has also documented dedicated communities for QAnon followers in at least 15 countries on Facebook. The growth in the QAnon Facebook communities has come as rival social media platform Twitter undertook a broad crackdown on content and accounts dedicated to the conspiracy theory, citing the movement’s “clear and well-documented informational, physical, societal and psychological offline harm”. At the time of Twitter’s crackdown, anonymous sources told the New York Times that Facebook was planning to take “similar steps” at some point this month. In the meantime, Facebook’s recommendation algorithm has continued to promote QAnon groups to users and some groups have experienced explosive growth. QAnon is a baseless internet conspiracy theory whose followers believe that Donald Trump is waging a secret war against a “deep state” cabal of Democrats and Hollywood celebrities engaging in pedophilia and sex trafficking. The theory evolved from the 2016 “pizzagate” conspiracy theory and has grown to have real-world political impact. Numerous QAnon adherents are running for elected office as Republicans; the FBI has identified QAnon as a potential domestic terrorism threat. In late June, the Guardian reported that the QAnon community on Facebook included more than 100 Facebook pages, profiles, groups and Instagram accounts with at least 1,000 followers or members each. The largest of those groups had more than 150,000 followers or members, and overall the accounts, groups and pages counted more than 3m aggregate followers or members.
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Forest Fairytale
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Forest Fairytale
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