Facebook says it will ban QAnon across its platforms, removing all Facebook Pages, Groups, and Instagram accounts that represent QAnon

Facebook said Tuesday that it is banning all QAnon accounts from its platforms, a significant escalation over its previous action and one of the broadest rules …

NBC News 2020-10-07

Context & Ripple Effects

This is the end of a three-month escalation ladder. In July, Twitter moved first, limiting QAnon content's reach and suspending thousands of accounts, while sources reported Facebook was preparing its own action and coordinating with Twitter and other companies. Facebook then spent August throttling rather than banning: [[a:956993|removing 790 Groups and restricting another 1,950 Groups, 440 Pages, and over 10,000 Instagram accounts]], plus taking down a ~200K-member QAnon group for repeated policy violations.

The October moves show the throttle becoming a ban. By October 1 Facebook had removed 6,500 groups belonging to 300 organizations tied to QAnon and militia movements; today's announcement drops the category-based approach for a blanket prohibition — any Page, Group, or Instagram account representing QAnon goes, making it one of Facebook's broadest content rules ever.

First-order effects

Every QAnon-representing Facebook Page, Group, and Instagram account now faces removal, converting August's restrict-some/remove-some enforcement into a platform-wide purge that Facebook's trust-and-safety operation must execute at scale.
QAnon organizers lose their largest coordinated distribution infrastructure in one stroke — the same networks Twitter had already permanently suspending accounts since July.

Second-order effects

The ban resets the competitive floor: platforms that only limited QAnon reach now look permissive by comparison, and any holdout risks becoming the movement's default home — the coordination reported in July makes divergence a visible choice.
Enforcement precedent spreads sideways: the same category-ban logic Facebook applied to militia organizations and Antifa-affiliated Groups in August becomes the template for how it treats other movements it designates, raising the stakes of Facebook's designation decisions themselves.

Third-order effects

If the pattern holds, platform moderation is shifting from adjudicating individual content violations to designating entire movements and removing them wholesale — a structural change that puts the designation process, not the takedown, at the center of content policy.
Cross-company coordination on enforcement, reported since July, points toward de facto industry-wide content standards set by the largest platforms rather than by each service independently or by regulators.

The trend: Major social platforms are escalating from throttling conspiracy movements' reach to banning them outright, with coordinated cross-company enforcement replacing case-by-case moderation.

Discussion

@shayan86 Shayan Sardarizadeh on x
On my list, there are now only five Facebook groups, nine pages and 19 Instagram accounts remaining with more than 10,000 members, likes or followers. I can't stress how huge this is. Gone are pretty much all the major QAnon groups/pages with tens of thousands of members/likes. h…
@shayan86 Shayan Sardarizadeh on x
Holy hell. Just had a look at my list of QAnon groups and pages on Facebook and it's bloodbath out there. Absolute bloodbath. I'm down to 31 groups and 49 pages. I had 220 groups and 205 pages just last week 😮 On Instagram, I'm down to 258 accounts, I had nearly 400 last week. ht…
@jessreports Jesselyn Cook on x
Instagram is still literally *recommending* QAnon content. https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...
@donie Donie O'Sullivan on x
Like anything with Facebook. Talk and commitments are cheap. And they generate a ton of free PR. How they implement the QAnon ban is the test.
@juliacarriew Julia Carrie Wong on x
This new QAnon policy is a major step for Facebook (especially when you consider that FB had no policy at all on QAnon two months ago). But there are still very large loopholes, especially for Instagram influencers. This is not a total deplatforming. https://www.theguardian.com/ …
@shayan86 Shayan Sardarizadeh on x
The lucky ones that have survived the cull have already pressed the panic button. Warnings are going out to members to avoid any references to Q or QAnon. Backup accounts and channels are already being set up. They all seem to have grasped this time Facebook looks serious. https:…
@sheeraf Sheera Frenkel on x
Facebook's sweeping ban on QAnon today is important. QAnon uses militaristic language about itself and its followers because it sees itself as waging a war. The most fertile ground for its goal (new recruits) has been Facebook and Instagram. https://www.nytimes.com/...
@oneunderscore__ Ben Collins on x
QAnon will now be treated like other militias and terror groups that have been tied to real-world violence and repeatedly fantasize about violence and mass slaughter. https://www.nbcnews.com/...
@kevinroose Kevin Roose on x
Facebook banning all openly QAnon-related accounts is a big deal. As always, the million-dollar question is how they actually enforce the policy, but it's farther than many people expected them to go. https://www.nytimes.com/...
@martinsfp Martin Sfp Bryant on x
This is going to be difficult because not all QAnon-related pages, groups, and accounts make the connection clearly obvious. https://twitter.com/...
@slpng_giants @slpng_giants on x
Please PLEASE don't thank @Facebook for banning QAnon. 1) Enforcement is everything. There are still tons of QAnon groups on the platform. 2) Facebook essentially created QAnon, allowing it to grow into a worldwide cult on their watch, aplifying and monetizing the entire thing.
@juliacarriew Julia Carrie Wong on x
All Facebook users are banned from praising designated “Dangerous Organizations”, or from representing them. If you post praise for Isis or the KKK, it should be deleted. That level of ban is *not* being applied to QAnon and that distinction matters. https://www.theguardian.com/ …
@yashar Yashar Ali on x
I did not expect this broad of a ban. https://twitter.com/...
@titusnation Titus on x
Horse out, now shut barn door. Facebook bans QAnon across its platforms https://www.nbcnews.com/...
@alexstamos Alex Stamos on x
@kevinroose I'm saying that I don't know what “deplatforming QAnon” means in practice, as we don't have a good precedent, and that some possible directions of where this goes sets scary precedents.
@slpng_giants @slpng_giants on x
@darth Anti-trust, outside pressure like #stophateforprofit and @FBoversight and, cynically, likely the politics of the moment. They're looking at polling and thinking that they might have to start pandering to someone else at some point soon. Terrible way to approach policy. And…
@joyannreid @joyannreid on x
Important news: https://twitter.com/...
@oneunderscore__ Ben Collins on x
Facebook's QAnon ban is the most sweeping content moderation step I've seen from any social media company so far. This won't just ban certain posts. Facebook will ban Groups, Pages and Instagram accounts that post about QAnon, a militarized movement. https://www.nbcnews.com/...
@juliacarriew Julia Carrie Wong on x
Seeing a lot of people assert that Facebook's treatment of QAnon is now a) a complete ban or b) on the same level as its treatment of terrorist or hate groups (which FB calls “dangerous organizations"). This is very much not the case. https://www.theguardian.com/ ...
@yeahunoeme @yeahunoeme on x
Three years later, Facebook says it will ban QAnon. Phew! Gee thanks @Facebook! You did this just in the nick of time before it caught on....😒 Give me a 🤬-ing break!! https://www.cnn.com/...
@shayan86 Shayan Sardarizadeh on x
Gab is already attempting to seize on this by saying in a statement that it will be “welcoming all QAnon accounts across our social network”. I am sceptical. This is not too different to the “mass migration” to Parler earlier. QAnon followers need the major platforms to recruit. …
@rmac18 @rmac18 on x
Fun that Facebook does the thing that everyone has wanted them to do for months right after a big government report comes out accusing of it of being a giant monopoly. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ...
@alexstamos Alex Stamos on x
So will the platforms be as effective suppressing QAnon as they were ISIS, one of the few really successful platform collaborations of the last five years? Probably not, as a key difference is that QAnon membership is not illegal and there is no gov pressure on the core group.
@alastairmca30 @alastairmca30 on x
Good. Now get rid of the antivaxxers. https://twitter.com/...
@kevinroose Kevin Roose on x
Every QAnon researcher I know is saying the same thing. This was not an empty gesture. https://twitter.com/...
@erindavis Erin Davis on x
You listening, @Jack? Please? https://twitter.com/...
@slpng_giants @slpng_giants on x
QAnon literally exists in its present form BECAUSE of @facebook. They get zero credit for something they should have done when there were warnings about what it would become.
@sheeraf Sheera Frenkel on x
Nearly 100 QAnon groups that have been monitored by the NYT have come down already. This is the most sweeping action we have seen Facebook take against QAnon to-date, and it is happening right before the elections: https://www.nytimes.com/...
@rashadrobinson Rashad Robinson on x
It's about time. @Facebook could have banned this violent group years ago. Instead, their inaction led to the growth of QAnon and many other groups spreading violent disinformation. FB must enforce its own policies on disinformation and hate for ALL of these groups. https://twitt…
@frankluntz Frank Luntz on x
In other words, Facebook is reclassifying #QAnon as no different than an extremist militia group, but not quite on the level of a terrorist organization or full-fledged hate group. https://twitter.com/...
@slpng_giants @slpng_giants on x
CONFIRMED: @facebook has banned ALL of QAnon pages and groups across their entire platform. https://twitter.com/...
@emilybell Emily Bell on x
That frantic sound you can hear is of researchers and journalists screenshooting Facebook groups..... https://twitter.com/...
@harrymccracken Harry McCracken on x
Wow—earlier this week, I was writing about Facebook Groups, and was discouraged that just searching for “QAnon” pulled up tons of groups. https://twitter.com/...
@evan_greer Evan Greer on x
QAnon is bonkers and dangerous. But what no one wants to admit is that existing moderation policies and automated removal algorithms already do a terrible job policing “terrorist” content, censoring a ton of legitimate speech mostly by Arab & Muslim folks living outside the US ht…
@evan_greer Evan Greer on x
Of course, Facebook (like the Trump administration) considers anti-fascist and anarchist pages “dangerous organizations” and recently used this policy to shut down a university livestream about Palestine so maybe begging them to moderate more isn't a real strategy for liberation?…
@mmfa @mmfa on x
The damage is already done. The Media Matters research team has found that some of the largest public QAnon groups on Facebook experienced 101% growth since March. https://twitter.com/...
@maziehirono Senator Mazie Hirono on x
.@Facebook helped make QAnon the threat to our democracy it is today. Now, it will finally ban QAnon accounts. Where was this when a QAnon supporter was arrested after an armed standoff in 2018? Or when the FBI declared QAnon a domestic terror threat in 2019? Shall I go on? https…
@sokane1 Sean O'Kane on x
This is good and long overdue and I'm also totally certain it's a coincidence that Facebook did it moments after the House antitrust committee released its long-awaited report about tech monopolies https://twitter.com/...
@edlavacnn Ed Lavandera on x
Where will they pop up next? https://twitter.com/...
@brooklynmarie Brooke Binkowski on x
Wow thanks for being on the cutting edge of 2017 @facebook https://twitter.com/...
@juliacarriew Julia Carrie Wong on x
Here's the current Facebook page for the Texas Republican Party. “The Storm” is a QAnon reference, but the group is clearly representing itself as the Texas GOP. Today's policy change won't affect this. https://www.theguardian.com/ ... https://twitter.com/...
@slpng_giants @slpng_giants on x
OOF! @facebook, are you serious about this QAnon thing or does it start, like, tomorrow or something? https://twitter.com/...
@normative Julian Sanchez on x
This makes it harder for an unhinged cult to recruit new dupes, which is probably a net positive. But moved like this seem bound to read as validation, and potentially to further radicalize, the already brainwashed. https://twitter.com/...
@hungrybowtie Garrison Davis on x
Just in the nick of time ;) https://twitter.com/...

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