Twitter is Banning Thousands of Accounts for This Reason

Social media giant Twitter has banned 7,000 QAnon accounts and has limited 150,000 others in an effort to crackdown on harassment and the dissemination of misinformation.

The platform will stop recommending accounts and content related to QAnon, including in email and follow recommendations.

According to Wikipedia, QAnon is a far-right conspiracy theory detailing a supposed secret plot by an alleged “deep state” against U.S. President Donald Trump and his supporters.

The conspiracy theory draws its roots from Pizzagate, which claimed Hillary Clinton ran a pedophile ring outside of a Washington D.C. pizza shop.

A unidentified spokesperson for Twitter has said that by doing this, 150,000 accounts would be affected. The spokesperson also said the company had taken down more than 7,000 QAnon accounts in the last few weeks for breaking its rules on targeted harassment as part of its new policy.

Going forward, Twitter will ban QAnon-related terms from appearing in trending topics and the platform’s search feature. It will additionally ban known QAnon-related URLs, and ban “swarming” of victims who are baselessly targeted by coordinated harassment campaigns pushed by its followers.

Recently Chrissy Teigen, the wife of John Legend and media personality has been a constant target of harassment by QAnon and Pizzagate accounts.

The Twitter spokesperson said this sort of anti-harassment policy could apply to other groups that are primarily motivated by targeted harassment in the future.

Disclaimer: We have no position in Twitter Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) and have not been compensated for this article.