YouTube has also banned the delusions of the QAnon conspiracy theorists

After Facebook and Twitter, the video platform will also ban content related to conspiracy theories such as QAnon, responsible for numerous acts of violence in America in recent years

(photo: Stephanie Keith / Getty Images) After Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg announcement on October 6, YouTube also announced that it will initiate a massive crackdown on content linked to QAnon's conspiracy theory. The dissemination of any material based on conspiracy theories used to justify violence against individuals or groups will be prohibited, as in the case of this singular movement born on the web in 2017 and spread in a few years to the most extremist fringes of US society (including several extremist supporters of Donald Trump).

In a post on its official blog on Thursday, October 15, YouTube claimed it had "removed tens of thousands of QAnon videos and shut down hundreds of channels" under current rules. However, given the challenges in managing this "ever-changing and ever-changing" content, YouTube stressed the need to take "a further step in our efforts to curb hatred and harassment" online: the video platform, in this sense, aims to further expand its policies.

The QAnon Threat

As a Guardian list reports, the QAnon conspiracy movement is involved in a long series of violent acts that began in 2018. QAnon supporters were arrested for threats to Democratic politicians such as Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton, breaking into the residence of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, an armed confrontation near the Hoover Dam (Colorado), an attempted kidnapping and two kidnappings. and at least one murder. Only last year, in fact, the FBI issued a warning note about "internal extremists guided by conspiracy theories", designating QAnon as one of these potential internal threats.

The QAnon theory took off in October 2017 when a user claimed on a 4chan bulletin board that he was directly involved in a Donald Trump-led secret investigation into a global pedophile network. Claiming to have the maximum security clearance from the US government known as "Q clearance", he began signing his anonymous posts as "Q". From here, in a few years, a rapidly growing movement has developed - which, in addition to no-vax and denial sympathies towards Covid-19, has its roots in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories such as the false historian of the Protocols of the Wise Men. Zion - increasingly influential among US voters and Republican politicians. Supporters of President Donald Trump were seen in public wearing flags and T-shirts bearing the QAnon symbol during the Republican rallies for the upcoming presidential election on November 3.

Trump's ambiguous position

During his first post-coronavirus televised debate on Thursday 15 October, in the middle of the election campaign, Trump refused to deny the theories of the conspiracy movement, limiting himself to say that he "knows nothing about it" except that "they are against pedophilia, they fight it very hard". Still, the president's Twitter feed often ends up amplifying content from conspiratorial accounts linked to QAnon.

Indeed, on Wednesday 13 October, while he was a guest on the Pod Save America podcast, former US President Barack Obama also berated his successor and the Republicans for giving space to QAnon. "Trump is a symptom of disinformation and an accelerator," argued Obama during the radio broadcast, "when crazy conspiracy theories like QAnon seep into the mainstream of the Republican Party, it means there are no more limits within the ecosystem. media ".