QAnon Lands on LinkedIn, Prompting Networking Site to Limit Spread

In response, Microsoft Corp.-owned LinkedIn has taken steps to remove QAnon posts with misleading information and to kick out people who break the site’s rules on sharing articles and videos. “QAnon misinformation is not tolerated on LinkedIn,” a LinkedIn spokesman said.

Extreme QAnon supporters promote baseless far-right conspiracy theories. They consider President Trump a messianic figure and accuse Democrats of running pedophile and cannibalism rings.

Researchers who study QAnon say the community has grown in popularity during the pandemic because lockdowns let people spend more time online. The increased interest has challenged social-media companies attempting to curb misinformation ahead of November’s election. The social-media sites are trying to balance deleting misleading content while also avoiding accusations of censorship.

Facebook Inc. said in August it was removing QAnon-related groups, pages and advertisements and was taking steps to limit how people can search for related content. Twitter Inc. said in July it had banned more than 7,000 QAnon-related accounts and restricted others.

The movement’s conspiracy theories remain prevalent across the major social-media platforms. From March—when U.S. coronavirus lockdowns began—to July, membership in large, public QAnon Facebook groups swelled from about 6,000 to 40,000.

QAnon’s popularity has seeped to LinkedIn, best known for being an online repository of virtual resumes.

Paul Rockwell, LinkedIn’s head of trust and safety, said his threat-intelligence team started noticing an uptick in QAnon-related activity on the site in recent months.

Working with LinkedIn’s artificial-intelligence team, Mr. Rockwell’s group removes posts including misinformation and bans people who frequently break LinkedIn’s posting guidelines, which state that shared content must be “professionally relevant.” Banned LinkedIn members can appeal for reinstatement.

LinkedIn has disabled searches for popular QAnon hashtags because of the amount of misinformation that resulted in searching for those hashtags. For example, a search for #wwg1wga, a QAnon slogan that stands for “where we go one, we go all,” turns up no results.

But LinkedIn hasn’t eliminated all QAnon content on its site. For example, people can still search for “wwg1wga” without the hashtag. And many QAnon supporters have co-opted mainstream hashtags, such as #savethechildren or #saveourchildren, in what researchers say is a deliberate attempt to spread their message while avoiding censorship. Mr. Rockwell said LinkedIn leaders constantly evaluate whether they need to take further action in this cat-and-mouse game.

Mr. Rockwell said LinkedIn won’t punish users for adding QAnon slogans to their profiles or for using LinkedIn’s message system to privately discuss QAnon topics. “There are lines that we have to draw,” he said. But if users start publicly sharing misleading QAnon content, he added, “that’s where we step in.”

Compared with other social-media sites that took action after finding thousands of QAnon-related posts, LinkedIn is trying to stop the spread in its infancy, said Brian Friedberg, a Harvard researcher who studies the QAnon community. “Compared to the way Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are dealing with it, that’s exemplary,” he said.

A Facebook spokeswoman said the company has recently taken more steps to address QAnon, including blocking the “#wwg1wga” hashtag on Instagram. A YouTube spokesman said the company has removed tens of thousands of QAnon-related videos, terminated hundreds of QAnon-related channels and made it harder for people to come across QAnon videos. A Twitter spokesman said it has taken steps to reduce visibility of QAnon posts on its site.

LinkedIn has some benefits its rivals didn’t have. It has fewer members than a site like Facebook. It focuses on the professional-networking niche, with guidelines that allow it to remove content that isn’t about career building. And it has been able to observe how other sites handled QAnon.

The QAnon movement started in 2017, when a person or group of people using the moniker “Q” started posting on the fringe website 4chan. Many QAnon supporters believe that Q is a U.S. official, or a group of officials, with clearance to access government secrets. QAnon supporters consider themselves researchers who try to answer questions Q poses.

“Whatever QAnon is and whatever conspiracies are attached, people feel that this is mainstream enough that they would attach it to a professional network,” said Molly McKew, author of Stand Up Republic’s Defusing Disinfo blog.

In interviews, several LinkedIn members that put wwg1wga on their profiles said they use LinkedIn like any other social-media platform. Some said that as a pleasant surprise, they began getting connection requests from fellow QAnon supporters.

Burkeley Rupp said he initially worried about backlash before he outed himself as a QAnon supporter on LinkedIn last year. “If you believe anything, but you fear the label that’s going to be put on you, that’s the definition of coward,” said Mr. Rupp, who co-owns a Southern California hair salon with his wife.

Mr. Rupp has posted videos that support President Trump, including one with the hashtag “#CORONAHOAX,” and others that criticize California Gov. Gavin Newsom for his coronavirus lockdown measures. He said LinkedIn has deleted some of his posts.

He added that he receives frequent connection requests from Q supporters on LinkedIn, and one turned into a business opportunity, when Mr. Rupp ended up buying three digital signs for the salon from a Q supporter he met on LinkedIn.

David Gardner, a 33-year-old engineer for an auto-industry company in Buffalo, N.Y., said he added “WWG1WGA” to his profile several weeks ago. His recent posts are about the auto industry. But on LinkedIn’s internal messenger, he mixes professional chatter and QAnon talk with his professional connections who revealed that they also support the movement.

“We’re talking about professional things, and if a Q Drop comes out,” Mr. Gardner said, referring to a new post by Q, “they come in and send me the link.” He considers himself a moderate QAnon supporter. “Are the elites eating children? No,” he said. But “if there was evidence, then OK.”

Write to Stu Woo at Stu.Woo@wsj.com