LinkedIn sees uptick in QAnon activity: Report

QAnon supporters have made their way to LinkedIn with the professional networking platform recently witnessing an uptick in activity related to the movement, the Wall Street Journal reported.

QAnon is a far-right-wing conspiracy theory movement that has had “harmful” consequences in the past.

The FBI last year had designated the movement as a potential domestic terror threat, according to reports.

LinkedIn’s head of trust and safety Paul Rockwell told WSJ that the platform’s threat-intelligence team has started noticing an increase in QAnon-related activity in recent months.

Linkedin trying to limit the spread of misinformation

LinkedIn’s trust and safety team is working with its AI team to limit the spread of misinformation. The professional networking site has disabled searches for popular QAnon hashtags in a bid to curb the spread of misinformation.

For instance, the platform shows no results for the hashtag #wwg1wga, a QAnon slogan meaning “where we go one, we go all.” However, it has not eliminated QAnon content entirely on its site. Using the example of the “wwg1wga” hashtag, people can still search for content related to the slogan without the hashtag.

According to the report, QAnon supporters are using hashtags such as #savethechildren or #saveourchildren to bypass safety checks and avoid censorship.

Multiple social media platforms including YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are cracking down on QAnon activity. Facebook for instance will now show “credible child safety resources” under #savethechildren, the Verge reported.

In August, the social media giant had said that it had removed over 790 groups, 100 Pages and 1,500 ads tied to QAnon from Facebook, blocked over 300 hashtags across Facebook and Instagram and additionally imposed restrictions on over 1,950 Groups and 440 Pages on Facebook and over 10,000 accounts on Instagram.

Twitter in July had said that it had taken down over 7,000 QAnon accounts for violating its policies and had limited over 1.5 lakh accounts, as per an NBC report.

 

A YouTube spokesman told WSJ that the platform has removed tens of thousands of videos related to the movement and has banned hundreds of related channels.

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