World News – UA – YouTube follows Twitter and Facebook with crackdown on QAnon

YouTube has followed the lead of Twitter and Facebook, saying it is taking more action to limit QAnon and other conspiracy theories that can lead to real-world violence

Google-owned video platform said it will ban content targeting a person or group with conspiracy theories that have been used to justify violence

An example would be videos that threaten or harass someone by suggesting they are complicit in a conspiracy such as QAnon, which portrays President Donald Trump as a secret warrior against an allegedly run child trafficking ring by celebrities and « deep state » government officials

Pizzagate is another internet conspiracy theory – essentially a predecessor of QAnon – that would fall under the forbidden category

A man who believed in the conspiracy entered the restaurant in December 2016 and fired an assault rifle He was sentenced to prison in 2017

For a growing number of Australians, friends and family have been drawn into a conspiracy theory called QAnon – leaving them wondering how to save their relationships

YouTube is the third of the major social platforms to announce policies to curb QAnon, a conspiracy theory they all helped spread

Twitter announced a crackdown on QAnon in July, but did not bar QAnon supporters from accessing its platform

It has banned the sharing of thousands of accounts associated with QAnon content and blocked URLs associated with it

He said he would take down Instagram pages, groups and accounts to represent QAnon – even if they don’t promote violence

The social network said it would take various factors into account when deciding whether a group meets its ban criteria

These include the group name, bio or “about” section, and discussions within the page or group on Facebook, or the account on Instagram, which is owned by Facebook

Facebook’s move came two months after announcing a softer crackdown, claiming it would stop promoting the group and its members, but that effort failed due to improper enforcement

YouTube said that, in accordance with its existing policies, it had already deleted tens of thousands of QAnon videos and eliminated hundreds of channels, especially those that explicitly threatened violence or denied the existence of major violent events.

« All of this work has been essential in limiting the scope of harmful conspiracies, but we can do even more to remedy certain conspiracy theories that are used to justify real-world violence, such as QAnon, » said the company Thursday blog post

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AEST = Australian Eastern Standard Time, which is 10 hours ahead of GMT (Greenwich Mean Time)

QAnon, YouTube, Conspiracy Theory, Pizzagate Conspiracy Theory, Donald Trump