Twitter bans QAnon accounts, tries to dial back abusive conversation

Twitter is ramping up safety rules on followers and accounts related to the QAnon conspiracy theory, citing concerns about harassment and threats. The social media platform had banned more than 7,000 QAnon-related accounts in recent weeks and has limited the visibility on an additional 150,000.

The company announced the move Tuesday while also saying that QAnon accounts have been especially active recently, particularly in their attempts to target and harass individuals on the site.

“As we work at scale to protect the public conversation in the face of evolving threats, we’ll continue to lead with transparency and offer more context on our efforts," the company wrote on its Twitter Safety accounts.

The QAnon conspiracy theory encompasses a wide-ranging number of beliefs, with the central one being that a powerful group of pedophiles run the "deep state" and are constantly moving to undermine President Trump with the help of the mainstream media and other such-tainted forces. 

The theory's origin point was a series of posts on 4chan message boards from a user often called "Q," who purported to be a high-level government intelligence officer.

In 2018, Reddit banned a 20,000-person QAnon forum for allegedly inciting violence, and Facebook has removed some popular QAnon pages, though the company maintains those pages were in violation of specific user-guidelines, their affiliation with QAnon alone was not the problem.