July 21 (UPI) — Twitter on Tuesday announced it would take action to limit and block accounts associated with the conspiracy group QAnon.
In a series of tweets on Tuesday night, Twitter said it would no longer promote content and accounts associated with QAnon in trends and recommendations and ensure the activity is not highlighted in search and conversations while blocking URLs associated with QAnon from being shared on the service, citing an effort to take strong action against behavior that has the potential to lead to offline harm.
“We will permanently suspend accounts tweeting about these topics that we know are engaged in violations of our multi-account policy, coordinating abuse around individual victims, or are attempting to evade a previous suspension — something we’ve seen more of in recent weeks,” Twitter said.
Twitter said the actions would be “rolled out comprehensively this week” and that rules and enforcement approach may be updated if necessary.
A Twitter representative told NBC News that the company has taken down more than 7,000 accounts in recent weeks and the latest action will affect about 150,000 accounts.
The FBI designated QAnon as a potential domestic terror threat last year and Twitter said that people associated with the group often “brigade” or “swarm” users through coordinated harassment campaigns.
