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The Instagram aesthetic that made QAnon mainstream - YouTube
Channel: Vox
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there's a certain look that's taken over
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everything
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a certain color palette kind of font and
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design
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today this visual style sells us meal
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kits and underwear
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and monthly toothbrush subscriptions and
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just about everything else
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but it's also showing up here in
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seemingly harmless trendy instagram
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posts about child trafficking
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on instagram there are over 800 000
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posts like this
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from social media influencers and
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regular users with the hashtag
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save the children we've seen things like
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this before
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slideshows about social justice and
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current events dominated instagram this
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summer
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but something else is happening here on
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facebook membership in pages and groups
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branded as anti-child trafficking
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grew three thousand percent between july
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and the end of september
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by the end of august in-person rallies
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started taking place in cities
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across the world ending child
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trafficking is
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hardly controversial but behind that
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surge in growth is the baseless
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conspiracy theory known
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as q anon now an ideology once confined
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to the more obscure parts of the
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internet
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is finding its way mainstream one
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instagram post
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at a time
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on october 28 2017 the first of a series
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of posts from an anonymous user appeared
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on the 4chan message board
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paul the user was nicknamed q after q
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level security clearance that's the
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energy department equivalent of top
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secret
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the community that followed and believed
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those anonymous postings became known as
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q anon
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and they developed an elaborate
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conspiracy theory lore that president
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trump is fighting a global trial
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trafficking network
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led by satanic cannibalistic left-wing
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pedophile elites
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their theories have been proven false
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time and time again but that didn't stop
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the community from spreading
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from 4chan to another messaging board
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8chan and to places like twitter
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youtube and facebook and as it did the
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posts
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videos and memes explaining its ideology
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became more accessible
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and digestible now qnon is a giant
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entanglement of conspiracy theories with
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dozens of offshoots that invites all
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different kinds of conspiratorial
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thinking
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into its fold kyoto has always been a
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big tent conspiracy theory that invites
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people of different beliefs
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and the thing is because the q a
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narrative is so broad
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and sprawling people can kind of enter
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it and pick out the the
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things that they like the best that
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paired with the facebook algorithm
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which uh recommends like other groups
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that someone might be interested in
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that turns into a very uh dangerous
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combination
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the q anon follower blocked the hoover
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dam with an armored vehicle
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a far right conspiracy theorist was
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planning a kidnapping and douglas
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guy a 24 year old man was charged in the
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shooting death of a reputed mob boss
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his attorneys argued he was motivated by
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q anon
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in 2019 the fbi labeled hunon as a
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potential domestic terror threat after
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some q anon followers started committing
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serious crimes in the real world
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on facebook q anon related activity grew
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steadily for years without consequences
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but then something changed there is a
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lot of evidence that suggests
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that the pandemic had a big effect on
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the growth of q anon the
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the impact of people spending a lot more
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time indoors
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and being online a lot more combined
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with the stress of the pandemic and the
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uncertainty of the future
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uh that was a toxic combination that
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pushed people into q a
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in march three leading q and on facebook
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group saw their membership rise from
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under fifty thousand to over three
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hundred thousand
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by august an internal investigation in
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facebook reviewed by nbc
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found that a number of qnon groups and
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pages had more than
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3 million followers on august 19th
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facebook announced that it would be
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banning hundreds of q on pages and
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groups
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and after that traffic for q and on
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phrases and hashtags
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fell but membership in groups posing as
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anti-child trafficking groups exploded
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and in those groups users were still
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largely spreading q anon content
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q anon followers had simply pivoted to a
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new hashtag to improve their image
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one that was already being used for a
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fundraising campaign by a uk-based
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charity save the children i suppose for
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someone like me who's kind of been
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covering q and on for the past number of
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years
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like the past six months have kind of
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been you know it's kind of been like
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watching a tsunami in slow motion
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save the children is as i say it's a
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simple rebrand of cubanon
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it's a very simple and effective message
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to bring the q on movement to a wider
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audience
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you know who doesn't want to save
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children
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it's hard to accurately trace how the
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save the children hashtag jumped from
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these cute on facebook groups
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to mainstream accounts on instagram but
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by july
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high profile accounts like model helen
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owen and the real housewives of orange
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county's kelly dodd
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boosted the hashtag with inaccurate or
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misleading statistics
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this coincided with the united nations
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human trafficking awareness day
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other accounts put together slideshow
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style infographics
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like these and these are all packaged up
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in very pretty posts
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that are you know essentially they're
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very easily digestible especially to
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people that are not familiar with q and
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on
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their their colors are so a lot softer
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there's a lot of pastels and it's very
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pretty and nice and and when if you look
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at it without reading the words you
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would think it would be
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just like just any other kind of uh yoga
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inspired um you know instagram post
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and so the move to instagram kind of
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brought you know it brought cuban on to
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this kind of
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lifestyle influencer circle really and
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many of these influencers already
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they already have very high followings
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and they already have a dedicated
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audience that will
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you know very much listen to what they
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have to say accounts that might
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otherwise be getting just a few hundred
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likes on posts
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found themselves getting tens of
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thousands of likes as soon as they
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started posting about save the children
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a lot of people who get into q a
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especially if they're struggling
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influencers
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they notice that these q and themes
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they're like an internet cheat code
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because they attract people who are very
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engaged they spend a lot of time online
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and if you start promoting keyword on
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themes you start noticing that you're
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getting a lot more likes and shares
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that could be a big incentive to keep
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doing it
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perhaps the most damaging part of the
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save the children movement is how
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inaccurate information is making it
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harder to fight actual trafficking
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one of these most often cited statistics
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is that 800 000 children go missing
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every year in the u.s
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that number comes from a 2002 survey
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that asked parents if they had reported
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their children as runaways sometime in
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the previous year
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797 and 500 said that they had
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the 2019 fbi data puts that number
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closer to 421 000.
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roughly half of those reports are
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related to custody disputes
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and the rest mostly relate to runaways
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but even then that number refers to
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children who are reported missing by
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their parents
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the vast majority of whom over 99
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percent return home within hours or days
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in that 2002 study only 115 were
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considered stereotypical kidnappings
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there's no reliable data on how many
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people are trafficked in the u.s
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each year but stereotypical kidnappings
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aren't what trafficking usually looks
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like
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instead it often takes the form of
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forced labor or wage theft
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most commonly in agriculture domestic
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work or sex work
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and the people most at risk are those
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already vulnerable youth experiencing
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homelessness
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in foster care or unstable housing lgbtq
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plus youth who have been kicked out of
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their homes
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or migrant young people most people kind
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of have this idea in their head that
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it's you know children being lifted off
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the streets
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and been shipped overseas you know and
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you know all of that that does happen
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it doesn't happen at all to the extent
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that you and unfollowers believe that it
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does
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but the hysteria caused by distorted
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numbers has led to a deluge of calls and
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outreach from concerned q anon followers
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and it's overwhelming the organizations
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fighting actual child trafficking
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and that's very damaging because it made
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it harder for people with real
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information about possible human
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trafficking victims
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to get through and so we've seen this
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actually repeatedly the ways in which
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the misinformation
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that this that this kind of save the
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children style of q anon
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is uh is promoting damages real efforts
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to actually help children
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you won't find any searchable hashtags
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with typical q and on language on
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instagram anymore
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but because save the children isn't an
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inherently harmful tagline
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moderating it has proven particularly
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difficult and tackling misinformation on
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instagram can be harder than on facebook
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since it's harder to train an algorithm
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to recognize misleading text in
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slideshow images
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than it is to recognize text in facebook
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posts or comments
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the belief in q anon definitely falls
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along a spectrum i don't think you can
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say that everyone
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that was how to say if the children
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rally believes that hillary clinton
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needs children it's the hysteria
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it's the hysteria that grows and grows
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and grows as you're going down that
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rabbit hole
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that could more than likely eventually
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lead to you thinking that hillary
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clinton needs children
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cuon has really struck on something
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clever in that
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people get confused in their own way and
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they fall down their own individual
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rabbit holes that
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that radicalize them according to their
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own personality type
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there are more than 20 candidates for
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congress who have expressed support for
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q anon
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the real danger is that people don't
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need to believe or even be aware of
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the entirety of a conspiracy theory for
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it to start influencing
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their decisions
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you
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