What is QAnon and should Europe be worried? | #TheCube

QAnon
QAnon   -  Copyright  AP Photo/Ted S. Warren
By Seana Davis

Conspiracy theory group QAnon has been around for years but we've been hearing about them a lot more in recent weeks.

In the age of Twitter and Facebook, conspiracy theories have become commonplace on our social media feeds.

QAnon is a group that began in 2017 on the imageboard 4chan and since then, the group has spread some of the most prominent and baseless theories to reach our newsfeeds.

Twitter announced this week that they had removed 7,000 accounts that are linked to the conspiracy channel for violating their guidelines: from engaging in spam to platform manipulation.

The QAnon conspiracy group has seen a surge in popularity over the past six months in Europe, Marc-André Argentino, a PhD candidate and associate fellow at the Global Network on Extremism and Technology, told The Cube.

"Some of the hotspots are Germany, Italy, France at the moment but they are present across Europe in approximately sixteen to seventeen different nations," he said.

The biggest growth on QAnon Facebook groups in recent months has been in Europe, with their content translated into French, Spanish, Hungarian, Italian, Russian, Czech and some Scandinavian languages, among others.

The group has seen an uptake in its activity on the continent since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, according to Argentino.

Click on the video player above to see Seana Davis' interview with Argentino.

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