QAnon is a sprawling and baseless conspiracy theory alleging that President Donald Trump is engaged in a secret war against a cabal of Satanist child abusers in government, entertainment and the media. The conspiracy — which has spread to millions of users in Facebook groups during the pandemic — has been linked to several violent crimes and was last year labeled a potential domestic terror threat by the F.B.I.
There's no more immediate example of how what happens on social media affects "real world" events.
And the disturbing question is, if some random collection of wackos can, via social media, cause dustups in the streets, what could the people—or the nations—who own those media platforms and the algorithms they run on do?
I don't advocate censorship, but handling with care would be a good idea.
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