QAnon received earlier boost from Russian accounts on Twitter, archives show

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

INTERNET NEWS
NOVEMBER 2, 2020 5:19 AM UPDATED 3 HOURS AGO

QAnon received earlier boost from Russian accounts on Twitter, archives show

By Joseph Menn
4 MIN READ

(Reuters) - Russian government-backed social media accounts nurtured the QAnon conspiracy theory in its infancy, earlier than previously reported, according to interviews with current and former Twitter executives and archives of tweets from suspended accounts.

Researchers said in August that the archives showed Russian accounts had helped spread QAnon in volume beginning in December 2017, but that team did not examine the history of specific QAnon promoters.

A more granular review by Reuters shows Russian accounts began amplifying the movement as it started, early in the previous month.

From November 2017 on, QAnon was the single most frequent hashtag tweeted by accounts that Twitter has since identified as Russian-backed, a Reuters analysis of the archive shows, with the term used some 17,000 times.

The archives contain more than 4,000 accounts that Twitter suspended for spreading Russian government disinformation in 2018 and 2019 but preserved for researchers.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-qanon-cyber/qanon-received-earlier-boost-from-russian-accounts-on-twitter-archives-show-idUSKBN27I18I

[hedda_foil]

1. Read the whole thing. They were in it from the start in 2017.

A Russian account was the FIRST to call it Qanon

[TomCADem]

2. Sort of like RT giving Scott Atlas a friendly interview

The goal is to spread pro-Republican misinformation.