Thoughtful analysis structured around one man’s personal journey away from QAnon.

No single online platform is responsible for QAnon’s rapid rise. YouTube hosted the videos that many members credit with their “red pilling,” the favored term for a supposed enlightenment or exposure to conspiracy theories. Facebook allowed for easy conversation, meme sharing and organizing. Twitter, Justin’s favored platform, provided fertile ground for QAnon influencers and their lies.

“It was an amplification machine,” said Daniel J. Jones, president of Advance Democracy Inc., a global research organization that studies disinformation and extremism, referring to Twitter.

Jones found QAnon followers (identified by the QAnon identifiers in their bios) to be among the most pervasive and dedicated groups pushing disinformation on Twitter throughout 2020 — most notably through millions of tweets promoting baseless claims about Trump’s multiple accusations of a stolen election.  —NBC News