About 4 years ago, a fellow Bernie Bro friend of mine on Facebook converted to Christianity. His politics became topsy turvy, and he soon began posting about Satanists controlling government and Hillary Clinton operating a pedophile ring. One year into the Trump Administration, he began sharing memes about "Qanon" ...what is Qanon you ask?
This video will make it clear:
Fascinated, I began following the Qanon conspiracy using a Twitter account and later a Facebook page using the name "Qanontum Entanglement." I would post (what I thought were) absurd memes, links and retweets that revealed that Qanon was nonsensical, but some true believers actually mistook my scorn for sincerity. The Clintons and the Obamas were going to be sent to Guantanamo any day now, and mass arrests were coming soon.
Last month Facebook decided to remove all accounts "representing" Qanon, due to the movement's unhinged promotion not only of violence, but misinformation about wildfires and child abuse, which wasted the time of peopled organizations actually trying to deal with these real problems. As a result, my satirical page was disappeared, along with everything else I had ever posted on my personal page. Anything I had ever posted, any comment I had made on FB was removed. I later went on Instagram to explain to friends that overlapped both accounts what had happened, then that account was disabled as well.
Had my Q related page really been a severe violation of Facebook's community standards? I don't believe so, but like many humans, Facebook's AI lacks a sarcasm detector. Was I unfairly banned from the social media platform? Well nooooo...for years I had 2 accounts, which I believe is against Facebook policy. I used one for over a decade to post pictures of my kids, stay connected with family and old friends, and last spring used to be a co-administrator on a group for a preschool classroom. Losing that account really affects me.
I had my second page since 2011 and used it to comment on politics, which I would never do on my personal page due to all the abuse- mostly from strangers, but also from a few friends. When I dared to criticize Ron Paul's newsletter for including racist articles over the years, two Paulites began tagging me in posts announcing I was a neo-nazi. When I argued on a debate page about Medicare For All, one of my best friends from college swooped in and told me in a series of angry comments to eff off for not being sufficiently loyal to the centrist Democrat cause. I probably am better off without that Facebook account. After all, now that Biden is president elect, everything will revert back to normal, right?
