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The passage
Fans of the pro-Trump conspiracy theory are obstructing anti-trafficking hotlines, infiltrating Facebook teams and creating false fears about child exploitation.
By Kevin Roose
Recently, an acquaintance posted a photo on his Instagram account showing a map of the United States with bright red dots.
“This is a map of Covid,” the legend said. “It’s a map of human trafficking.”
Below the photo a hashtag: #SaveTheChildren.
A few days later, I saw the same trending hashtag on Twitter. This time it was published through fans of QAnon, the vast theory of the pro-Trump conspiracy. These other people were also concerned about human trafficking, but with a bleak turn: many of them think that President Trump is about to divulge “Pizzagate” or “Fardogate,” his terms for a global conspiracy involving a circle of Satan worship. abusers led by prominent Democrats.
My wisdom is not a believer in QAnon. And he doesn’t believe, as some QAnon members do, that Hillary Clinton and her friends kidnap and eat young people (yes, eat them) to harvest a chemical that prolongs the life of their blood.
But like many social media users in weeks, she had been attracted to QAnon’s new outreach strategy.
QAnon first appeared in 2017 with a series of unnamed messages on the 4chan Internet forum that purported to reveal high-level government data on crimes committed through highly sensitive Democrats. Since then it has spawned one of the most disturbing and consequential conspiracy theory communities in fashion history. His fans have committed serious crimes and his online vigilantes have made a bullying and doxxing game to his alleged enemies. The F.B.I. He cited QAnon as a possible national terrorist threat, and social media began looking to remove QAnon’s equipment from their platforms. Dozens of non-QA applicants are applying this year. One of them, Marjorie Taylor Greene, won a first-round seat in Georgia on Tuesday, and received a tweet of congratulations from Trump.
Like any move, QAnon wants to win new members. And its ultimate recent expansion strategy is to build on the anti-trafficking movement.
The idea, in a nutshell, is to create a wave of fear by flooding social media with posts about human trafficking, joining Facebook parent teams, and engaging in hashtag crusades like #SaveTheChildren, which began as a valid fundraising crusade for Save Children’s Charity. Fanatics can then change the verbal exchange to unsubstantiated theories about who is guilty of trafficking: a clique of notorious elites that includes Tom Hanks, Oprah Winfrey and Pope Francis.
Part of the perverse lure of the strategy is that child sex trafficking is genuine and terrible, and some politically impoverished people, such as financier Jeffrey Epstein, have been credibly accused of exploiting underage girls. And speaking out against child exploitation, whatever its policy, is from a reprehensible position.
“This is probably one of the key elements that attracts QAnon,” said Marc-André Argentino, a PhD student at Concordia University who is reading QAnon’s presence on social media. “Everyone that child trafficking is very bad and the argument presented through QAnon is,” if you object to us talking about this, it’s in favor of child trafficking.”
Sometimes QAnon fans disseminate factual data in a way that serves their purposes. Last week, an Associated Press article about a $35 million Trump management grant to organizations that traffic space survivors have become one of the most shared stories on Facebook, after QAnon teams picked it up and cited it as evidence that President Trump’s secret crusade objected. to the elite paedophiles underway.
Other times, the strategy is to hold on to conspiracy theories and insert QAnon’s talking points. A few weeks ago, influential people on TikTok and Instagram began speculating on unfounded accusations that Wayfair, an online furniture site, manipulated young people under the pretext of promoting valuable cabinets. The conspiracy theory went viral and QAnon’s believers began to spread their own supposedly incriminating details. They falsely claimed that a Wayfair worker had already been photographed with Ghislaine Maxwell, who accused of recruiting underage women for Epstein.
These accusations merged with the popular imagination, and soon, unsuspecting, other people shared crazy conspiracy theories that came here from QAnon’s orthodoxy.
“With Wayfair, the two accounts went away and amplified the content,” Argentina said. “Many yoga moms and juice circles shared it.”
The strategy of sowing QAnon’s discussion issues with other audiences turns out to be working. In recent weeks, Facebook’s commitment to human trafficking content has increased, according to knowledge research by CrowdTangle, a knowledge platform owned by Facebook. (Interactions in posts with the hashtag #SaveTheChildren, for example, have increased to more than 500% since early July).
Featured “mom bloggers” and fitness influencers on Instagram have begun posting anti-human trafficking memes to their millions of fans. Even Trump’s crusade has begun to include more anti-human trafficking content with his millions of fans on Facebook and Twitter.
QAnon’s strategy of disseminating flawless and factual content about human trafficking, in addition to the savage conspiracy theories, has blurred the lines between valid anti-trafficking activism and partisan conspiracy. Recently, activists marched in cities across the country to call for an end to child exploitation. Among them were believers of QAnon, who carried banners with messages like “Hollywood Eat Babies”.
For organizations against human trafficking, the wave of web conspiracy theorists has been a combined blessing. Some activists, such as Tim Ballard, founder of the anti-trafficking organization Operation Underground Railroad, see an opportunity to succeed in a new overactive online audience.
Others are concerned that QAnon will divert valuable resources from valid computers that seek to prevent traffic. After the Wayfair incident, Polaris Project, a nonprofit that manages the national anti-trafficking hotline, issued a press release saying its hotline had been flooded with false reports. He then posted a blog post warning that “accusations and accusations that are not based on child sex trafficking can be uncontrollable and deceive other well-meaning people by doing more harm than good.”
I have spoken to several anti-trafficking activists for a long time who have been alarmed by the recent QAnon incursion into their territory. They had worked for years to spread facts about child trafficking, to see them distorted and misused through partisan opportunists. And they feared that, in addition to blocking the hotlines, QAnon believers could undermine the movement’s bipartisan credibility.
“It’s wonderful that we have a build-up of donations,” Williamson said. “But we don’t need to exploit incorrect information for fundraising purposes.”
The fact of child sex trafficking, those experts told me, is much less laswd than QAnon wants to make them believe. Many victims are trafficked through their parents, teachers or others they know. Trafficking sometimes does not involve kidnapping or physically forcing minors to have sex.
“This does not take position in a secret clique. This happens in each and every community,” said Lori Cohen, executive director of ECPAT-USA, an anti-trafficking organization. “But it’s less difficult to focus on public figures than to think about the truth that human trafficking is positioned among us, among other people we know, young people we know.”
Some anti-trafficking experts feared that social media, in an attempt to suppress QAnon, could inadvertently harm valid organizations trying to end trafficking. Recently, Facebook briefly disabled the hashtag #SaveTheChildren after being flooded with pro-QAnon content. (A Facebook spokesperson said, “We temporarily blocked the hashtag because it was streaming poor quality content. Since then, the hashtag has been restored and we will continue to monitor content that violates our community standards”).
And TikTok has blocked the search for hashtags similar to QAnon. A TikTok spokeswoman said the company “proactively seeks to delete the erroneous data we find relevant with this hashtag.”
Most of the time, anti-human trafficking activists are incredul in disbelievers that QAnon has made his case his case.
“When I contact my friends about the anti-trafficking movement, we say, “Oh, it’s Pizzagate again,” Williamson said of Love146.” And this time it’s even worse.”
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