Read on Twitter
1/ THREAD ON FACEBOOK ACTIONS: Yesterday Facebook announced "An Update to How We Address Movements and Organizations Tied to Violence". The actions taken by the platform affect multiple ideological groups, but I will be focusing on QAnon https://about.fb.com/news/2020/08/addressing-movements-and-organizations-tied-to-violence/
2/ Facebook took actions around "growing movements that, while not directly organizing violence, have celebrated violent acts, shown that they have weapons and suggest they will use them, or have individual followers with patterns of violent behavior."
3/ To this end thy expanded their DIO policy to "address organizations and movements that have demonstrated significant risks to public safety but do not meet the rigorous criteria to be designated as a dangerous organization and banned from having any presence on our platform."
4/ As @AmarAmarasingam and I have recently written ( https://ctc.usma.edu/the-qanon-conspiracy-theory-a-security-threat-in-the-making/) QAnon does fall into a category that may pose a growing public security threat, so please take a gander if you want to know more.
5/ Facebook is taking a novel approach to QAnon, whereby they are not using the nuclear option and outright banning the movement, rather they are seeking to strike a balance between certain rights, their ToS and growing concerns around some movements.
6/ Before I provide comparative number 24 hrs in, lets just highlight what actions Facebook is/will be taking. People need to keep in mind that this approach by Facebook is to make the platform as inhospitable as possible for QAnon et al. Vs. the single purpose ban hammer
7/ My criticism of Twitters "coordinated harmful behavior" was in the slow implementation of removing influecner accounts/ban evasion. When an account came down they were immediately able to come back & have others promote the new account & regain tens of thousands of followers.
8/ Also week later I have not seen the recommendation algorithm change (my sock-puppets keep getting recommended new Q accounts), nor have I seend any real implementation of a reduced search functionality around QAnon content.
9/ It is impossible to tell what the real impact of Facebook's actions will be right now as it is to early to compare numbers, as well as some features have yet to be implemented. Further this will be about the platforms capacity to keep up with QAnon's adaptability.
10/ One changes I have noticed the difficulty to find QAnon content on Facebook via search (not impossible, but less than what I was able to a few weeks ago). Limiting search functionality for QAnon/extremist is key as @noUpside explained in 2018 https://www.wired.com/story/creating-ethical-recommendation-engines/
11/ One thing I will be monitoring in the weeks to come, will be if there is an impact on organization 
mobilization for QAnon and adjacent groups. Also will be interesting will be the impact on private QAnon groups and QAnon group messenger convos.
mobilization for QAnon and adjacent groups. Also will be interesting will be the impact on private QAnon groups and QAnon group messenger convos.
12/ It will be important to keep an eye on Instagram, where it's a growing QAnon community, that's often younger & where women in the movement play an important role. the Challenge with IG is topic hijacking (i.e. save the children) and the verified QAnon lifestyle influecners
13/ IG provides an interesting radicalization pipeline that does not necessarily clearly fall into the "celebrated violent acts, shown that they have weapons and suggest they will use them, or have individual followers with patterns of violent behavior"
14/ 24 hrs ago in @crowdtangle I had 237 QAnon groups, and I am currently at 166 (down 71 groups or 30% drop), I had 253 pages and I am at 216 ( down 37 pages or 15% drop). On Instagram i'm sitting at 239 (don't remember my before count but all the big fish are still there)
15/ The aggregate like count prior was 3.12M and today it is 2.01M which is a 35% drop.
16/ Currently, there is an aggregate total of 928k members in groups, a 45% drop from 1.7M, which is significant. Page likes sit at 1.11M, a 15% drop from 1.32M, which is less impressive. Pages are different than groups behaviorally for a community so that is not surprising
17/ Comparing the post counts, there is not a large decrease (I am comparing the number until august 7th in both cases to keep this fair) What I am seeing there are still a fair amount of smaller but very active groups still around atm.
18/ The interaction rate has taken a pretty good hit and is down by 28%. What will be important is to monitor this trend long term between the initial casualties and the chilling effect to see if the community will remain as active as before.
19/ Again the total user count was aggregate and thus since users weren't necessarily banned, group count and likes may include a count of the same individual multiple times. Community activity will be one way to see if there is a behavioral impact.
20/ The final thing that I would highlight there is a big challenge around adjacent conspiracy theories and narratives of which QAnon are participants. It is unclear if an how these new policies extends to these other communities
