Facebook cracks down on extremist conspiracy group QAnon for hijacking Save the Children movement

In addition, content about QAnon and child safety is eligible for fact checking through our third-party fact-checking program.

QAnon followers believe that Trump is a messianic figure battling a deep state of devil-worshipping, child-molesting Democrats.

With influential figures using their social media megaphones to amplify them, incendiary falsehoods that Biden and other Democrats are pedophiles are circulating in the mainstream before the November election in an alarming break from the norms of presidential politicking.

QAnon is exploiting fears about the vulnerability of children to push such allegations into everyday peoples social media feeds, Michael Jensen, a senior researcher at the University of Maryland who leads a team that researches domestic radicalization, told USA TODAY.

Some social media users whove been exposed to QAnon posts about saving the children have turned out to rallies in cities across the country to call for an end to child exploitation.

In recent months, millions have seen anti-child-trafficking memes, according to data from CrowdTangle, a public insights tool owned by Facebook. 24, there were nearly 5.3 million interactions with posts on public pages and in public groups on Facebook that mentioned #SaveTheChildren.

According to data prepared for USA TODAY by media intelligence company Zignal Labs, Save the Children has received nearly 2.6 million mentions on Twitter since June 1.