As other social networks wage a very public war against misinformation, it’s thriving on Instagram.
When Alex, now a high-school senior, saw an Instagram account he followed post about something called QAnon back in 2017, he’d never heard of the viral conspiracy theory before. But the post piqued his interest, and he wanted to know more. So he did what your average teenager would do: He followed several accounts related to it on Instagram, searched for information on YouTube, and read up on it on forums.
A year and a half later, Alex, who asked to use a pseudonym, runs his own Gen Z–focused QAnon Instagram account, through which he educates his generation about the secret plot by the “deep state” to take down Donald Trump. “I was just noticing a lack in younger people being interested in QAnon, so I figured I would put it out there that there was at least one young person in the movement,” he told me via Instagram direct message. He hopes to “expose the truth about everything corrupt governments and organizations have lied about.” Among those truths: that certain cosmetics and foods contain aborted fetal cells, that the recent Ethiopian Airlines crash was a hoax, and that the Christchurch, New Zealand mosque shootings were staged.
I deleted my Instagram account when they were acquired by FB. I felt a little silly about it — who would possibly care about my dumb, one-person protest, esp since I didn’t make a thing out of it. I just deleted the account. But in hindsight I’m glad I did it. Any app owned by FB is destined to become a safe harbor for hate and misinformation because those things are easy for Facebook to monetize. So this story doesn’t surprise me. But it does depress me a bit. And it makes me have a little more respect for all the execs who have quit their jobs with FB recently, including the founders of Instagram and WhatsApp. I mean, yeah, they got their money, but they didn’t stay and continue to help Mark and Sheryl expand their platform and perpetuate their lies and laziness.
