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QAnon posts by figurehead Q may be written by more than one person

By Chris Stokel-Walker

29 July 2021

People wearing QAnon t-shirts ahead of a political rally

People wearing QAnon t-shirts ahead of a political rally

Sean Rayford/Getty Images

A study of nearly 5000 online posts purporting to be from Q, the supposed figurehead of the far-right conspiracy theory QAnon, shows the posts are written by different authors, despite claims to the contrary.

“Quantitatively, there’s not a single Q,” says Jeremy Blackburn of Binghamton University, New York.

The conspiracy theory has long been disproven. It is driven by “Q drops”, or messages from a person calling themselves Q, who since October 2017 has claimed to have high levels of security clearance within the US government. Such…

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