Trust the Plan: The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Unhinged America

by Will Sommer

In 2019, a North Carolina woman named Carol created her first Facebook account. She favorited the pages for Fox News and Donald and Melania Trump, and liked memes making fun of Democrats. Facebook’s algorithm—the programming that determines what recommendations users like Carol receive—wanted her to go further. Two days after joining Facebook, Carol received recommendations to like a page called “Q WWG1WGA,” which used a fiery Q as its profile image. A few days after that, Facebook recommended she check out another QAnon page illustrated with a screenshot of a Q clue. The page’s slogan: “Do you believe in coincidence?” Carol wasn’t a real person. She was the creation of Facebook employees testing how the site’s algorithm would nudge a woman fitting Carol’s profile—a conservative southern mother—toward conspiracy theories and disinformation. By populating the Carol account with “likes” for only mainstream conservative figures, they were able to see how the site’s algorithms encouraged users to check out QAnon and other conspiracy and fringe theories even when they had shown no interest in them in the first place.