What Is #SaveTheChildren and Why Did Facebook Block It?
Last edited Wed Aug 12, 2020, 08:29 PM - Edit history (1)
On July 30th, model and influencer Helen Owen, who has more than a million followers, deviated from her typical fare of Mexican-beachside dinner videos and lush-haired bikini images to post a photo of herself and her boyfriend with their mouths bound, holding a sandwich board that read, “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves,” in honor of World Human Trafficking Day. She concluded her post — which cited numerous statistics associated with child trafficking — with the hashtag #SaveTheChildren.
Owen’s post was clearly intended innocently enough, and child trafficking is undeniably a real and serious issue: According to UNICEF, one quarter of trafficking victims worldwide are children, most of whom are trafficked for labor. But the hashtag itself has darker undertones.
Over the past few weeks, the #SaveTheChildren hashtag has been co-opted by conspiracy theorists of all stripes to propagate the notion that an international cabal of elite pedophiles is secretly trafficking children, prompting worldwide #SaveTheChildren protests in July and earlier this month in cities like Los Angeles; Savannah, Georgia; and Columbus, Ohio. The hashtag has become so glutted with conspiracy theories that Facebook temporarily blocked it last week, prompting outrage from the Q contingent on social media. (“We temporarily blocked the hashtag as it was surfacing low-quality content,” Facebook spokesperson Dami Oyefeso tells Rolling Stone. “The hashtag has since been restored, and we will continue to monitor for content that violates our Community Standards.”)
Temporary censorship of the hashtag led to #SaveTheChildren trending on Twitter on Monday morning, racking up 240,000 tweets in the past 24 hours, according to Darren Linvill, an associate professor at Clemson University who studies disinformation. Social media has become so glutted with posts espousing a secret link between human trafficking and conspiracy-theorist favorites (such as Hillary Clinton and Chrissy Teigen), that Save the Children, an actual organization devoted to providing humanitarian aid for children, was forced to issue a statement on Twitter distancing itself from the movement. (In true brain-worms fashion, some on the more extremist fringes of the far-right movement issued clarion calls not to use the #SaveTheChildren hashtag, due to the organization’s purported links to philanthropist Bill Gates. Save the Children did not return a request for comment.)
Link to tweet
?s=20
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/savethechildren-qanon-pizzagate-facebook-block-hashtag-1041812/#savethechildren-and-why-di
QAnon Followers Are Hijacking the #SaveTheChildren Movement
Recently, an acquaintance posted a photo on her Instagram story showing a map of the United States, filled with bright red dots.
“This is not a map of Covid,” the caption read. “It is a map of human trafficking.”
Under the photo was a hashtag: #SaveTheChildren.
A few days later, I saw the same hashtag trending on Twitter. This time, it was being posted by followers of QAnon, the sprawling pro-Trump conspiracy theory. These people were also disturbed about human trafficking, but with a dark twist: Many of them believed that President Trump was on the verge of exposing “Pizzagate” or “Pedogate,” their terms for a global conspiracy involving a ring of Satan-worshiping, child-molesting criminals led by prominent Democrats.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/qanon-followers-are-hijacking-the-supernumbersavethechildren-movement/ar-BB17Rq35?li=BBnb7Kz
= new reply since forum marked as read
