Leaked Facebook documents show scope of QAnon conspiracy theorists on the social media platform

On Monday, NBC News reported that leaked documents from Facebook reveal QAnon conspiracy theorists have penetrated their social network on a scale not previously imagined.

"An internal investigation by Facebook has uncovered thousands of groups and pages, with millions of members and followers, that support the QAnon conspiracy theory, according to internal company documents reviewed by NBC News," reported Ari Sen and Brandy Zadrozny. "The investigation’s preliminary results, which were provided to NBC News by a Facebook employee, shed new light on the scope of activity and content from the QAnon community on Facebook, a scale previously undisclosed by Facebook and unreported by the news media, because most of the groups are private."

"The top 10 groups identified in the investigation collectively contain more than 1 million members, with totals from more top groups and pages pushing the number of members and followers past 3 million," continued the report. "It is not clear how much overlap there is among the groups."

The news comes after rival social network Twitter instituted a major crackdown on pro-QAnon content, purging 7,000 related accounts and placing restrictions on another 150,000.

The QAnon conspiracy theory holds that President Donald Trump is working behind the scenes to take down a massive world-spanning pedophile ring run by Democrats and celebrities, with various versions of it claiming he is working arm in arm with former special counsel Robert Mueller or a secretly not-dead John F. Kennedy Jr. The movement has grown so big that there are businesses catering to it, including a wide selection of merchandise. But FBI officials have classified QAnon as a potential source of domestic terrorism, and some of its adherents have gone on to commit political violence, including the murder of a mob boss.