Washington Post - QAnon learns to survive — and even thrive — after Silicon Valley’s crackdown

As part of its Election Protection Project, Alethea Group, in partnership with the Global Disinformation Index, analyzed the QAnon community to identify the key for-profit individuals, groups, and companies selling Q-themed merchandise and the platforms acting as QAnon marketplaces.

As QAnon messages continue to spread on various platforms, business ventures related to the conspiracy theory are also expanding — often using enforcement actions on mainstream social networking services as a selling-point. Consumer products, from T-shirts to coffee to mugs, bind adherents to the conspiracy theory just as powerfully as do memes and online catchphrases, said Lisa Kaplan, CEO and founder of Alethea Group, a counter-disinformation consultancy.

“There’s truly an economy that’s now associated with QAnon,” Kaplan said. “We talk about it in the context of elections — for the first time there are QAnon candidates likely to be elected to Congress — but we haven’t talked enough about the individuals who are paying their mortgages and feeding their families based on QAnon merchandise sales.”

Read the full article here.