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Using artificial intelligence, two French researchers conducted a long linguistic investigation to identify who is hiding behind “Q”. For several years, this mysterious account has been spreading a conspiracy theory on online forums.
From A to Z, “Q” had kept his identity a secret. Between 2017 and 2020, this surfer under a pseudonym posted more than 5,000 cryptic messages on the 4chan and then 8kun forums. While on condition of anonymity, he has been spreading a conspiracy theory the whole time peppered with absurd claims, ranging from Hillary Clinton’s arrest to Donald Trump’s return to power. Above all, he used these networks to portray an America secretly controlled by a satanist and pedophile cabal against which Donald Trump was trying at all costs to fight. This conspiratorial and anti-Semitic movement has spread widely in the United States, even though none of Q’s predictions have ever come true.
Q has left a few crumbs of clues lying around to orient his followers as to his identity, persuading them that he supposedly has access to top secret classified documents and is therefore a senior American official. Unsurprisingly, none of this is true, according to a survey conducted by two French researchers and a Swiss start-up. After months of work, they believe they have found who is behind all these posts, as revealed by the New York Times. The two teams worked on their own, at the request of the American daily: Jean-Baptiste Camps, lecturer at the National School of Charters (ENC) and Florian C…