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Facebook announced on Tuesday it would ban all accounts, pages and groups representing the fringe conspiracy theory QAnon from its platforms.

Why it matters: Facebook previously banned or restricted hundreds of groups, pages and Instagram accounts that "demonstrated significant risks to public safety" due to their ties to QAnon, but the latest update goes even further — removing all accounts "even if they contain no violent content."

Context: QAnon is a sprawling, far-right conspiracy theory that alleges a secret cabal of sex traffickers and pedophiles is waging a war against President Trump from inside the government. Trump has previously praised the group, which the FBI has deemed a potential domestic terrorist threat, saying that he understands its supporters "like me very much" and that they "love America."

The big picture: The move comes as Facebook, long accused of bending over backward to accommodate the right, looks to take action against harmful rhetoric coming from conservative groups and figures. Just this morning, Facebook took swifter action than Twitter against a post from President Trump falsely claiming COVID-19 is less deadly than the flu.

Yes, but: Facebook has its work cut out for it with the hard ban. QAnon supporters have already gotten canny about dodging enforcement actions from social media platforms, and the movement is increasingly intermingling with more anodyne-seeming calls to protect children that may be hard to claw apart from the conspiracy theory.

What they're saying: "We’ve been vigilant in enforcing our policy and studying its impact on the platform but we’ve seen several issues that led to today’s update," Facebook said in a statement.

  • "For example, while we’ve removed QAnon content that celebrates and supports violence, we’ve seen other QAnon content tied to different forms of real world harm, including recent claims that the west coast wildfires were started by certain groups, which diverted attention of local officials from fighting the fires and protecting the public.
  • "Additionally, QAnon messaging changes very quickly and we see networks of supporters build an audience with one message and then quickly pivot to another. We aim to combat this more effectively with this update that strengthens and expands our enforcement against the conspiracy theory movement."

Go deeper: QAnon's 2020 resurgence

Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times

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Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.

Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.

The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.

  • The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.

What the transcripts say:

  • Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
  • The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
  • Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."

Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.