Conspiracy theory researchers explain how QAnon spread through Instagram. Subscribe to our channel! http://goo.gl/0bsAjO At first glance, the images under the hashtags about child trafficking don’t look that different from anything else you’d expect to see on Instagram. They feature bright pastel colors with trendy fonts spelling out taglines like “wake up” and “get loud.” What the people who see these hashtags — and the lifestyle influencers who often post them — might not know is that the hashtag is being used to bring QAnon ideas into the mainstream. In March, 23 percent of people surveyed by Pew had heard of QAnon; by September, that number had risen to 47 percent. Now the conspiracy theory has reached a bigger support base than ever before via QAnon-lite memes — with serious implications for the election. Read more of Vox's coverage on QAnon: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/8/1/17253444/qanon-trump-conspiracy-theory-4chan-explainer And on how it spread to a new audience: https://www.vox.com/21436671/save-our-children-hashtag-qanon-pizzagate Open Sourced is a year-long reporting project from Recode by Vox that goes deep into the closed ecosystems of data, privacy, algorithms, and artificial intelligence. Learn more at http://www.vox.com/opensourced This project is made possible by the Omidyar Network. All Open Sourced content is editorially independent and produced by our journalists. Watch all episodes of Open Sourced right here on YouTube: http://bit.ly/2tIHftD Become a part of the Open Sourced Reporting Network and help our reporting. Join here: http://www.vox.com/opensourcednetwork Vox.com is a news website that helps you cut through the noise and understand what's really driving the events in the headlines. Check out http://www.vox.com/. Watch our full video catalog: http://goo.gl/IZONyE Follow Vox on Facebook: http://goo.gl/U2g06o Or Twitter: http://goo.gl/XFrZ5H