NEW How did furniture firm Wayfair end up at the centre of a conspiracy theory about child trafficking?

Expensive pillows - and cabinets with girls’ names - the latest QAnon conspiracy gripping the internet.

Read here: https://bbc.in/2C5CsqM 

I spoke to @BBCRosAtkins

Also with the excellent anti-disinformation team! @Shayan86 and editors @Malhotra_rk @Roop1 @rebeccaskippage

So what’s the recipe for a conspriacy theory like this one? And how does it burst into the mainstream?

Here’s a step-by-step guide! THREAD

Wayfair: The false conspiracy about a furniture firm and child trafficking https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-53416247

It starts on the fringes of the internet. In this case with QAnon!

The QAnon community believe in a far-right conspiracy theory that there's a secret plot by a supposed "deep state" against President Trump and his supporters.

They are actively looking for conspriacies

Take facts and throw them together to point towards an outlandish conclusion.

In this case it was very expensive Wayfair cabinets (because they were industrial) - and the fact they have girls’ first names (not unusual)

Tweet the claims and “just ask questions”

Make sure the facts that you cherry pick point towards the conclusion you want!

With these conspriacy theories - that’s often about human trafficking.

QAnon made supposed links between the expensive Wayfair furniture, girls’ names and actual cases of missing children.

This isn’t dissimilar to the unfounded QAnon Pizzagate conspiracy theory suggesting that a pizza restaurant in Washington DC was at the centre of a supposed child sex ring linked to Hillary Clinton.

These conspriacy theories undermine legitimate concerns about human trafficking!

Find more totally unrelated and baseless claims to bolster your conspriacy theory.

In this case that Wayfair pillows - which can cost up to $10,000 if you try to personalise them because of a price glitch - are that expensive because they come with a trafficked child

And why not add in another for good luck?

QAnon followers then said that after they put stock-keeping unit numbers of specific Wayfair products into Yandex, images of young women appeared in the search.

That claim was true, but was down to a glitch - @Shayan86 investigated!

But by this point your conspiracy theory is trending in the US - and it’s spreading on social media across the world

From the US to Latin America to Turkey - with the term Wayfair generating 4.4 million engagements on Insta and spreading on Facebook groups and pages!

This conspriacy theory might seem very bonkers - and unbelievable. But that doesn’t stop people thinking there could be some truth to it!

And very shortly after this report went out I received this email

Wayfair has said “there is of course no truth to these claims”.

And their explanations make sense!

They use an algorithm to generate names of products - and high prices were either down to glitches or industrial-size furniture.

And one woman, who was mentioned when a cabinet with her first name was linked to her alleged disappearance as a teenager, did a Facebook live refuting the claims.

She said she never went missing in the first place.

I spoke to @Emmabarnett @bbc5live about how furniture firm Wayfair found itself at the centre of this child trafficking conspiracy that gripped social media https://bbc.in/2C5CsqM 

Explaining the anatomy of these outlandish claims - and the QAnon community - is a mouthful!