OrphAnalytics analysis sheds light on QAnon writings

QAnon has spread conspiracy theories to an unprecedentedly large audience. Its thousands of online messages have popularized narratives such as the existence of a child-trafficking deep state. Recently, it inspired a series of violent attacks and was listed as a terrorist threat by the FBI. The Swiss company Orphanalytics just published an analysis of all messages posted by Q so far. Its patented technology aims at deciphering the authorship of written documents. It has found two different signals within the corpus of Q messages. This investigation could contribute to revealing the origins and the individuals behind one of the most impactful conspiracy theories in recent times.

“Our results very strongly suggest the existence of two different authors behind Q,” says Claude Alain Roten, OrphAnalytics' CEO and co-founder. “Moreover, these distinct signatures clearly correspond to separate periods in time and different online forums.” 

The capacity of computational genomics

A former geneticist trained at Harvard and the University of Lausanne, Roten has derived his text analysis approach from computational genomics. While conventional stylometry relies on the interpretation of words, content, or syntax complexity, Orphanalytics technology is entirely based on statistical analyses. Its software compares frequencies of character patterns to decipher individual signatures, regardless of the meaning. The company has provided compelling pieces of evidence in several legal affairs in Europe and is currently collaborating with the Department of Forensic Science at the University of Lausanne.

Orphanalytics experts have skimmed through the entire corpus of Q posts known as “Q drops”. They cleaned the 4950 messages from any content deprived of individual syntax: lists, greetings, quotes from personalities, and messages shorter than 50 characters. Then, they fed the resulting elements to their software.

The analysis shows that the first period of Q messages clearly bears a different individual signature from the rest. These seminal messages appear on the 4chan web forum for a month, from October 28 to December first, 2017. After that, another author takes over QAnon on a different forum, named 8chan. The signal difference is strong enough to leave very little doubt on this author’s swap. 

The second and longest period — from Dec.1 2017 to Nov. 13, 2020 — shows a single signature with a slight evolution over time. While it is not impossible that a few other persons have mixed their voices in these +4000 messages, the signal is quite consistent and mostly points to a single person, says Roten.

“After establishing these two authorships, our next step is to contribute putting a name on QAnon by comparing these signatures to those of specific persons,” says Roten. To do that, OrphAnalytics still needs to gather and cure written material from these persons. “We hope to bring a significant contribution to these investigations, even if it will not stop conspiracy theories“, Roten adds, “tracing back the history of QAnon is important. It could help to understand how and why a baseless and outlandish theory, initially destined to a few isolated hackers, ended up having such an impact.”

(Press release / SK)