One of the biggest Qanon conspiracy theory hubs on the internet named QMap, suddenly went offline this week following the developer behind it being uncovered by a fact-checking group, according to a report on Friday by Bloomberg.
Logically.ai investigated the site and identified a New Jersey-based financial information security analyst named Jason Gelinas, as the one who developed the site and is the mouthpiece for it, according to an announcement on Thursday. Gelinas is the founder and sole employee of the entity called Patriot Platforms that is the credited developer behind the site known as QMap, or “QAppAnon.” Gelinas’ phone number and home address link him to the Patriot Platforms, Logically.ai uncovered.
QAnon is a far-right extremist group that is a loosely organized movement. These “Q’s” believe that President Donald Trump leads a global fight against a covert cabal made up of widespread pedophile Satan-worshippers who are running the “deep state,” in secret, which consists of members of the Democratic Party, elite politicians, some movie stars, along with just about anyone who happens to make it onto the group’s shit list that day.
The conspiracy theory originated from a series of 8chan and 4chan posts and 8kun that came later, from a mysterious figure that goes by Q who claims to be an intel official at the senior level. After that, the theory picked up traction on Facebook and other social media platforms. Even Trump and those in his inner circle have assisted in stoking the flames by giving QAnon supporters endorsements and retweeting them.
QMap was originally launched in 2018, it was biggest archive of posts from Q before it was taken offline. On average since May, the site had more than 10 million visitors each month, web analytics firm SimilarWeb revealed. QAppAnon also has an account on Patreon that earns over $3,000 in donations each month.
Earlier in the year, Jason Gelinas announced that an Android app called Armor of God was in the works meant to effectively function as a QAnon supporter social network. The app was removed in May by the Google Play Store after it was deemed to be “harmful content,” and in violation of Google policies. However, before the app was removed, the page displayed a Patriot Platforms associated email address as its developer contact. State business records in New Jersey show that Gelinas’ home address and that of Patriot Platforms are exactly the same, the phone numbers are also the same.
“I’m not going to comment on any of that. I’m not going to get involved. I want to stay out of it,” Jason Gelinas said when asked if he was behind the site. Reached outside his home wearing an American-flag baseball cap, he went on to describe QAnon as a “patriotic movement to save the country.”
Over the last few months, Twitter and Facebook have been trying to crack down on content related to QAnon as conspiracy theorists are ramping up their efforts before the 2020 presidential election. Tech giants seem to be playing a never-ending game of “whack-a-mole” as they attempt to keep these campaigns of misinformation from gaining more traction. We can at least rest easy knowing there’s one less space online for these crackpots to organize in.
Citigroup Fires the QMap Operator
The exposure cost Gelinas far more than his website. Citigroup, where he worked as a senior IT manager at the rank of director, placed him on paid leave within days of the Logically.ai report and then terminated him on October 6, 2020, citing its code of conduct requiring employees to disclose and obtain approval for outside business activities. “Mr. Gelinas is no longer employed by Citi,” the bank said in a statement. QMap.pub itself never came back in its old form; after the operator was outed, it briefly degraded into a page of links to alternative QAnon sites before disappearing entirely, scattering its audience toward harder-to-track aggregators.
From Q Drops to January 6 and the “Q Drought”
The takedown of QMap turned out to be an early skirmish in a much larger reckoning. In October 2020, YouTube joined Twitter and Facebook in cracking down on QAnon, removing tens of thousands of videos and terminating hundreds of channels tied to content used to justify real-world violence. The FBI had already flagged the movement as a potential domestic terrorism threat. Despite the bans, QAnon imagery surged into public view on January 6, 2021, when adherents — including the spear-carrying “QAnon Shaman,” Jacob Chansley — joined the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol; hundreds of people were later arrested in connection with the insurrection.
After the deplatforming and the failed predictions, the anonymous “Q” largely went silent, leaving followers in a prolonged “Q drought,” and one of the final posts told believers to scrub overt references to QAnon to dodge moderation while the underlying theories quietly migrated to Telegram, Gab, and similar platforms. Researchers have documented QAnon-linked communities in roughly 70 countries, a reminder that pulling one website offline, however large, does little to dissolve a movement built on distrust itself.
It bears repeating that none of this has anything to do with the hacktivist collective Anonymous. If half of what QAnon says is true, and half of it is false, that means QAnon is a Psyop meant to misinform its believers and have them chasing after what doesn’t exist and isn’t reality. QAnon isn’t “Anonymous” either, sure, Anons might have their own personal political views, but most of them don’t try and push a political agenda onto the masses in the name of Anonymous. One of the UN-Official rules laid out by the old school “We are Anonymous” states that Anonymous isn’t meant to show support for politicians in the name of Anonymous.
For related coverage of online misinformation and platform moderation, see our reporting on how police deleted a Facebook post about a massive “weed” bust after the internet corrected them — it was hemp.
