The alleged owner of QMap, a popular QAnon site that received millions of visits per month when it was live, has been fired by investment bank and financial services company Citigroup.
The firing comes less than a month after fact-checker Logically published an in-depth report on the alleged owner which included his name, registered business address, current employer, employment history, email addresses, photo, approximate age, the town where he lives, and details of his last remaining social media profile.
When the investigation was published, Logically’s editor also contacted Citigroup to make the company “aware of his activities.”
According to Bloomberg, the alleged QMap owner was placed on leave days after the publication of the Logically investigation and then terminated this month.
Bloomberg added that Citigroup “requires employees to disclose outside business income” and wrote that he was allegedly earning more than $3,000 per month through donations to QMap. The alleged owner said these donations helped to cover the monthly operating costs of QMap.
Citigroup wrote: “Our code of conduct includes specific policies that employees are required to adhere to, and when breaches are identified, the firm takes action.”
Before Logically’s investigation, the alleged owner of QMap was operating anonymously and the site was being used to share and organize “Q Drops” – updates that were initially posted by Q on the imageboard 8kun.
After the investigation was published, QMap was shut down and the alleged owner scrubbed his remaining social media profiles and shut down his business website.
Logically published his personal information as part of an investigation into the identity of Q, despite concluding that the alleged owner of QMap was not Q.
The firing follows a wider mass mainstream media pressure campaign against QAnon that has resulted in most of the mainstream social media platforms aggressively censoring the movement.
The shut down of QMap and firing of its alleged owner demonstrates that even when those following QAnon set up a platform outside of Big Tech’s walled gardens and attempt to operate anonymously, mainstream media pressure can still threaten the platform and owner’s anonymity.
