The deep state has tried in many ways to silence Qanon and limit the growth of the movement. More than 2,000 mainstream articles have been written to date about Q. Not one has had anything positive to say. Despite (or perhaps because of) the media's hatred of Q, the movement has grown exponentially.
One tactic employed by Q's enemies was de-platforming. The media applied pressure in the form of shaming to the companies that provided services to 8chan. That resulted in them losing their technical services and the website went offline That maneuver silenced Q for three months, but 8chan's owner, Jim Watkins was able to create a new website, 8kun, which Q has been posting on ever since. Having failed in previous attempts, the deep state appears to be deploying a different tactic—imitation.
Tripcodes
Because Q's identity is unknown, it's possible for others to imitate him. Although technically, Q posts anonymously, we know that certain posts are from him (or her) because of their tripcode. A tripcode is a hashed password used on internet message boards like 8kun. They give a user a unique identification code while allowing them to remain anonymous. When someone uses a tripcode, it appears on all their posts. Q's unique tripcode has been carefully tracked ever since he began posting.
In 2017 and 2018, attacks and infiltration forced Q to move from one message board to another. In December of 2017, Q moved to the 8chan board /cbts/. Three weeks after he began posting there, the board owner lied about the validity of Q's tripcode and claimed it had been compromised.
Q replied, confirming that his tripcode had not been compromised. He said it was the board that had been compromised and he told anons there would be no more posts from him on that board. Q then moved to the 8chan board /thestorm/.
One of the more well-known early Q decoders was Jerome Corsi. He drew the attention of anons after sharing his thoughts about a photo posted by Q. In November of 2017, President Trump flew to Asia. During that trip, on November 9th, Q posted the photo below. An internet search for the photo returned no results. Apparently, it was an original. Corsi insisted that it had been taken on Air Force One and it was evidence that Q must be close to the President.
A few months later, Corsi would claim that Q had been compromised. On April 29, 2018, Q warned anons to be careful who they followed. Some people were trying to profit off the movement.
Many people took this as a prohibition against receiving financial support. Jerome Corsi did, and he accused Q of being a communist. He later claimed that although the original Q was legitimate, the person currently posting as Q was not the same person. Two weeks later, Q explained the real purpose of this post.
Because the movement was growing rapidly, Q needed to expose a deceptive scheme so that new followers would not be misled. One part of Corsi's plan was to intentionally provide false decodes. Unbeknownst to us, he was secretly collaborating with Alex Jones and InfoWars. Their goal was to discredit Q and bring his followers over to their platform. To refute Corsi's claim and prove he was the same person who posted at the beginning of the operation, Q posted a photo nearly identical to the one posted on November 9th.
Q had anticipated that at some point, someone would claim that he was not the same person who posted at the beginning of the operation. He prepared a collection of original photos of the same scene that had been taken a few seconds apart. He could post another original photo at any time, to verify that he was the same person who began the operation.
On July 21, 2020, Twitter announced it had suspended thousands of Q-related accounts and that they planned to take punitive action against other accounts.
That same day, former CIA employee Kevin Shipp claimed on Twitter that while Q had begun as a legitimate intelligence insider, the operation had since been compromised. In another tweet, he claimed that "real" intelligence insiders would soon be dropping "real" intelligence on the chans. These tweets have since been deleted, but currently, Shipp has a thread posted that explains his concerns about Q.
Note that Shipp doesn't claim to be a Q expert. The claim that Q has been compromised is based on second-hand information from an anonymous source. In another tweet, he said he was concerned because Q is anonymous, and "Secret identity is rarely a good thing when presenting important information."
Shipp said we should be suspicious of Q because he presents important information while remaining anonymous. At the same time, Shipp made an important claim of his own (that Q had been compromised), and we should accept his claim based on information from an anonymous source. (You can view Shipp's Twitter thread below.)
Shipp's tactic is no different than that of Jerome Corsi. Corsi endeared himself to anons by providing commentary on Q's posts. Shipp endeared himself to the community by appearing in the film Out of Shadows. In that film, he discussed CIA programs like MKUltra and Operation Mockingbird. He didn't reveal anything that wasn't already in the public domain, but that wasn't his objective. He needed to make a public appearance where he seemed to be on the side of patriots and truthers. He needed us to trust him. That way, when he attacked Q, we would perceive his actions as being motivated by a love for the truth.
Shipp's error is the same one made by many political commentators. We are all entitled to our opinions about Q, but not all opinions are equal. Shipp hasn't read Q's posts. His opinion is uninformed and his intelligence background is irrelevant. If you've read the posts yourself, you have a better understanding of Q's operation than someone who hasn't.
My present concern is about the comment he made in his deleted tweet regarding "real intelligence insiders" dropping "real" intelligence on the chans. Shipp has essentially warned us that infiltraitors are coming. Their goal is to fool us with fake intelligence drops. At the same time, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube seem intent on removing long-time Q decoders from their platforms. If experienced Q analysts are removed, how will new followers know which posts are from Q? The timing of Shipp's announcement and the social media purge of Q accounts almost seems to be coordinated.
Now more than ever, it's important to know how to determine which posts are from Q and which are not. Q has never posted on any social media platform and he never will. He does not communicate with anyone privately. If someone claims to have a source that is in contact with Q, you can regard their claim as false.
Messages from Q are only posted on 8kun under the tripcode
Q !!Hs1Jq13jV6. If someone claims that a new post is from Q, and this tripcode is not visible on it, consider it to be fake. (Q has used other tripcodes in the past. You can find them on sites like
qanon.pub where the posts are displayed.)
Whenever Q changes his tripcode, he warns anons ahead of time and verifies the change on the board. (Note in the image below, there is one tripcode prior to the change (Q !CbboFOtcZs) and a different one after (Q !A6yxsPKia).
It's easy to photoshop a real Q tripcode onto a fake post. If you cannot find a particular post by searching for it on a website where Q posts are displayed, consider it to be fake.
I would expect that if a new threat is about to emerge, Q has already anticipated it, and has countermeasures in place. If the deep state is, in fact, about to unleash a pack of phony intelligence insiders, we might consider it a sign of how much damage Q is doing to their operations. Imitation is the sincerest form of panic.