Experts say Facebook’s latest purge of QAnon pages is unlikely to have a major impact on the growing Australian following of the conspiracy theory.

Facebook on Thursday announced it had taken down or restricted 790 groups, 1,500 ads and 100 pages tied to QAnon, and blocked more than 300 hashtags used by its followers on Facebook and Instagram.

It has identified and restricted a further 1,950 groups, 440 pages and more than 10,000 Instagram accounts linked to QAnon, which may later be removed.

Users will still be able to post content that supports QAnon. But Facebook will restrict their ability to organise by removing posts from recommendation algorithms, making them less prominent in newsfeed and search results, and stopping them from using fundraising and advertising.

QAnon is a sprawling and disjointed conspiracy that, though centred on the United States, has amassed a considerable following in Australia.

Its followers believe Donald Trump is fighting secretly against a cabal of Satanic deep-state actors and celebrities who are said to run the world while engaged in paedophilia and human trafficking.

QAnon has been linked to attempted acts of violence and identified as a potential domestic terrorism threat by the FBI.

Data collected from online forums by Marc-André Argentino, a researcher with Canada’s Concordia University who studies QAnon, suggests the Australian QAnon following is among the largest in the world.

That accords with a report by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which found Australia was the fourth biggest country for discussion of QAnon on Twitter.

“We found that the US was consistently the largest QAnon content-producing country, followed by the UK, Canada and Australia,” the report said.

The institute’s analysis suggested Australian discussion of QAnon was growing considerably.

The report found Twitter discussion of QAnon had grown from 105,545 tweets between October 2017 and June 2018 to 191,210 tweets between November 2019 and June 2020.

The Guardian asked Facebook how many of the groups and pages it removed had Australian administrators and how many of the purged ads were being distributed in Australia. It said it couldn’t provide that data.

But Elise Thomas, a researcher with the ISD and Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said the Facebook crackdown was unlikely to have any major impact on QAnon in Australia.

Thomas, who studies extremism and conspiracy theories, checked Australian QAnon pages on Thursday and saw little to no change.

“I haven’t actually seen much action on the Australian front. All of the Q Australia groups that I follow are all still there. They don’t seem very perturbed,” she said.

“And to be honest Facebook has repeatedly announced they are going to crack down on QAnon, and it really hasn’t happened.”

Facebook has indicated it is still in the process of removing content.

Questions remain over whether Facebook’s purge will cause any change in the belief systems of QAnon followers.

Neil Levy, an expert on conspiracy theories with Macquarie University and Oxford University, said Facebook’s move was unlikely to deter hardcore believers, who would likely see it as additional evidence of their conspiracy.

“Some of the people more on the periphery may well fall away, though: they might require a pretty constant drip feed of new stories to remain interested,” Levy said. “When that becomes more intermittent, they might lose interest.”

Levy said if the groups migrate from Facebook to another platform, they would be unlikely to take their entire following with them. He said such a migration would cause attrition, due to a lack of motivation or forgetfulness.

Changes to the recommendation algorithm might also prove effective, he said.

“A more important effect might be that Facebook doesn’t act as a feeder for QAnon any more,” he said.