The lead vocalist of the Christian rock band, Sweet Crystal, was stunned when he went to log onto Facebook one day last week and discovered all nine of the accounts he administers for the band, their brand and business had been deleted because the Goliath of social media had somehow linked him to the conspiracy movement known as QAnon.
"So, because my profile disappeared, they all disappeared. They're all gone," said Marq Andrew Speck of Canton. "That's 11 years of my life and I have never posted anything political in my life. My stuff is all inspirational or videos, photos of the band, that kind of stuff. And it was just a kick in the gut."
QAnon is a far-right movement that believes satan-worshipping pedophiles in the "deep state" are plotting against President Donald Trump.
Facebook has been pushing back against the controversial group.
And Speck believes whatever systems Facebook uses to spot QAnon items also associated his name with QAnon.
When Speck was in the seventh grade, his parents allowed him to legally change the spelling of his first name from Mark to Marq. And for decades now, most of his fans, friends and family members call him Q.
Speck's middle name is Andrew.
"There's a q-a-n in a row, but that's my name," he said.
What made losing his accounts even worse is when he began trying to contact Facebook for a fix, Facebook indicated that the situation he was in was not anything that they'd consider reviewing.
Action News reached out to Facebook with the URLs to the deleted pages that Speck provided, and a representative said they are looking into it.
In light of his experience, Speck is now encouraging others to backup the photos and videos they post on Facebook in case their page is removed for whatever reason.
"The hardest thing is people have passed from my life and we have memorial videos and stuff that were shot on Facebook, that only exist on Facebook, and they're gone," he said. "I can't re-friend these people because they died and that's heartbreaking."
