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Do these conspiracy theories appear organically or is there a special nudge to make them stick? Who nudges the conspiracy theories to stick?

by aritmo 6y ago

throwaway80332 6y ago
Most likely it is the team around loser ex-president Donald Trump and nazis like Breitbart, and they are bought and controlled by Vladimir Putin and other right-wing extremists, who hacked the election in 2016 even though Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by a landslide. Do you remember when Donald Trump called nazis "very fine people" and threatened to have journalists assasinated? There is nothing these people won't attemp to destroy our democracy, including putting immigrant children in concentration camps, and spreading dangerous falsehoods and conspiracy theories is just another day at the office for them. And these days it is even worse. I fear for the republic if Trump attempts a coup because they ridiculously claim "the election was hacked"! In short, those paranoid idiots spreading conspiracies are sick and evil and I hope we will have the technology in the near future to keep them under very close surveillance 24x7.
- overallduka 6y ago
  You literally are using a left wing conspiracy theory to corroborate your arguments against CT. You just want shut down opinions that disagrees with you, you are not interested in truth at all, if the IA disagree with you probably you would call the IA "racist" or "nazi".
- vharuck 6y ago
  Sarcasm doesn't work very well on the internet. Even when it's obvious, it rarely improves the discussion.
- rightbyte 6y ago
  It is hard to tell whether this is sarcasm or not.
Item_Boring 6y ago
I can’t answer your question but maybe you’ll find this paper interesting [0]. TLDR: social bots are highly responsible for spreading misinformation - and for such also conspiracy theories. By tagging people with a lot of followers and tweeting the information multiple times they attempt to make it go viral. Keep in mind that this paper concerns the 2016 elections. [0] http://cs.furman.edu/~tallen/csc271/source/viralBot.pdf http://cs.furman.edu/~tallen/csc271/source/viralBot.pdf
rsynnott 6y ago
I mean, they probably show up organically, but clearly sometimes people who should know better stoke the flames and spread them.
crispyambulance 6y ago
It's a wild combination, everything from bored Estonian teens getting money from clickbait to state-sponsored disinformation campaigns with specific intentions. The best writing about this IMHO is from Renee Diresta. She has papers, articles, talks, testified before congress, and founded the Internet Observatory project. Diresta co-wrote a very comprehensive report on the activities of the Russian "Internet Research Agency": http://www.reneediresta.com/ira-report-4e8d0ff684.pdf http://www.reneediresta.com/ira-report-4e8d0ff684.pdf It explains in gory detail how this "stuff" works when there are state actors involved.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
throwaway91774 6y ago
I saw a lot of crap appear organically, but my guess is that by volume most is exagerated, clickbait, racebaitting stuff done as a dayjob, with wildly varying levels of sincerity. The few talented peddlers that create organic looking content make a huge difference, and some almost believe their own bullshit. For reference: IMO, Alex Jones knew from day one that pizzagate was just bullshit made up on the internet, and kept distance accordingly. But there was so much intersection with his audience that he treaded carefully and did an obscure video on the side where he said he was just playing it cool to avoid persecution. Of course, if anything real came out of that, he would have claimed he was in on it from the start.
jberryman 6y ago
The "Reply All" podcast episode #166 ("Country of Liars"), has a pretty good analysis of the history of the Q-anon conspiracy theory. fwiw

Do these conspiracy theories appear organically or is there a special nudge to make them stick? Who nudges the conspiracy theories to stick?

by aritmo 6y ago

Do these conspiracy theories appear organically or is there a special nudge to make them stick? Who nudges the conspiracy theories to stick?

throwaway80332 6y ago

Most likely it is the team around loser ex-president Donald Trump and nazis like Breitbart, and they are bought and controlled by Vladimir Putin and other right-wing extremists, who hacked the election in 2016 even though Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by a landslide. Do you remember when Donald Trump called nazis "very fine people" and threatened to have journalists assasinated? There is nothing these people won't attemp to destroy our democracy, including putting immigrant children in concentration camps, and spreading dangerous falsehoods and conspiracy theories is just another day at the office for them. And these days it is even worse. I fear for the republic if Trump attempts a coup because they ridiculously claim "the election was hacked"! In short, those paranoid idiots spreading conspiracies are sick and evil and I hope we will have the technology in the near future to keep them under very close surveillance 24x7.

overallduka 6y ago
You literally are using a left wing conspiracy theory to corroborate your arguments against CT. You just want shut down opinions that disagrees with you, you are not interested in truth at all, if the IA disagree with you probably you would call the IA "racist" or "nazi".
vharuck 6y ago
Sarcasm doesn't work very well on the internet. Even when it's obvious, it rarely improves the discussion.
rightbyte 6y ago
It is hard to tell whether this is sarcasm or not.

Item_Boring 6y ago

I can’t answer your question but maybe you’ll find this paper interesting [0]. TLDR: social bots are highly responsible for spreading misinformation - and for such also conspiracy theories. By tagging people with a lot of followers and tweeting the information multiple times they attempt to make it go viral. Keep in mind that this paper concerns the 2016 elections. [0] http://cs.furman.edu/~tallen/csc271/source/viralBot.pdf http://cs.furman.edu/~tallen/csc271/source/viralBot.pdf

rsynnott 6y ago

I mean, they probably show up organically, but clearly sometimes people who should know better stoke the flames and spread them.

crispyambulance 6y ago

It's a wild combination, everything from bored Estonian teens getting money from clickbait to state-sponsored disinformation campaigns with specific intentions. The best writing about this IMHO is from Renee Diresta. She has papers, articles, talks, testified before congress, and founded the Internet Observatory project. Diresta co-wrote a very comprehensive report on the activities of the Russian "Internet Research Agency": http://www.reneediresta.com/ira-report-4e8d0ff684.pdf http://www.reneediresta.com/ira-report-4e8d0ff684.pdf It explains in gory detail how this "stuff" works when there are state actors involved.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

throwaway91774 6y ago

I saw a lot of crap appear organically, but my guess is that by volume most is exagerated, clickbait, racebaitting stuff done as a dayjob, with wildly varying levels of sincerity. The few talented peddlers that create organic looking content make a huge difference, and some almost believe their own bullshit. For reference: IMO, Alex Jones knew from day one that pizzagate was just bullshit made up on the internet, and kept distance accordingly. But there was so much intersection with his audience that he treaded carefully and did an obscure video on the side where he said he was just playing it cool to avoid persecution. Of course, if anything real came out of that, he would have claimed he was in on it from the start.

jberryman 6y ago

The "Reply All" podcast episode #166 ("Country of Liars"), has a pretty good analysis of the history of the Q-anon conspiracy theory. fwiw