6 ms·

Browing the top of reddit right now is really reminiscent of /r/The_Donald, particularly the shift from a bunch of 'ironic' jokers to conspiracy theories and sh

by eterm 6y ago

Browing the top of reddit right now is really reminiscent of /r/The_Donald, particularly the shift from a bunch of 'ironic' jokers to conspiracy theories and shouty chest beating and calls for upvotes. I'd treat anything like this with a huge pinch of salt.

dageshi 6y ago
In the words of Agent Kay from MiB "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it."
czechdeveloper 6y ago
Is it conspiracy theory, when it's true?
- golemiprague 6y ago
  Yes, something can be true but not proven. I for example believe that the elections were rigged and that Trump actually won. It could be true but I got not proof so it stays in the realm of theory.
greenshackle2 6y ago
Not just Reddit. It's here too. It's wild to see people being whipped into a frenzy in real time. I'm following the discussions a bit, lots of comments by people spreading conspiracy theories, comments asking for evidence are just downvoted, or met by the conspiracy theorist's favorite, "do your research", comments spreading disinformation like "citadel owns robinhood" with a tweet as the only source, people who have no idea how market functions talking about "naked shorting", etc. The disinformation spreads faster than it takes to rebut it.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Railsify 6y ago
  Someone not wanting to explain what is in 50 news articles to new commenters does not make them a conspiracy theorist, why should they do your google searches for you?
  - Goronmon 6y ago
    Someone not wanting to explain what is in 50 news articles to new commenters does not make them a conspiracy theorist, why should they do your google searches for you? Yes, this is definitely one of the cookie-cutter responses. Dubious claims of "so many sources" but they are just super busy and can't be bothered to link to a single one.
    - zo1 6y ago
      Honestly, I'd say a lot of time there aren't any "legitimate sources" to prove the claims being made. That's a good chunk of the problem, because it seems that legitimate investigation and "linking" of said facts to prove the claims is next to impossible without serious government-level powers of acquiring evidence. So inference needs to be used, unfortunately. And once you start inferring without direct evidence, you start sounding like a conspiracy theorist, which is now being used to shut-down dissent and questioning. It's not like a journalist right now can tell Robinhood "give us all your internal emails so we can verify the reason you've stopped trading these stocks". Or "Hey Discord, let's look at your internal slack comms so we can figure out what evidence you had to conclude that the WSB chat rooms were filled with hatespeech." Or "give us a data-dump of all the users and comments you identified as hatespeech". How about some regulation in that regard? Hey EU? Here's an idea for a possible scenario and how it could look: 1. Public company makes contentious claims. 2. Curious individual (maybe journalist) makes formal request for data to confirm. 3. By law, company above is obligated to provide access. 4. Individual gets given a secure-room, no-data-copying-allowed physical access to inspect and analyze said data. 5. Individual is allowed to report on said data. Edit. Formatting.
      - Railsify 6y ago
        Excellent points, well said. If any claims that were not immediately supported by secret video were not at least thought about then no investigations would ever start. At this point the allegations are 50/50, either true or false, the onus is on our regulators/journalists/whistleblowers to investigate and find out if the claims are true.
- dj_mc_merlin 6y ago
  One of the most common techniques of making a class of people seem crazy is associating conspiracy theories with them. CIA has been doing it for nearly a century by now.
  - anchpop 6y ago
    Source?
    - zo1 6y ago
      Do your own research! /s
  - maest 6y ago
    I like how this is a meta conspiracy theory. We're way beyond the land of the falsifiable at this point.
    - wegs 6y ago
      To be specific, we're in the land of confirmable and obvious. Consider: * Most conspiracy theories are false. * Many conspiracies do exist. I've seen people involved in a few. In conspiracies, people keep secrets. Ergo, there's a poor mapping between actual conspiracies and conspiracy theories. People are speculating with no evidence. On the other hand, the conspiracies I've seen, you haven't heard of, and you probably won't. The CIA is quite literally the US government covert agency set up to meddle in foreign affairs. It's raison d'être is to: 1. Collect covert intelligence for the US 2. Undermine enemies of the US / support friends of the US A vague statement like "The CIA is involved in conspiracies" or even slightly less vague "The CIA lies and sometimes vilifies people" are almost vacuously true. That's literally what a covert government agency is designed to do. A conspiracy theory is much more specific. "The CIA assassinated [leader] on [date] by [some action that looked like an accident] in order to [favorable outcome]." Most of those, with blanks filled in, are paranoid nonsense. If the CIA is doing it's job, I'll never find out about whom it assassinated or why. On the other hand, a blanket statement like "The CIA sometimes engages in assassinations" is obviously true. We have plenty of records from times the CIA slipped up. As far as associating people with crazy by associating conspiracy theories with them, we're not even at the level of CIA. We're at the level of municipal politics, divorce cases, executive battles, and corporate PR smear campaigns. If the CIA isn't involved in conspiracies, where are my tax dollars going?
eigenvalue 6y ago
Losing a lot of money very quickly is a hell of a motivator for action.
paxys 6y ago
One of the top posts on WSB this morning was a supposed Robinhood engineer who overheard a call between their CEO and the White House instructing them to stop trading $GME. The /r/The_Donald comparisons seem apt at this point.
- ptd 6y ago
  You don't think any of the high finance billionaires who were losing billions of dollars reached out to the people in the government whose campaigns they funded for support? Calling this a conspiracy theory is...inaccurate in my opinion.
  - DennisAleynikov 6y ago
    I think the specific nature of the baseless accusation is what makes it a conspiracy theory. Market manipulation is happening but mostly cuz Robinhood doesn't do anything on their own they rely on other companies
  - greenshackle2 6y ago
    There is a difference between believing in corruption and believing a specific conspiracy based on anonymous hearsay. So yes. It's literally a conspiracy theory.
- ptd 6y ago
  Justin Kan, founder of Twitch and Atrium(net worth over 9 figures) tweeted that he got a tip that Citadel(the company that executes trades for Robin Hood) reloaded their shorts before they told Robinhood to stop allowing users to buy GME. If you think Kan is a conspiracy theorist making baseless accusations, we see the world very differently. Which is fine. Diversity of thought is always welcomed in my opinion. But I am curious how you can have that opinion. It seems so clear to me, so I'm a bit confused as to how someone can hold the oppsite view. https://twitter.com/justinkan/status/1354853920762253315?s=20 https://twitter.com/justinkan/status/1354853920762253315?s=2...
  - paxys 6y ago
rasz 6y ago
Movements like /r/The_Donald ended up with attempted insurrection, dead people, guns and pipe bombs confiscated. Are you suggesting we might have another one coming, this time directed at the Hedge fund managers?

by eterm 6y ago

dageshi 6y ago

In the words of Agent Kay from MiB "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it."

czechdeveloper 6y ago

Is it conspiracy theory, when it's true?

golemiprague 6y ago
Yes, something can be true but not proven. I for example believe that the elections were rigged and that Trump actually won. It could be true but I got not proof so it stays in the realm of theory.

greenshackle2 6y ago

Not just Reddit. It's here too. It's wild to see people being whipped into a frenzy in real time. I'm following the discussions a bit, lots of comments by people spreading conspiracy theories, comments asking for evidence are just downvoted, or met by the conspiracy theorist's favorite, "do your research", comments spreading disinformation like "citadel owns robinhood" with a tweet as the only source, people who have no idea how market functions talking about "naked shorting", etc. The disinformation spreads faster than it takes to rebut it.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Railsify 6y ago
Someone not wanting to explain what is in 50 news articles to new commenters does not make them a conspiracy theorist, why should they do your google searches for you?
- Goronmon 6y ago
  Someone not wanting to explain what is in 50 news articles to new commenters does not make them a conspiracy theorist, why should they do your google searches for you? Yes, this is definitely one of the cookie-cutter responses. Dubious claims of "so many sources" but they are just super busy and can't be bothered to link to a single one.
  - zo1 6y ago
    Honestly, I'd say a lot of time there aren't any "legitimate sources" to prove the claims being made. That's a good chunk of the problem, because it seems that legitimate investigation and "linking" of said facts to prove the claims is next to impossible without serious government-level powers of acquiring evidence. So inference needs to be used, unfortunately. And once you start inferring without direct evidence, you start sounding like a conspiracy theorist, which is now being used to shut-down dissent and questioning. It's not like a journalist right now can tell Robinhood "give us all your internal emails so we can verify the reason you've stopped trading these stocks". Or "Hey Discord, let's look at your internal slack comms so we can figure out what evidence you had to conclude that the WSB chat rooms were filled with hatespeech." Or "give us a data-dump of all the users and comments you identified as hatespeech". How about some regulation in that regard? Hey EU? Here's an idea for a possible scenario and how it could look: 1. Public company makes contentious claims. 2. Curious individual (maybe journalist) makes formal request for data to confirm. 3. By law, company above is obligated to provide access. 4. Individual gets given a secure-room, no-data-copying-allowed physical access to inspect and analyze said data. 5. Individual is allowed to report on said data. Edit. Formatting.
    - Railsify 6y ago
      Excellent points, well said. If any claims that were not immediately supported by secret video were not at least thought about then no investigations would ever start. At this point the allegations are 50/50, either true or false, the onus is on our regulators/journalists/whistleblowers to investigate and find out if the claims are true.
dj_mc_merlin 6y ago
One of the most common techniques of making a class of people seem crazy is associating conspiracy theories with them. CIA has been doing it for nearly a century by now.
- anchpop 6y ago
  Source?
  - zo1 6y ago
    Do your own research! /s
- maest 6y ago
  I like how this is a meta conspiracy theory. We're way beyond the land of the falsifiable at this point.
  - wegs 6y ago
    To be specific, we're in the land of confirmable and obvious. Consider: * Most conspiracy theories are false. * Many conspiracies do exist. I've seen people involved in a few. In conspiracies, people keep secrets. Ergo, there's a poor mapping between actual conspiracies and conspiracy theories. People are speculating with no evidence. On the other hand, the conspiracies I've seen, you haven't heard of, and you probably won't. The CIA is quite literally the US government covert agency set up to meddle in foreign affairs. It's raison d'être is to: 1. Collect covert intelligence for the US 2. Undermine enemies of the US / support friends of the US A vague statement like "The CIA is involved in conspiracies" or even slightly less vague "The CIA lies and sometimes vilifies people" are almost vacuously true. That's literally what a covert government agency is designed to do. A conspiracy theory is much more specific. "The CIA assassinated [leader] on [date] by [some action that looked like an accident] in order to [favorable outcome]." Most of those, with blanks filled in, are paranoid nonsense. If the CIA is doing it's job, I'll never find out about whom it assassinated or why. On the other hand, a blanket statement like "The CIA sometimes engages in assassinations" is obviously true. We have plenty of records from times the CIA slipped up. As far as associating people with crazy by associating conspiracy theories with them, we're not even at the level of CIA. We're at the level of municipal politics, divorce cases, executive battles, and corporate PR smear campaigns. If the CIA isn't involved in conspiracies, where are my tax dollars going?

eigenvalue 6y ago

Losing a lot of money very quickly is a hell of a motivator for action.

paxys 6y ago

One of the top posts on WSB this morning was a supposed Robinhood engineer who overheard a call between their CEO and the White House instructing them to stop trading $GME. The /r/The_Donald comparisons seem apt at this point.

ptd 6y ago
You don't think any of the high finance billionaires who were losing billions of dollars reached out to the people in the government whose campaigns they funded for support? Calling this a conspiracy theory is...inaccurate in my opinion.
- DennisAleynikov 6y ago
  I think the specific nature of the baseless accusation is what makes it a conspiracy theory. Market manipulation is happening but mostly cuz Robinhood doesn't do anything on their own they rely on other companies
- greenshackle2 6y ago
  There is a difference between believing in corruption and believing a specific conspiracy based on anonymous hearsay. So yes. It's literally a conspiracy theory.
ptd 6y ago
Justin Kan, founder of Twitch and Atrium(net worth over 9 figures) tweeted that he got a tip that Citadel(the company that executes trades for Robin Hood) reloaded their shorts before they told Robinhood to stop allowing users to buy GME. If you think Kan is a conspiracy theorist making baseless accusations, we see the world very differently. Which is fine. Diversity of thought is always welcomed in my opinion. But I am curious how you can have that opinion. It seems so clear to me, so I'm a bit confused as to how someone can hold the oppsite view. https://twitter.com/justinkan/status/1354853920762253315?s=20 https://twitter.com/justinkan/status/1354853920762253315?s=2...
- paxys 6y ago

rasz 6y ago

Movements like /r/The_Donald ended up with attempted insurrection, dead people, guns and pipe bombs confiscated. Are you suggesting we might have another one coming, this time directed at the Hedge fund managers?