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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 peop

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.
- polka_haunts_us 6y ago
  If someone is saying "This morning Robinhood conspired with Citadel to halt trading", that is a claim. If I ask for source on the claim and they say "It's in the logs, go see for yourself?", my, and most other people on this sites assumption is "This person has no evidence of this claim, or any evidence they do have is eminently debunkable". Handwaving the claim away as "It's obvious" when to most people, "no it isn't obvious whatsoever", or in the worst case "It obviously is not", marks you at best as uninterested in having a real conversation, at worst a conspiracy theorist.
  - Railsify 6y ago
    Maybe you shouldn't assume that? Sure sometimes there will be no evidence, but you should only come to that conclusion after you shake off the laziness and go look. Again, someone not wanting to tell you something that you can easily check out yourself does not make them a conspiracy theorist by default. I'm sure you are special enough in your mind that every poster you reply to should take time to type you a personalized response but that is not the case. However, I think you are special.
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?

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.
polka_haunts_us 6y ago
If someone is saying "This morning Robinhood conspired with Citadel to halt trading", that is a claim. If I ask for source on the claim and they say "It's in the logs, go see for yourself?", my, and most other people on this sites assumption is "This person has no evidence of this claim, or any evidence they do have is eminently debunkable". Handwaving the claim away as "It's obvious" when to most people, "no it isn't obvious whatsoever", or in the worst case "It obviously is not", marks you at best as uninterested in having a real conversation, at worst a conspiracy theorist.
- Railsify 6y ago
  Maybe you shouldn't assume that? Sure sometimes there will be no evidence, but you should only come to that conclusion after you shake off the laziness and go look. Again, someone not wanting to tell you something that you can easily check out yourself does not make them a conspiracy theorist by default. I'm sure you are special enough in your mind that every poster you reply to should take time to type you a personalized response but that is not the case. However, I think you are special.

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?