> But as soon as there is a person or group out there secretly “meaning for” some result from the actions of tens of thousands of people, that’s by definition a

> But as soon as there is a person or group out there secretly “meaning for” some result from the actions of tens of thousands of people, that’s by definition a conspiracy. There are many interest groups pushing to influence mass behavior in many kinds of ways. Some do so transparently, others less so. We've overloaded "conspiracy" to mean at least two different things: the traditional definition of secret plotting to do bad things and a more modern derogatory connotation involving far-fetched conspiracies like politicians being lizard people. Something can be a conspiracy and also be true and it is reasonable to investigate the extent to which reporting is influenced by different interests.