7 ms·

Conspiracy content drives anti-establishment sentiment on TikTok, YouTube

50 points by _p2zi 1y ago

Wegg 1y ago
[dead]
Wegg 1y ago
[dead]
sunscream89 1y ago
It’s funny, those conspiracies are now the establishment. New fresh relevant conspiracies buried in my threads!
- Joel_Mckay 1y ago
  "Memoirs of extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds" (Charles Mackay, 1852) https://www.gutenberg.org/files/24518/24518-h/24518-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/24518/24518-h/24518-h.htm Not a new phenomena, but rather a reminder of what civilizations often offer. =3
jasonvorhe 1y ago
Perhaps because the establishment is persistently wrong about almost anything?
cjpartridge 1y ago
Because everything anti-establishment is a conspiracy, remember folks, trust the main stream media - they definitely aren't working hand in hand with intelligence agencies and corporations.
- krapp 1y ago
  >they definitely aren't working hand in hand with intelligence agencies and corporations. And definitely neither are any of the "alternative" sources you think are telling you the real truth.
- maxbond 1y ago
  The YouTuber Milo Rossi [1], who debunks archaeological conspiracy theories (and makes educational content about archaeology) likes to say (paraphrasing slightly) "you don't need to make up conspiracy theories to be mad at the government, you can be mad at the actual government for what they actually do." Institutions/"the establishment" deserve skepticism but that skepticism has to be grounded in the real world and in evidence you can actually acquire. Not in supposition about a nebulous "they" pulling the strings. Conspiracy theories rapidly devolve into something entirely unfalsifiable. A key smell test is: Does receiving pushback or counter evidence strengthen your conviction that you are correct? If so, you're going down a dangerous path. You're painting yourself into a corner where you will have a lot of trouble changing your mind, even if you're wrong. The "main stream media" is the worst source, except for most of the other ones. It's not valuable because it is gospel - it's plain to see that the media is fallible. It's valuable because it adheres to any standard of evidence whatsoever while producing content at scale. It's like what people sometimes say about Wikipedia, it's the best place to begin your research but it doesn't have to end there. [1] https://youtube.com/@miniminuteman773 https://youtube.com/@miniminuteman773
  - ryandrake 1y ago
    > A key smell test is: Does receiving pushback or counter evidence strengthen your conviction that you are correct? The parallels with religion are obvious here too. I would guess that the fall or organized religion participation in America directly matches the rise in political zealotry and/or conspiracy theory belief. There’s always something people believe more strongly the more it is opposed.
    - maxbond 1y ago
      To be honest, while there are definitely religious fundamentalists or literalists who suffer from this kind of thinking, I don't find it to be any less prevalent among people who identify as atheists or rationalists. It's a problem of rigid thinking, overcommitment to ideology, and being unwilling to question and overturn your premises. If you are willing to hold beliefs lightly, entertain ideas even if you do not accept them, and remain open to new evidence and to changing your mind, you're probably on the right track regardless of other factors. A lot of religions teach that reality and God's will is mysterious and open to interpretation. That can be the cornerstone of an epistemic humility, if you cultivate it that way. (I'm agnostic for what it's worth.)
l33tbro 1y ago
All 5g gay frogs aside, this a power problem and not really a people problem. How many establishment institutions are left that citizens would wish to enthusiastically uphold? We have come to almost expect corruption and these days. This isn't a justification for irrational conspiracy theory (which are generally harmless, yet occasionally highly catastrophic). It's that the establishment whack-em-all approach is not working, and is probably exacerbating their problem.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > this a power problem and not really a people problem It’s an education and channel incentive problem. Our kids’ literacy is crashing [1]. And most Americans get their news through channels that are incentivised by selling ads. [1] https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Living/us-students-reading-math-scores-historic-lows-devastating/story?id=125392421 https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Living/us-students-reading-math-s...
  - l33tbro 1y ago
    I totally agree about literacy being huge, and would actually extend it to going beyond literacy. The literacy crash is alarming, and is no doubt agitating this situation in a major way. However, I think what we are experiencing is something like a kind of siloing of private realities. Not the pearl-clutching 'echo chamber' discourse from 2019. But an increasing lack of social competency amongst younger people that is disallowing them to be present others in the world itself. This is why I still think it is a power problem. Government, however incompetent, still has the monopoly on control and policy. They have experts yelling at them everyday about these problems. But their answer does seem to be more censorship and surveillance, rather than addressing the causes of these problems. As I mentioned, this only exacerbates the problem and makes it more socially dangerous.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > their answer does seem to be more censorship and surveillance, rather than addressing the causes of these problems The power hypothesis doesn’t explain Flat Eartherism. That’s just stupid people believing what I cannot imagine started as anything but a tantrum.
louloulou 1y ago
I think the establishment's actions are what's driving anti-establishment sentiment.
- mannykannot 1y ago
  The establishment? That sounds so 20th. century to my ears.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
uyzstvqs 1y ago
> Researchers say anti-establishment sentiment can undermine the health of democracies This actually sounds like something from a fascist state. It's a completely contradictory, manipulative statement. Where did you source that "research"? Orwell's Ministry of Truth?
markus_zhang 1y ago
People don’t trust the establishment because it doesn’t take care of them. Trump is simply a symptom, whether you agree with him or not. If Democracy is simply Oligarchy with voting as a decoration and sometime even that was gamed, then to the hell with this democracy.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  This is the Hillbilly Elegy hypothesis. I used to buy it. I’m now less convinced. There is a hateful streak in America driven, in part, by reduced attention spans, literacy and ad-powered algorithms. When those folks get better off, they don’t become less hateful. (I’d love to see evidence to the contrary.) > If Democracy is simply Oligarchy with voting as a decoration and sometime even that was gamed, then to the hell with this democracy Do you really think you’ll be treated better in a quasi-monarchy?
  - markus_zhang 1y ago
    I guess it depends on who the Monarchy is. It was like asking, do you really think you will be treated better under Augustus or the Senate? I bet back then a lot of people would want the Monarchy — after all Augustus won and the Roman Empire was born. In general we consider democracy > monarchy because good monarchies are rare and far between, so democracy is the least bad option. And no, I don’t think Trump could be Augustus. Augustus and Caesar beat their enemies and cut them down like chicken. We are more civilized now, but I don’t think Trump is willing and can do enough sweeping. It is only by sweeping away the old aristocratic that the new ones can building a new Empire.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > depends on who the Monarchy is We have a pretty good hint! > do you really think you will be treated better under Augustus or the Senate? Augustus’s rein started with him engineering a peninsula-wide famine and economic collapse. He grew up after the civil war. But promptly after him you got Trajan. > we consider democracy > monarchy because good monarchies are rare and far between, so democracy is the least bad option Sort of. There is also the whole part about being able to fire the leaders once in a while. > We are more civilized now, but I don’t think Trump is willing and can do enough sweeping Trump would absolutely mow down Americans if his life depended on it, most leaders would, this is what makes dictatorships and other systems without a peaceful transition of power so dangerous. > only by sweeping away the old aristocratic that the new ones can building a new Empire Octavianus was a Claudian, one of Rome’s most prestigious patrician families. Most of the Emperors were also patricians. (Rome collapsed shortly after the aristocracy actually lost control. It’s literally referred to as the fall of Rome.) If America goes monarchy, it would be in a way that ensconced our current elites into a generational aristocracy far more powerful than what Americans think is social immobility today.
oldsklgdfth 1y ago
It’s a symptom not a cause.
mastazi 1y ago
IMHO - distrust in the establishment is not the cause, but a side effect of the real cause. I used to be a journalist before my career in tech. In my opinion, the real culprit is that news outlets now have the wrong incentives. When people still used to buy printed newspapers, you had to pay for your news so you better get well researched articles for your hard earned money. [1] With the rise of internet news, that incentive is no longer in place. Yes there are paid news outlets on the Internet but the majority of people don't pay for a subscription. What gets you most views does rarely align with high journalistic standards. [2] In a way, everything is a tabloid now. [1] If you are at least as old as me, you might remember that reading a certain newspaper rather than another was almost seen as a status symbol. I remember journalists saying things like "I love working at [newspaper X] because of our fine readership, they challenge me to write high quality articles". [2] With a few obvious exceptions like Panama Papers etc.
- Kenji 1y ago
  [dead]
- potato3732842 1y ago
  > is that news outlets now have the wrong incentives. You know how one sausage is made. But every factory is filthy just like yours. I work with "the establishment". It has the wrong incentives too, just different ones.
  - mastazi 1y ago
    Oh yes of course I don't disagree on that. I used to cover local politics when I was still in the field, so I've seen my fair share.
- ViscountPenguin 1y ago
  Seems like it'd run a bit further than the invention of the internet then, right? Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent is scathing of the move to ad supported newspapers way back in the past, leading to the rise of companies like News Corp.
cubefox 1y ago
"Conspiracy content drives anti-establishment sentiment on TikTok, YouTube" drives anti-establishment sentiment on Hacker News
Insanity 1y ago
It’s kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. You watch one conspiracy video, the algorithm learns and recommends more of it. Humans absorb what we see around us and our identity is now also formed by what we consume. So essentially you get a type of flywheel where you become more and more sucked in by virtue of watching more.
luxuryballs 1y ago
I think there’s been this sudden realization that the media can’t be trusted (for good reason) but people have been so long trusting the news that now they can’t accept the true reality which is NOT KNOWING THINGS and so they go to the internet to fulfill the addiction to a false feeling of knowing what’s going on and think “this must be true instead” but really we all need to accept that we just can’t know things to the extent that the media claimed they had the answers for, and that’s a healthy and good thing to embrace.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
fy20 1y ago
So basically rage-bait sells? It's not really surprising in the finance and wellness space that it also works. People often feel vulnerable and that "the system" is rigged against them. This kind of content appeals as it makes them feel that they are not alone, like someone understands them. It would be interesting to extend the study to other categories where this trust gap does not exist. Would anti-establishment content also get more engagement in say the woodworking niche?
IT4MD 1y ago
Not allowed content, so sayeth Dang.

50 points by _p2zi 1y ago

Wegg 1y ago

[dead]

Wegg 1y ago

[dead]

sunscream89 1y ago

It’s funny, those conspiracies are now the establishment. New fresh relevant conspiracies buried in my threads!

Joel_Mckay 1y ago
"Memoirs of extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds" (Charles Mackay, 1852) https://www.gutenberg.org/files/24518/24518-h/24518-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/24518/24518-h/24518-h.htm Not a new phenomena, but rather a reminder of what civilizations often offer. =3

jasonvorhe 1y ago

Perhaps because the establishment is persistently wrong about almost anything?

cjpartridge 1y ago

Because everything anti-establishment is a conspiracy, remember folks, trust the main stream media - they definitely aren't working hand in hand with intelligence agencies and corporations.

krapp 1y ago
>they definitely aren't working hand in hand with intelligence agencies and corporations. And definitely neither are any of the "alternative" sources you think are telling you the real truth.
maxbond 1y ago
The YouTuber Milo Rossi [1], who debunks archaeological conspiracy theories (and makes educational content about archaeology) likes to say (paraphrasing slightly) "you don't need to make up conspiracy theories to be mad at the government, you can be mad at the actual government for what they actually do." Institutions/"the establishment" deserve skepticism but that skepticism has to be grounded in the real world and in evidence you can actually acquire. Not in supposition about a nebulous "they" pulling the strings. Conspiracy theories rapidly devolve into something entirely unfalsifiable. A key smell test is: Does receiving pushback or counter evidence strengthen your conviction that you are correct? If so, you're going down a dangerous path. You're painting yourself into a corner where you will have a lot of trouble changing your mind, even if you're wrong. The "main stream media" is the worst source, except for most of the other ones. It's not valuable because it is gospel - it's plain to see that the media is fallible. It's valuable because it adheres to any standard of evidence whatsoever while producing content at scale. It's like what people sometimes say about Wikipedia, it's the best place to begin your research but it doesn't have to end there. [1] https://youtube.com/@miniminuteman773 https://youtube.com/@miniminuteman773
- ryandrake 1y ago
  > A key smell test is: Does receiving pushback or counter evidence strengthen your conviction that you are correct? The parallels with religion are obvious here too. I would guess that the fall or organized religion participation in America directly matches the rise in political zealotry and/or conspiracy theory belief. There’s always something people believe more strongly the more it is opposed.
  - maxbond 1y ago
    To be honest, while there are definitely religious fundamentalists or literalists who suffer from this kind of thinking, I don't find it to be any less prevalent among people who identify as atheists or rationalists. It's a problem of rigid thinking, overcommitment to ideology, and being unwilling to question and overturn your premises. If you are willing to hold beliefs lightly, entertain ideas even if you do not accept them, and remain open to new evidence and to changing your mind, you're probably on the right track regardless of other factors. A lot of religions teach that reality and God's will is mysterious and open to interpretation. That can be the cornerstone of an epistemic humility, if you cultivate it that way. (I'm agnostic for what it's worth.)

l33tbro 1y ago

All 5g gay frogs aside, this a power problem and not really a people problem. How many establishment institutions are left that citizens would wish to enthusiastically uphold? We have come to almost expect corruption and these days. This isn't a justification for irrational conspiracy theory (which are generally harmless, yet occasionally highly catastrophic). It's that the establishment whack-em-all approach is not working, and is probably exacerbating their problem.

JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> this a power problem and not really a people problem It’s an education and channel incentive problem. Our kids’ literacy is crashing [1]. And most Americans get their news through channels that are incentivised by selling ads. [1] https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Living/us-students-reading-math-scores-historic-lows-devastating/story?id=125392421 https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Living/us-students-reading-math-s...
- l33tbro 1y ago
  I totally agree about literacy being huge, and would actually extend it to going beyond literacy. The literacy crash is alarming, and is no doubt agitating this situation in a major way. However, I think what we are experiencing is something like a kind of siloing of private realities. Not the pearl-clutching 'echo chamber' discourse from 2019. But an increasing lack of social competency amongst younger people that is disallowing them to be present others in the world itself. This is why I still think it is a power problem. Government, however incompetent, still has the monopoly on control and policy. They have experts yelling at them everyday about these problems. But their answer does seem to be more censorship and surveillance, rather than addressing the causes of these problems. As I mentioned, this only exacerbates the problem and makes it more socially dangerous.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > their answer does seem to be more censorship and surveillance, rather than addressing the causes of these problems The power hypothesis doesn’t explain Flat Eartherism. That’s just stupid people believing what I cannot imagine started as anything but a tantrum.

louloulou 1y ago

I think the establishment's actions are what's driving anti-establishment sentiment.

mannykannot 1y ago
The establishment? That sounds so 20th. century to my ears.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

uyzstvqs 1y ago

> Researchers say anti-establishment sentiment can undermine the health of democracies This actually sounds like something from a fascist state. It's a completely contradictory, manipulative statement. Where did you source that "research"? Orwell's Ministry of Truth?

markus_zhang 1y ago

People don’t trust the establishment because it doesn’t take care of them. Trump is simply a symptom, whether you agree with him or not. If Democracy is simply Oligarchy with voting as a decoration and sometime even that was gamed, then to the hell with this democracy.

JumpCrisscross 1y ago
This is the Hillbilly Elegy hypothesis. I used to buy it. I’m now less convinced. There is a hateful streak in America driven, in part, by reduced attention spans, literacy and ad-powered algorithms. When those folks get better off, they don’t become less hateful. (I’d love to see evidence to the contrary.) > If Democracy is simply Oligarchy with voting as a decoration and sometime even that was gamed, then to the hell with this democracy Do you really think you’ll be treated better in a quasi-monarchy?
- markus_zhang 1y ago
  I guess it depends on who the Monarchy is. It was like asking, do you really think you will be treated better under Augustus or the Senate? I bet back then a lot of people would want the Monarchy — after all Augustus won and the Roman Empire was born. In general we consider democracy > monarchy because good monarchies are rare and far between, so democracy is the least bad option. And no, I don’t think Trump could be Augustus. Augustus and Caesar beat their enemies and cut them down like chicken. We are more civilized now, but I don’t think Trump is willing and can do enough sweeping. It is only by sweeping away the old aristocratic that the new ones can building a new Empire.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > depends on who the Monarchy is We have a pretty good hint! > do you really think you will be treated better under Augustus or the Senate? Augustus’s rein started with him engineering a peninsula-wide famine and economic collapse. He grew up after the civil war. But promptly after him you got Trajan. > we consider democracy > monarchy because good monarchies are rare and far between, so democracy is the least bad option Sort of. There is also the whole part about being able to fire the leaders once in a while. > We are more civilized now, but I don’t think Trump is willing and can do enough sweeping Trump would absolutely mow down Americans if his life depended on it, most leaders would, this is what makes dictatorships and other systems without a peaceful transition of power so dangerous. > only by sweeping away the old aristocratic that the new ones can building a new Empire Octavianus was a Claudian, one of Rome’s most prestigious patrician families. Most of the Emperors were also patricians. (Rome collapsed shortly after the aristocracy actually lost control. It’s literally referred to as the fall of Rome.) If America goes monarchy, it would be in a way that ensconced our current elites into a generational aristocracy far more powerful than what Americans think is social immobility today.

oldsklgdfth 1y ago

It’s a symptom not a cause.

mastazi 1y ago

IMHO - distrust in the establishment is not the cause, but a side effect of the real cause. I used to be a journalist before my career in tech. In my opinion, the real culprit is that news outlets now have the wrong incentives. When people still used to buy printed newspapers, you had to pay for your news so you better get well researched articles for your hard earned money. [1] With the rise of internet news, that incentive is no longer in place. Yes there are paid news outlets on the Internet but the majority of people don't pay for a subscription. What gets you most views does rarely align with high journalistic standards. [2] In a way, everything is a tabloid now. [1] If you are at least as old as me, you might remember that reading a certain newspaper rather than another was almost seen as a status symbol. I remember journalists saying things like "I love working at [newspaper X] because of our fine readership, they challenge me to write high quality articles". [2] With a few obvious exceptions like Panama Papers etc.

Kenji 1y ago
[dead]
potato3732842 1y ago
> is that news outlets now have the wrong incentives. You know how one sausage is made. But every factory is filthy just like yours. I work with "the establishment". It has the wrong incentives too, just different ones.
- mastazi 1y ago
  Oh yes of course I don't disagree on that. I used to cover local politics when I was still in the field, so I've seen my fair share.
ViscountPenguin 1y ago
Seems like it'd run a bit further than the invention of the internet then, right? Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent is scathing of the move to ad supported newspapers way back in the past, leading to the rise of companies like News Corp.

cubefox 1y ago

"Conspiracy content drives anti-establishment sentiment on TikTok, YouTube" drives anti-establishment sentiment on Hacker News

Insanity 1y ago

It’s kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. You watch one conspiracy video, the algorithm learns and recommends more of it. Humans absorb what we see around us and our identity is now also formed by what we consume. So essentially you get a type of flywheel where you become more and more sucked in by virtue of watching more.

luxuryballs 1y ago

I think there’s been this sudden realization that the media can’t be trusted (for good reason) but people have been so long trusting the news that now they can’t accept the true reality which is NOT KNOWING THINGS and so they go to the internet to fulfill the addiction to a false feeling of knowing what’s going on and think “this must be true instead” but really we all need to accept that we just can’t know things to the extent that the media claimed they had the answers for, and that’s a healthy and good thing to embrace.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

fy20 1y ago

So basically rage-bait sells? It's not really surprising in the finance and wellness space that it also works. People often feel vulnerable and that "the system" is rigged against them. This kind of content appeals as it makes them feel that they are not alone, like someone understands them. It would be interesting to extend the study to other categories where this trust gap does not exist. Would anti-establishment content also get more engagement in say the woodworking niche?

IT4MD 1y ago

Not allowed content, so sayeth Dang.