Facebook Features 9/11 Conspiracy Theory as 'Trending' (slashdot.org)

Facebook is having a tough time with stories that trend on the social network. The company has been accused of gaming what it shows as "trending" on the site, and sometimes favoring things it showed to people. Not long ago, it fired the human editors who took care of it, but then earlier this month, a fake story about Megyn Kelly. It apologized for the slip, but it has happened again. The Hill reports: Facebook is taking heat yet again for its Trending Topics section after featuring a story from a British tabloid pushing a conspiracy theory that the World Trade Center collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001, because of a "controlled demolition." Facebook users who clicked on the "September 11th Anniversary" trending topic Friday were presented an article titled "September 11: The footage that 'proves bombs were planted in Twin Towers.'"

Comments

Forensic Investigation of 9/11

[MrKaos]

An "Official Report" is not a Forensic Investigation that conducts various scientific analysis of the crime scene. The very fact that there has been no formal Forensic Investigation with evidence given from structural engineers and scientists on what was the biggest crime scene in U.S is evidence enough of some sort of conspiracy, regardless of how it was achieved.

The laws justified after 9/11 were the very ones that enabled the type of police state monitoring of citizens that not just US, but many other countries like the UK, Canada, Australia and, others all endure today. Before 9/11 western governments had not passed laws to remove our freedoms (that terrorists hated) because adequate laws were already in place to deal with terrprism. Those laws were based on what was learned by the UK government dealing with the IRA's terrorism.

Those two very obvious facts often go unacknowledged by 9/11 theorists and denialists because that allows them to (understandably) ignore the frightening reality that the laws justified by 9/11 moved western societies to an overt surveillance state. These two facts show us how and why, just not who could create such a conspiracy. Since time has revealed these laws to be in-effective at stopping terrorism that shows us who ever wants these laws to monitor us is very powerful indeed.

I don't know the specifics of how the towers were destroyed, but I do know that the laws passed because of 9/11 left us in a police state.

Re:"Conspiracy theory"

[samkass]

I'm afraid none of that addresses the suspicious way in which these buildings collapsed. That's why anti-conspiracy theorists are often even worse. They extrapolate their own ideas out of it so they can have a comfort blanket to hold on to and stop looking at what is in front of them.

The buildings collapsed exactly how you'd expect a building with strong center and shell supports would collapse, thus there's not much to explain there. Fuel heats cross-beams, steel loses half its strength at those temperatures and they bend in the center, one floor falls down to the next and cascades. The outer shell and inner shell hold it all together as its going down. Every single thing that happened to all three buildings and the field in PA is easily explained by physics, and doesn't need the conspiracy. Nothing that happened that day is "comforting," and insulting people doesn't help your case.