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YouTube Is Fighting Conspiracy Theories With 'Authoritative' Context and Outside Links (theverge.com)
In an effort to reduce misinformation on YouTube, the video-sharing website will be adding "authoritative" context to search results about conspiracy-prone topics, as well as putting $25 million toward news outlets producing videos. YouTube made the announcement today as part of a new step in its Google News Initiative, a journalism-focused program that aims to help publishers earn revenue and combat fake news. The Verge reports: This update includes new features for breaking news updates and long-standing conspiracy theories. YouTube is implementing a change it announced in March, annotating conspiracy-related pages with text from "trusted sources like Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica." And in the hours after a major news event, YouTube will supplement search results with links to news articles, reasoning that rigorous outlets often publish text before producing video.
YouTube is also funding a number of partnerships. It's establishing a working group that will provide input on how it handles news, and it's providing money for "sustainable" video operations across 20 markets across the world, in addition to expanding an internal support team for publishers.
YouTube is also funding a number of partnerships. It's establishing a working group that will provide input on how it handles news, and it's providing money for "sustainable" video operations across 20 markets across the world, in addition to expanding an internal support team for publishers.
Sometimes it's fun to watch tinfoil-hat videos... But if you ARE going to try to be "authoritative", please do NOT use fresh news articles, especially about anything political, racial, or climate-based. Many of those have "corrections" issued a few days later, meaning that they were NOT in fact, authoritative. Better to just let it go as-is, and stop trying to hand-hold the viewer. Let people learn when they screw up, and learn the lesson that sometimes you need to check the facts that you hear, and also look at the other side as well to see if it has a better position backed with facts and logic.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Conspiracy theories drive clicks and make them money.
Because wiki, ya know? The thing where people who made the conspiracy up can write the article and be listed as an authoritative source?
Youtube want's to be the only ones dictating your reality.
Could you also eliminate fails videos and the 'you won't believe this trick' shit? Who the fuck is making all of these fake videos?
Frankly, it would be great is Youtube scrapped the recommendations all together. They suck balls.
The problem is that you have to have trust in the authoritative sources and the first thing the vast majority of the conspiracy peddlars do is to throw massive amounts of doubt upon said sources. This quickly devolves into a one side versus the other argument that authoritative sources almost never win.
It comes down to how you cannot reason someone out of a idea they didn't arrive at through reason in the first place.
AKA, Liberal propaganda can fly and conservative view points will be taken down.
It deletes them as “undue weight” or “not notable”. You also have the reverting admins. Anyone who likes conspiracies don’t use Wikipedia as a source due to the “admin conspiracy”. When Wikipedia whines for donations, tell them your money is “not notable”.
Those videos are very entertaining for some reason even if they're mostly full of shit
So, now we need to update the old Russian saying
""there's no truth in Pravda, and no You in YouTube"
Why should Youtube be in the business of editorializing on content? This is so wrong. Youtube up to this point has provided a free forumn for ideas. Now it is editorializing. Really, it is time for regulators to break up Youtube, Google, Facebook, and Twitter. Seriously, they have grown too big and powerful.
> Admin conduct hasn't changed since, Wikipedia's a joke.
Wow, Wiki bashing. How 2010.
No, no, he'd a "Youtube Content Creator", he'd make the videos full of his facts, the "good facts". He'd have been at home with the KGB.
Gotta love how Google is "helping" a news industry it destroyed.
Search engines are mono-cultures: they are always sick, and they destroy anything with higher search costs - i.e., everything.
Combating fake news with Wikipedia ? Surely you jest....
Yeah, he's afterall an expert on beastiality -- after having watched his parent have sex through the holes in the divide in the van they were living.
BeauHD, when are you going to set the world straight on the ins and outs of beastiality and your mom? It's so sad the world has to run on so many misconceptions like beastiality being disgusting, instead of the truth that it's uniquely and utterly revolting. Or that a brother and sister can't have viable offspring when you're the proof otherwise.
We need these facts, front and center!
Yes, yes. We're all aware of the cult of wikipedia. Say anything truthful that isn't kiss-ass about it, remind people that it is "a kind of quantum encyclopedia, where genuine data both exists and doesn’t exist depending on the precise moment I rely upon your discordant fucking mob for my information" and the pro-wikipedia trolls will come in screaming.
https://www.penny-arcade.com/n...
We are 13 years after Tycho's observation and Wikipedia still has the same problems. As an entity it hasn't learned from its mistakes - if anything it doubled down on the "admin as god" cult, bestowing ever more power on a cliquish few who are less interested in getting it right than in deleting what they dislike and making sure nobody ever, ever questions the conduct of the admin clique Judge Dredds.
That's the funniest shit I read today!
What interpretation of different religions will be hand picked by google as more credible?
Are bullshit too.
The problem is that their precious "authoritative" sources engage in tabloid level gossip and assumptions in order to compete with actual tabloids and conspiracy sites.
So, while they might have good articles and writes, it becomes easy to dismiss because you can just point at all the bullshit opinion pieces and hastily published articles that have to be retracted.
Who is going to believe them when for 2 years they predicted with near 100% certainty that clinton would win, and then she lost?
No one would blame them for miss-predicting with maybe 60-40, but 98-2 is something else.
Or all their other scandals:
Weapons in iraq.
Firing people saying that there are no weapons in iraq.
Saying no one wants to ban guns, while people in the street chant to ban guns.
Saying the gays aren't going to indoctrinate children, when now they have books teaching children faggotry.
Calling people trans phobic for not wanting to have sex with trans people. (whether men or women).
Yeah, you can take your authoritative sources and stuff them.
At least when I watch conspiracy shit, I know what I'm getting.
The thing that pisses me off most of all, is that because of their constant bullshitting now I have family members who fall for conspiracy nonsense because they have seen that the mainstream news lies too, and in their confusion they assume that just because the news lied about some things, they must have lied about all those other things too.
I don't blame the conspiracy nuts. They always existed. The difference is that back then the news didn't stoop to easily debunked click bait as much.
Yay, let's make YouTube even more bland than it already is!
I question whether this will do much to slow down those who follow the conspiracy theories. They actively seek out crazy plots to explain their distorted realities and will either move towards private websites that dish up these juicy rumors du jour or will dismiss any YouTube evidence as "evidence" and think the men in black helicopters have taken over the site. At the end of the day, we seek out sites that confirm our view of the world. We have news agencies that cater to the spectrum of political beliefs that help confirm to you that Obama is a Kenyan or that Trump is a Russian puppet. If you believe 9/11 was a government plot, I doubt you will take the time to read an NYT article to refute it, even if it is offered on the same page.
The reason "fake news" can thrive is because MSM is so constantly horseshit that people correctly distrust it. The problem is that the replacements often have lower quality and reliability. The answer is to bludgeon MSM into shape. Ban CNN's account for a week when they post a bullshit story, and this will be resolved pretty quickly, because it's treating the cause. What Youtube is proposing here is treating the symptoms.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
This quickly devolves into a one side versus the other argument that authoritative sources almost never win.
Depends on what you mean by "win". If by "win" you mean that the conspiracy theorists are convinced of the error of their ways, yeah, that's not going to happen. But if you mean that you'll prevent a significant number of visitors who would otherwise get sucked into the weirdness from getting sucked in, that seems much more feasible.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Aside from that, Wikipedia authors are supposed to cite reliable sources in the articles. Why? Because Wikipedia itself isn't a reliable source, it's only roughly as reliable as the sources it cites (or doesn't).
That said, on most topics it ends up being pretty good.
Have you guys noticed he deleted most of his comment history, which was largely 0s and -1, and him bragging to be a /. editor as a constant argument of authority?
Nice to be an editor with that power. I wonder how many deletions go on behind the scenes here?
Please. Judge Dredd had the law to answer to. Admins at wikipedia have only the lynch mob of their peers.
Jimbo pretty much nailed it many years back, when he was asked about it. Paraphrasing from memory, "wikipedia isn't about facts, it's about popular opinions".
It comes down to how you cannot reason someone out of a idea they didn't arrive at through reason in the first place.
And I wish YouTube would realize that trying to police reason, logic, and facts on their platform makes herding cats look easy.
They will. Soon enough.
Too bad you, and people like you, weren't as concerned with the slippery slope of intentional misinformation that we're now careening headfirst down.
Wikipedia. As a trusted source.
Absolutely. Nobody is claiming that it is a primary source or should be trusted blindly but it's demonstrably a reliable source for quite a huge amount of information. Honestly I trust it more than I do quite a number of so-called "news" sources. No source should be trusted independently of verification.
That's hysterical, really. Wikipedia's lies-by-omission and scandals surrounding admins controlling and twisting content are legendary.
And that is different from any other source of news and information how exactly? Plus you clearly are overstating the scope of the problem substantially. ("Legendary"?) Most Wikipedia articles are fine and reliable sources of information that is entirely verifiable if you are concerned about any of it.
Admin conduct hasn't changed since, Wikipedia's a joke.
You sound butthurt about something though it's not clear what exactly. Wikipedia is useful. Nobody is claiming it is perfect. It's certainly proven reasonably reliable for a wide variety of use cases. It's not a primary source so if you need that go elsewhere and use appropriate skepticism at all times anyway.
The reason this is bad because currently the "authoritative" sources are actually incredibly biased, manufacture stories, and often hide information to further an agenda. They understand that if you control the narrative, you can manufacture a reality, or at least keep compliant people invested in such a narrative.
For example, you might yell tinfoil hate but here are a few off the top of my head:
Dan Rather, anchor long time CBS anchor, forced to resign in disgrace for manufacturing anti-conservative news http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBI...
Funny if you read the NY times and other articles attempting to pretend this was a normal stepping down
Brian Williams, NBC making false claims https://www.bbc.com/news/world...
NPR admitting press is biased and making up stories https://nypost.com/2017/10/21/...
If i need, I can go on. The point being it is easy to paint others with pejoratives like "tin foil hat" while failing to even consider much that you believe is likely from tainted perspective. Many people rightly fear that google (aka youtube) are censoring opinions that poke holes in their world view. Fake-news is more about people who disagree, not with people posting things that are untrue.
"Liberalism is a very noble idea, currently controlled by some very bad people. Be sure you do not get the two confused.
Here he is, in the crowd welcoming the Soviet Invasion on the eastern side of Poland in 1939.
BeauHD's grandfather taught him well.
Who is Q? #QAnon or qanon.pub
Sir, Unless you have some timestamped screenshots or other proof, I am disinclined to believe you.
BeauHD is known here for his fine and timely submissions and reporting around here and I would not have an AC besmirch his good reputation without some basis.
FCLM is just mad that creimer wouldn't let him lick his balls.
Title fixed. This is all about suppressing news that goes against the establishment narrative - if Youtube had been big in 2003 it would have been tagging videos questioning Saddam's WMD's and ties to Al Queda as conspiracy theories.
Speaking of CT, Youtube doesn't give a shit about batshit crazy theories as long as they're coming from CNN or MSDNC. Like how Putin was such a master chess player that he knew years in advance that a professional wrestling character could be president, but at the same time was completely unable to anticipate any blowback in messing with an election. Or how Assad never uses chemical weapons when it would be to his tactical advantage, but loves to drop gas the very day weapon inspectors arrive in the country, or the United States announces a withdrawal from its regime change operations.
If Youtube was honest here, every other clip from Fox, CNN or Rachael Madcow would be the ones coming with disclaimers and debunking information.
You don't have to be a conspiracy peddler to mistrust those sources when Vox (The Verge's parent) is a part of them. Google/Youtube are notoriously biased when it comes to who they consider trustworthy.
Wrong wrong wrong. CBS did verify the memos for the accuracy of their content. If they were forged - which has never been proven - someone forged the truth.
And bitch, please, it's not as if every reporter, anchor and editor who repeated the outright lies on Iraq was castigated, much less suspended, much less fired for taking part in the very worst propaganda in modern times. Wingnuts have created this standard that applies to just one person, because it fits your biases.
Yes, National Pentagon Radio is quite biased. Just 180 degrees from where you think it is.
Exactly, a cry of "fake news" about the source and all is lost.
Lame. Put some zing into your replies you toothless molester.
UNLESS you have screenshots of THAT, I'm disinclined to believe YOU.
P.S. GTFO BeauHD. No one's buying it.
This. Fighting irrational/illogical/counterfactual thinking is like fighting an outbreak of zombie virus: Trying to find a cure is a waste of time and may even be impossible, it's much more important to contain the spread - that means reducing new exposure. The authoritative videos are like a zombie proximity warning system. Won't help the zombies, but it will help to keep the uninfected but vulnerable from becoming infected.
People who want to spread ideologies that rely on irrational/illogical/counterfactual thinking know this, that's why deplorables flip the fuck out about no-platforming, because that shit works wonders. The "sunlight is the best disinfectant" argument is equivalent to arguing for spraying zombie virus on a crowd of people who have mostly been immunized...sure, most of them won't pick it up, but some will, and now there are more zombies than before. It's indistinguishable from clever, underhanded malevolence.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Looking at it, I see the distinct lack of "If you aren't an ardent Hillary Supporter, you are a nazi white supremacist piece of shit" tone from each and every comment from what I remember. Definitely more than a few missing.
Youtube and netflix both piss me off no end
They know I have an interest in science and tech but for some reason they keep suggesting conspiracy videos
On netflix it is so bad that searching for anything only shows videos I have already watched or conspiracy bullshit!
At least youtube keeps putting airplane crashes into the mix
I would love to never even never even know the bullshit stories exist but that doesn't seem to be an option
And just like with Gamergate, opinion pieces coming from rags like Kotaku and Polygon will be considered "authoritative" when they say they've done nothing wrong and it's all about those neckbeards who want to keep teh womenz out of gaming.
An even better option might be to apply a quality filter to search results so that bullshit conspiracy brain damage sinks down the search ratings. Demonetize it too.
Here are the Wikipedia guidelines for reliable sources:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
It's very clear that being published does NOT make it reliable. Publication is generally a prerequisite to citing a source simply because others need to be able to refer to the source and see it for themselves. For example, I once heard Mikhail Gorbachev say something interesting, in person. I can't cite that as a source because you can't tell if he actually said what I claim. I could have heard him wrong, or I could completely make up the whole incident. To cite it, I'd need to find video available of his remarks or something.
Where publication is key is determining NOTABILITY. If several large publications carry stories about something, it's notable (almost by definition, since people noticed it). That goes to the notability of the *topic*, not anything specifically the sources say about it. For example, the '57 Chevy is notable enough to have a Wikipedia article as evidenced by the many articles and even books written about it, plus songs, paintings, etc. The new product I thought up this morning does not yet have any evidence of notability because nobody besides me has eve heard of it. The fact that lots of people write (and even sing) about the '57 Chevy makes it notable - quite apart from any claims they make about the Chevy. Eric Clapton and Don McLean aren't reliable sources of information about the Chevy, they are evidence that the culture took notice of it. These are two separate things.
I cannot help but notice that since the US President was elected with zero endorsements from "papers of record" or "mainstream media outlets" that there has been an all out assault on the freedom of speech that was once a hallmark of the internet, furthermore that assault has had a hard leftward bend. I would bet money that "Spying on Trump campaign" or "FBI Political Bias" would have all been filtered out as conspiracy theories by "Authoritative Sources" and yet they have been proven true with nothing left but to argue over the motivation. People must be allowed to come to their own conclusions; you only increase mistrust by filtering away counter perspectives and ideas. Let people argue thoughts in the battle field of ideas instead of trying to control the narrative, maybe then you can avoid an actual war.
youtube is the world largest puveyor of conspiracy and nonsense - video or otherwise. And this is by choice and for profit. They cant expect me (or anybody else) to take this seriously if - because I watched space science content - my feed and recommendations are almost exclusively tinfoil-hat content - ancient aliens, moon landing conspiracies etc.
> the "authoritative" sources are actually incredibly biased
Why sourceS ?
In France there's only ONE allowed fact checker allowed by Google (FranceInfo).
And yes some of their statements are highly questionable.
Go back to your lotteries, you simple minded Proletarians.
The Internet - despite being filled with crap - is an excellent medium for people to spread the truth.
The problem is that when intelligent logical-minded people start calling bullshit on "official versions" of events - like the WTC 9/11 attacks, for example - they are labelled "conspiracy theorists" and automatically lumped in with flat-earthers and flying pigs.
The fact about 9/11 is that we were lied to about what really happened and who was responsible.
Building 7 (and the WTC towers) would not realistically collapse due to fires - there were bombs planted in the beforehand. Any logical human being who has done any research on 9/11 knows this. If you haven't done any research then search for "professor Stephen Jones 911".
And the 19 "evil arabs" that were blamed for the attacks were patsies. If they were suicide bombers then they would be dead. Yet, shortly after 9/11 nearly HALF of the alleged 9/11 hijackers were found alive and well. They had their passports stolen and were victims of identity theft. One falsely accused hijacker - Mr. Al-Omari - a pilot with Saudi Airlines - was even given a formal apology in Jeddah.
While the rest of the world is duped into believing that "Bin Laden and the Arabs" were behind the attacks, the REAL 9/11 hijackers are still out there alive and well plotting their next attack.
And what about the 5 dancing Israelis who were filming the attacks on the WTC while they happened and were laughing and cheering when the towers collapsed and thousands of innocent people were murdered? And the largest spy ring by a foreign government that was found operating on US soil just before, during and after the 9/11 attacks? Search Carl Cameron for more...
Trusting youtube or any MSM outlet to give honest, unbiased reporting is a fallacy.
Modern media outlets want to tell you how to think, what kind of opinions to have, what not to question, etc.
Sadly, the disgraceful mainstream media almost exclusively controlled by one small group of people.
#investigateisrael
#supportbds
I am APK the great "LORD of HOSTS", a.k.a. AlecStaar or Alexander Peter Kowalski.
I am the godlike creator of various GUI front-ends for other people's configuration files.
Calling people ne'er-do-wells or Jealous JOWIEs is how I think I win every argument
When people state the truth about me I get really mad and accuse them of projecting which is something I do all the time.
Don't call me out on anything unless you are willing to prove you too can write some strings to a file programmatically
Spamming and being a general pain in the ass is what I do
Listen as I relive my glory days of being a college athlete in the early 80s
Bask in my greatness as I can do a ping as a non root user.
Watch as I whine about my work being flagged as malware by anti-virus software.
Witness my descent into madness
APK
You mean any news that is not approved by Google CIA ?
this is so laughable
She finally going to get the "Authoritative" smack down?
Spoiler alert. The husband did it with the intern off the Oval Office.
Next up, Hillary's Russian, Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. Some Kooks never give up.
I lost my suspension of disbelief at "trusted sources like Wikipedia"
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
"I have no interest in molesting FCLM's goats and kids."
Of course not, you've got quite the personal harem already!
I'm super duper sure liberal Google and liberal Youtube wont "accidentally" punish people who arent liberal enough
And the Thought Police keep marching on
Maybe it really is time to break these people up.
Or it will create more doubt. Why does so much money need to be thrown at producing videos about the "truth". Is there some sort of harm if people investigate these theories? I think the idea that there is a "FACT" stamp on anything should raise red flags. Even "facts" as simple as the population of the USA are subject to lots of footnotes and ambiguity. Get beyond the most simple facts and you would need to write a book to truly explain the parameters around your "fact".
Any adult should know that there is simply no ability to explain one universal truth in a clear concise way. Take any major political topic and I can argue both sides truthfully and I should be able to convince you both sides are "correct", barring major preconceived opinions.
This implies that there is a ulterior "conspiracy" motive behind this program. I dare not say more or my entire post will be labeled by the stigma of a "conspiracy theorist".
All I know is that I get paid extremely well to SPIN the truth. I don't lie (because I don't have to) but I sure as hell know that how you express and tell the truth matters more than the actual truth. I can see firsthand how completely illogical ways of telling the truth results in drastically different outcomes. The spun narrative can make the facts tell any story you want so it gives me little comfort that someone is dispensing "facts" when I know the "facts" don't even matter. Tell me these people won't be biased and I will laugh you out of the room. We are all biased and will inject our own biases into anything we do.
I know where they can start: That farcical conspiracy that claims women get paid less than men for equal work.
Or maybe the comical conspiracy theory that western societies are based on a patriarchy.
But those are too easy, I guess Google would prefer to focus resources on the big ones, like the daft idea Russia caused America to elect Trump,
(Anybody wanting to claim that these are not conspiracy theories is welcome to provide actual and referenceable credible evidence)
I think they meant "authoritarian".
This is a likely scenario, but the division will not be what you think. It'll be more like a big cluster of big power who declare trust in each other, and those who don't trust them are refused any platform. It's like the NYTimes trusts the Pentagon and the CIA. Wikipedia trusts the NYTimes. Youtube trusts the NYTimes and Wikipedia. Big interests trust Youtube because they get some control over the output. So the CIA considers Youtube safe.
The essence of a conspiracy theorist is not the incompetence but that he distrusts.
So on the other half of the divide will be an awful lot of people who don't trust the system anymore. They'll be right. Youtube will flag their posts.
The truth of the moonlandings is not that important.It's trivia. Nobody who matters believes in fake moonlandings, it has no effect on people's actions(although it makes you doubt their general competence), and nobody who believes in that gets a trusted platform or ever did get such a platform. Who cares about fake news. It's just clickbait. Mostly.
The IT giants are lining themselves up to control what we're supposed to believe. They want to be our corporatised "Ministry of Information" that puts us back on the straight and narrow path of groupthink. All news is fake, by definition. It's all biased, skewed, and has hidden or overt agendas, e.g. the UK's Daily Mail and Fox News. Google et al. want to be the gatekeepers who decide. Just imagine how powerful that'd make them.
And remember that Google took money from BP during the Gulf of Mexico disaster to hide news and information that was critical about BP and their responses to the disaster. Do we want to allow them to entrench their commercial and political power even further?
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
This was not an issue until ya boi ran for and became president. Don't bitch about the things you're doing. You can stop at any time.
That's simply false.
If the "mistaken" news organization trumpets the original on page one and buries the correction on page 27 (like nearly all printed sources, and many TV presenters) then correcting the original means little.
... YMMV.
If they fix the posted story (like websites can and sometimes do) AND leave the information that the story was updated then yes, they can keep a bunch of credibility.
If, however, they pull down the original story and post a different story WITHOUT posting the fact that they have updated things, then no, they get no points for credibility. Getting it wrong should matter if you are in the news business. Getting it FIRST instead of getting it RIGHT is one of the most annoying things the "news" organizations do these days
Hmmm. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Probably won't succeed in reducing the alive of bullshit people believe, but at least it will piss off the nazis and morons that infest YouTube and slashdot.
Hey Inforwars has great news. Didn't you see the on about how the elites keep their sex slaves on Mars? CNN wouldn't dare publish such news.
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -- HST
If you were a Wikipedia editor, you would know otherwise.
Indeed, the army of sad volunteer autists that run wikipedia keeps a very tight lockdown on it. But anyone who thinks this "control" is exercised in the pure interest of The Truth is just naive. It's not as bad as some places (yet), but whenever you look up anything remotely political there's often a conscious feeling of sifting through irrelevant nonsense or decoding newspeak-ified passages to figure out what - if any - actual facts are being offered.
If I'm reading about some 16th century politician, I don't need ten paragraphs about his positions on race relations or speculation about whether he was secretly gay or transgendered.
Authoritative as in laughing and cheering after 9/11.
Having the Urban Moving Systems group going on national TV to give a lame explanation.
Alleged hijackers who were supposed to be dead showing up to give press conferences. The FBI gave the correct names after reviewing security footage, right?
Watch as Youtube starts to censor political views it does not like. FML
Is the truth you hold so dear so easily challenged by nut job conspiracy theories? Do you not realize they are called, "conspiracy", "theories", because they are, "theories", of and about, "conspiracies"?
Conspiracies happen all the time. Bosses conspire to fire their employees. Employees may conspire to give their bosses a hard time. Walmart may conspire to push out it's local competitors.
Does the, "flat earth", really frighten and unnerve you to the point you feel a need right that particular wrong? I suppose I must admit that a flat earther is, well it, it makes me feel weird; like, a mixture of sad, afraid, bewildered, pitiful, and slightly agitated.
I digress, though. I think trying to fight misinformation is going to be about as effective as trying to fight drugs with laws, prison sentences, and guns. It's going to be as successful as waging war on terror (war is terror by the by. Last time I checked, fire doesn't put out fire, well in some few instances maybe, but... "war on terror" remains an oxymoronic phrase/stance.).
When a person is labeled and diagnosed as suffering from a delusional psychotic break; you can't really snap the person out of it. Maybe in some rare instances you can guide them toward the path out; but, like some one in a coma, they just tend to wake up when they wake up.
If we had the resources we could offer to pay every self confessed flat earther 10,000 dollars if they will travel in a straight line with us long enough to reach the point at which we began. However, even then, they may decline saying they don't want to fall off the edge of the earth.
So all these "conspiracy theories" do NOT fucking bother me. Dark matter, as far as I know at this moment remains a theory. I think even the big bang still remains a theory. Many, many things in actual academic and professional science still remains theory, until proven. Likewise, there are conspiracies of all kinds out there some big, some little, some benign, some malicious. However, I don't think you have to fight conspiracy theories at all. If they make you that uncomfortable, fucking ignore them. I'll listen to Coast2Coast AM from time to time and enjoy the hell out of it; but, when I fell they are covering a nonsense subject (nonsense to me), I just change the station. Everyone on this planet has their own particular brand of insanity. For the majority of us, it all works out just fine enough to get along with the rest of the world. Every now and then individuals or even entire masses find themselves bat shit crazy and do some crazy egregious shit; but, for the most part, we all get along.
And if you are a hard core atheistic science nut who thinks they know all the truth about how most of everyone else believes in some kind of crazy bull shit, I'm sort of right their with you; but, at the same time... To have so much lack of actual belief in almost anything to the point of a sort gray nihilism, is pretty bleak on it's own...
There is life, there is beauty and there is wonder all around and it contrasts quite well against death, ugliness, and horrors... All of which has it's own splendor and bitterness...
I for one fear the authoritative reaction to, "conspiracy theories", far more than the conspiracy theorists and theories themselves. Theories have the benefit of the doubt in that they could be true or could be false. However, it is when we are convinced 100% that we are right...that is when the crazy shit could start happening.
Shut it down!
Most commonly used by Sam Harris and his fanboys when anyone points out his psychopathic rationalizations, imperialist hypocrisy and racist islamophobia. "Using words that have come out of my mouth is quote mining and that's sooooo unfair!" (stomps feet).
The problem with Media Matters isn't quoting, it's that they've turned into a purely tribalist organization for the DNC that will go to great lengths to ignore right wing bullshit if its coming from Democrats, or to rationalize it.
You morons, your presidents have all told you long ago they make up the news to fit the current agenda. Your all idiots who would rather put your faith in paid off satanists.
People who digest this content do so because it reinforces their already held conspiracy theories (whether self-created or learned). It acts on a person's psyche in a similar fashion to how praising a child works to alter the child's behavior and self-image as well as to build their self-esteem: it tells them they are good, smart, and right.
Putting a label on the source is no different than a child who hears his father being belittled by another kid on the playground: it results in a defensive response that only reinforces their adoration for their parent (or, in this case, Alex Jones types).
Stop with the virtue signalling, already. The only purpose it serves is to fluff your own egos and make you even more insufferably arrogant.
Do something meaningful if you want to address the issue. Otherwise, leave it alone because, just like the kids on the playground, it will work itself out on its own.
And yet, if you mention this you are modded down by WikiZealots.