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YouTube To Blame For Rise in Flat Earth Believers, Says Study (cnet.com)
According to research, almost everyone who believes in flat Earth theory got started on YouTube. From a report: Asheley Landrum is an assistant professor of science communication at Texas Tech University. Her focus: how cultural values affect our understanding of science. Most recently she's been looking at the rise of flat Earth theory. Incredibly, more people than ever believe in a flat Earth. Google searches for "flat earth" have grown massively over the past five years and flat Earth conventions have begun popping up all over the globe. That's where Landrum focused her research. Landrum interviewed 30 people who attended one flat Earth convention and found that all but one became flat Earthers after watching videos on YouTube.
She presented her research at an event run by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. While Landrum didn't explicitly blame YouTube for the rise in flat Earth believers, she does believe that Google could be doing more to stop the spread of scientifically incorrect ideas. "There's a lot of helpful information on YouTube but also a lot of misinformation," she said, as reported by The Guardian. "Their algorithms make it easy to end up going down the rabbit hole, by presenting information to people who are going to be more susceptible to it."
She presented her research at an event run by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. While Landrum didn't explicitly blame YouTube for the rise in flat Earth believers, she does believe that Google could be doing more to stop the spread of scientifically incorrect ideas. "There's a lot of helpful information on YouTube but also a lot of misinformation," she said, as reported by The Guardian. "Their algorithms make it easy to end up going down the rabbit hole, by presenting information to people who are going to be more susceptible to it."
A lot of the flat earthers I've met are really just trolling other people.
If the number of "believers" is going up then it might be that the number of critical thinkers is going up.
On the other hand it could also be that I don't hang round with the other end of the spectrum and it really is the number of idiots that's going online to confirm their beliefs that's going up.
No sig today...
..over the globe"
We all saw what you did there.
I don't think these people really believe in a flat Earth.
They do it because it pisses off the "critical thinker/debunker" and "academic" types. They're very easy targets for something like this because they know they'll get a reaction (and don't understand they're being trolled).
It relied on the assumption that most people are rational, which in fact they were not. It was able to support itself using media gatekeepers which prevented mass-hysteria of the population and managed to keep them educated and informed to some extent. The moment that freedom of speech became absolute, and any idea of "knowledgeable" or "respectable" was lost, the truth about the populous was revealed. It was then that many people began to realize that democracy is based on a lie - that every man is rational.
Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
until you've seen it for yourself... this group is the epitome of this rationality. I love these guys :)
[($)]
It's not nice to make fun of the curvature impaired. And let us not forget the concave earthers. Yes, apparently that's very much a thing, too, so I think I will go out tonight and watch the city lights of China in the sky....
We are in a simulation, so the earth must be flat like a CD or circuit board... lol
[($)]
Yes, obviously they are popping up all over the "plane".
The Earth is flat from the point of view of the 4th spatial dimension. Flat-Earthers are actually cosmic horrors possessing the weak-minded.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Enough is ENOUGH! I have had it with these motherfuckin' flattards on this motherfuckin' plane!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Ones who start with Youtube, probably have trouble reading text, so they prefer video as source of information.
Of course, most of flatearthers are those who haven't read their textbooks in school.
There is actually two kinds. Just like with religion. The ones that really, really, REALLY try hard to believe it and at least convinced themselves, and now want to convince someone else to strengthen their faith so they don't "fall". To them it's quite a bit of a religious thing, and more often than not you'll notice that they follow some other religion and think that their holy book kinda "demands" that the world is flat, so they have to believe in a flat earth or their holy book could maybe be wrong, and that MUST NOT be.
And then of course there's the snakeoil peddlers that noticed that the former group is a welcome source of income.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
you got to convince the flat earthers that the earth is really a cube, then gradually soften the corners of the cube so it is back to being a sphere
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
They're not eliminating it, they just don't promote it anymore. I.e. you won't get it in your "recommended" list anymore.
Doesn't keep flattards from crying CENSORSHIP, of course.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
These people would have latched onto some other pseudo scientific belief if it wasn't "flat earthism" if youtube didn't exist. Youtube didn't make these people illogical, it just gave them something to latch onto.
All over the disc, that is. I wonder if their compasses have directions named H (Hubwards), T (Turnwise), R (Rimwards) and W (widdershins) as well.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
The media is complicit in so many narratives they can't keep them straight. Or, they just assume their readers will take them at their word and never fact check them.
If YouTube creates more flat earthers (as opposed to simply attracting existing ones), then can't the same be said for radical Islam? Which means we SHOULD be taking it far more seriously than they want us to currently?
...the Vril will take care of those gullible flat-earthers when they arise from their subterranean lair.
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
The problem is that ignorant people vote.
why is that in this era that we are living in, people can't believe in what they want?
For flat earthers, I don't mind if they believe what they believe, as long as they aren't put in charge of map-making, arranging routes for cargo ships, or setting orbits for satellites.
There are other varieties of "ignint" [tm Zappa] that are actively dangerous; vaxxers, for example (I can't see their problem, really - the Vax 11-780 was a cool machine for its time).
Nice.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
If you have not seen the conferences, it is because they pop up on the other side of the globe with respect to where you live.
YouTube is not to blame for people believing that the world is flat. There are many posts that argue both sides, so if a person watched and listened to both sides of the argument, then they could formulate their own opinion. The problem is that people tend to sway to things they already believe in, and support their ideology, so they are typically getting only one side of the argument; thus, it reinforces what they already want to believe. YouTube is to blame for this, like a spoon is to blame for making me fat.
YouTube To Blame For Rise in Flat Earth Believers, Says Study
While Landrum didn't explicitly blame YouTube for the rise in flat Earth believers
When your headline is so inaccurate that it is contradicted right in the summary...
Better known as 318230.
Seriously, the tin foil hat wearers use to read books on the subjects they believed in. Or subscribed to magazines that was geared to those type of tin foil theories. YouTube may have increased the number of idiots, but they were always around. And they always had material they could read on the subject. YouTube is not the catch all for the ill's of the world. Those ill's were always here, and just fed and nurtured in different ways.
Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
Several articles now have talked about how youtube is feeding various undesirable ideas. I suspect this will be followed by calls for censorship.
These are people who believe NASA guards the ice wall. The second Google identifies and 'educates' these misguided people, it'll only fuel their us vs. them mentality.
Are there Slashdot readers that believe that the Earth is flat? Or what demographic are we speaking of: Luddites that only read bibles and watch youtube on their Walmart PC?
Simply because Google/YouTube returns something in a search doesn't mean it's responsible for the content in the search.
And if some potato heads choose to play "pretend" that the world is a dinner plate, that's fine.
We are NOT the friggin' Thought Police.
We simply correct for it elsewhere (such as if said potato heads gain some form of temporal authority).
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
>flat Earth conventions have begun popping up all over the globe.
Now that's just darn ironic... :D
The more powerful social media will try to censor any topic, the more people get interested to see why its getting banned, deranked, reported and removed.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Is it? I may be Canadian, but I'll still celebrate anyway. Today instead of my usual grape-flavoured vitamin C, I'll take an orange-flavoured vitamin C.
#DeleteFacebook
The Earth is not flat from the point of view of the 4th spatial dimension. It's still a mostly-sphere shape, without a 4th spatial dimension.
You live in three spatial dimensions. Do you call two-dimensional squares "flat, one-dimensional lines"?
#DeleteFacebook
I'm the last person to argue that the earth is flat since all evidence is to the contrary but I also think that there are concerns over free speech and that "she does believe that Google could be doing more to stop the spread of scientifically incorrect ideas" she thinks google should do something to suppress idea's or beliefs and that in and of itself should be cause for concern. There are a lot of conflicts between what some people believe and what science says, the anti-vax movement is such a instance with plenty of scientific study's saying vaccinations don't cause autism but there also appears to be plenty of anecdotal evidence saying the opposite. I find it very dangerous to even consider giving a company like google the power to suppress idea's or to try and silence people who have a opinion that's not supported by science since aside from free speech there are also censorship concerns.
I don't trust any of the fact given that I can't proved myself.
But you can easily prove yourself that the Earth is round, using nothing more than common household items.
serious flat earthers are there? I doubt it is statistically significant. Lump 'em with the majick-underwear-wearing Mormons, Satanists, and other eccentrics. Not a big deal.
Do you call two-dimensional squares "flat, one-dimensional lines"?
That depends. Do they lack tits and any hint of personality?
One question that I've never gotten a good answer to and simply don't understand: WHAT MEANS TO AN END?
Meaning -- a true flat earther believes that ALL the governments of the world along with scientists, media, etc ... and ALL trying to make us believe the world is round.
Ok ... what means to an end? WHY would they do this? HOW do they benefit from hiding the FLAT truth to you?
Makes so sense. Oh, and the world is round. Ish.
people can't believe in what they want?
People are free to believe anything they want until their belief starts having an impact on others. Frankly we should form lists of people for the sake of the species. You believe the earth is flat? You're on the list. You're on the list? You don't get to vote or have your opinion heard on anything that has an impact on the life of someone else.
why is that in this era that we are living in, people can't believe in what they want?
https://xkcd.com/154/
I know it goes against popular opinion, but you're supposed to blame the idiot believers.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
A critical thinker has to be able to do both: list the pro- and the counter-arguments and weigh them against each other.
That's all fine and dandy. But nothing in your post actually defines critical thinking. The keyword here is critical. Which is not about making up lists of arguments and explanations - anybody can do that. Its about judging the quality of those arguments. Which for most people means evaluating the source of the argument, the qualifications and trustworthiness of the people making the arguments as well as things like logical consistency (of both the argument and the people making the argument). The fact is, truth is NOT self-evident and anyone who tells you that probably doesn't want you to critically evaluate them.
99% of the time we are not experts in the topics being debated, so we are left with critical evaluations of arguments based on external factors. Understanding how and why we evaluate those factors is central to critical thinking.
Media literacy, in particular, is a key component of critical thinking in the internet era. The reason youtube is causing a rise in people believing in conspiracy theories like a flat-earth is because youtube is designed to maximize "engagement" and conspiracy theories are like crack for the unsophisticated - especially those who feel dis-empowered in their lives (and who doesn't feel that way at least some times?) So youtube's algorithms reward ($$$) people who make conspiracy theory videos, which induces the creation of even more conspiracy theory videos.
In other words, the people making videos for youtube have strong incentives to be manipulative and completely dishonest because that's what youtube's algorithm rewards. The people consuming those videos aren't thinking about how those rewards degrade the trustworthiness of the video makers. Fundamentally its all a grift. A billion dollar grift. Its also the same business model as talk radio which has been lucrative AF for grifters too.
In other news, "Language is responsible for 100% of lie telling".
Do they take Planes across the Plane to attend the conference held on the Plains?
I've always been impressed that they believe the flat-earth exists in 3-D. Airplanes travel on this 2-D surface and that water-droplets form balls - but that earth itself is not a ball. When they look at other Planets -- are they all Flat too?
Sorry I'm a bit ignorant on their belief system. Are the Sun, Moon, Jupiter (and moons) all Discs as well? If not -- how come earth is the odd-ball? (get it... odd ball...)
Yes. I've met them irl, they are serious. Sure there are plenty of people who do it for the lulz and really aren't clueless, but there are still hundreds of millions of people in the world who have an education that goes so further than about the fifth grade, and when *they* hear someone giving authoritative proofs about something, like the flat earthers, they genuinely believe them and it starts to become an uphill battle to undo this.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
To use the same methodology on TV. I bet you'll find TV lead to all kinds of wacky things, like the Iraq war.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
I'm getting tired of how idiotic our species can be.
Round up all the 'flat Earthers' into a secure facility. Screen them for the ones that are 'claiming' to believe it for purely entertainment or trolling purposes, give them a stern warning to discontinue that activity and release them. The 'true believers' stay and are treated for their delusion(s) (no doubt they have actual treatable mental/emotional illnesses); release the ones that respond to treatment, lock away the 'incorrigibles' who are too ill to grasp actual truth and actual reality.
Maybe we do the same with anti-vaxxers.
I'm only about 51% serious about the above. But I think hard about it.
Youtube pushes these face-science clickbait videos on to viewers.
Watch videos of real science or space exploration like Saturn V launches, Space Shuttle launches, videos of the Cassini, Voyager, Curiosity missions, Hubble or any astronomical topic and the "suggested video" panel is filled with flat earth, hollow earth, donut earth, Apollo was faked, face on mars cover-up, Elvis was the first reptilian alien videos with tens of millions of views.
Seriously, it's 2019 and the internet is making people more stupid or at least more ignorant today than people were a century ago. People are losing their ability use common-sense, objective reasoning, and critical thinking.
Take me to the edge.
There's a song in there somewhere, and I mean a good one; not the one from Magnum.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
This is not just a "you tube" problem, we've entered a period of anti-intellectual tribalism. It's not just "flat eathers", we have an increase in "climate change deniers", Washington State declared a measles emergency - from anti-vaxers.. We have FauxNoise, Breitbart and Alex Jones constantly spouting "conspiracy" and "deep state" nonsense. Scientists are vilified and personally attacked - . Many can no longer differentiate what they like or what the tribe mentality is vs VS fact and truth.
To sidetrack, I like your example.
To use a Christian example.
(rhetorically)
A preacher/evangelist preaching "prosperity theology". Telling listeners or congregation if they "sow a seed" (faith), and give him money, the more money given then "more seeds sown". And that for every seed sown it will grow and blossom multiplying into riches that God will reward them with a 100 fold return.
So morally what's the difference between the evangelist that knows it's completely bullshit or the small town preacher that truly believes it.
When their followers still believe either and think giving all their money to the preacher/ evangelist, some giving their rent money believing with immense faith that God will make them rich. :-P
It's because religion is on the decline and they're seeking alternate communities that accept members without preconditions.
As a nerd I've engaged in and witnessed this behavior many a time. Nerds and weirdos have a hard time making friends and keeping them. Folks don't think much about what it really means to have "poor social skills". It means you constantly blurt out the wrong thing and make folks around you uncomfortable.
So you need a community that's not likely to kick you to the curb. The easiest way to find that is to look for a community under attack from outside. New members are an asset not to be discarded. The gun community does this too. Pipe clubs too.
There's also a desire to have something bigger than yourself to believe in. Not out of fear, but out of wonder. Folks like to think the world has mysteries that only they and their friends solved. That's a big part of religion, and as Church attendance declines in the wake of scandals folks are turning to new age crap like Goop and conspiracy theories to scratch that itch.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The problem is a growing psychological behavior where people tend to select the option that fits their brain decision patterns. I'm not a neuroscientist, so I don't have the correct term for this. But it's the same mentality that compels people (in the US, statistically older, less educated) to agree with a certain anti-scientific answer. Basically it's the behavior that causes people to reject published science for peer-shared hoaxes and, dare I use the horrid term, "fake news".
All youtube does is deliver video content (ignoring their censorship responsibilities or actions). Point is, trolls or people will ill intent or just simply morons publish videos of disinformation, and unfortunately simple-minded people latch on to those ideas - especially if they think their enemies (elitist educated (liberals)) believe in the opposing ideas).
.sigs are for post^Hers.
Nice VAX 11/780 reference there. Indeed a great machine back in the day, first computer I was ever paid to manage.
The problem is those that disbelieve anything that doesn’t match their world view. In the case of flat Earthers, it is ridiculously easy to verify that Earth is round in a number of ways. The denial becomes increasingly complicated involving complex conspiracies. Joe Rogan of all people quipped that he was accused a shill for being against Flat Earth conspiracies. Paraphrasing him: “As if there’s a lot of round Earth money out there to collect.”
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
You're asserting what they're trying to do, again out of your own ignorance
Aren't you just asserting what they are trying to do without any proof of your own?....
Flat earthers bleating on about their conspiracy, whether troll or idiot, are still trying to convert and at the very least firm up the faith
Incorrect, the two kind of people have goals that are diametrically opposed.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Isaac Asimov wrote an essay called "The Relativity of Wrong". (One of several links thereto.)
One thing Asimov says is, "... when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."
He then goes on to note that the Earth actually is flat, to a reasonable approximation, over short distances. He also notes several observations explained by the assumption that the Earth is (nearly) spherical but that are not explained by a flat Earth.
Are there really people who believe the International Space Station is all just faked? For what purpose? Not to mention other planets, Kepler's laws, Newton's laws, and GPS.
All of the videos are flat
Have you fscked your local propeller head today?
Do you call two-dimensional squares "flat, one-dimensional lines"?
I call them flat, two-dimensional squares.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Google's algorithms attempt to optimize "engagement", which is quite different from truth. The things we find engaging are those which trigger the ancient reptilian parts of our brains into anger, fight-or-flight and above all turn off the pre-frontal cortex responsible for executive function and reasoning. Google's entire existence was based on being better at curating search results than Hotbot, Altavista, or Yahoo. It will continue to curate. The question becomes "How does one curate results?" is much like "What menu items should our cafeteria offer?". If Google were a cafeteria, they would offer nothing but junk food and liquor as choices, whine about nutrition -- as this would be the most profitable course. You throw "AI" or "Machine Learning" into optimization these problems and they'll find the same unhealthy optimizations as a human would while absolving the engineers of blame because "a computer did it".
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Sure, blame Google and Youtube. It's like blaming a library for ignorance.
I have been saying for a while, FEers are 1 of 2 things. Either a troll, or someone with mental issues, there is no 3rd option.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
Actually dissecting which parts of mainstream knowledge is true (for a workable version of true) and which are not, is tedious work, and no single person will manage it during their lifetime completely.
Both people modded it down as a joke/insightful knowledge or what?
https://pasteboard.co/I1ThjHt....
I doubt everyone gets that lots of flat earthers are just joking. I'm also pretty sure not everyone take it for granted that there's something done with "science" done by women. I kinda appreciate the joke in moderating it redundant but I don't feel the comment is.
Socialism can most certainly work, as long as no one acts like a greedy, self-centered, free-loading asshole. In other words, it can never work for humanity.
Horsey. The word you were looking for was "horsey".
I think the Horsey was for the strippers..
Oh gar, I'm going to hell..........
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Are the Sun, Moon, Jupiter (and moons) all Discs as well?
Oh come on.
Everybody knows that they are just pictures on the Celestial Sphere.