punyweakling

Tag: youtube

  • A Researcher Just Found A 9,000-Video Network Of YouTube Conspiracy Videos

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    Buzzfeed:

    Albright said the results suggest that the conspiracy genre is embedded so deeply into YouTube’s video culture that it could be nearly impossible to eradicate.

    “It’s already tipped in favor of the conspiracists, I think,” Albright told BuzzFeed News. “There are a handful of debunking videos in the data. They can’t make up for the thousands of videos with false claims and rumors.”

    Albright also suggested that the proliferation of these videos makes it more attractive for others to create this content.

    To anyone who dabbles in occasional conspiracy-theory deep dives on YouTube, this rings true. There is an absolute avalanche of dipshit conspiracies on YouTube, and most people lack the mental dexterity to tell that a video is playing loose with the facts – especially if it meshes nicely with their existing worldview.

    Less common is the conspiracy parody. The Outline absolutely nailed it with this gem:

    I’ve often thought a conspiracy channel would be an easy way to make some quick beer money, but it seems I’m much too late to the game.

    Or am I?

    Yes, I am.

  • Where the ‘Crisis Actor’ Conspiracy Theory Comes From

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    Jason Koebler, Motherboard:

    The term ‘crisis actor’ has been in the news a lot lately, because conspiracy theorists have accused survivors of the Douglas High School mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, of being actors—people paid to pretend they witnessed a horrible tragedy that actually never happened and was instead staged by the government in order to garner the political will necessary to ban guns.

    To be clear, there is no evidence this is actually the case. Conspiracy theorists have questioned the legitimacy of people who lived through a horrific shooting—watched their friends and classmates slaughtered—in an attempt to harass and silence their political activism.

    It wasn’t until relatively recently that conspiracy theorists were audacious enough to suggest that terrorist attacks and mass shootings actually didn’t happen at all.

    A good backgrounder on the origins of the horseshit “Crisis Actor” conspiracies.

    Semi-regular reminder that false-flaggers are scum.