Twitter Takes Down 7,000 Accounts Linked To QAnon (cnn.com) 277
Twitter has removed thousands of accounts linked to QAnon, a group known for spreading conspiracy theories and disinformation online. From a report: "We've been clear that we will take strong enforcement action on behavior that has the potential to lead to offline harm," Twitter's safety team said late Tuesday in a tweet. "In line with this approach, this week we are taking further action on so-called 'QAnon' activity across the service." More than 7,000 accounts have been removed in the last several weeks, according to Twitter. It also expects that additional actions it is taking to limit the reach of QAnon activity on its platform could affect 150,000 accounts worldwide. QAnon began as a single conspiracy theory. But its followers now act more like a virtual cult, largely adoring and believing whatever disinformation the conspiracy community spins up. Its main conspiracy theories claim dozens of politicians and A-list celebrities work in tandem with governments around the globe to engage in child sex abuse. Followers also believe there is a "deep state" effort to annihilate President Donald Trump.
quick everyone... (Score:3)
...go find out what QAnon is.
Re:quick everyone... (Score:5, Informative)
...go find out what QAnon is.
I'll save you a Google search. [theatlantic.com]
Re:quick everyone... (Score:5, Funny)
I didn't realize The Atlantic had the power to destroy your computer, Google and all internet access.
Re:quick everyone... (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't forget, for conspiracy theorists, "do your own research" means watching even more conspiracy theory videos.
Re:quick everyone... (Score:4, Insightful)
That echo chamber is a loud one.
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Re:quick everyone... (Score:5, Informative)
...go find out what QAnon is.
It's a conspiracy theory group that started with Pizzagate and 4chan, has now been heavily commercialized with merchandise, and counts among its supporters high profile people like Michael Flynn and his son, several GOP representatives running for election this year, and many police such as the head of the NYPD police union who recently gave an interview with Fox News with a QAnon mug clearly placed behind him. QAnon primarily deals with the so called deep state and Trump's fight against it and is notorious for offering "predictions" that have never come true and yet seems to just add more and more followers.
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There was a study a while back that found most QAnon "secret messages" were consistent with someone mashing a QWERTY keyboard.
Re:quick everyone... (Score:5, Insightful)
So called deep state? You need to wake up.
Federal employees following their constitutional oaths and duties does not a "deep state" make.
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Federal employees following their constitutional oaths and duties
There's a lot of leeway in how one carries out their duties. As with large corporations, the operations of big government is less affected by policy dictates of the executives than daily orders from middle management.
Re: quick everyone... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's true but that also isn't what the deep state is.
The "deep state" is anyone who hasn't sworn fealty to Trump and is actively working to suppress his administration through such actions as doing their jobs, following ethics rules, speaking favorably about the Obama administration (see the ouster of the London deputy chief of mission by Woody Johnson who was appointed Ambassador by Trump), and upholding the constitution.
Re: quick everyone... (Score:5, Informative)
If we agree with your definition, then it would be a serious problem to look into. You seem to forget - the president is the boss of the executive branch. I know it sucks and I have many friends who work in the government, and they always complain whenever an election happens and a new minister/governor/etc is voted in, because they always change direction. Even if you don't like it, Trump won a valid election and it's his job and right to set how things go, and if a public service employee doesn't follow that direction, it's insubordination. If they try and subvert it secretly, you can legitimately call that even worse words.
He can set policy, yes. But he cannot force federal employees to break regulations, ethical guidelines, or constitutional restrictions or mandates, even if the new policy would require them to do so. So, when Federal employees follow all those rules, they get called the deep state.
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If James Garfield hadn't been shot, perhaps the United States would still have a spoils system. Just imagine, the advertisers at world net daily could be in charge of the COVID-19 vaccine.
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How about lying on FISA warrants?
You have evidence that there is a cabal of people spanning the entire federal government lying in FISA warrants? Because the deep state conspiracy implies/alleges a massive conspiracy, not one or 2 people acting unethically.
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I'll save everyone the trouble. It's the latest name which agent provocateurs in Russia are using to sweep up useful idiots in the West to do their bidding for them to try and damage whatever Western country they reside in.
Movements like the alt-right, anti-vaxxers, qanon, are just the same old bullshit. A tiny irrelevant minority of idiots riled up by propaganda tactics as old as propaganda itself and then their voices amplified by Russian security services until the Western media hear about it and turn it
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The only question I have is when our own media will stop being part of the process by supporting that amplification.
As long as it keeps bringing in the clicks and money, never.
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Yeah, Milo got appearances canceled by figments of the alt-right's imagination.
No, he was cancelled (by CPAC and Breitbart) because of comments that on the surface supported relationships between adults and pre-teen children.
Oh, and on the topic of Milo, don't forget about his Privilege Grant for white men to supposedly counteract grants to women and minorities that he claimed raised $100k and received pledges of $250k more but, 6 months later, saw over $250k go missing. But no, of course he didn't spend the money on himself or anything.
Re:quick everyone... (Score:4, Funny)
"...go find out what QAnon is."
Are you crazy? Do you want us to land on the same watch-lists that you are?
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Not me. If I try to find out what every group of morons the planet has to offer is, I would not have time for anything else.
Outcomes (Score:5, Insightful)
Just let people freely discuss it and point to all of the absurd shit and inane predictions that failed to manifest and maybe people will start to come to their senses.
That's not the point (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: That's not the point (Score:2)
If the point is to make Twitter not be a cesspool, the only hope is shutting it down and destroying all backups.
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Sorry, no. This is working to stop idiots from screaming 'FIRE' in a crowded theatre.
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"Actually it's more like the usher walking up And down the aisles splashing gasoline around then going for a smoke."
Since the moviegoers can't smoke there, the only one that's going up in flames is the usher.
Re:Outcomes (Score:5, Insightful)
If you think banning accounts that deal with crazy conspiracy theories are going to get people to stop believing them you're even more insane than they are. All this will do is convince people that there must be some truth to it and make them cling on even more.
I tend to agree with you, but I'm also concerned about the contagion of these claims. They're like a viral load - people who aren't yet infected may encounter a small amount of the 'information' and either shrug it off or catch a mild case of irrational paranoia. Some people who get dosed with a lot of it stand a chance of getting onside and becoming one of the full-on zombies. As you point out, banning accounts is a double-edged sword - but so is not banning them.
Just let people freely discuss it and point to all of the absurd shit and inane predictions that failed to manifest and maybe people will start to come to their senses.
I have approximately zero confidence that will happen - can you point to something in your own experience that might change my mind? I could use some optimism right now, but I'm having a hard time finding rational justifications for it.
This. (Score:5, Interesting)
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The other problem is the term conspiracy theory used to be reserved for things almost unbelievable and a reasonable person would assume it’s not true in the first place. The prevailing (left-leaning) media of the day though
Re:Outcomes (Score:5, Interesting)
I tend to agree with you, but I'm also concerned about the contagion of these claims. They're like a viral load - people who aren't yet infected may encounter a small amount of the 'information' and either shrug it off or catch a mild case of irrational paranoia. Some people who get dosed with a lot of it stand a chance of getting onside and becoming one of the full-on zombies. As you point out, banning accounts is a double-edged sword - but so is not banning them.
Pretend we're in a world where Twitter has decided to ban accounts that are raising concerns about global climate change. Today it seems incredibly unlikely, but if Twitter had existed decades ago, it could have been possible. Not only is it a double-edged sword, but it's one that can be wielded against truth equally as well as it can against nonsense. Just as I agree with the proposition that it's better for ten guilty men to be set free than for one innocent to be falsely imprisoned, I also believe it's better to let inane conspiracy theories exist rather than for a single truth to be suppressed mistakenly.
I have approximately zero confidence that will happen - can you point to something in your own experience that might change my mind?
I can't speak for your own life personally as I know nothing of it, but I'm sure you've had some recent experience where you changed your opinions about something. Perhaps you can step back and think in general about times in the past you've done this. Do you feel it was the result of having access to information and to be able to look at multiple points of view or some other cause.
One specific example I like to point to is that of Daryl Davis [theguardian.com] who has probably done more to change the minds of people who presumably have some strongly held beliefs than anyone else I can think of. I'm sure there are plenty of people whose minds he didn't change, or didn't change immediately, but I'm willing to bet that if he'd just screamed to ban or remove these people that he'd have changed exactly no minds. If outright banning were effective, we shouldn't see neo-nazis in Germany where their freedom of expression is far more limited, and yet they still exist. Just because something is out of site doesn't mean it's gone. [dw.com]
Perhaps another way of thinking about it is by likening it to your immune system. We could probably do a good job of keeping you isolated from any infection by putting you in a bubble of sorts. But that only works to the extent that you can keep up the barrier forever, and if it should be breached even a minor infection could be far more dangerous for you than a typical person because your immune system has never really developed. There's even some research into the worry about exposing children to potential allergens ultimately leading to an allergy [nih.gov] because the body never became accustomed. The mind is similar in the sense that if you remove all situations where people need to engage reasoning ability to be able to make a decision then they won't be able to do it when something slips through.
My own personal tendencies and ability to dismiss all of this and other such claptrap are largely because I have looked at a lot of conspiracy theories (largely out of curiosity) and my brain is better at spotting the bullshit. It's dealt with it before and can easily handle it, just like my immune system can trivially filter out of a lot pathogens.
Re:Outcomes (Score:4, Interesting)
Pretend we're in a world where Twitter has decided to ban accounts that are raising concerns about global climate change. Today it seems incredibly unlikely, but if Twitter had existed decades ago, it could have been possible. Not only is it a double-edged sword, but it's one that can be wielded against truth equally as well as it can against nonsense. Just as I agree with the proposition that it's better for ten guilty men to be set free than for one innocent to be falsely imprisoned, I also believe it's better to let inane conspiracy theories exist rather than for a single truth to be suppressed mistakenly.
You've made a good point, and I'm partially convinced. But for me there's a parallel between well-funded and focused disinformation campaigns on social media, and corporate misbehaviour and abuse. Just as I don't agree that corporations should enjoy the same status and rights before the law as individuals do, so I don't think that anonymous agenda-driven organizations posing as individuals should have the same speech freedoms as regular citizens. So i guess I'm saying that I support Joe Sixpack's right to say whatever he wants on whatever platform, but I don't support the right of shadowy behind-the-scenes organizations to manipulate the ideascape in that way. I don't know what the answer is to differentiating between the two though.
I have approximately zero confidence that will happen - can you point to something in your own experience that might change my mind?
I can't speak for your own life personally as I know nothing of it, but I'm sure you've had some recent experience where you changed your opinions about something. Perhaps you can step back and think in general about times in the past you've done this. Do you feel it was the result of having access to information and to be able to look at multiple points of view or some other cause.
Yes, that has happened a lot to me, and thanks for the reminder.
One specific example I like to point to is that of Daryl Davis [theguardian.com] who has probably done more to change the minds of people who presumably have some strongly held beliefs than anyone else I can think of. I'm sure there are plenty of people whose minds he didn't change, or didn't change immediately, but I'm willing to bet that if he'd just screamed to ban or remove these people that he'd have changed exactly no minds. If outright banning were effective, we shouldn't see neo-nazis in Germany where their freedom of expression is far more limited, and yet they still exist. Just because something is out of site doesn't mean it's gone. [dw.com]
Thanks for that reminder too - I'd forgotten about Daryl Davis until you mentioned it, and that story is cause for hope.
Perhaps another way of thinking about it is by likening it to your immune system. We could probably do a good job of keeping you isolated from any infection by putting you in a bubble of sorts. But that only works to the extent that you can keep up the barrier forever, and if it should be breached even a minor infection could be far more dangerous for you than a typical person because your immune system has never really developed. There's even some research into the worry about exposing children to potential allergens ultimately leading to an allergy [nih.gov] because the body never became accustomed. The mind is similar in the sense that if you remove all situations where people need to engage reasoning ability to be able to make a decision then they won't be able to do it when something slips through.
Do you also tend to think of these things in terms of immune systems
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Pretend we're in a world where Twitter has decided to ban accounts that are raising concerns about global climate change. Today it seems incredibly unlikely, but if Twitter had existed decades ago, it could have been possible. Not only is it a double-edged sword, but it's one that can be wielded against truth equally as well as it can against nonsense.
Then people would have boycotted twitter.
QAnon can boycott twitter too. But what I suspect is the case is that there are 1,000,000 bots and 200,000 real people. So the bots boycotting Twitter will have a small effect and very few real people would leave.
Re:Outcomes (Score:4, Insightful)
Funny how things which exist are reported on while conspiracy theories are laughed at and ignored because they don't exist.
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That's a cool movie you're watching there, what's it called?
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But they hurt my feelings and I’m not capable of putting my phone down!
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But they hurt my feelings and I’m not capable of putting my phone down!
Wait...Trump's posting on /.?!
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Some of these theories may actually be true... I mean as far as child abuse its pretty well accepted that that occurs regardless of any conspiracy theories. The problem is when specific people get accused without any grounds.
Re:Outcomes (Score:4, Insightful)
The issue though is it takes far, far, far more effort to disprove these theories than it takes to make them up. It becomes an impossible game of whack-a-mole.
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Yes, the people who think Trump is an obvious Russian plant and those who think there was no validity to the investigation at all are both wrong. People on both ends have twisted themselves into knots trying to justify their positions. The truth on that one is we won't get the actual bottom of it until years from now one way or another.
Re:Outcomes (Score:4, Interesting)
"If you think banning accounts that deal with crazy conspiracy theories are going to get people to stop believing them you're even more insane than they are."
Do you base this on any actual research? Deplatforming is effective at fighting extremist/conspiracy theorist views; allowing insane ideas to be debated makes people think there is validity in them.
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Not giving morons a platform is hardly the same as book burning. Apples and spaceships.
Re:Outcomes (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: "Just let people freely discuss it and point to all of the absurd shit and inane predictions that failed to manifest and maybe people will start to come to their senses."
The evidence very solidly shows that this doesn't work.
MIT study on Twitter in 2018 -- "We found that falsehood diffuses significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth, in all categories of information, and in many cases by an order of magnitude".
http://news.mit.edu/2018/study-twitter-false-news-travels-faster-true-stories-0308 [mit.edu]
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The truth also has the disadvantage of often being banal and unappealing or ev
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Just let people freely discuss it and point to all of the absurd shit and inane predictions that failed to manifest and maybe people will start to come to their senses.
Do you have any evidence for this claim? My impression is that it's false -- that people tend not to come to their senses. But I don't have evidence either, which is why I'm caveating it.
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Just let people freely discuss it and point to all of the absurd shit and inane predictions that failed to manifest and maybe people will start to come to their senses.
Do you have any evidence for this claim? My impression is that it's false -- that people tend not to come to their senses. But I don't have evidence either, which is why I'm caveating it.
Some people realize that it's all BS and walk away. But when predictions don't come true the rest just say "they had to put out some fake ones for operational security" and keep on trucking.
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that people tend not to come to their senses
And yet it's these same people that you are expecting to elect our next leadership this fall. And if that's the case then you'll be better off admitting that this is all a battle of ideologies being fought at the Washington Post/Breitbart News or Twitter/4chan levels. Bow down and worship your actual leaders.
Re:Outcomes (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably not. The Flat Earth Crap society was almost dead when it had to rely upon mimeographed newsletters, but has made a resurgence with the internet, and a huge resurgence with social media and video. The easily availability of facts, figures, science, and information on the internet has not killed this idiotic belief at all, instead we have huge bubbles of alternative facts and information.
There is a highly gullible public that feels that watching a video is the same thing as getting the facts (or as conspiracy theorists say "doing your own research"), and they can't distinguish between what's credible and what's bullshit. What they do see are highly placed politicians who are not disagreeing with the conspiracy theory groups, and in some cases agreeing with them or naming them as reliable. We have a president who was the number one proponent of an absurd conspiracy theory for many years. So a gullible public that doesn't know how to find or determine what is true, and figures of authority who are pushing lies.
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And you're not a member of those highly gullible public. It is credible that black men are being hunted down by police? Is it credible that the US was formed to protect slavery? Is it credible that the MeToo cadre want to "believe all women", unless one accuses Joe Biden?
Face it. You don't mind Twitter goring QAnon, because you don't support their conspiracies; but, you'd be up in arms if they started goring your bull.
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Quite a lot of the formation of the US was indeed based around slavery. Not entirely, but it was one of the important issues for disassociating with Great Britain and a front and center topic during the creation of the constitution. "The Great Compromise" was greatly influenced by the issue of slavery, as the counting of slaves as 3/5s of a person for apportionment was a part of that compromise as put into the constitution, and the addition of the senate gave the south a balance of power with the north.
Re:Outcomes (Score:4, Insightful)
If you think banning accounts that deal with crazy conspiracy theories are going to get people to stop believing them you're even more insane than they are.
People believe what they read. By limiting the spread of the message you limit the number of people who fall prey to misinformation. No those people won't be any smarter, but they may as a result accidentally not believe some bullshit they no longer stumble across on the internet.
Re:Outcomes (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the hallmarks of conspiracy theorists is that they always believe that those in authority are trying to suppress their claims. The wide-scale censorship that we are now seeing really validates that belief.
Stupid people are going to stupid, no matter what. Validating the beliefs of stupid people makes no difference in the end, they can't be helped anyway.
The hope is removing stupidity will help other people before they become stupid. I guess that remains to be seen.
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What aardvarkjoe said is true, but conversely one of the hallmarks of modern authoritarianism is discrediting any criticism of them as being a conspiracy theory.
I don't know anything about this qanon thing or what it is they believe, but you can't dismiss people for distrusting the government and the meda in our society as being stupid. They're just learning from past experiences. Maybe their theories are completely whackadoo insane, but they're not stupid for refusing to believe the authorities after decad
Re:Outcomes (Score:5, Informative)
What aardvarkjoe said is true, but conversely one of the hallmarks of modern authoritarianism is discrediting any criticism of them as being a conspiracy theory.
I don't know anything about this qanon thing or what it is they believe, but you can't dismiss people for distrusting the government and the meda in our society as being stupid. They're just learning from past experiences. Maybe their theories are completely whackadoo insane, but they're not stupid for refusing to believe the authorities after decades of being lied to about anything and everything under the sun.
QAnon followers thought JFK Jr is still alive and living in Pittsburgh under the name Vincent Fusca (and might be Q himself) and was going to show himself at Trump's 2019 July 4th celebration and be Trump's 2020 running mate. You can even still buy tshirts about it for the reasonable price of $19.99 plus free shipping on Amazon! (the real reason so many people, especially high profile people, are getting into it right now: to make a quick $)
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you can't dismiss people for distrusting the government and the meda in our society as being stupid.
Distrusting the government (no matter who is in power) is fair. The media is useful, but you have to know how to use it rather than letting it use you. Far too many people lack that skill, which is why we are having this discussion to begin with.
Re:Outcomes (Score:5, Insightful)
If you knew what QAnon was you would think they are stupid. It's so mind bogglingly dumb that no moderately intelligent person could take it seriously.
To believe it you have to be so completely divorced from reason and reality that there is probably no helping you.
Re:Outcomes (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know anything about this qanon thing or what it is they believe, but ...
"I don't know anything, but I have an opinion." That's not a promising start to making a point.
You can teach critical thinking (Score:5, Insightful)
The wealthy make sure their kids get a complete, well rounded education with lots and lots of reading and time spent analyzing complex texts. This isn't for the hell of it or for tradition. It's because this is how you pound critical thinking skills into the heads of stupid people.
Increase funding for schools, reduce class sizes so teachers can spend more time with the less bright kids. Do more special ed. Give everyone free Internet so they've got access to that vast store of information.
You'll have a lot fewer problems in society and your life in general.
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One of the hallmarks of conspiracy theorists is that they always believe that those in authority are trying to suppress their claims.
Well, you know, that is actually the literal truth. Of course, other things get suppressed as well in modern states, like, for example, illiteracy (you are forced to go to school and being illiterate really limits your possibilities in life), so that is hardly unique.
What they get completely wrong is the reasons why their outlandish claims get suppressed. On the other hand, organized religion comes with some exceptionally outlandish claims as well and there are even states that push an organized religion on
Excellent! (Score:4, Insightful)
Now they just need to do all the Nazi accounts next.
Re: Excellent! (Score:2)
Twitter sticks finger in dike (Score:2)
It's not a conspiracy theory... (Score:2, Insightful)
It's a laundry list of things they want to do when they're out of power.
There's one mode the modern right has been stuck on for decades now; Rovian projection of every cruel desire they have, to pretend that all the bad they want is just as bad in everyone else.
Most classically aggressive regimes do this in history. Everyone in the game of playing dirty says the reason they act so badly, is because they don't want the other side to act badly, and are just playing the game. Power mongers pretending everyo
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Everyone is guilty of something. That is just the human condition. And it is the reason why Ad Hominem is a fallacy: It is meaningless.
Ban anti-vaxxers (Score:5, Insightful)
The Anti-Vaxxers have had actual, negative consequences in the real world, unlike QAnon. Why not ban those fuckers? Is it because the deep state thinks they're harmless? Hahaha.
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The Anti-Vaxxers have had actual, negative consequences in the real world, unlike QAnon.
Changing how people would have voted otherwise isn't a real world consequence?
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That's what this is really about: Qanon might have convinced people to vote for the "wrong" candidate, so they had to be banned.
Another day, another politically motivated ban wave on social media. Expect more of this in the coming months.
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Changing how people would have voted otherwise isn't a real world consequence?
Twitter isn't a major forum for QAnon and its followers. Banning it may provide more political fodder for them by claiming persecution than the few votes lost.
Re:Ban anti-vaxxers (Score:5, Insightful)
If you haven't noticed the venn diagram of Q and anti-vax overlaps pretty hard. Qanon has become sort of the unifying theory of conspiracies. The flat-earthers, lizard people and clone thinkers all take part in it. It can be whatever people want it to be.
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The Anti-Vaxxers have had actual, negative consequences in the real world, unlike QAnon.
When you have police publicly displaying support for something that is clearly a conspiracy theory and politicians running on a platform that specifically represents that conspiracy theory, you're in negative consequences territory.
They do (Score:2)
Keep in mind that there's a threshold of reports & views where they don't bother. If an anti-vaxx post gets 2 views and 1 report then it's probably not worth caring about. Again, given the volume you have to pick your battles, and you can't just auto ban anyone reported or it gets abused.
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You want to ban stupid? How would you do that? Gas chambers? Because there really is no other way and that one is unacceptable for obvious reasons.
Trump (Score:2)
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There actually is a large coordinated affort to get rid of Trump. There is also a large effort to get rid of every other politician too. Their called elections and election campaigning.
This is *not* the same...or if it is, it's even worse.
As a garden variety disclaimer, I am *not* a Trump Supporter. I didn't vote for him in 2016, I'm not voting for him in 2020, and the single best thing he could do for this country before the election is to stop Tweeting.
That being said...if it were merely a matter of campaigning, banning Qanon is an incredibly oblique way of doing it. I mean, I submit that bans and algorithmic tweaking with the intent of swaying an election is *far* more insidious than j
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Trump is not the problem. The people that voted him into office are. And getting rid of them is basically impossible.
The marketplace of ideas (Score:5, Interesting)
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That isn't a problem with the marketplace of ideas. It's a problem with humanity in general. The marketplace of ideas is the tool we use sift through the muck to find those gems. Sure it's inefficient, but it's better at finding gems than anything else we've tried.
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I think it's a problem for all marketplaces where evaluation of the product isn't easy and quick. Compare to, say, the marketplace for chairs: You can evaluate a chair pretty quickly just by sitting on it. You might not be able to determine whether it's a great chair that'll last for a century or an okay chair that'll only last for a year, but you can at least tell whether it's a chair or a pile of bullshit.
The marketplace for ideas is more like the marketplace for baby formula. You can't tell before
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Maybe government regulations, maybe trusted sellers who have built a reputation of eliminating the bullshit from the ideas they sell or the melamine from the baby formula they sell. Either way, the marketplace has a problem that needs to be solved somehow.
Yes, we have plenty of these information aggregating institutions (various news agencies, universities and government orgs) but for a functional marketplace of ideas, you have to have both these trusted organizations and open forums that are not subject to such gatekeeping restrictions to act as a check against abuse of their power to influence.
Like always when new religions are formed (Score:2)
This seems legit (Score:2)
FBI uncovers al-qaeda plot... [theonion.com]
But I guess the real question is are we just doing it to ourselves, or are there those outside the US who are fucking with us?
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But I guess the real question is are we just doing it to ourselves, or are there those outside the US who are fucking with us?
Both
[facepalm] Censorship ALWAYS backfires (Score:2)
Human beings seem hard-wired to want what they've been told they cannot have. When you censor something, people respond a bit like cats; their curiosity ramps way up and many of them not only NEED to see it, but they often begin to play with it. Just about the worst thing one can do with conspiracy theories, of ANY sort including JFK, Moon Landings, Flat Earth, the Masons and Bilderbergs, etc is to ban them for the vary act of banning/censoring feeds directly into, AND VALIDATES the conspiracy. I cannot gra
News for nerds (Score:2)
Re:How Twitter work (Score:5, Insightful)
2. Why would you even want to wade into a cesspool like Twitter in the first place? FFS you may as well start hanging out on 4chan all the time.
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'Social media' wasn't an inherently bad idea in it's beginnings; I used to have a LiveJournal account myself, and for a very short time a Facebook account, when everyone jumped ship from LJ to Facebook. But I h
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I mean, if they're targeting accounts that might lead to offline harm, it seems Antifa and BLM should have been first up, but I'm sure they'll rectify that oversight shortly.
I'm struck that covid-19 is a bigger cop-killer than Antifa and BLM. Source: Officer Down page, says that since March there have been
* 59 officers killed by covid-19 contracted in the line of duty
* 0 officers killed by Antifa and BLM
* 49 officers killed by all other reasons combined.
So just from the perspective of saving officer's lives, we should be more concerned about non-mask-wearers than about Antifa or BLM.
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59 officers killed by covid-19 contracted in the line of duty
How many of these were because of the protests and riots?
0 officers killed by Antifa and BLM
A quick search found one dead in this incident: https://www.foxnews.com/us/fed... [foxnews.com]
A retired officer who got killed: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/d... [cbsnews.com]
And plenty of attempts:
https://nypost.com/2020/06/15/... [nypost.com]
https://www.foxnews.com/us/4-s... [foxnews.com]
https://www.cincinnati.com/sto... [cincinnati.com]
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news... [msn.com]
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Mainstream media was quick to label Pizzagate (despite evidence), Epstein (despite evidence), and now QAnon (despite numerous little coincidences that all seem to add up) as disinformation, yet it peddles the following disinformation with seeming impunity:
- Russiagate - Trump's racism - Antifa are 'peaceful protestors' - looters are 'peaceful protestors' - deplatforming conservatives or Trump supporters is stopping 'hate speech'
IMO, this Slashdot article is junk and Slashdot is compromised too.
Here's what will happen: - Trump will win again - Liberals and Democrats will complain, obstruct, get nothing done, and generally not matter - Conservatives will be happier than ever - The 'news' will be reformed into news
You have an interesting perspective on the world.
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See that's the thing, there are actual problems with child and sec trafficking in the world and in this country. I don't think anyone would deny that politicians, celebrities and the wealthy class in this country are involved. QAnon has taken that idea and run it through the right-wing filter and they refuse to acknowledge this is a class problem and not strictly a "Democrat" problem. They shut their ears to the idea that maybe Trump and Republicans are just as guilty as some Democrats are. If they spen
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> But its followers now act more like a virtual cult, largely adoring and believing whatever disinformation the conspiracy community spins up. Its main conspiracy theories claim dozens of politicians and A-list celebrities work in tandem with governments around the globe to engage in child sex abuse.
I'm not a QAnon guy, but this "conspiracy theory" is pretty darn well-established now. Jeffery Epstein was connected to dozens of politicians and A-list celebrities, to include Trump, the Clintons, and Kevin Spacey. He trafficked child sex slaves, including a 16-year-old girl to Prince Andrew. Then he is alleged to have committed suicide in a maximum security prison because, for some reason, the guards who were supposed to check on him fell asleep, coincidentally at the same time Epstein happened to choose to kill himself.
Except QAnon has gone WAY beyond the Pizzagate/Clinton and Epstein theories. You have the Seth Rich conspiracy theory, that Sessions was secretly working with Trump and that their tension was a front, that enemies of Trump would be rounded up and detained at Gitmo, that charges against Mike Flynn would be dropped, that JFK Jr faked his death and is Q, etc. You would be correct to note that none of these predictions came true. At this point it's evolved into a bunch of idiots, people along for the fun, so
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I couldn't care less about what QAnon has said about Michael Flynn. I care about the part where the article frames the statement that "dozens of politicians and A-list celebrities [working] in tandem with governments around the globe to engage in child sex abuse" as the main conspiracy theory of a group of disinformation-spreading cultists. I am interested in that specific remark, which seems to try to paint that assertion as false.
Yet, it is only a conspiracy theory insofar as conspiracy theories can be hi
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If that was true all these people should be forever extolling the praises of Julie K. Brown of the Miami Herald, whose long work and articles were pretty solely responsible for bring the whole Epstein situation and cover-up back into the light. Instead she has been maligned by them at almost every turn along with all the other journalists who helped with these stories. They don't care for the actual truth of the matter, only their version of it.
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> They don't care for the actual truth of the matter, only their version of it.
My experience has been that this is everyone, but that's beside the point. CNN said: "Its main conspiracy theories claim dozens of politicians and A-list celebrities work in tandem with governments around the globe to engage in child sex abuse." Now, perhaps that's not even what QAnon believes, I don't know. I'm mildly more interested in QAnon now just due to the Streissand effect, but I'm much more interested in the fact that
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The CNN version is just that, a CNN version. If you are taking CNN as your source of info on this then you are getting the most bland, washed out version of the story. CNN is leaving out many of the more conspiracy leveled details such as the main fact that these people follow this all on the word of an anonymous poster who started on 4Chan, moved to 8chan and then moved to 8kun, have never verified if this person is in fact a singular person or even the same person (they have never used PGP which to me
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I don't think you're following my argument. The point is not that CNN is my "source of info." The point is that CNN, a source of info for millions of others and quoted verbatim here in the Slashdot summary, framed something which is a very legitimate claim as being the central conspiracy theory of a fringe group, when as you and others have pointed out, there are many other examples of verifiably false things they could have listed instead.
Also, Twitter doesn't need to be involved in child sex trafficking t
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"Democracy" is what got us into this mess in the first place.
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You should probably drop the homophobic slur from your argument if you want anybody at all to take you seriously instead of just discounting you as an intellectual midget spewing hate.