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Due to the Internet, conspiracy theories are on the rise and playing an increasingly significant role in global politics. Now new research from The Australian National University (ANU) has analysed digital data to reveal exactly who is propagating them and why.
Lead researcher Dr Colin Klein of the ANU School of Philosophy said that conspiracies such as Pizzagate (which falsely claimed high-ranking Democratic Party officials were running a child-sex ring out of a pizza shop) and the anti-vaccination movement are becoming a bigger issue.
Dr Klein and his team used a huge, publicly available dataset of every comment made on the conspiracy section of the world's largest discussion website Reddit from 2007 to mid-2015 to work out exactly who was taking part in spreading these conspiracies and why. He was surprised by the results.
The analysis showed that most conspiracies built traction when a range of different people and groups could connect it to their own preconceived beliefs or agendas.
http://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/anu-study-reveals-who-is-spreading-online-conspiracies
[Also Covered By]: Phys.org
[Paper]: Topic Modeling Reveals Distinct Interests within an Online Conspiracy Forum
Does Reddit seem like a good choice for this study?
(Score: 5, Funny) by Hartree on Tuesday April 03 2018, @05:46PM (7 children)
All the conspiracy theories are run out of a multibillion dollar datacenter at Area 51 co-funded by George Soros and the Koch brothers!
(Score: 1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 03 2018, @05:52PM (1 child)
You're forgetting that they are directed by the lizard people who have a pee-pee video of Soros doing it with an illegal alien in the basement of a pizza-place.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 03 2018, @06:00PM
The whole kiddie diddling thing is a cover story and distraction. The pizza place actually houses weather modification equipment. (Granted, the weather machines are based on lizard person technology that was reverse engineered at Area 51 after that horrific malfunction in 1947 that killed 3 good, hard-working lizard people.)
(Score: 2) by mendax on Tuesday April 03 2018, @06:56PM (4 children)
You forgot about the Jews and the Freemasons.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday April 03 2018, @07:41PM
Don't worry, J-Mo and/or VLM and/or Eth will show up any second now to accuse the Jews. And they'll mean it, too, because that's how nuts they are.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Tuesday April 03 2018, @07:51PM (2 children)
They're all fronts for The John Dillinger Died for You Society!
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Tuesday April 03 2018, @09:26PM (1 child)
Which is just another tool of the Invisible Hand Society.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Tuesday April 03 2018, @09:56PM
But that's a misdirection too. It's The Mothers of Invention all the way down. (The Turtles just faked the lawsuit so they could join up with Frank Z and get out of the spotlight).
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Snow on Tuesday April 03 2018, @07:01PM (8 children)
There are places on reddit where there are very coordinated efforts to manipulate votes, use sockpuppets to give the illusion of support of a particular idea, and the outright use of censorship to keep the narrative. It's really disturbing. I've been wanting to write up an article on the topic, but haven't yet.
My experience has been with the /r/bitcoin subreddit. The story is very, very long, but in short -- Since 2013, bitcoiners have been discussing how to properly scale bitcoin. Around that time, it was generally assumed that the block size would be raised, and that the 1MB limit was a temporary one. Around that time, a company called Blockstream was founded, and proceeded to buy up (hire) many of the bitcoin developers. As these developers got bought up, their opinion about raising the block size would mysteriously change to '1MB max'.
During this time, the users wanted change. We wanted bigger blocksizes, and a number of proposals were on the table: 2MB, 8MB, 32MB, etc. Eventually a competing client was created (BitcoinXT) that would allow 8MB blocks. Shortly after the announcement of BitcoinXT, Theymos, the administrator of /r/bitcoin, started removing threads and comments that voiced support for BitcoinXT. It was slow at first, then more, and more, and more people would get banned.
They also changed their custom CSS so that comments that were removed would be completely hidden (thus removing evidence of the censorship). Eventually, pretty much everyone that supported bigger blocks got banned. We formed our own subreddit -- /r/btc. Those that remained in /r/bitcoin were either small blockers, noobs, or brainwashed individuals. Most of the people that had been with bitcoin for years and helped build bitcoin were banned from the bitcoin sub.
Eventually the big blockers (/r/btc), who actually made the original bitcoin great, created their own fork. Thus, Bitcoin Cash was created.
There is strong evidence that /r/bitcoin employs teams of sockpupets and they work very, very hard to discredit Bitcoin Cash. These trolls are very, very coordinated, and the message changes every day, but they are always on point. There is little doubt in my mind that this is a professionally run trolling operation. Someone is very scared of Bitcoin Cash and is putting a lot of money and effort to persuade the public that:
-- Btrash is a scam.
-- Roger Ver is a criminal
-- Bcash is chinacoin.
-- etc
Their arguments are all personal attacks on influential people in the Bitcoin Cash community, and are mostly false. Bitcoin Cash is objectively better than Bitcoin, so they can't attack the technology, so they attack the people -- The very people who made Bitcoin great many years ago.
The original Bitcoin has been hijacked and it happened via reddit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 03 2018, @07:38PM (1 child)
Whats wrong with using both?
(Score: 2) by Snow on Tuesday April 03 2018, @08:21PM
Nothing wrong with that. I have some of both.
Personally, I feel that the direction that Bitcoin Core has taken is wrong. I signed up for bitcoin to take over the place as the world's top currency (from USD). Bitcoin Core's refusal to raise the blocksize limits access to the block. Only the rich can make a 'real' bitcoin transaction and have it included in a block. This pushes people to transact using 'Layer 2' solutions, like Lightning. If Lightning works, great, but no one should be FORCED to use it.
My vision bitcoin is open to anyone and everyone. Are you dirt poor? No problem, your transaction costs 1/10th of a cent (or is free). I don't have a problem with layer 2 solutions, but I do have a problem with forcing people onto layer 2 solutions. If the layer 2 is so damn great, people should flock to it on their own.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 03 2018, @09:41PM (2 children)
Posting this under an article about conspiracy theories might be counterproductive.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 03 2018, @11:41PM (1 child)
That is what they want you to think! But Snow has it backwards, it is not the Bitcoin community the causes the conspiracies, it is a conspiracy that causes Bitcoin.
(Score: 2) by Snow on Wednesday April 04 2018, @12:51AM
Woah... Dude... That is... like... deep.
It's conspiracies all the way down.
(Score: 0) by fakefuck39 on Wednesday April 04 2018, @05:39AM (2 children)
I hate to break it to you, nothing happens via reddit, nothing gets hijacked via reddit, nothing is on reddit that does anything or impacts anything. the people who fuck around with the bitcoin price have never even heard of reddit. you think the direction that bitcoin takes is influenced by reddit? I'm going to guess you're a part of the 99% who is not 14. same with douche dot, same with the ten people who use this site. it's a bunch of people 99% of whom are 14 or retards, talking about nothing, and doing nothing. In fact, the more crap you see people post on reddit, the more they're actually doing.
back to the topic of this article/study - more idiots doing meaningless things. it's like going to a republican convention and polling to predict who's going to win.
(Score: 2) by Snow on Wednesday April 04 2018, @02:44PM (1 child)
For the most part, I agree. Nothing happens on reddit. However, for bitcoin, reddit is (by far) the major meeting place to discuss bitcoin and ideas. All of the developers have reddit accounts and are active on reddit. It actually is where decisions are made. You should check it out. It's very interesting to watch it happen in front of your eyes:
https://reddit.com/r/btc [reddit.com]
(Score: 0) by fakefuck39 on Saturday April 07 2018, @03:24AM
I see. I'm going to guess you also think google is in charge of bitcoin because developers have a gmail account. day traders of oil futures also have reddit accounts, so reddit influences the oil prices. let me know when you actually invest in bitcoin, hundreds of thousands of dollars of USD that you buy it for (like me). Otherwise, sorry - your opinion doesn't count since you're not educated on or involved in the topic at hand. You're some idiot doing PC Support who reads a lot of random crap and states his useless opinion as fact. M'a douche to you dipshit.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 03 2018, @07:53PM (3 children)
Aren't the DNC and CNN a better start? Conspiracy wako's (sic) have been on the internet since BBS days and it was never a problem before. It only became a problem when the corporate news media lost any pretence of being objective and went full, propaganda mode retard. Now it's all that "fake news", those "loony conspiracies" and still no impeachment for Russian Collusion.
Indeed and it's a much more serious problem when it's the DNC and MSM are pushing an unproven conspiracy theory at societal level.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 03 2018, @08:09PM
And the CIA.
The CIA Democrats: Part one [wsws.org]
The CIA Democrats: Part two [wsws.org]
The CIA Democrats: Part three [wsws.org]
The CIA takeover of the Democratic Party [wsws.org]
But wswswswsws is just another one of those nutty conspiracy sites. I can tell because it doesn't appear on Google News.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 03 2018, @08:11PM (1 child)
Yeah. Who goes to r/conspiracy to spread conspiracy theories? That would be one place where everyone objectively believes it is a conspiracy theory.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Tuesday April 03 2018, @10:07PM
It'd be far better to go to the moon to spread conspiracy theories. Except, of course, we never went to the moon...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Gaaark on Tuesday April 03 2018, @11:10PM (5 children)
Wouldn't it be better to do a study on why the feck politicians are such scum?
This wouldn't be as believed if it wasn't believable.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 04 2018, @04:17AM (3 children)
The democrats of course want to claim that it is false. Since most media and all the "fact checker" web sites are hard-core leftist, of course they all will agree that the claim is false. Is it? Based on what evidence?
Granted, the burden of proof is on the accuser, but there is some really damning circumstantial evidence in Podesta's emails. He used pedophile jargon. He is unable/unwilling to explain why he rents specific numbers of slices of pizza by the hour. That is not how any ordinary person enjoys pizza. In the jargon, the number of slices is a child's age.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 04 2018, @05:15AM (2 children)
If you think most media is "hard-code leftist" you must be a full blown nazi yourself.
Also you're obviously a pedo too yourself, you just used the jargon...
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 04 2018, @09:34AM (1 child)
Why are all the pedos full blowing Nazis, too? And you mean there are people stupid enough to still credit the Ping-Pong-Ding-Dong Cosmo-Galactic Pizza thing? Of course, you would have to be at least that stupid to credit it in the first place. (Oh, and "credit" here is from the Latin, "credo", from where English gets "creed" and "credence", and has nothing to do with charge cards. Thought you might need that clarified, since, well, what with all the "jargon" you refer to, you must not be too bright or even very well educated. Baptist, I presume?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 04 2018, @09:40AM
Found the spreader! Chances are, this fine article was just a ruse to flush him out. They got your number now, conspiracy-theory spreader!
(Score: 1) by i286NiNJA on Wednesday April 04 2018, @05:28PM
It wouldn't be believable if there weren't so many stupid people to believe it.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 04 2018, @02:35AM
americans. shock.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 04 2018, @04:19AM (1 child)
They've been spreading the Russian collusion conspiracy theory for over a year now.
Or does that not count? For exactly what reason?
(Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Wednesday April 04 2018, @09:42AM
Ha! I have been spreading the Russian collision theory for at least half that time, and with more success!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 04 2018, @05:27AM
Q: Who is Spreading Online Conspiracies
A: a range of different people and groups
(And yes, it's copypasta from the summary but the 2 articles and the paper really shed very little more light on the subject.)