[kemonocode]

Conspiracy nuts and other unsavory members from fringe communities do make for odd bedfellows when one is being actively censored, thus why I am loathe to promote Bitchute et al. Best second alternative would be their own Peertube instance, but that of course requires them to put up their own infrastructure.

[jackfoxy]

Q: What's the difference between fake news / conspiracy theories and the real news?

A: About 8 months.

Sure this joke is an exaggeration, but occurrences like this seem to be getting more common. Sometimes it's much longer than 8 months. The informed reader can fill in the blanks.

One very big problem is YT and other content providers intentionally provide recommendations to reinforce confirmation biases of the viewer. If you click a few wacky conspiracy videos you will start seeing more in your feed. If you click fact and logic based alternate videos, you will start seeing confirmations of this particular view point, but no factual/logical discussions from opposing viewpoints. What's worse, inevitably you will start seeing references to censorship in your favorite topics. This feels very much like a political agenda on the part of big tech content providers.

In any event it is clear the algorithm is not interested in healthy reasonable discussion and debate to further democracy.

[treeman79]

It’s past reinforcement bias and moved into picking winners.

[roenxi]

It's the fact that the censors are there to step in for things that are plausibly true. There isn't any need to censor flat-earth theories. Nobody cares, it doesn't have any implications and it easy to disprove (eg, the fact that the horizon dips away).

The censors only get really active for things that could plausibly be true or things that are absolutely true but inconvenient to the people who control the censorship office.

[treeman79]

Not talking about flat earters. I’m taking about tech companies picking election winners by “fact checking”/suppressing stories that make their chosen guy look bad.

[zarkov99]

Todays conspiracy is often tomorrow's orthodoxy. Society is better served by erring on the side of free speech and letting evolution decide what ideas are good and where are not. This was settled hundreds of years ago but apparently this generation did not get the memo.

[wesleywt]

I hope this isn't true. Imagine if flat earth, anti-vaccines and 911 was faked becomes "orthodoxy". We'd be a regressed society.

[SV_BubbleTime]

Flat earth is 5% idiots and some damn near remainder trolling, but the other two… what if they were right?

Obviously they aren’t.

But in this scenario, what if they were and you were part of the useful idiots covering up for someone? You would be the bad guy directly hurting society… so instead, how about a free marketplace of thoughts and opinions and allow the “orthodoxy” to be organic even if it might slightly be flawed on average (to the example we land on “no vaccines aren’t bad, but we have a lot more required testing and liability just incase”).

What makes your pet theories better than anyone else’s? Why “can’t” you be wrong?

[zarkov99]

Do you trust YT to decide for you what is nonsense and what is not? I do not, and I think I could make a pretty good case as to why not.

[briefcomment]

What about Odysee (LBRY) [1]? Seems promising.

[1]https://odysee.com

[devetec]

Also filled with many nuts, though I wish more people would actually use it. It's a very good alternative to YouTube though.

[HNfriend234]

The conspiracy nuts are crazy, I agree, but they are also opposed to oppression so they are our allies.

Be wary of the "divide and conquer" strategy when it is being used by oppressive regimes and various governments.

[ajsnigrutin]

It's not a conspiracy, if they're really out to get you.

[nathanaldensr]

Do you want freedom or authoritarianism?