[brandonmenc]

> to others this is a period where the internet was thoroughly weaponized by misinformation agents to undermine democracy and civil societies around the world.

If you said something like this in the 1940s, you'd get a bunch of people nodding their heads in agreement and using it to justify the McCarthy hearings.

Maybe I'm naive, but I still believe the lesser of the two evils is to err on the side against censorship.

Also, if you've spent any time with crazy conspiracy theorists, you'd know that letting the government/corporations/media act as censors just adds fuel to that fire.

[heavyset_go]

Conspiracy theorists have spent the last few years literally using the term "the good guys" to describe the federal government, and were clamoring for a military coup up until earlier this year.

[l33t2328]

I’m sorry, who are you referring to?

[heavyset_go]

The conspiracy theorists I know, and most of r/Conspiracy, went from distrusting the government to generally converging on Qanon conspiracy theories, and Qanon adjacent conspiracy theories like #SaveTheChildren.

They use the term "the good guys", literally those words, to describe those in the federal government who are supposedly fighting a secret war against a pedophile cabal that will culminate in a military coup.

Interestingly enough, even those conspiracy theorists who haven't fallen down the far right conspiracy rabbithole are also assuming the federal government and military are on their side. A popular conspiracy theory is that the government is gearing up to disclose that UAP reports are actually evidence of alien contact. In those that hold this view, there's a widespread reverence for military members' testimony, and an almost implicit assumption that they are nearly infallible because of their military training. Instead of distrusting the government, they're eagerly awaiting for it agree with them and confirm their personal feelings towards reports of UAPs.