[Nextgrid]

Conspiracy theories spread when you let a medium that profits off "engagement" take over humanity's social fabric.

Back in the day that kind of crazy was relegated to the dark corners of the Internet and you had to explicitly seek it out.

Nowadays social media apps that claim to make it easier to connect with your family/friends will happily push these in front of you, knowing that getting you deep into that rabbit hole is likely to net them more "engagement".

The net result is that naive but well-meaning people who originally just wanted to keep in touch with friends/family got sucked deep into this bullshit.