Exactly what someone who was paid to cover up conspiracies would say! Wake up sheeple!
So many people have incredibly empty lives, so they fill themselves up with hatred, anger and conspiracy theories because they have nothing else.
Has she investigated the conspiracy theory that the BBC covered up Jimmy Savile’s activities for years during the 70’s and 80’s?
This is what happens when your news outlets have zero integrity, people are as likely to believe the spin the BBC gives its reporting as some rando on YouTube. Experiance has taught us that the BBC are definitely full of BS while the rando is an unproved quantity
Is it a conspiracy that every MEP the BBC had on question time was a brexiter?
Conspiracy theory is a too widely used term to discredit any view against the ‘publicised truth’. If authorities were more trustworthy there wouldn’t be as many ‘conspiracy theories’. If I said, people in government use their position to create policies and appoint companies for contracts that increases their own personal wealth; this would be called a conspiracy theory to discredit it.
Aah good old Marianna pops up again to remind you if you don’t believe what she tells you, you’re nuts.
Conspiracy theories come from mistrust of the government. Can you really blame people now?
People are ‘happier’ to be angry about something rather than hear the truth. It’s a shame that so many are willing to let that negativity dominate their lives, eating away at them. Must also be exhausting remembering what you hate this week and why.
Spring’s work, which includes a new BBC Sounds podcast, Marianna in Conspiracyland, inevitably sees her delve into some of the darkest corners of the internet. She has tracked the rise in Britain of online conspiracy theorists, from anti-vaxxers to “disaster trolls”, who claim terrorist attacks have been staged.
By highlighting the links between many online conspiracies and UK far-right movements, Spring has become a target for violent and misogynstic abuse. “I’m very lucky at the BBC to have a brilliant team to support me and keep on top of that,” she tells i.
“At the extreme end there are people calling for Nuremberg-style trials of doctors and politicians over the pandemic, saying they are complicit in plots and need to be hanged or executed. It’s a scary thing to be honest as someone who receives threats like that frequently.”
Analysts at the University of Sheffield assessed 75,000 tweets directed at Spring over six months last year, and found that 55 per cent of the abuse was designed to discredit her as a journalist, while 27 per cent was sexist and misogynistic. The remainder was classified as generally abusive.
So she’s paid by the BBC to tell us what’s true and not true?
I don’t think conspiracy theories are the issue. Look how many of them have turned out to be true, or at least have some truth to them.
I think the issue is a lack of critical thinking. If someone has a hair-brained idea (such as the world being flat), people don’t necessarily look any further into it and just believe it because they were told it.
I also think you can’t tar all “conspiracy theories” with the same brush. Flat earth: rubbish; People in positions of power preying on young children, which is in turn covered up by other people in positions of power: proven multiple times.
The only reason we don’t celebrate these as “true conspiracy theories” is because at that point, they’re simple known as the truth. Conspiracy theories are, by definition, unproven.
Let’s not pretend similar doesn’t regularly happen on this sub and Reddit as whole. The main difference is the topic. Everyone loves slagging off the Tories here, me included, but the amount of actual fantasy that gets upvoted is pretty crazy. People see what they want to see and people upvote it because they want it to be true.
The BBC and disinformation are equivalent to Strawberries and cream
I think the recognition that the government tells porkies all the time has set in for a lot of people.
The fact that there is a disinformation correspondent is evidence enough that conspiracy theories have been normalised
Another benefit of the net. Speed of communication with the ability to spread wide and little desire to fact-check means disinformation can spread like wildfire. As soon as politicians found that out, it was game over because those dicks will do anything to stay in power, even burn society down around themselves.
To me Conspiracy theories seem to detract from the absolutely appalling stuff that happens in plain sight that no-one seems to care about.
An example i’ll most likely be downvoted for. Minerals like Coltan & Casserite are mined in huge amounts in countries such as the DRC, Uganda, Angola etc. Children are often used in these mining operations, violence over these resources is common, the environmental impact is huge.
These minerals are then shipped to China, an authoritarian state with little in the way of workers rights or freedom for the populace, to be manufactured into mobile phones & numerous other electronic devices.
The phones are shipped all over the world. Harvesting data about the users to better manipulate them by corporations is standard. If required authorities in these countries (& others), can use these devices to track & listen to the users. I’m not saying the latter often happens, but we have given them the capability.
These are all things that actually happen, no-one even bothers to argues with it, it’s not a conspiracy.
But 5G transmitting a biological virus through electronic waves, thats real shit.
I wonder if any of our large broadcasters have been willingly allowing lies spread by authorities over the last few years, potentially causing people to have less faith in official stories? I guess I’ll always wonder.
Wouldn’t have a country full of conspiracy theorists if those who run the country where honest and transparent about their motives. Instead we have a bunch of political criminals having uncontrollable, euphoric orgasms every time the opportunity to ‘disappear’ some money comes along. When you poke and ask questions all you get is “boats, unemployment rates, gender, Corbyn”. If you want to stop the theories give straight answers.
It’s not a shock when you have a country where people have good reasons to not trust their institutions.
We’re constantly told something that is happening is just a conspiracy and then later find out, it was happening and it was covered up.
You know what really sounds like a conspiracy “powerful men are running pedophile rings”.
Then we find out about:
Jimmy Savile but don’t get all of the detail on who was involved despite his long career.
Jeffrey Epstein, again, we barely know who was involved.
The Catholic church…
Obviously this doesn’t mean we should believe any old conspiracy but it definitely doesn’t breed trust.
The problem is that ‘conspiracy theory’ has negative connotations. People hear it and think about the nutters who think aliens built the pyramids.
In reality, so many of these theories have been proven to be true in recent years that people don’t even notice any more.
No shit? I realised this when David Icke sold out Wembley Arena..
It’s a tool used to discredit anyone that doesn’t follow the intended forced narrative of the facis…. I mean Tories. Anyone who believes anything else is instantly discredited as a conspiracy theorist. Then there’s actually mad nonsense like lizard people . Very different things
So many replies in here like “well yes conspiracy theories are bad – but look at how many turned out to be true!” then refuse to elaborate.
Ah yes, the BBC who fact check everything and never spread misinformation…. And whom I personally have sent emails to about their lack of fact checking and spreading of misinformation…..
Yes. In part because of the BBC refusing to correct infamously dishonest Tories and platforming populist wackos with equal weight to actual experts in any given field.
If it turns out vaccines are not safe and effective and are in fact dangerous, I think we should have a “Nuremburg style trial”. How is that extreme? I’m asking for a trial, which is more than the vax companies could muster XD
You know what else has been normalized in the UK? young people dying suddenly of “natural causes”
It’s hard not to conspire when mainstream media spew out constant lies
Cuts in education, propping up right wing channels that peddle this shit on social media, of course they are the norm. I’m from North London and I cannot hold a conversation with people from either my ethnic background or there adjacent. Way too many anti-vax, anti-Semite, “lefties are to blame” shite. No wonder I’ve become a recluse
BBC: Lets promote far-right conspiracy theories!
Also BBC: why do idiots believe the stuff we showed them?
It’s wild and its everywhere. A few days ago, someone was saying banning a Shell advert will make oil go up, all due to the leftists.
I think people are just thick. They always were, but now media caters for the.
The only way false narratives get to grow is if there isn’t a media provider that the public widely trust.
The BBC used to be a widely trusted information source, no longer.
Well, you still had Andrew Wakefield gaining respectability in this country.
Yeah? Who’s fault is that? Maybe the big media companies shoving their agendas down everyone’s throat rather than reporting news in a non-bias manner?
And they wonder why so many of the public resort to ridiculous theories they create for themselves.
Look at Fox News. They spout all kinds of nonsense on a daily basis and promoted the likes of Trump into a position of political power. It’s no wonder the public are confused and angry.
They’ve been normalised because theres good evidence for them.
The GCHQ has hacked into peoples Smart TVs to secretly monitor and record their conservations at home. Years ago people took the piss and called you a paranoid schizo if you came up with something like this.
Marianna Spring is free to express her views but at the same time me and Joe Bloggs are allowed to be sceptical of some things.
This BBC “fact” check is going to be as reliable as the Iraqi women who was “live” on TV saying nothing was happening and everything was all right, meanwhile our news showed us bombing the living daylights out of them
Every working class family I know, including mine, are affected by this. My dad has been talking to me about buying gold and bodies in the street and a run on banks etc etc for ages. Anyone else notice that or is it just in my circle?
I trust this privileged Oxbridge educated 27 year old journalist to tell me what’s actually the truth, everything else is misinformation and Russian lies.
I’m so thankful for the fact checkers and now that we have BBC verify, I can sleep soundly now that I don’t have to rely on anyone else for the facts.
The people on this subreddit are complete sycophantic clowns, it’s actually embarassing to read the comments from these scared geeks
I find it laughable that Microsoft can’t buy Activision Blizzard because it will stifle competition but three or four people can own almost the entirety of Western mainstream media.
41 comments
Exactly what someone who was paid to cover up conspiracies would say! Wake up sheeple!
So many people have incredibly empty lives, so they fill themselves up with hatred, anger and conspiracy theories because they have nothing else.
Has she investigated the conspiracy theory that the BBC covered up Jimmy Savile’s activities for years during the 70’s and 80’s?
This is what happens when your news outlets have zero integrity, people are as likely to believe the spin the BBC gives its reporting as some rando on YouTube. Experiance has taught us that the BBC are definitely full of BS while the rando is an unproved quantity
Is it a conspiracy that every MEP the BBC had on question time was a brexiter?
Conspiracy theory is a too widely used term to discredit any view against the ‘publicised truth’. If authorities were more trustworthy there wouldn’t be as many ‘conspiracy theories’. If I said, people in government use their position to create policies and appoint companies for contracts that increases their own personal wealth; this would be called a conspiracy theory to discredit it.
Aah good old Marianna pops up again to remind you if you don’t believe what she tells you, you’re nuts.
Conspiracy theories come from mistrust of the government. Can you really blame people now?
People are ‘happier’ to be angry about something rather than hear the truth. It’s a shame that so many are willing to let that negativity dominate their lives, eating away at them. Must also be exhausting remembering what you hate this week and why.
Spring’s work, which includes a new BBC Sounds podcast, Marianna in Conspiracyland, inevitably sees her delve into some of the darkest corners of the internet. She has tracked the rise in Britain of online conspiracy theorists, from anti-vaxxers to “disaster trolls”, who claim terrorist attacks have been staged.
By highlighting the links between many online conspiracies and UK far-right movements, Spring has become a target for violent and misogynstic abuse. “I’m very lucky at the BBC to have a brilliant team to support me and keep on top of that,” she tells i.
“At the extreme end there are people calling for Nuremberg-style trials of doctors and politicians over the pandemic, saying they are complicit in plots and need to be hanged or executed. It’s a scary thing to be honest as someone who receives threats like that frequently.”
Analysts at the University of Sheffield assessed 75,000 tweets directed at Spring over six months last year, and found that 55 per cent of the abuse was designed to discredit her as a journalist, while 27 per cent was sexist and misogynistic. The remainder was classified as generally abusive.
So she’s paid by the BBC to tell us what’s true and not true?
I don’t think conspiracy theories are the issue. Look how many of them have turned out to be true, or at least have some truth to them.
I think the issue is a lack of critical thinking. If someone has a hair-brained idea (such as the world being flat), people don’t necessarily look any further into it and just believe it because they were told it.
I also think you can’t tar all “conspiracy theories” with the same brush. Flat earth: rubbish; People in positions of power preying on young children, which is in turn covered up by other people in positions of power: proven multiple times.
The only reason we don’t celebrate these as “true conspiracy theories” is because at that point, they’re simple known as the truth. Conspiracy theories are, by definition, unproven.
Let’s not pretend similar doesn’t regularly happen on this sub and Reddit as whole. The main difference is the topic. Everyone loves slagging off the Tories here, me included, but the amount of actual fantasy that gets upvoted is pretty crazy. People see what they want to see and people upvote it because they want it to be true.
The BBC and disinformation are equivalent to Strawberries and cream
I think the recognition that the government tells porkies all the time has set in for a lot of people.
The fact that there is a disinformation correspondent is evidence enough that conspiracy theories have been normalised
Another benefit of the net. Speed of communication with the ability to spread wide and little desire to fact-check means disinformation can spread like wildfire. As soon as politicians found that out, it was game over because those dicks will do anything to stay in power, even burn society down around themselves.
To me Conspiracy theories seem to detract from the absolutely appalling stuff that happens in plain sight that no-one seems to care about.
An example i’ll most likely be downvoted for. Minerals like Coltan & Casserite are mined in huge amounts in countries such as the DRC, Uganda, Angola etc. Children are often used in these mining operations, violence over these resources is common, the environmental impact is huge.
These minerals are then shipped to China, an authoritarian state with little in the way of workers rights or freedom for the populace, to be manufactured into mobile phones & numerous other electronic devices.
The phones are shipped all over the world. Harvesting data about the users to better manipulate them by corporations is standard. If required authorities in these countries (& others), can use these devices to track & listen to the users. I’m not saying the latter often happens, but we have given them the capability.
These are all things that actually happen, no-one even bothers to argues with it, it’s not a conspiracy.
But 5G transmitting a biological virus through electronic waves, thats real shit.
I wonder if any of our large broadcasters have been willingly allowing lies spread by authorities over the last few years, potentially causing people to have less faith in official stories? I guess I’ll always wonder.
Wouldn’t have a country full of conspiracy theorists if those who run the country where honest and transparent about their motives. Instead we have a bunch of political criminals having uncontrollable, euphoric orgasms every time the opportunity to ‘disappear’ some money comes along. When you poke and ask questions all you get is “boats, unemployment rates, gender, Corbyn”. If you want to stop the theories give straight answers.
It’s not a shock when you have a country where people have good reasons to not trust their institutions.
We’re constantly told something that is happening is just a conspiracy and then later find out, it was happening and it was covered up.
You know what really sounds like a conspiracy “powerful men are running pedophile rings”.
Then we find out about:
Jimmy Savile but don’t get all of the detail on who was involved despite his long career.
Jeffrey Epstein, again, we barely know who was involved.
The Catholic church…
Obviously this doesn’t mean we should believe any old conspiracy but it definitely doesn’t breed trust.
The problem is that ‘conspiracy theory’ has negative connotations. People hear it and think about the nutters who think aliens built the pyramids.
In reality, so many of these theories have been proven to be true in recent years that people don’t even notice any more.
No shit? I realised this when David Icke sold out Wembley Arena..
It’s a tool used to discredit anyone that doesn’t follow the intended forced narrative of the facis…. I mean Tories. Anyone who believes anything else is instantly discredited as a conspiracy theorist. Then there’s actually mad nonsense like lizard people . Very different things
So many replies in here like “well yes conspiracy theories are bad – but look at how many turned out to be true!” then refuse to elaborate.
Ah yes, the BBC who fact check everything and never spread misinformation…. And whom I personally have sent emails to about their lack of fact checking and spreading of misinformation…..
Yes. In part because of the BBC refusing to correct infamously dishonest Tories and platforming populist wackos with equal weight to actual experts in any given field.
If it turns out vaccines are not safe and effective and are in fact dangerous, I think we should have a “Nuremburg style trial”. How is that extreme? I’m asking for a trial, which is more than the vax companies could muster XD
You know what else has been normalized in the UK? young people dying suddenly of “natural causes”
It’s hard not to conspire when mainstream media spew out constant lies
Cuts in education, propping up right wing channels that peddle this shit on social media, of course they are the norm. I’m from North London and I cannot hold a conversation with people from either my ethnic background or there adjacent. Way too many anti-vax, anti-Semite, “lefties are to blame” shite. No wonder I’ve become a recluse
BBC: Lets promote far-right conspiracy theories!
Also BBC: why do idiots believe the stuff we showed them?
It’s wild and its everywhere. A few days ago, someone was saying banning a Shell advert will make oil go up, all due to the leftists.
I think people are just thick. They always were, but now media caters for the.
The only way false narratives get to grow is if there isn’t a media provider that the public widely trust.
The BBC used to be a widely trusted information source, no longer.
Well, you still had Andrew Wakefield gaining respectability in this country.
Yeah? Who’s fault is that? Maybe the big media companies shoving their agendas down everyone’s throat rather than reporting news in a non-bias manner?
And they wonder why so many of the public resort to ridiculous theories they create for themselves.
Look at Fox News. They spout all kinds of nonsense on a daily basis and promoted the likes of Trump into a position of political power. It’s no wonder the public are confused and angry.
They’ve been normalised because theres good evidence for them.
The GCHQ has hacked into peoples Smart TVs to secretly monitor and record their conservations at home. Years ago people took the piss and called you a paranoid schizo if you came up with something like this.
Marianna Spring is free to express her views but at the same time me and Joe Bloggs are allowed to be sceptical of some things.
This BBC “fact” check is going to be as reliable as the Iraqi women who was “live” on TV saying nothing was happening and everything was all right, meanwhile our news showed us bombing the living daylights out of them
Every working class family I know, including mine, are affected by this. My dad has been talking to me about buying gold and bodies in the street and a run on banks etc etc for ages. Anyone else notice that or is it just in my circle?
I trust this privileged Oxbridge educated 27 year old journalist to tell me what’s actually the truth, everything else is misinformation and Russian lies.
I’m so thankful for the fact checkers and now that we have BBC verify, I can sleep soundly now that I don’t have to rely on anyone else for the facts.
The people on this subreddit are complete sycophantic clowns, it’s actually embarassing to read the comments from these scared geeks
I find it laughable that Microsoft can’t buy Activision Blizzard because it will stifle competition but three or four people can own almost the entirety of Western mainstream media.