Internet Under Fire

The internet is a rather recent phenomenon on society; only the youngest of American voters have experienced a life where the internet was a mainstream source of information their entire lives. It only truly became popularized in the late 90s and since this has skyrocketed to one of the most important technologies in the modern world. It has rapidly increased the rate in which new technologies are created and has opened up the world in a whole new way only truly comparable to the invention of the television. The internet has crossed borders and united much of the word in a way that would have been otherwise impossible. On the internet it is not uncommon to see groups of friends talking to each other that not one of them is from the same country or even the same time zone, and often times they don’t even need to be fluent in the same language. It is a true melting pot of the world and it leads to place full of infinite possible ideas and beliefs. With this free flow ideas comes some radical outliers who do not have what would be considered reasonable beliefs in our current society, this may be anything from radical political beliefs to radical beliefs in science, or being anti-science. These areas contain much of what is considered conspiracy theories; most conspiracy theories are harmless and in fact have led to a greater understanding of the subject they are based on. Some have even turned out to be true. Despite this, there are still plenty of example of conspiracy theories that are far from harmless. 2 These conspiracy theories have presented a threat that many feel needs to be addressed and prevented with any means necessary, even if it means limiting the rights of those that believe them. Cue in Alex Jones, Alex Jones is a talk show host for Infowars with some very radical right wing beliefs. He has many times supported conspiracy theories on his show and supported many theories that are considered absurd such as his theory that the government put chemicals in the water that turned the frogs gay. Jones is constantly under fire for his radical beliefs by both the mainstream news sights, these news sights also began targeting the platforms that hosted and kept his show going. For a long time, social media networks such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter have defended free speech even for people like Alex Jones. They had taken the heat from the mainstream papers and protected their users from the outcries for censorship. This all suddenly changed in the first days of August in 2018, Apple, Facebook, and YouTube suddenly removed Alex Jones and Infowars from their streaming services in a gap of less than a week of each other. (Romano) Mob rule took over and companies who did not immediately follow suit were harassed by enraged mobs of their own users who were encouraged by mainstream newspaper companies who also praised any company that stepped in line. They practically removed Jones off the face of the internet in less than a week. People don’t have to agree or even like Alex Jones to realize how dangerous this actually is to the rest of us. Conspiracy theories can be dangerous, but is it worth our own freedom of ideas and beliefs? The mainstream news networks and politicians would like everyone to believe it is. (Murphy) They also would like everyone to believe that the belief in conspiracy theories has 3 skyrocketed due to the internet; that simply is not true. The internet actually leads to a decrease in the belief of conspiracy theories. There are factors and personality traits that can indicate whether or not someone will believe in a conspiracy theory, it is arguable that many of the traits the factors that reduce the chance someone would believe a conspiracy theory is less likely are more common due to the internet. What would lead higher-ups to believe that the internet increases the beliefs in conspiracy theories? The main argument against the internet is that it allows people to present false information, alternative facts, as if it were fact to a large audience. People surfing the web have a chance of being exposed to professional looking information that is actually inaccurate or even a lie meant to mislead them or doubt what they already know. The problem with this argument is that it is just as easy if not easier to find factual articles; in many cases you have to be actively searching for a conspiracy theory in order to find any information that supports a conspiracy theory, especial one that is written with any weight or prestige. Looking up information on vaccinations for example, most of the information presented is telling you why you should vaccinate, some of it is telling you how dangerous anti-vaxxers are, but you have to really dig to find anything that is against vaccines and chances are this won’t be any sort of article or argumentative essay but just a scrambled form of people who all think vaccines are dangerous telling stories and venting to each other. Another popular argument is that in some communities the conspiracy theory has spread so fast it becomes the mainstream story before the real story can even be presented, this creates a bubble where the majority belief is actually in the conspiracy theory and the true story is viewed as the conspiracy theory. (Tupac Pointu) This is especial the case with younger 4 people who are more likely to be open to suggestive ideas. On the internet, with kids especial, news stories are most likely to be first introduced to people through social media and not an official news site. This leads to the potential of less than accurate stories being the first interactions many people receive on a story, and this could greatly affect the bias of the viewer as they look into further information about the topic. You could look at almost any terrorist attack in recent years to see the effect this has on the spread of information. Especially with emotions running high many people will try to find someone to blame for the horrendous acts even if there claims are clearly just jumping to conclusions. This argument raises a good point that unsupervised kids on the internet do gather information differently than they used to and lack the filter of a parent or other authority figure; however, beyond that the argument is a huge example of confusing association with causation. Rumors are not caused by the internet, and the belief in rumors spread without the internet as well, it was arguable worse without the internet as they did not have access to the mainstream story at all. All the internet does is speed up the process and make it more noticeable to the outside world, it also grants the people in these blocks access to the correct information. The final argument against the internet are cyber cascades. There are two types of cyber cascades: information cascades and reputational cascades. (Sunstein 99) Informational cascades are the more prevalent to the argument. An informational cascade is when someone is interested by a topic and they look into online; the more they look into the more the algorithm recommends it and similar topics to it to the person doing research or just spending time on the hobby and the recommendations will slowly become increasing more extreme. (Sunstein 99) In other words, it’s like if a hiker went off the path and got turned around and in 5 their attempts to get back on the path they only got more turned around. The big threat from cyber cascades is not actually the threat of someone being convinced in a conspiracy theory but instead the person becoming polarized and in extreme cases becoming an extremist. Most cyber cascades do not lead to the belief in new ideas as the person is normally reinforcing their own ideas, hence why it tends to lead people to become more polarized. For the most part cyber cascades only affect the ill-informed or younger people when it comes to introducing a new idea, a big example of a cyber cascade is doing any research online into cryptids or aliens, the researcher will eventually be flooded by hoax and debunk sights, these sights will even be advertised long after the researcher has stopped researching the topic. There is no real evidence to suggest that cyber cascades actually lead to people believing conspiracy theories without already having at least a bit a belief towards them. The different beliefs to internet’s actual effects doesn’t really matter if statistics don’t support it. Evidences show no actual evidence that people have been more prone to believe conspiracy theories. (Douglas) In fact, the numbers in the belief in conspiracy theories from before the internet that are believed now have actually decreased. For example, as many as 80% of Americans believed a conspiracy that the Kennedy assassination wasn’t performed by a lone gunman, today that number is closer to 60%, it would be reasonable to conclude the belief could decrease do to its relevancy being lost, but the assassination and its conspiracies have remained rather active in both mainstream news and on the internet alike. (Uscinski) The theory that the internet increases the belief would have concluded that this theory would have at least maintained if not grown. 6 Another problem with the claims that the internet spreads the belief through access is that on the internet viewers a still far more likely to see a mainstream source such as the New York Times which is 33rd most trafficked sight in the USA compared to the most popular Conspiracy News Sight InfoWars being only the 942nd . (Uscinski) The internet not only presents the authoritative information but also makes it far easier to see first. One has to actively hunt for alternative information if they want to come across it at all in most cases; an argument could be had that the mainstream media plays a larger factor in the spread of conspiracy theories by covering them and legitimizing them to a mainstream audience. The biggest problem the internet has introduced is it gave people the ability to only see what they want to see. (Sunstein) This problem has become much more noticeable in recent years as extremist on both sides of the political spectrum have been far more active and far more influential than they have been at prior times. This is not solely due to the internet though; mainstream news networks have also become far more politically polarized to the point there is no success permitted to those who walk the line in centralism. In the field of conspiracies this is shown not by their growth but their entrenchment instead. On the internet believers don’t tend to confront and share their beliefs with people who don’t believe them, but instead they just share it with those who share the beliefs. An active believer in one conspiracy is likely to introduced into another and conspiracy theory but someone who is not actively in a conspiracy is unlikely to be introduced into a conspiracy outside of what a mainstream news source says about it. The internet may create echo chambers where people’s ideas may become more extreme over time if they do not actively seek out counterpoints to their beliefs. This 7 entrenchment caused by the echo chambers has made it almost impossible to convince someone to shift their beliefs. (Sunstein) This in itself is a problem, but it would likely exist without the aid of the internet as the human mind does not enjoy receiving information conflicting to its current beliefs and will often dismiss it unless the person actively subdues the natural tendency. It’s simply that humans are natural triballistic and will surround themselves with those of similar beliefs; they will actively avoid those with conflicting opinions, and often times dehumanize or delegitimize them as stupid, crazy, or just ill-informed. (Sunstein) The main effects the internet has on information and its spread are the speed of which it spreads, the attention the information gets, and peoples abilities to control their own flow of information. The internet favors those who know how to use it, so when a sight like 4chan/8chan uses there expertize to put themselves in the spotlight, it’s not because of numbers it’s because of experience. Internet experience has granted many groups make their minorities seem much more popular than they actually are and manipulate mainstream companies to treat them with legitimacy. This may be why several of these companies may truly believe the internet is as much of danger as they claim it is, but the facts simply don’t back this belief. In response to this belief they call for censorship and mob rule to destroy those they disagree with. It is beginning to create a very dangerous environment. Many people are being hit hard by a sudden shift in environments, particularly politically and socially. YouTube for instance has gone through multiple “adpocolipses”, a pull out of advertisers their main source of income, from mainstream news sights directly attacking them for their minimal censorships. Mainstream sources claimed that the claim to be protecting free speech on companies like Facebook was just so the company didn’t have to make a controversy 8 decision and risk upsetting their users despite that the decision not to censor was actually more controversial. After the attack on Alex Jones happened though the flood gates opened and many people began to find themselves banned off of sites that had once protected their free speech. Even sites like Patreon, a popular money exchange site, began removing users from their platform, some with probably cause but many others with vague claims of rule breaking and no examples. Sargon of Akkad, a popular political commentator, was removed from twitter and the reason given was a tweet where he insulted the white nationalist movement, an extremist movement a majority population can agree is a bad thing. Recently these sights have actually seen backlashes as users on both sides of the isle have realized the threat on free speech and free exchange of ideas, but only time will tell if this will become a bigger problem or die down. The internet is under fire by the mainstream news networks for aiding the spread of conspiracy theories. This is either a miss informed believe or a blatant lie. There is no evidence to support the claim, the arguments they use are either invalid or just completely inaccurate. Many of the arguments against the internet are that the internet created something that had been around long before the internet existed. All the internet has done is entrenched people in what they believe and if anything, decreased the belief in conspiracy theories. So in a trial the internet would likely found not guilty of its accused crimes but maybe guilty of different crimes entirely that would also incriminate its accusers.