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Thread: YouTube to blame for rise in flat Earth believers, says study

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    YouTube to blame for rise in flat Earth believers, says study

    Source: C|NET


    According to research almost everyone who believes in flat Earth theory got started on YouTube.





    Asheley Landrum is an assistant professor of science communication at Texas Tech University. Her focus: how cultural values affect our understanding of science. Most recently she's been looking at the rise of flat Earth theory.

    Incredibly, more people than ever believe in a flat Earth. Google searches for "flat earth" have grown massively over the past five years and flat Earth conventions have begun popping up all over the globe.

    That's where Landrum focused her research.

    Landrum interviewed 30 people who attended one flat Earth convention and found that all but one became flat Earthers after watching videos on YouTube.

    She presented her research at an event run by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

    While Landrum didn't explicitly blame YouTube for the rise in flat Earth believers, she does believe that Google could be doing more to stop the spread of scientifically incorrect ideas.

    "There's a lot of helpful information on YouTube but also a lot of misinformation," she said, as reported by The Guardian. "Their algorithms make it easy to end up going down the rabbit hole, by presenting information to people who are going to be more susceptible to it."

    Google has acknowledged there's more it could do to combat the spread of false information on YouTube and, as recently as January, outline new plans designed to push back.

    "We'll begin reducing recommendations of borderline content and content that could misinform users in harmful ways—such as videos promoting a phony miracle cure for a serious illness, claiming the earth is flat, or making blatantly false claims about historic events like 9/11," the YouTube team said, in a post describing new measures in the process of being implemented. The YouTube team admitted this would be a "gradual change".

    Interestingly Landrum called on scientists themselves to fight back by using YouTube as a platform to communicate their own work.

    "We don't want YouTube to be full of videos saying here are all these reasons the Earth is flat," she said. "We need other videos saying here's why those reasons aren't real and here's a bunch of ways you can research it for yourself."


    Source: C|NET
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    The problem with this is that while Flat Earth is clearly unscientific, so is the official explanation for what happened to the three towers on 9/11. No independent scientist, engineer or demolition expert worth his salt would accept that concrete and steel skyscrapers can collapse into their own footprint at free-fall speed, pulverizing concrete into fine dust, sending steal beams flying hundreds of yards away, melting steel in the process (but not paper passports and Qurans for some reason), just through their own weight, in a "pancaking process". Anybody with a rudimentary understanding of physics would know that is impossible, yet it is the accepted common wisdom and now it is called "unscientific".

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    Quote Originally posted by Chris View Post
    The problem with this is that while Flat Earth is clearly unscientific, so is the official explanation for what happened to the three towers on 9/11. No independent scientist, engineer or demolition expert worth his salt would accept that concrete and steel skyscrapers can collapse into their own footprint at free-fall speed, pulverizing concrete into fine dust, sending steal beams flying hundreds of yards away, melting steel in the process (but not paper passports and Qurans for some reason), just through their own weight, in a "pancaking process". Anybody with a rudimentary understanding of physics would know that is impossible, yet it is the accepted common wisdom and now it is called "unscientific".
    Great call Chris!

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    Quote Originally posted by Chris View Post
    The problem with this is that while Flat Earth is clearly unscientific, so is the official explanation for what happened to the three towers on 9/11. No independent scientist, engineer or demolition expert worth his salt would accept that concrete and steel skyscrapers can collapse into their own footprint at free-fall speed, pulverizing concrete into fine dust, sending steal beams flying hundreds of yards away, melting steel in the process (but not paper passports and Qurans for some reason), just through their own weight, in a "pancaking process". Anybody with a rudimentary understanding of physics would know that is impossible, yet it is the accepted common wisdom and now it is called "unscientific".
    Well, it's only two of the three buildings we need to worry about. Larry Silverstein has already admitted on camera that he had Building 7 demolished because there was a fire in one of the offices. Interesting detail: said office was on the opposite side of the Twin Towers, and said office also contained some highly objectionable documents regarding certain financial transactions.

    But let's save that debate for one of the pertinent threads. This one here is about YouTube as a source of Flat-Earthism.
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    I believe that Gio has already solved the question of the flat earth:



    I like the maps which show other continents beyond the wall of Antarctic ice. It's wonderful to imagine whole other worlds beyond ours yet possibly accessible. Good fodder for sci fi and fantasy.

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    Quote Originally posted by Aragorn View Post
    Well, it's only two of the three buildings we need to worry about. Larry Silverstein has already admitted on camera that he had Building 7 demolished because there was a fire in one of the offices. Interesting detail: said office was on the opposite side of the Twin Towers, and said office also contained some highly objectionable documents regarding certain financial transactions.

    But let's save that debate for one of the pertinent threads. This one here is about YouTube as a source of Flat-Earthism.
    It is pertinent here I think, because of this highly concerning quote:

    content that could misinform users in harmful ways—such as videos promoting a phony miracle cure for a serious illness, claiming the earth is flat, or making blatantly false claims about historic events like 9/11
    equating flat-earth nonsense with the 9/11 truth movement and alternative medicine is highly dangerous and we must resist it. You can refute flat earth with basic primary school physics (hint: if in doubt, look under: "gravity"), but if google is now equating that with legitimate areas of research, we are in trouble.

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    Quote Originally posted by Dreamtimer View Post
    I believe that Gio has already solved the question of the flat earth:



    I like the maps which show other continents beyond the wall of Antarctic ice. It's wonderful to imagine whole other worlds beyond ours yet possibly accessible. Good fodder for sci fi and fantasy.
    You know, I often think that current mercator-projection maps are partly to blame for the rise of flat-earthism. People used to have globes in schools and homes a few decades ago, but you hardly see that any more. Most people grow up looking at flat depictions of earth, either in atlases or on flat screens. Perhaps subconsciously that makes it easier for them to accept that the earth is actually flat.

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    Quote Originally posted by Chris View Post
    It is pertinent here I think, because of this highly concerning quote:

    content that could misinform users in harmful ways—such as videos promoting a phony miracle cure for a serious illness, claiming the earth is flat, or making blatantly false claims about historic events like 9/11
    equating flat-earth nonsense with the 9/11 truth movement and alternative medicine is highly dangerous and we must resist it. You can refute flat earth with basic primary school physics (hint: if in doubt, look under: "gravity"), but if google is now equating that with legitimate areas of research, we are in trouble.
    Well, I saw that in the article, yes, and I agree with you. And perhaps this is why the matter is so insidious, i.e. it's all sitting under the same umbrella. And you can add the UFO/ET fakers to that list. It all makes the genuine research into the anomalies in the 9/11 Commission report or even the Warren Commission report into a travesty in the eyes of mainstream journalism.

    And people like Alex Jones are not helping our cause either.
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    Hi Chris,

    I tend to disagree with that...I've read serious research on the towers collapse. I watched it in real time in total disbelief...

    Research does support the pancaking. The one question I came out of things with was a hard figure of the amount of 'particulates'. A chaos theory type question and very difficult to quantify.

    But it isn't a slam dunk by any stretch of the imagination. My alternative theory centers around 'motivation' once again.

    If the towers were brought down by explosives the question is why? If so, I believe it was by necessity. It isn't conducive to city management to allow two major skyscrapers to go on burning in the middle of downtown for days on end.
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    Quote Originally posted by NotAPretender View Post
    Hi Chris,

    I tend to disagree with that...I've read serious research on the towers collapse. I watched it in real time in total disbelief...

    Research does support the pancaking. The one question I came out of things with was a hard figure of the amount of 'particulates'. A chaos theory type question and very difficult to quantify.

    But it isn't a slam dunk by any stretch of the imagination. My alternative theory centers around 'motivation' once again.

    If the towers were brought down by explosives the question is why? If so, I believe it was by necessity. It isn't conducive to city management to allow two major skyscrapers to go on burning in the middle of downtown for days on end.
    We’re still a bit off-topic here, but I do think this is pertinent to the OP, because we are talking about the misuse of science and conflating 9/11 truth with flat-earthism after all.

    I can understand your scepticism, if you want to check out what independent experts have to say on the matter, this would be your best resource.

    https://www.ae911truth.org/

    I don’t want to go into the physics on this thread, suffice to say, even if you accept the pancaking theory (and with steel rebar, and a steel structure holding the building up, which is flexible and bendy, it makes little sense), there is no way a building would collapse into its own footprint at freefall speed, unless you blew away the steel support structure at each floor and at precisely the right time as the building came down. That is exactly what seems to have happened with all three buildings and the evidence is pretty overwhelming.

    As to why it was done, I have no idea, and we may never find out. None of the theories circulating on the internet make too much sense to me. Perhaps ex-government official Dr Paul Craig Roberts is right and they just wanted to see if they can blow up three skyscrapers in the middle of Manhattan, blame it on terrorists with box-cutters and a half-dead guy in a cave in Afghanistan, who is a known CIA asset and see if they can get away with it. They did and the people bought it. You have to admire their Chutzpah in that regard.

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    Quote Originally posted by NotAPretender View Post
    Hi Chris,

    I tend to disagree with that...I've read serious research on the towers collapse. I watched it in real time in total disbelief...

    Research does support the pancaking. The one question I came out of things with was a hard figure of the amount of 'particulates'. A chaos theory type question and very difficult to quantify.

    But it isn't a slam dunk by any stretch of the imagination. My alternative theory centers around 'motivation' once again.

    If the towers were brought down by explosives the question is why? If so, I believe it was by necessity. It isn't conducive to city management to allow two major skyscrapers to go on burning in the middle of downtown for days on end.
    Well, okay, here's a couple of things to consider...


    • There are several videos in which you can see the steel beams of the superstructure vanish as if they were being vaporized. Jet fuel cannot do that. Thermite can.

    • Jet fuel does not burn for two months on end, let alone at over 2000 °C. Thermite does, if there's enough of it.

    • The Twin Towers were designed to withstand an impact from a Boeing 707, which is a much larger plane than the two 757s that hit them.

    • If the Twin Towers were demolished for security reasons, then why was this not admitted to, and why was it done while there were still people inside?

    • That which hit the Pentagon was not a commercial airliner but a cruise missile, and one of the generals who testified on camera mentioned this by way of a slip of the tongue. The two manufacturers of jet engines for the Boeing 757 have confirmed that the remnants of the jet engine found outside the Pentagon did not come from either one of them, and only one such engine was found. Cruise missiles have only one jet engine. A 757 has two, and they're much bigger.

    • It is impossible even for an experienced airline pilot to fly a Boeing 757 so close to the ground on its path toward the Pentagon without hitting the ground, let alone that a guy who had learned to fly a twin-propeller Beechcraft would have been able to pull that off.

    • United 93 did not crash after "brave patriots overcame the terrorists". It was shot down by an F-16 of the US Air National Guard, and Donald Rumsfeld has also stated this on camera by way of a slip of the tongue. The appearance of the crash site was also not consistent with a crash from a commercial airliner. United 93 also had its transponder switched off, then it vanished from the radar for about 10 minutes, and then it reappeared on radar with its transponder switched on again.

    • Building 7 was reported to have collapsed by a reporter from the BBC while the building was still visible behind her, 30 minutes before Larry Silverstein decided to bring it down.

    • Larry Silverstein's two children were both employed at the WTC, and both of them had taken a day off on "9/11". How convenient.

    • Last but not least, Osama Bin Laden has always denied any involvement with the "9/11" attacks, even though he applauded them.
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    If the Twin Towers were demolished for security reasons, then why was this not admitted to, and why was it done while there were still people inside?

    bad timing, callousness and there was never going to be an admission that it was done. If there was a chance that it was going to topple over better to bring it down in place. the buildings were goners in any case

    That which hit the Pentagon was not a commercial airliner but a cruise missile, and one of the generals who testified on camera mentioned this by way of a slip of the tongue. The two manufacturers of jet engines for the Boeing 757 have confirmed that the remnants of the jet engine found outside the Pentagon did not come from either one of them, and only one such engine was found. Cruise missiles have only one jet engine. A 757 has two, and they're much bigger.

    I just don't buy that one. Consider that the plane hit the ground before the building...it hit the building 'tail' first...thus the entry configuration.


    Now the issue of the F-16's always struck me as extremely odd. Those planes (I worked on them) are capable of Mach-3 (I think that is suppose to be classified...yeeouch)

    Yet, it took them 20 minutes to fly 50 miles and there are some in the air 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I can only shrug on that one.
    Last edited by Emil El Zapato, 18th February 2019 at 14:24.
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    Quote Originally posted by NotAPretender View Post
    Quote Originally posted by Aragorn
    If the Twin Towers were demolished for security reasons, then why was this not admitted to, and why was it done while there were still people inside?
    bad timing, callousness and there was never going to be an admission that it was done. If there was a chance that it was going to topple over better to bring it down in place. the buildings were goners in any case
    The buildings were not going to topple over, or at least not for quite a while still. They weren't sufficiently damaged to make that happen. I repeat that they were designed to remain upright after an impact from a 707, which is a much larger plane than a 757. A 757 has two jet engines, while a 707 has four, and a much larger wingspan.

    The Bush administration simply needed an excuse for invading Afghanistan ─ and later on, as planned, also Iraq ─ and Dick Cheney had already stated on television that "what America needed was another Pearl Harbor." And that's exactly what "9/11" was ─ an event that shocked the entire nation and turned everyone into a patriot again, blindly following the US government in all of its moves. And that includes the Patriot Act, the unlawful detentions at Guantanamo Bay, and the "enhanced interrogation tactics" ─ read: torture.

    The USA took a very deep swing to the right on "9/11", and it still hasn't recovered from that, or else that troglodyte Donald J. Trump would not be living in the White House right now. Hell, even Hillary is right-wing at heart, and definitely more so than Obama, who wasn't quite the "leftie" that the far-right wants to paint him as. But then again, all political understanding has already long been wiped off the table with the majority of the US population. That's what you get when more than 65% of the gross national income is deflected toward the military-industrial complex instead of toward education and welfare.
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    I know it's very sad...

    time will tell, I reckon'

    Good people expect good, Bad people expect bad...the old projection thing...

    Can anyone really be that demonic...
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    Quote Originally posted by NotAPretender View Post
    Can anyone really be that demonic...
    Yes, absolutely. And just to remind you of how demonic exactly, here's a CNBC article in which Goldman-Sachs questions the curing of patients as a business model... again, because it's not the first time they're doing that.

    Say no more...
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