Tag: conspiracy theories

TikTok Announces Crack Down on “Conspiracy Theories”

As of May 17, TikTok will start implementing new rules affecting content appearing on the app’s For You feed (FYF), and the changes are prompted by concerns about so-called “harmful speech” and “misinformation.”

FYF is vital for the visibility of content, since it opens and plays videos automatically when the app is launched, something TikTok refers to as its “personalized recommendation system.”

A post on the company’s site titled, “For You feed Eligibility Standards,” reveals that content that is deemed as health or news “misinformation” will be censored from this tab more stringently going forward.

On the health side, TikTok looks to clamp down on anything from videos promoting “unproven treatments,” dieting and weight loss, plastic surgery (unless related risks are included as well), videos allegedly misrepresenting scientific findings, to the very broadly defined content that is considered misleading, and “could potentially” cause harm to public health.

Clarity is not the announcement’s strong suit, and so the new rules will tackle even such things as “overgeneralized mental health information.” Also in the FYF “doghouse” will be content that’s found to be too focused on “sadness” (including “sharing sad quotes”).

Then there’s the blog post’s “explanation” that some types of content “may be fine if seen occasionally, but problematic if viewed in clusters.”

What this actually means is control of users’ exposure to content at its finest: “We will interrupt repetitive content patterns to ensure it is not viewed too often,” TikTok said.

When it comes to hate speech, “outlawed” is now even “some content” that is deemed to be making insinuations or indirect statements about protected groups – such that “may implicitly demean” them.

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Why Doomsayers Think the Eclipse Will Bring Disaster to Illinois

THE END OF THE WORLD will occur in Carbondale, Illinois. That is one of the latest conspiracy theories that’s been floating around the internet over the past year. Seven years ago, this small town experienced a total solar eclipse, the path of which spanned the United States diagonally from South Carolina to Oregon. This year on April 8, the U.S. is once again seeing a band of 100 percent totality, but this time stretching from Texas to Maine. If the paths from both the 2017 and 2024 total solar eclipses were laid on top of each other, the two trajectories would form an X over the country. Carbondale sits right at the center of that X, one of the very few lucky places to see a total eclipse twice in seven years.

“If you lived forever, and you never moved from where you are today, on average, you would have to wait 400 years for a total eclipse to come across where you are,” says Frank Close, Professor of Physics at Oxford University and a Fellow of Exeter College. The likelihood that you could experience two total solar eclipses in one place in the space of seven years is miniscule. The chances are so low, that some believe something special is going on in Carbondale. In particular, conspiracy theorists believe that a seismic event will be triggered when the eclipse arrives in this part of the state, known as Little Egypt, killing hundreds of thousands of people.

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Recommended reading…

Get it HERE.

“Is the traditional, accepted view of the life of Christ in some way incomplete?

• Is it possible Christ did not die on the cross?
• Is it possible Jesus was married, a father, and that his bloodline still exists?
• Is it possible that parchments found in the South of France a century ago reveal one of the best-kept secrets of Christendom?
• Is it possible that these parchments contain the very heart of the mystery of the Holy Grail?

According to the authors of this extraordinarily provocative, meticulously researched book, not only are these things possible — they are probably true! so revolutionary, so original, so convincing, that the most faithful Christians will be moved; here is the book that has sparked worldwide controversey.”

Moscow Detains 11 Terror Suspects, False Flag Theories Abound, Death Toll Rises To 115 And Will Likely Climb

Russian authorities point finger at Ukraine, as fugitives in car try to cross Ukrainian border.

“The terrorists involved in the attack on the concert building tried to escape to the Russia-Ukraine border,” the Central Investigation Department of the Russian Federal Security Service now reports. “The terrorists planned to cross the border and had contacts on the Ukrainian side. The terrorist attack was carefully planned.”

The death toll from yesterday’s terror attack in Moscow has risen to 93 and will likely climb.

Intelligence agencies have detained 11 people, including four terrorists, who were directly involved in an attack on the Crocus City Hall, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said in a statement.

“The activities of intelligence and law enforcement agencies have resulted in the detention of 11 people, including four terrorists, who directly participated in the terrorist attack on the Crocus City Hall,” the statement reads, reported Russian state media agency TASS.

“There are also reactions [to what happened at Crocus City Hall] that raise more questions. This certainly concerns comments from Washington, which said it saw no signs that Ukrainians might be involved in the terrorist attack,” Zakharova said on the Rossiya-24 television channel.

“If there is no such evidence, then neither the White House nor anyone else is in a position to postulate anyone’s innocence,” Maria Zakharova said

“What grounds Washington officials are using to draw any conclusions in the midst of the tragedy about someone’s noninvolvement is a big question,” Zakharova added. “If the US or any other countries had reliable information on that it should have been provided to the Russian side immediately. If there is no such information neither the White House nor anyone else has the right to indulge anyone,” she noted.

“To be honest, the reaction of the UN Secretary-General’s secretariat raises not simply questions, but big questions, as he stated, I mean the secretariat of his representative, that they are saddened by reports of shooting,” the spokeswoman said, adding that all adequate people, even considering various emotional level, had similar reaction: terror, shock, bewilderment, unconditional condemnation and compassion.

“What does sadness about shooting mean? Maybe no one else, but the United Nations and the secretariat of the UN in particular, and Secretary-General of this structure, and [UN] member-states should see what the rest of the world sees now, a bloody terrorist attack, and unconditionally condemn it,” she stressed.

Questions also have flooded the internet about a possible ‘false flag’ created by the Putin administration itself.

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Inside the £160-a-ticket UFO conference where thousands of alien hunters flocked to French city to ‘train humanity for the arrival of extraterrestrials’ – as councillor slams ‘eccentrics’ peddling ‘conspiracy theories’

Thousands of UFO fanatics flocked to a small city in central France in the hopes of finally meeting extra-terrestrial life. 

The event, organised by fringe group Alliances Célestes, reportedly drew around 2,200 people who each paid between €150 to €190 (£128 to £162) to attend the three day conference held in Zenith Limoges Metropole building in Limoges, a small city with a population of around 130,000. 

Organisers said they wanted to prepare people for the arrival of aliens or ‘new-style encounters.’

The event’s website reads: ‘The mission of this citizen delegation is to accompany humanity in this process, in order to properly inform and reduce the fear and stress that this type of encounter can generate.’

Though media was banned from the event, video of the conference was leaked to BFMTV, and showed thousands of people attentively listening to someone speaking on a set on the stage. 

The stage was decorated with white furniture, including several seats and what appeared to be a high table on the right. 

The background of the set was made up of ‘futuristic’ windows that portrayed stars rushing past the ‘alien room’ they were in. 

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MH370 – the mystery that stunned the world: Ten years on, we look at the theories about what happened, the fight for a new search and the clues that hint equally at tragic accident.. or murder

Friday marks ten years since Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 vanished without a trace, tragically becoming one of the world’s great aviation mysteries.

The plane carrying 239 people bound for Beijing disappeared from radar screens on March 8, 2014, shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur.

Despite the largest search in aviation history, which combed 46,332 square miles of the sea floor of the southern Indian Ocean, only a few fragments of the Boeing 777-200ER plane have been found, scattered on beaches thousands of miles apart.

The operation was suspended in January 2017.

The families of those who were lost to the abyss have long hoped that by finding the missing plane, authorities would finally be able to give them an answer to the question that has haunted them for a decade: What happened to their loved ones?

In the years since, the void left by the missing wreckage has been filled by speculation and outlandish conspiracy theories, when the fact is that still – after ten years – no one alive today truly knows beyond reasonable doubt what happened.

Hopes were once again raised this week that the question could be answered with the announcement that Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim would be ‘happy to reopen’ the search if ‘compelling’ evidence emerged.

This came after Texas robotics firm Ocean Infinity said it had proposed a new search for the missing jetliner to the Malaysian government while claiming to have new evidence – six years after carrying out an unsuccessful search in 2018.

While it remains to be seen whether a new search will unearth any new clues, the families of the victims remain in limbo. Today, as they mark 10 years since their loved ones were lost, MailOnline looks back at the MH370 tragedy.

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MSNBC Hosts Blast ‘White Rural Voters’ As Conspiracy-Driven ‘Threats To Democracy’

Apair of MSNBC panelists derided “white rural voters” as ignorant, conspiracy-driven rubes who present a “threat to democracy.”

Journalist Paul Waldman and University of Maryland professor Thomas Schaller went on MSNBC Monday to promote their new book, “White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy” with “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski.

“We lay out the four-fold interconnected threat that white rural voters pose to the country,” said Schaller. “They’re the most racist, xenophobic, anti-immigrant, anti-gay geodemographic group in the country.”

“Second, they’re the most conspiracist group,” Schaller continued. “QAnon support and subscribers, election denialism, Covid denialism and scientific skepticism, Obama birtherism.”

“Third, anti-democratic sentiments,” Schaller added. “They don’t believe in an independent press, free speech. They’re most likely to say the president should be able to act unilaterally without any checks from Congress or the courts or the bureaucracy. They’re also the most strongly white nationalist and white Christian nationalist.”

Schaller kept going. “Fourth,” he said, “they are most likely to excuse or justify violence as an acceptable alternative to peaceful public discourse.”

“You mentioned a lot of negative factors about this demographic,” Brzezinski responded.

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BLM co-founder slams Taylor Swift fans as ‘racists’ and Travis Kelce-led Chiefs winning the Super Bowl as a ‘right-wing, white-supremacist conspiracy’

The co-founder of a Black Lives Matter chapter has slammed Taylor Swift fans as ‘racists’ and referred to Kansas City’s Super Bowl victory as a ‘right-wing, white-supremacist conspiracy’ in a series of posts on social media. 

Melina Abdullah, 51, a professor of Pan-African Studies at Cal State University Los Angeles, took to X, formerly Twitter, to unload her opinions on the pop singer and her athlete boyfriend over the course of two weeks.

‘Why do I feel like it’s slightly racist to be a Taylor Swift fan?’ Abdullah wrote on February 11, the day of the Super Bowl.

‘I said FEEL, not think,’ she continued when another user asked her to elaborate. ‘Kind of like that feeling I get when there are too many American flags.’

Hours later, after the Kansas City Chiefs were declared the winners, Abdullah wrote: ‘Why do I feel like this was some right-wing, white-supremacist conspiracy?!?! Booooooo!!!!’

As her posts drummed up attention from other users, Abdullah doubled down on her stance. ‘Folks think they’re attacking me by asking why I think everything is racist…I’m not offended,’ she wrote. ‘Virtually everything is racist.’

In response to one commenter, the advocate clarified: ‘And I’ve also decided to work with all my might and in a community of committed people to upend racism and oppression.’ 

On February 23, Abdullah returned to social media to post a voice message sent by a man who blasted her as ‘a joke,’ ‘ignorant,’ and ‘what’s wrong with this country.’

‘How dare you throw out the racist ideas you throw out on a daily basis?’ shouted the man, who identified himself as Ethan George from Texas, before proclaiming that he wished she would ‘die.’

‘If this is what a tweet about Taylor Swift fans being “slightly racist” brings, I’ll edit myself…Y’all are full-fledged violent white-delusionists,’ Abdullah wrote.

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The 2024 Santa Monica Film Festival was chock full of red-pilled conspiracy content

The 18th annual Santa Monica Film Festival, which held in-person screenings on Saturday, February 3 and which is running online screenings through February 28, chose to feature and then give awards to some dangerous right-wing conspiracy theories masquerading as “documentary” films.

The festival awarded “Best Documentary Feature” to The Great Awakening, the third film in anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Mikki Willis’ Plandemic series. The Santa Monica Film Festival website describes the film:

The Great Awakening is the third installment of the ‘Plandemic’ series. This documentary experience assembles forbidden puzzle pieces to reveal the big picture of what’s really happening in America and beyond. The Great Awakening is intended to be a lighthouse to guide us out of the storm and into a brighter future.

 The Plandemic website also provides a description of the film:

Witness the culmination of truth-seeking as PLANDEMIC 3: The Great Awakening unravels the layers of corruption and unveils a path towards a brighter future. Prepare to be inspired, awakened, and empowered to take a stand for liberty.

After the screening, the audience was treated to a Q&A with Rizza Islam, anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist and member of the Center for Countering Digital Hate’s disinformation dozen.

The first installment of Plandemic was released May 4, 2000, and was largely responsible for the viral spread of COVID-19 conspiracy theories and vaccine disinformation. The New York Times explained in 2020 that nothing in the pandemic had gone as viral as the 26-minute short film, “a slickly produced narration that wrongly claimed a shadowy cabal of elites was using the virus and a potential vaccine to profit and gain power. The video featured a discredited scientist, Judy Mikovits, who said her research about the harm from vaccines had been buried.”

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Why So Many People Believe Taylor Swift Is a Psy-Op

You’d have to go back to the peak years of Bob Dylan’s cultural relevance, when one critic cum stalker started searching the songwriter’s garbage for clues about his lyrics, to find a musician who attracts as many amateur code breakers as Taylor Swift does. Swift has fed the frenzy by declaring that her songs, her liner notes, her social-media posts—basically everything around her—might have hidden meanings embedded in them. As she told The Washington Post in 2022, she and her fans have “descended into color coding, numerology, word searches, elaborate hints, and Easter eggs.”

That scavenger-hunt mentality can lead would-be decoders in directions the singer might not prefer, as with the “Gaylors” who search for signals that Swift is secretly queer. Now a different subculture is getting in on the act: A chunk of the GOP has been conjuring alleged evidence that Swift is a deep-state psy-op, and that maybe—we’re just asking questions here—the NFL is in on it.

This theory got its first burst of mainstream attention last month, when Fox’s Jesse Watters aired a video that, he claimed, shows that “the Pentagon psychological-operations unit floated turning Taylor Swift into an asset.” The person speaking in the video was not in fact from the Pentagon, she was citing Swift as a generic example of celebrity influence, and this all happened years after Swift became super popular anyway, but Watters still seemed to think it might explain “why or how she blew up like this.” He then interviewed a former FBI agent, who said that Joe Biden’s presidential campaign would like Swift’s support (which is true) and that she could move substantial numbers of votes into Biden’s column (which is not the track record that pop-music endorsements have historically had in American politics).

The psy-op rumor mutated into its most infamous form a few weeks later. Vivek Ramaswamy, until recently a presidential candidate himself, posted on X, “I wonder who’s going to win the Super Bowl next month. And I wonder if there’s a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall. Just some wild speculation over here, let’s see how it ages over the next 8 months.”

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