{"id":43512,"date":"2019-02-04T08:41:45","date_gmt":"2019-02-04T13:41:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43512"},"modified":"2019-02-04T08:41:47","modified_gmt":"2019-02-04T13:41:47","slug":"why-the-war-on-conspiracy-theories-is-bad-public-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43512","title":{"rendered":"Why the War on Conspiracy Theories Is Bad Public Policy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.unz.com\/article\/why-the-war-on-conspiracy-theories-is-bad-public-policy\/\">Why the War on Conspiracy Theories Is Bad Public Policy<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.unz.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/BarrettConspiracy-600x369.jpg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A Review of&nbsp;<em>Conspiracy Theories and Other Dangerous Ideas<\/em>&nbsp;by Cass Sunstein (based on an earlier paper co-authored with Adrian Vermeule);&nbsp;<em>In Defense of Troublemakers: The Power of Dissent in Life and Business<\/em>by Charlan Nemeth; and&nbsp;<em>Conspiracy Theories and the People Who Believe Them<\/em>, edited by Joseph E. Uscinski<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On January 25 2018 YouTube unleashed the latest salvo in the war on conspiracy theories,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/youtube.googleblog.com\/2019\/01\/continuing-our-work-to-improve.html\">saying<\/a>&nbsp;\u201cwe\u2019ll begin reducing recommendations of borderline content and content that could misinform users in harmful ways\u2014such 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At first glance that sounds reasonable. Nobody wants YouTube or anyone else to recommend bad information. And almost everyone agrees that phony miracle cures, flat earthism, and blatantly false claims about 9\/11 and other historical events are undesirable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But if we stop and seriously consider those words, we notice a couple of problems. First, the word \u201crecommend\u201d is not just misleading but mendacious. YouTube obviously doesn\u2019t really&nbsp;<em>recommend<\/em>&nbsp;anything. When it says it does, it is lying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When you watch YouTube videos, the YouTube search engine algorithm displays links to other videos that you are likely to be interested in. These obviously do not constitute \u201crecommendations\u201d by YouTube itself, which exercises no editorial oversight over content posted by users. (Or at least it didn\u2019t until it joined the war on conspiracy theories.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The second and larger problem is that while there may be near-universal agreement among reasonable people that flat-earthism is wrong, there is only modest agreement regarding which health approaches constitute \u201cphony miracle cures\u201d and which do not. Far less is there any agreement on \u201cclaims about 9\/11 and other historical events.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&nbsp;\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why the War on Conspiracy Theories Is Bad Public Policy A Review of&nbsp;Conspiracy Theories and Other Dangerous Ideas&nbsp;by Cass Sunstein (based on an earlier paper co-authored with Adrian Vermeule);&nbsp;In Defense of Troublemakers: The Power of Dissent in Life and Businessby Charlan Nemeth; and&nbsp;Conspiracy Theories and the People Who Believe Them, edited by Joseph E. Uscinski [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[10,120,159,21191,19452,3931],"class_list":["post-43512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-10","tag-censorship","tag-conspiracy-theories","tag-kevin-barrett","tag-the-unz-review","tag-youtube"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43512"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43513,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43512\/revisions\/43513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}