Reddit Say That Again Flat Eath
It was on their weekly video telephone call that Kasey Edwards start noticed the flat Earth poster in her mother'southward firm.
The poster had quietly replaced an ordinary framed photo in the background. It struck Kasey as odd, simply she believed it was harmless.
"Not all families concord on everything. And if Mum wanted to think that the Earth was flat, well then and so be it," she said.
A retired instructor, Kasey'south female parent was an involved parent who called once a week, sometimes more than, and tutored her granddaughters in maths over the phone.
Kasey permit her mum talk most her theories and occasionally asked probing questions, but otherwise didn't engage.
She didn't know information technology at the time, but the apartment Earth poster was the kickoff sign her mother was globe-trotting abroad from her friends and family unit.
"My mum said that she felt for the first fourth dimension in her life that she'd found her tribe of people where she really belonged. It was her coming out moment," Kasey recalled.
Soon, her mother was speaking at a flat World briefing in London, and socialising with other adherents.
Over the adjacent two years she seemed increasingly unable to talk about anything else — not just flat Earth theory, merely chemtrails, nine/xi truth, anti-vaccination, and the "Plandemic".
She began deliberately trying to grab coronavirus to prove it was fake.
For Kasey, who is a journalist, the discussions became personal when her mother alleged that she was ordered what to write, and that her husband, an bookish, was part of a global conspiracy.
To Kasey'south stupor, her mother began arguing the Holocaust never happened — a conspiracy theory that is banned in Frg, where Kasey's brother lives.
The final straw came when she was peddling anti-vaccination conspiracies while tutoring Kasey's grandchildren. Non wanting to distress her children, Kasey began to pull back.
"My girls will say things like, 'We haven't spoken to granny for a while.'
"I feel like at that place'south a stake in my heart at that moment."
How to talk to a flat-earther
With the rise of QAnon and the spread of misinformation well-nigh the pandemic, many people this twelvemonth accept had the bewildering and deplorable feel of watching a loved ane "fall downwardly the rabbit hole".
But for those nigh affected it can exist difficult to know how to respond, or even where to turn for assist.
"I would [one time] expect at these people … and think they were contemptible, reprehensible idiots," Kasey said.
"And so I saw my mum go a conspiracy theorist and I was like, well, this is someone that I dear, and this is someone who is not stupid."
For friends and family, a starting point is to recognise that people concur beliefs for good reasons, according to Australian Psychological Club president Tamara Cavenett.
Conversations are best structured effectually gentle enquiries about how these behavior formed and attempts to understand each other.
"[Information technology's] not to necessarily try to change the belief outright, but introduce lilliputian pieces of doubt," Ms Cavenett said.
Confronting people as well directly runs the risk of expecting them to acknowledge their unabridged worldview is incorrect and having them shut down the conversation, she said.
We've seen this twelvemonth how some COVID-deniers in the US go so far as to angrily maintain their conventionalities that the virus is false right up to their dying jiff.
One way to handle this is to give someone the "Golden Gate of Retreat": the infinite to recognise they are incorrect without feeling attacked and doubling downward.
"I'd also encourage family members to just consider [that] the other person doesn't have to hold all the same beliefs [as you]," Ms Cavenett said.
"Information technology'south really most whether or non the belief is interfering with their life."
In defense of conspiracy theories
Part of the entreatment of conspiracy theories, Ms Cavenett said, is they offer simple explanations for complex problems, and suggest an element of control in a cluttered earth.
Belief in conspiracy itself isn't necessarily misguided — recent history is full of outlandish plots that take subsequently turned out to be truthful.
To have one example, in the 1950s the CIA tested hallucinogenic drugs on unsuspecting American citizens — and then tried to destroy the show — and also illegally spied on citizens.
ANU schoolhouse of philosophy associate professor Colin Klein also noted a survey earlier this yr that plant a strong conventionalities among blackness Americans that COVID-nineteen had been made in a laboratory.
"There's a long history of conspiracy theories [among black Americans] about medical experimentation," he said.
"Part of that is if you look back, y'all find pretty awful things done to African Americans [by the The states regime].
"So you lot tin can't say: 'Oh, it's unreasonable for African Americans to distrust health institutions.'"
It'due south also of import to remember not all conspiracy believers are as deeply enmeshed every bit they announced.
When Dr Klein analysed eight years of conspiracy discussions on Reddit up to 2015, he found that well-nigh users were engaged just as actively with forums about sport, movies and cat videos as they were well-nigh fake moon landings or 9/eleven being an inside task.
In other words, the conspiracy theories were just 1 interest amid many.
And contrary to the "tinfoil hat" stereotype, Dr Klein said users on conspiracy forums actively sought out facts and research.
"What jumps out at me is that by far the virtually they talk about is evidence and sources. Conspiracy theorists are actually quite obsessed with things philosophers say people should be thinking nigh," he said.
Journeying downwards the rabbit pigsty
Conspiracy beliefs can also be a powerful course of individuation — asserting personal freedom in a globe said to be under threat from shadowy external forces.
Information technology's oftentimes rooted in fear, and Ms Cavenett said those who feel alienated from family and friends, or are marginalised in some way tin be peculiarly vulnerable.
"Every bit a family member, you lot might not work directly on the conventionalities, but you can piece of work on that person's wellbeing and their connection to other people," she said.
Kasey said her mother was e'er interested in alternative behavior, like star divination, merely these sat comfortably with others.
She was a maths teacher who believed in scientific discipline, educational activity and the collective proficient and was instrumental in shaping Kasey's politics and worldview.
"That'due south one of the things that I experience so shocked past at present — that anything that has a collective purpose is a conspiracy … it's part of us being controlled."
"It's near like I don't even know who my mum is anymore."
When her dad left the spousal relationship xv years ago, Kasey's mum "completely cruel apart."
Kasey encouraged her mother to move overseas to escape her "rather dreary" suburban life, and in London she met her at present-husband, who she married in 2015.
Although he had some foreign beliefs, Kasey was happy that they shared their eccentricities.
But information technology wasn't until COVID-19 emerged that her mother became fixated on conspiracies.
"Part of this is … that she is lonely and bored [in lockdown] … and she'south scared," Kasey said.
Kasey noticed that as her female parent'south behavior began to shift, she slowly became isolated from her former life.
"I don't know of whatsoever [onetime] friends that are left," she said.
Pulling someone back from the brink at this stage often needs professional help, and tin be beyond the chapters of ane individual.
From conspiracies to radicalisation
At that place'due south growing business concern among those who work to counter online extremism that the COVID-19 pandemic and political polarisation has acted as a "lightning rod" for the spread of misinformation in 2020.
In the past few years, organisations that work to counter violent extremists — known as CVE to insiders — have begun to explicitly focus on conspiracy theories.
"The link is harm," Moonshot CVE managing director Clark Hogan-Taylor said of how these 2 fields are related.
Initially, Moonshot CVE's focus was on jihadists and the far-right, but it has now reframed to preventing online harm in full general, especially from anti-vaccination, coronavirus conspiracies or QAnon.
"It'southward of import to say that anti-vaxxers are not fierce extremists, only they do increase the take chances of real-world harm confronting other people," Mr Hogan-Taylor said.
Jacob Davey, who researches the far-right and hate crimes for the London-based Constitute for Strategic Dialogue, sees conspiracy theories playing a function in the degradation of key institutions — authorities, health intendance, the media — and, in certain cases, even undermining trust in democracy itself.
Along with misinformation spread by state actors and those with disciplinarian tendencies, Mr Davey said parts of the traditional media are increasingly "laundering" conspiracy theories to give them legitimacy.
At the same fourth dimension, social media has created a greater possibility of casual engagement, and an ease of finding likeminded groups of people.
"Even if some facets of this customs seem quite benign, they could be a pathway into more than hateful, more than extremist worldviews."
Countering the pull of the rabbit hole
One of Moonshot CVE's core activities is placing ads with tech companies like Google and Facebook that divert people at risk of being radicalised.
These ads might, for example, brandish in the results for high-adventure search terms for the QAnon conspiracy — that is, search terms that go beyond a casual interest or curiosity.
The ad might provide a link to a Reddit thread with one-time QAnon adherents sharing stories of how and why they left.
The idea is to utilize the power of internet searches to offer an culling message and create what Mr Hogan-Taylor calls "friction" between an intention and a harmful behaviour.
Like any online advertisement, information technology only presents something that users can cull to click on.
"We're trying to counteract the pull of the rabbit hole … the mode the recommendation algorithm will pull you very rapidly from mainstream content to extremist content," he said.
One of the risks, Mr Hogan-Taylor acknowledges, is these being perceived every bit part of another conspiracy, alienating the paranoid even further.
Beyond these countermeasures, he said he sees a greater demand for media literacy and "the wearisome regular provision of trustworthy reliable sources".
The ISD's Jacob Davey too sees a greater role for digital literacy and digital citizenship being taught not just in classrooms, but also to adults.
"I call up at that place is a very pressing need for ways in which y'all tin can create curriculums for adults, which tin help build those disquisitional thinking skills and assist them understand and navigate the social media ecosystem," he said.
A civil society response
An elephant in the room is to what extent the profit model of tech giants similar Facebook and Google are contributing to radicalisation.
Collectively, the 2 companies control some sixty per cent of online revenue, and Mr Davey said the pull towards farthermost content was an "intrinsic" office of monetising attention.
"Information technology's in their interests to go along people on their platforms … [and] keep people clicking through content," he said.
"These platforms [are] almost inherently skewed to facilitate serving upward extremist material to people, because it'southward engaging, it'due south attractive and because people want to run across more than of it."
Mr Davey pointed to leaked internal memos published by the Wall Street Periodical in May that revealed superlative executives at Facebook shut down efforts to make the site less divisive.
Internal inquiry revealed Facebook's algorithms were responsible for the growth of extremist pages.
Facebook's representatives have repeatedly claimed over the years that they take the spread of harmful content seriously.
Mr Davey said the algorithm is so powerful he uses it to support some of his research.
"So I'm looking at the far right in Australia at the moment," he said.
"One of the tools I tin can use to detect out what that looks like is past liking some of these pages that Facebook recommends to me."
Inquiries over the past two years have looked critically at the activities of the tech giants in the Usa, Australia and the UK.
In October, Facebook and YouTube tightened their moderation rules to crack down on QAnon content. YouTube, nonetheless, stopped brusk of an outright ban.
Moonshot CVE'southward Clark Hogan-Taylor hopes the social media giants are moving towards operating like huge public spaces.
"I think the direction of travel is right. It's way too dull, but it'south right," he said.
"[And we'll ask] 'what the hell were nosotros thinking allowing recommendation algorithms to bombard people with this stuff?'"
Mr Davey said reversing extremism needed long-term investment on the calibration of several decades.
Although almost everyone is touched by online manipulation in 1 grade or another, only a tiny part of society has then far been involved in confronting it.
"1 intervention or one project or ane program here is non going to be plenty to opposite these trends. We need a whole of lodge response," he said.
'I will get my mum back'
For Kasey, repeated interventions and conversations with her female parent have not been enough. The two all but ceased contact earlier this yr.
Kasey wrote an article for the Sydney Morning Herald where she shared her story, and was overwhelmed with the responses from others who had lost someone dearest to them.
"We need a more nuanced way of regarding conspiracy theorists," she said.
"That these people behind the conspiracy theories are people that nosotros beloved and that something has happened to them and that there's a real tragedy hither, not just for them, but besides for all the people who love them, whose relationships with them take been fundamentally inverse because of it."
Equally the earth waits for a breakthrough in the pandemic, Kasey is property on to her ain far-fetched belief.
"My only hope is that when the vaccine frees us from coronavirus, it volition besides complimentary us from the worst of the conspiracy theories and I will get my mum back. That'south my hope," she said.
"Look, I think it's unlikely, but I accept to retrieve like that because the alternative is unbearable."
Posted , updated
Source: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12-06/mum-thinks-the-earth-is-flat-saving-family-conspiracy-theories/12935984
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